Tag: Finance and economics

ITALY’S next government, a coalition between the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right Northern League, is giving investors plenty to worry about. Leaked plans, hastily abandoned, suggested it might want to leave the euro or ask the European Central Bank to forgive €250bn ($292bn) of Italian debt. But less attention has been paid to what it might mean for Italian banks, and in particular for their biggest burden: non-performing loans (NPLs). Over €185bn of NPLs were outstanding at the end of 2017, the most for any country in the European Union (see chart).

By comparison with Greece, where NPLs are 45% of loans, Italy looks manageable, with just 11.1%. And it has made progress: in late 2015 NPLs were 16.8% of loans. But any wild policy lurches would put that progress in question. The clean-up of banks’ books has relied on openness to foreign investors. Huge volumes of NPLs (€37bn in 2016 and over €47bn in 2017, according to Deloitte, a consultancy) have been sold by banks, often to…Continue reading

IN 2005 and 2006, in northern Pakistan, some 900 pregnant women took part in an unusual experiment. All were in their third trimester and suffering from depression. Most families in the area rely on subsistence farming. Almost none of the women worked outside the home. This kind of life is hard. Perinatal depression (depression around the time of giving birth) is more common in poor countries than in rich ones.

As part of one of the largest psychotherapy trials ever run, the women were split randomly into two groups. Those in one received weekly visits from a health worker for the month before the birth, and less frequent visits during the ten months after. The rest received the same number of visits, but from health workers who had been trained to deliver cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) during the visits, too.

CBT is a talking therapy that aims to break the cycle of self-reinforcing negative thoughts. It focuses on the present, rather than trying to uncover the causes of…Continue reading

A RECESSION strikes. Central banks leap into action, cutting interest rates to perk up investment. But what if, as now, there is not much cutting to do, with rates already at or close to zero? In such cases the manual calls for purchases of government bonds with newly printed cash—quantitative easing, or QE—swelling the reserves each bank keeps at the central bank. Imagine instead that people also kept accounts at the central bank. New money could be added to their accounts, providing a direct, equitable boost to spending. That is one of several potential benefits of individual central-bank accounts, which are among the more intriguing of the radical policy ideas in circulation.

Central banks deal in two sorts of currency: cash, which anyone can hold, and digital money, accessible only to financial institutions through their accounts at the central bank. Individuals hoping to spend digital money must use a bank card or transfer (or a service, like Apple Pay, linked to a bank account), or a private…Continue reading

REPUBLICANS in the House of Representatives had hoped to cut a swathe through the Dodd-Frank act, a titanic set of financial regulations passed in 2010 in the wake of the 2007-09 crisis. The “Financial Choice Act”, drafted last year, would have lessened bureaucratic oversight and relied more on stiff capital requirements. Responsibilities and penalties would have been made clearer and regulators’ discretionary powers would have been reined in. President Donald Trump, who had promised on the campaign trail to “do a number on Dodd-Frank”, was effusive when the House endorsed the Choice Act last year.

But the bill approved by the House on May 22nd, and expected soon to be signed into law by Mr Trump, is a distinctly tamer affair. It moves the line between big, systemically risky banks and the rest, set in Dodd-Frank at $50bn in assets, to $250bn. That cuts the number of institutions subjected to stress tests and stricter supervision from 38 to 12. It also eases some restrictions on proprietary trading. But only the very smallest banks will be allowed to substitute higher capital for strict regulation. Even as bold thinking was thrown out, one truly bad idea made it in, presumably under pressure from representatives from heavily indebted states. Municipal bonds will be granted special treatment in the composition of bank capital, incentivising lenders to load up…Continue reading

AS A citizen, Dave Jones worries that climate change may imperil his two children, and theirs in turn. What exercises him, as California’s insurance commissioner, is the way in which a transition to a low-carbon economy might affect the financial health of his other charges—the state’s 1,300-odd insurers. On May 8th Mr Jones unveiled an examination of how well the investment portfolios of the 672 insurers with $100m or more in annual premiums align with the Paris climate agreement of 2015, in which world leaders vowed to keep global warming below 2°C relative to pre-industrial times.

The answer is, not very. In the next five years carbon-intensive firms in the insurers’ portfolios plan to produce more internal combustion engines and coal-fired electricity than the maximum the International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons is compatible with meeting the 2°C goal (see chart). Meanwhile, investment plans in renewable energy and electric vehicles lag behind the IEA’s projections of what is needed.

The results echo those of a study last…Continue reading

LIFE insurance is among the oldest financial products. The Amicable Society, founded in London in 1706, charged members a set contribution and paid out annually to widows and children of those who had died in the previous 12 months. Today it is a vast industry: life and health insurers employ over 800,000 people in America alone. It protects hundreds of millions against the risk of dying early, through death benefits, or the risk of living longer than expected, for example through annuities. According to Allianz, a German insurer, total life-insurance premiums are above 5% of GDP in many rich countries, including Britain, France, Italy and Japan. In America, the world’s biggest market, annual premiums total more than $550bn.

But life insurers are struggling as never before. Those parts of the industry that have not evolved fast enough, says Clive Bannister, the head of Phoenix Group, a “closed” life insurer that buys and manages old policies but issues no new ones, have experienced a…Continue reading

On May 16th Callum Williams, our Britain economics correspondent, was named joint winner of the Young Financial Journalist of the Year at the Wincott Awards, an annual set of prizes for British journalists.

IN 2011 Kathleen started work at an insurance-and-benefits consultancy in Boston. A couple of years later the firm gave her an ultimatum: sign a “non-compete” agreement within 30 days or wave goodbye. She signed, which meant that, if she left, she would be barred for three years from working for a rival or any firm that had been contacted as a potential client, and from starting a competing business. In 2015, when she accepted a new job in a different industry at an unrelated company, her former bosses threatened to sue. The job offer was withdrawn, and reinstated only when she offered to pay any legal costs that resulted. The matter never came to court, but the fear of legal action has kept her out of her old industry ever since.

Non-compete agreements are widely used to stop ex-employees walking out of the door with valuable know-how, or poaching suppliers and customers when they move jobs. Sometimes a great deal of money and intellectual property is at stake. When Paul English, an entrepreneur,…Continue reading

IN 2017 the global economy broke out of a rut. It grew by 3.8%, the fastest pace since 2011. Surging animal spirits accompanied a rebound in business investment across the rich world. Global trade growth rose to 4.9%, also the fastest rate since 2011. Emerging-market currencies appreciated against the dollar, keeping inflation low and debts affordable. Financial markets wobbled in February, but only after reaching all-time highs. In April the IMF said that the global economic upswing had become “broader and stronger”.

Since then that healthy glow has begun to fade. First, economic surveys in Europe took a turn for the worse (presaging…Continue reading

MANY of the most famous hedge-fund trades have been bets that things were about to go wrong. Think of Enron’s bankruptcy or the souring of subprime mortgage bonds in America. The best trade made by “the Professor” was very different. It was a bet that something was starting to go right.

A visit almost 20 years ago convinced him that Turkey was serious about fixing its economy. The yield on its one-year Treasury bills was then above 100%. “It was a serious mispricing,” he tells Steven Drobny in “The Invisible Hands”, a book of interviews with pseudonymous hedge-fund managers. The IMF gave its approval to Turkey’s reforms soon afterwards. The price of T-bills surged. The one-year interest rate fell to 40%.

The wheel has since turned almost full circle for Turkey, which now seems to attract more sellers than buyers. The lira is sinking. S&P has cut the country’s credit rating from junk to junkier, partly because of concerns about its reliance on foreign capital. The…Continue reading