TAURUS
The man who knew better
I HAVE not yet had an opportunity to read Sebastian Mallaby’s new biography of Alan Greenspan (pictured), The Man Who Knew. I have heard great things about it; you can read Martin Wolf’s review of the book in The Economist here. (Full disclosure: Mr Mallaby is a former Economist journalist and is married to our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes.) In reading coverage of the book, I have been intrigued by one of Mr Mallaby’s judgments of Mr Greenspan: that he was insufficiently committed to keeping control of asset prices. Mr Wolf quotes the book as follows:
The tragedy of Greenspan’s tenure is that he did not pursue his fear of finance far enough: he decided that targeting inflation was seductively easy, whereas targeting asset prices was hard; he did not like to confront the climate of opinion, which was willing to grant that central banks had a duty to fight inflation, but not that they should vaporise citizens’ savings by forcing down asset prices. It was a tragedy that grew out of the mix of…Continue reading
Casi cuatro de cada diez jubilados ayudan económicamente a familiares
Siete de cada diez pensionistas viven solo de la prestación pública
Tres exdirectivos de Novacaixagalicia tendrán que indemnizar a Abanca con 10,4 millones
Por el cobro indebido de sus prejubilaciones. Leer
La renta fija dispara el beneficio de Morgan Stanley un 62%
Morgan Stanley ha puesto el punto final a la temporada de resultados bancarios en Estados Unidos con unas cifras que consolidan un buen trimestre para el sector. Leer
American airlines can no longer ignore cheap European rivals on transatlantic routes
GULLIVER tried an experiment the other day: he visited Kayak, a price-comparison website, plugged in some random dates in December, and looked for flights between New York and Berlin. The lowest fare that came up was a modest $387, with Norwegian Air Shuttle. The second-lowest fare was $419, also with Norwegian. After that came several flights combining legs on Norwegian and other airlines, including easyJet and Iceland’s WOW air, and a full itinerary on WOW. Only after scrolling through nearly two pages of results did the cheapest fare not involving one of these low-cost airlines appear: a $742 itinerary on Aer Lingus.
The lowest fare on an American airline didn’t show itself until page 19 of the results. That round-trip flight, with United, was selling for $2,123—more than five times the cheapest fare, with Norwegian.
That, to put it mildly, is a problem for American carriers. The big American airlines used to compete only with their European equivalents—the likes of Lufthansa, Air France and British Airways—on transatlantic flights. It was a reasonably friendly fight, since they co-operated through codeshare alliances. The…Continue reading
El FROB se ha personado en 24 causas penales contra entidades nacionalizadas
El fondo ha denunciado 47 operaciones irregulares, que suman un perjuicio de 3.588 millones de euros
El Frob reconoce una recuperación «exigua» de las ayudas públicas a la banca
El Fondo ve «razonable» la fusión Bankia-BMN, pero no descarta su venta por separado. Leer