Heidi is more reliable than Elizabeth

In the UK the train was usually my last and reluctant choice, though the UK performance isn’t too bad, after all, 90% of British trains arrive on time. In Switzerland the equivalent is 98% of trains. But that 8% difference ! Considering a trip from Lindenpark, Zug, to Basel?  The journey time by train is [...]

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Lex needs a new calculator

“In the UK interest rate cuts since the start of the crisis have delivered the average £103,000 floating rate mortgage holder an annual saving of £4,635.Against that the government estimates the net cost of bailing out the financial system at £10bn or £400 per household.”  Lex in the Financial Times today. There are 26m households [...]

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Lex – who is being stuffed?

Lex writes about the proposed Lloyds capital raising –  the world’s largest – but misses the opportunity for deserved excoriating criticism on behalf of the poor bloody individuals who are the being plucked and stuffed by the fund managers gifting  their savings. Here is a quote from yesterday’s “HM Treasury – Government Announcement on Banks. [...]

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Lex – once rumoured to be authoritative

Alexander Justham of the FSA’s markets division has  said: “Spreading false or misleading rumours about companies, particularly in volatile or fragile market conditions, can be a very damaging form of market abuse. While we pursue individual cases of rumour-mongering, it is of equal concern to us that market practitioners handle rumours properly and avoid giving [...]

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Lex – embedded in the new Pravda?

The military have learned to exert some control over media reports of their operations by ‘embedding’ journalists into operational units. Embedded journalists are not free to choose where they go and what they see, instead they have to remain with the unit they are embedded into and to the extent that they identify with the culture [...]

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Lex, let Wittgenstein be your guide: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

 This is Lex on the 24th September: “But the frightening reality is that bank lending is contracting faster than the Fed is buying assets from the non-bank private sector, as part of its efforts to lower yields and revive failed markets. No matter how much the Fed seems to do, banks are not extending loans. [...]

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Lex it’s the capital stupid!

Lex writes today about ‘Executive compensation’.   But ‘Executive compensation’ is to income, what Harry Potter is to literature. Traditionally and in most people’s minds, income is earned from employment to fund current consumption, though some may be deferred (savings). Anyone fortunate enough to have experienced a steady ascent from average income to say, ten times average income, [...]

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Is Lex a lawyer?

Expressing an opinion can be risky, events may prove you wrong.  However. this can be avoided if you include most of the available opinion options in a commentary. Welcome to the “no comment” commentary or:  “We might not always be right, but we are never wrong” Here is my commentary on today’s Lex piece on Baidu. I [...]

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The inflated elephant in Lex’s room

I do not believe there is an active conspiracy, but I do think that the collective power of the large and amorphous city establishment (this includes the Financial Times), consciously and unconsciously limits the agenda for discussion, to one which is survival friendly for the tribe. The FT depends upon financial advertising and as a consequence, [...]

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Lex – more bun than burger again this morning

Financial Times  subscribers deserve more analysis and reflection from the paper’s lead commentator than another sterile discussion about the level of the S&P .  Today Lex states that the S&P is too high. “valuations look toppy indeed”.   The column supports this view with references to the current S&P constituents average percentage profit levels, which at about 35% are high compared [...]

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