Yellow Pages de forex

Votre banque a-t-elle pu se transformer en banque des Etats-Unis ?

La dernière vague des problèmes d'opérations bancaires a des investisseurs inquiétés que le gouvernement nationalise les établissements profondément blessés, tels que Bank of America Corp. et Citigroup Inc.
Une étape si dramatique a pu le faciliter pour que quelques clients de banque obtiennent un prêt. Et des clients avec des dépôts seront encore protégés par assurance fédérale, juste comme ils sont aujourd'hui. Toujours, les consommateurs pourraient voir plus de closings de branche, plus d'étalonnage à travers des produits de banque et une détérioration dans le service à la clientèle. Les actionnaires communs et préférés, en attendant, obtiendront probablement éliminés dans une nationalisation de banque.

Avec tous les problèmes aux lesquels les banques font face maintenant, voici une amorce sur des effondrements de banque et l'impact de la nationalisation possible de banque.

Que moyen « encaisse nationalisation » ?

Une banque nationalisée est possédée et course par le gouvernement. Les chocs des législateurs l'automne dernier stimulés de crise de crédit seminationalize le secteur bancaire ; presque 314 établissements ont déjà signé l'excédent certaines de leurs parts et d'autres valeurs au trésor en échange pour $350 milliards dans des fonds du gouvernement TARP. Le gouvernement a pu maintenant aller une étape plus loin en prenant la propriété complète de certaines banques préoccupées.

Pourquoi nationalisez les banques ?

Il se comprend seulement si les banques sont en danger d'échouer. Dans les pays occidentaux, la nationalisation est en grande partie employée comme méthode de secours pour étayer vers le haut des banques pendant des moments difficiles. Il est typiquement employé pour prêter à de petites et moyennes entreprises et pour restructurer des prêts onéreux aux consommateurs.

La nationalisation a-t-elle jamais fonctionné avant ?

Il a un disque mélangé. La Suède a succédé ses banques, les a reconstituées à la santé et les a privatisées encore. La France a nationalisé son secteur bancaire, l'a privatisé encore en le vendant dans les mains privées et maintenant peut être en cours d'une autre vague de la nationalisation. Aux États-Unis, le gouvernement a assuré des centaines d'établissements pendant la crise d'épargne et de prêt deux il y a décennies. It aggressively sold off bad assets, and the experiment is now regarded as a success.

What will happen to my account if my bank is nationalized?

There should be very little change to consumers’ bank accounts and insurance-protection levels if their bank is nationalized. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures deposits for up to $250,000, will continue to cover all FDIC-insured institutions, regardless of who the owner is.

And even though an increasing number of banks are failing, the FDIC — which is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government — can’t run out of money because of its ability to borrow from the Treasury.

Will I be able to get a loan?

Nationalized banks are more likely to loosen the lending spigots. Banks would start making loans that they wouldn’t otherwise make today, such as to borrowers with less-than-stellar credit. There would be more pressure to make loans to achieve social objectives.

Homeowners at nationalized banks should also benefit since the government is likely to halt any foreclosure proceedings, says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “Uncle Sam is not going to want to put anybody out of their house,” he says.

Government-owned banks could offer basic credit cards with low rates that would appeal to less-creditworthy customers who regularly use cards to borrow. But such cards are less likely to come with costly rewards programs, such as those that earn frequent-flier miles, says Dave Kaytes, managing director at Novantas.

How will private-banking and brokerage-account customers be affected?

That depends on whether the government takes a short- or long-term view. If it intends to be a long-term owner, then it will probably sell off the brokerage, investment-banking and other auxiliary operations as nonessential to the core banking business. If, however, the government sees its step as a short-term fix to shore up the system temporarily, then it may hang on to such operations.

What other products and services might be affected?

If the government takes over a bank, management will be under even more pressure to cut costs. Expect more branch closings and poorer customer service. “Think of the bank as the DMV of the future, run by government employees who have little upward mobility,” says Mr. Kaytes.

“I think we can expect that over time, the nationalized banks will be less open to innovation and new product development, more conservative in their approaches, and more constrained in their actions and subject to tighter scrutiny,” says Jim Eckenrode, banking and payments research executive at TowerGroup.

What are the disadvantages of bank nationalization?

In the U.S., the biggest problem for the government would be the sheer impracticality and expense of taking over all 8,000 banks — or even the 314 institutions that described themselves as “banks” in order to receive government aid.

The U.S. government would have, at most, the ability to take over only a handful of the most important institutions. As a result, nationalization would not solve the pressing problem of potential bank failures, particularly among small banks. Consumers who have deposits in such banks would still be dependent on the FDIC to return their money during a failure, and such a process could be lengthy and involve a lot of red tape.

Copyrighted, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Provided By Wall Street Journal
by Jane J. Kim and Heidi Moore
Sunday, January 25, 2009

My house is shabby, but it is comfortable
There is no end to wanting - after the Ferrari and the Birkin bag, what next?

By Lee Wei Ling, daughter of Lee Kuan Yew, Former Prime Minister of Republic of Singapore

In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote: ‘Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time.

Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.’ Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.
Decades of the good life have made us soft.

The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities. A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order.
A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate.

The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption.
Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse.

I am not an economist, but wasn’t that the root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could afford to? I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don’t believe in the supernatural and I don’t think I have a soul that will survive my death. But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me: ‘Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.’

My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal.
My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today’s standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby.

Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate. But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970
who have never lived through difficult times. No matter how poor you are in Singapore, the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore.
Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference.

Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy.
Enjoying the fruits of one’s own labour is one’s prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously. But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering.
After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to? Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.
When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it?

We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make that choice.
In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely.

To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute
–
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.

That’s a question I’m asked quite often. In most professions, it’s fairly simple to answer. If you’re in accounting, you have a fairly reliable range. Engineering? Same thing. Trading? It gets unwieldy very quickly.

Here’s why.

First, you can lose. In most other jobs, you’re usually guaranteed to be paid. In trading, there is no such guarantee. On the upside, there is no limit. In 2007, three hedge fund managers earned over $1 billion dollars. Even the Yankees don’t pay their employees this type of money.

But once you get past that point (most people already know this ahead of time) the possibilities of the many potential returns become endless. Let me give you an example using only one trade made during the year.

Let’s say you went short the market at the closing top so far of 2009 made on January 6 at 934.70. This is a fairly good assumption if you are a Battle Plan subscriber and took the sell signals the Battle Plan triggered. Everyone who took the trade made money, right? For this example we’ll assume so.

Let’s now say that everyone who subscribes to the Battle Plan has a $500,000 account. Would everyone have achieved the same return shorting and then covering at the same price?

At first thought, you might say yes. But then you realize the answer is absolutely not.

Why not?

Because even though everyone took the same signal on the same day at the same price, there are two driving factors to the returns people achieved.

The first is position size. The second is vehicle selected.

Let’s look at position size first.

If someone was extremely aggressive they might have put their entire $500,000 in the position. If they did, their account would have risen by about 3% if they exited the next day on the close which was the signal day to exit.

Someone else might have been 1/2 as aggressive. They would have allocated $250,000 of their $500,000 and earned half as much which is 1.5%.

Someone else could have been more conservative and placed 20% of their account in the position. Their account grew about 0.60%. A good return for the day but 1/5 what the person who was fully invested earned. On the flip side, this same person had the peace of mind knowing that if the position moved against them the loss would have been 1/5 the loss of someone who was fully invested. Returns and Risk usually go hand in hand.

Now let’s go further and take number two which is vehicle selection.

We’ll look at the same signal and then look at the very different returns based upon the investment vehicle selected.

A more aggressive trader will take the signal and use the e-mini market to trade. And on this trade, for each contract they sold short, they made about 28 points or $1400 per contract. With a $500,000 account they can potentially trade many many contracts. Their returns would have been substantial (as would their losses have been if they were wrong).

Someone else who is aggressive may take the same signal and buy the SDS which is the 2x inverse ETF of the S& P. He will have made good money too on this trade (about 6%) but less than the e-mini trader.

Someone else could have taken the trade and used the SPY as the vehicle of choice. His return? Half of what the 2x ETF trader made.

Someone else who wanted to limit their risk could have bought puts. Limited dollar downside and unlimited dollar upside (the amazing lure of long options). Their gain becomes more complicated because of the decision they made along the way as to which put to buy.

Another options trader, more conservative than our trader above, could simply have put on a bear call credit spread on the SPYs. Sell the calls and protect the position by buying the calls. He had the least risk of the group and he also made the least amount of money. Again, its risk and reward.

So how did this one simple trade that worked out so nicely get so complicated when we look at its return? We had this very simple high probability signal trigger last Tuesday night and for most people who took the trade it was a profitable trade. But at the end of the year this one very nice trade will look very, very different on everyone’s P&L sheets. Most will have taken different position size than everyone else and many will have used different investment vehicles than others. And I can promise you that almost nobody’s P&L sheets are going to look the same on the trade at the end of the year. Now multiply all these variables by dozens if not hundreds of trades made in a year and you have an exponential number of potential combination of returns, all from taking the same trades every day

Position sizing and investment vehicle choice is not something you will learn on television from people screaming out their stock picks or their Dow projections for 2009. All that stuff is as real as the WWE (though in defense of the WWE my 10-year-old son and his friends insist it really is real).

You can only learn proper position sizing and investment vehicle choice by spending time studying this and creating a strategy plan ahead of time. This plan lays out exactly how you allocate your capital and also allows you to see what the potential risks and rewards for the different scenarios are as they play out. This is not an easy exercise and it can take a great deal of tine before ever getting right. But no other profession out there allows you the freedom and upside that this one does. It’s time well spent.

We’ll continue to look at this topic as we proceed in the future.

The European Central Bank lowered its benchmark interest rate by 50 bps to 2.5%. Yet, in our opinion the rate cut came a bit too late and we expect more EUR/USD weakness going forward on speculation that we may have a considerable deterioration of the euro zone economy in 2009.

The Euro-zone is experiencing a significant slowdown, Trichet said

In the introductory statement ahead of the regular press conference, Jean-Claude Trichet sounded very pessimistic. The President of the ECB said the Euro-zone is experiencing a significant slowdown and “today’s decision takes into account that inflationary pressures have continued to diminish, owing in particular to the further weakening in the economic outlook”. Looking further ahead, he said that we may “continue to see global economic weakness and very sluggish domestic demand persisting in the coming quarters as the impact of the financial tensions on activity continues”.

Euro/Dollar Forecast For 2009 (Update)

It is always difficult to make exchange rate forecasts, particularly when the currency market is very volatile.  Even so, in this article we argue that a considerable deterioration of the euro zone economy in 2009, could lead to a significant shift of interest rate differentials in favor of the U.S. dollar and keep the EUR/USD under pressure over the next few months. Indeed, recent economic data points toward weakening of real GDP growth in the euro zone economy and a more accommodative monetary policy by the European Central Bank could be needed to prevent the region from falling into a much deeper recession. On the other hand, the recent sell-off in commodities, particularly in oil, should alleviate some downward pressure from the U.S. economy which has been running a current account deficit of nearly 5 percent of the GDP.

The ECB Underestimated the Size of the Financial Crisis

The biggest housing and credit bubble in history continues to threat the entire global financial system and the once resilient Euro zone economy is slowly succumbing to tight credit conditions and a slowing global economy.  Initially, European policy leaders thought the financial crisis would be confined to the United States and the ECB was slower to act than the Federal Reserve. Inflation in the euro zone was well above a level consistent with price stability and the ECB was concerned with second-round effects of energy prices in wage and price setting. However, the credit storm that began in the U.S. end up affecting the euro zone and European banks were forced to write off $229 billion out of a global total of $588 billion in losses related the collapse of the U.S. subprime market. While no one can deny that Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB president, has done a lot to boost the euro as a credible alternative for the U.S. dollar, it is also becoming clear that the ECB perhaps underestimated the size of the financial crisis by keeping interest rates too high for too long. In fact, the euro zone is now in a technical recession and facing the most serious test since the euro was introduced to the world financial markets in 1999.

Risks for This Trade

In 2008, the U.S. dollar appreciated against several of the world’s most heavily traded currencies. To some extent, investors were reluctant to take leveraged positions on higher yielding currencies and the U.S. dollar was helped by a strong demand from financial institutions seeking a safe-haven currency.  However, holding a long position in the U.S. dollar also involves some risks. In fact, the U.S. economy is likely to continue to face substantial challenges in 2009 including further job losses and a rapid deleveraging in the financial sector. In addition, some investors are concerned with the fiscal impact of the rescue plan which could cost almost 5 percent of GDP. Currently, the United States federal government runs a deficit of $438bn, or 3 per cent of gross domestic product and the bailout plan could push the fiscal deficit next year to $1 trillion or 7% of GDP.

Written by Antonio Sousa, Chief Strategist for DailyFX.com, asousa@fxcm.com