Bibliographie torrent : “the financial and economic crisis collection”

Il me semble incontournable de vous faire part de l’existence d’une mine documentaire absolument gigantesque sur la thématique économique et financière, notamment liée à la crise de 2008-2009 ainsi qu’aux années suivantes …

Je ne veux pas faire trop la publicité du protocole bittorent car il sert essentiellement à partager des fichiers illégalement, sans respecter les droits d’auteur, mais si vous en avez l’occasion, je vous propose de télécharger un client bitorrent comme utorrent (fonctionne sur windows ou sous MAC OS X) et de rechercher sur un moteur de recherche tel que “kickass.to”, ou “fenopy.se”, ou simplement taper “torrent search engine” dans google. Sur ces sites d’indexation de fichier torrent, effectuez la recherche suivante et téléchargez les torrents répondant à cette requête :

” The financial and economic crisis collection ”

Les torrents sont rangés par numéro, de 2 à 21.

Ensuite ouvrez les fichiers torrent au moyen d’un logiciel client bitorrent tel que utorrent, et téléchargez. Vous trouverez une masse considérable de livres (tous en anglais) sur cette thématique là, soit en format PDF, soit en format epub (livre électronique).

Je parle ici d’une quantité astronomique. A tel point que pour lire tout cela (d’autant qu’il m’est toujours difficile de lire un livre de 300 pages sur l’écran), il me faudra probablement 10 ans.

Mais ces packages ont le mérite d’exister. Inutile de me demander d’où cela vient… je ne sais pas. Je pense que c’est le fait soit d’un passionné, de quelqu’un qui travaille dans le secteur ou alors tout simplement d’un étudiant en thèse sur ce sujet.

Les livres sont généralement sérieux et “reliable”, c’est à dire émanent de sources fiables, comme des maisons d’édition liées à des universités américaines. On trouvera même quelques rapports d’organisations internationales comme l’ONU, le FMI ou la banque mondiale.

Amusez vous bien et surtout bon courage, vu la masse de documentation…

E.C.B action won’t bring much relief

This article is from the international herald tribune, from Anatole Kaletsky. It seems interesting to me because it helps me to understand the intimate mechanisms of quantitative easing and also the concept of negative interest rates.

Anatole Kaletsky is an journalist but also an economic analyst.

At last, the European Central Bank seems ready to shoot some adrenalin into the moribund euro zone economy.

After a news conference last week, when Mario Draghi strongly hinted at action to come after the E.C.B. council meeting in June 5, this week brought a host of interviews and media leaks describing quite specifically the new ideas the bank has in mind.

The measure, which is almost a foregone conclusion, will be a cut in the interest rate the E.C.B. pays on bank deposits from zero to negative 0.1 percent or 0.2 percent. Beyond that, E.C.B. officials have suggested several additional stimulus measures : extension of loans to commercial banks at very low fixed rates for three or even five years, purchases by the E.C.B. of bank loans to small and midsize enterprises packaged into asset-backed securities, and concessional lending to European banks on condition that they pass on these funds to those businesses. These announcements generated quite a lot of enthusiasm : The euro weakened from almost $1.40 to $1.37, bond yields in Italy and Spain fell to record lows and European stock markets jumped between 1 and 2 percent. On Wednesday the market reaction even crossed the Altlantic, with interest rates on United States Treasury bonds falling to their lowest levels in six months.

Sadly, however, investors may be overexcited about E.C.B.’s plans. Even assuming all the reports about the plans turn out to be true – and several times recently the E.C.B. has not followed through on similar rumors – it is far from clear that these policies would have much impact on the big economic problems facing the euro zone : feeble economic growth and mass unemployment, a continuing credit crunch for small and midsize enterprises in southern Europe, huge imbalances in competitiveness between Germany and the rest of the euro zone, and deflationary pressures that create debt traps and balance sheet recessions in the peripheral economies.

A negative interest rate on deposits, the measure that has been watched closely, is unlikely to have much effect for two reasons.

First, the banks that have excess cash to park at the E.C.B. are by definition the stronger ones, most of them in Germany, France and northern European countries. These banks do not need further incentives to lend to their customers, because credit is readily available to both businesses and households in those countries.

The credit crunch that needs to relieved is in Italy, Spain and other peripheral countries – and the bnks in these economies are generally much weaker. Their reluctance to lend to customers is mainly due to their lack of capital, not their eagerness to hoard cash at the E.C.B. If negative E.C.B. deposit rates now eliminate the meager profits these institutions can earn by placing excess liquidity in the interbank market, their capital positions may, on balance, deteriorate, and it is hard to see how this would increase their ability to lend.

Second, although negative interest rates may grad media headlines, there is nothing magical about their economic effect. This has been demonstrated by the experience in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, where negative interest rates have been used to discourage excessive capital inflows and to try to weaken currencies that were deemed too strong. In all these cases, the effects of imposing what amounts to a small tax on bank deposits turned out to be quite modest.

To achieve the desired results, negative rates had to be supplemented with other measures, like foreign exchange intervention or aggressive expansion of the central balance sheets, which amounted in one day or another to “printing money” and using it to by government bonds.

And printing money to buy government bonds, in the manner of American, British and Japanese quantitative easing, is the one kind of measure still ruled out for Europe by German opposition, as Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank president, confirmed this week.

To be more precise, Mr. Weidmann has ruled out easing in Europe unless and until the other measures now planned for the E.C.B. have been tried and found wanting. The problem with the step-by-step approach favored by the E.C.B. under pressure from the Bundesbank is that every step taken becomes an excuse for delaying the next step. Experience suggests that E.C.B. economists may be well spend months analyzing and studying the consequences of negative deposit rates before they decide to move onto other measures such as purchasing small and midsize enterprise loans.

And even if the E.C.B. does move faster than than in the past and announces a package next month combining both negative interest rates and business loans, this may not do much for southern Europe without action to encourage investment and spending by businesses and consumers, as well as increasing the availability of credit by easing the regulatory pressure on undercapitalized banks.

What would really help these countries would be a relaxation of fiscal policies or a direct injection of government-backed mortgages that transformed the British economy.

Unfortunately, neither fiscal easing nor any kind of government-backed credit expansion seems to be an option for southern Europe, because it would directly conflict with the deficit-reduction programs and bank restructuring regimes imposed by the European Commission and E.C.B.

The upshot is that E.C.B. action will probably prove just sufficient to prevent the euro zone economy from deteriorating any further, and the attainment of this stability will be offered as a reason not to do anything more ambitious, either by way of monetary stimulus or the easing of fiscal and regulatory constraints. A continuation of Japanese-style stagnation thus seems the most likely prospect for most of Europe despite, or perhaps because of, the half-hearted action that can now be expected from the E.C.B.

Pourquoi la victoire du FN renforce la position de François Hollande au conseil européen

Je tiens à signaler que la victoire du FN est un bon argument à faire valoir pour le prochain conseil européen afin de peser face à l’Allemagne. François Hollande pourra négocier en position de force face à Angela Merkel, et son orthodoxie monétaire. Il faut faire baisser l’euro en utilisant des méthodes non conventionnelles, du quantitative easing pour encourager la croissance comme le font les Etats-Unis. Il montrera à Angela Merkel, que lorsque l’Europe n’est géré que par l’Allemagne, voilà ce qui arrive. Il montrera à Angela Merkel, que lorsque le modèle du soutien à l’activité et à la croissance voulu par la France n’est pas écouté et que l’on applique à la lettre les schémas austéritaires, l’électorat vote pour des partis europhobes. Angela Merkel ne veut pas de ces partis là, et elle écoutera donc la voix de la France.

BlackRock : société d’investissement américaine complètement inconnue

BlackRock gère directement plus 3000 milliards de dollars et indirectement via sa plateforme de conseil et d’investissement “Aladdin”, plus de 15 000 milliards, soit 7% de l’ensemble des fonds disponibles sur la planête (environ 225 000 milliards de dollars, 225 trillions en anglais, ou 225 x 10^12).

Des articles intéressants à son sujet :

Aperçu de « Investment management- The rise of BlackRock | The Economist »

Aperçu de « BlackRock- The monolith and the markets | The Economist »

Here is a example : the French public debt is composed of 2.000 billions, or 2 000 milliards. Our GDP is approximately of (2.000/90)x100 =  € 2.222,22 billions.  And the part of public spending is around € 1.200 billions.

Apple’s net cash is 148 Billions US$. Not situated in US banks of course. The international man newletters are the best way to understand to put your money to avoid taxes. Apple’s cash is not in the USA to avoid paying taxes on it. So when Apple needs cash, they prefer to borrow than to use their cash money. Because if you move USD into the USA, you need to pay taxes.

I think it’s always interesting to speak about huge amount of money because it remained the only way to understand the power of every institutions, states in our messy modern world.

If you remember an old post of mine. The biggest amount of cash controlled by a company is around 12 trillions or 12.000.000.000.000 $. It is composed of assets directly or indirectly controlled by BlackRock through Aladdin network and represents 6% of the total amount of financial cash available in the whole earth. Given this fact, we can deduce than the total amount of cash available in the whole world is = (12.000.000.000.000/6)x100 = (12 Tb/6)x100 = 2Tb x 100 = 200 Tb $ = 200.000.000.000.000 $. It is also interesting to understand that 6% is far from a majority in the mess of world financial assets. So BlackRock through Aladdin cannot impose its will.

Data about BlackRock and Aladdin are provided by The Economist weekly magazine. But please let’s go back to what I wanted to say when I decided to write this post. I was just listening BBC world service when I heard that the FED created 3,5 Tb of USD since 2008 !

Attention !, je viens d’obtenir une nouvelle statistique d’après le documentaire noire finance diffusé sur Arte, qui propose les chiffres suivants :

Les dérivés représenterait en part des dépôts bancaires mondiaux 400 000 milliards de dollars, soit 400 Tb. On peut en déduire que la somme des dépôts bancaires mondiaux est donc 3x ce chiffre, soit
1 200 000 milliards ou 1.200 Tb.

3,5 Tb ! Interesting to make a comparison of this amount versus the GDP of the USA don’t you think ?