Tag: finance

In a world in which there is no risk, only return (thank you Federal Reserve Risk Management LLC), hedge funds – used to generating Profits just by sitting on legacy positions – see no need to reallocate their portfolios. Nowhere was this more evident than in the position turnover in Q4. As Goldman calculates, total asset turnover in Q4 dropped to 28% – a new all time low. In fact, the only increase in turnover, either buying or selling, was in the tech and infotech spaces. Everything else saw an unprecedented buyers and sellers strike.

 

Needless to say, this explains the epic, and ongoing, collapse in trading volumes: since nobody is repositioning their portfolios, there is virtually no trading volume, and as a result stocks move, higher of course, on ever lower and lower trading block size. Which means that if and when the current regime fails, and the real block size re-emerges, watch out below. It also means that banks which are reliant on flow trading commission for revenues, are out of luck again, as there is virtually no flow to speak of.

Finally, for those curious what diversification means for hedge funds, the following chart shold explain it:

What it means is that Hedge fund returns are highly dependent on the performance of a few key stocks. The typical hedge fund has an average of 63% of its long-equity assets invested in its 10 largest positions compared with 31% for the typical large-cap mutual fund, 22% for the average small-cap mutual fund, 18% for the S&P 500 and just 3% for the Russell 2000 Index.

This is good when said 10 largest positions perform well. Naturally, once the Fed’s all too visible hand is pulled from under the market, it may be time to consider other options.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1gRqcpc Tyler Durden

An agreement in the Ukraine has just been signed, which sees early presidential elections. Europe is delighted by this development as confirmed by the following statement by the unelected Herman Van Rompuy:

Statement by the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, on Ukraine

 

I welcome the agreement reached between the government and the opposition in Ukraine. The agreement is a necessary compromise in order to launch an indispensable political dialogue that offers the only democratic and peaceful way out of the crisis that has already caused too much suffering and bloodshed on all sides. It is now the responsibility of all parties to be courageous and turn words into deeds for the sake of Ukraine’s future. This agreement was facilitated by important work by the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, Poland and the Special Representative of the President of Russia and based on the persistent efforts during the last two months by High Representative Ashton and Commissioner Füle. The EU continues to stand ready to support Ukraine.

The Foreign Ministers of Germany, France, and Poland said the following:

The Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Poland welcome the signing of the agreement on the Settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, commend the parties for their courage and commitment to the agreement and call for an immediate end to all violence and confrontation in Ukraine.

And the full agreement is below (link):

Agreement on the Settlement of Crisis in Ukraine

 

Concerned with the tragic loss of life in Ukraine, seeking an immediate end of bloodshed and determined to pave the way for a political resolution of the crisis,

We, the signing parties, have agreed upon the following:

 

1. Within 48 hours of the signing of this agreement, a special law will be adopted, signed and promulgated, which will restore the Constitution of 2004 including amendments passed until now. Signatories declare their intention to create a coalition and form a national unity government within 10 days thereafter.

 

2. Constitutional reform, balancing the powers of the President, the government and parliament, will start immediately and be completed in September 2014.

 

3. Presidential elections will be held as soon as the new Constitution is adopted  but no later than December 2014. New electoral laws will be passed and a new Central Election Commission will be formed on the basis of proportionality and in accordance with the OSCE & Venice commission rules.

 

4. Investigation into recent acts of violence will be conducted under joint monitoring from the authorities, the opposition and the Council of Europe.

 

5. The authorities will not impose a state of emergency. The authorities and the opposition will refrain from the use of violence. The Parliament will adopt the 3rd amnesty, covering the same range of illegal actions as the 17th February 2014 law.

 

Both parties will undertake serious efforts for the normalisation of life in the cities and villages by withdrawing from administrative and public buildings and unblocking streets, city parks and squares.

 

Illegal weapons should be handed over to the Ministry of Interior bodies within 24 hours of the special law, referred to in point 1 hereof, coming into force. After the aforementioned period, all cases of illegal carrying and storage of weapons will fall under the law of Ukraine. The forces of authorities and of the opposition will step back from confrontational posture. The Government will use law enforcement forces exclusively for the physical protection of public buildings.

 

6. The Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, Poland and the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation call for an immediate end to all violence and confrontation.

 

Kyiv, 21 February 2014

As a reminder, this won’t be the first “crisis settlement” agreement that will be promptly violated.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bRK7oH Tyler Durden

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,320.75, EUR 963.63 and GBP 792.20 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,313.75, EUR 959.22 and GBP 788.90 per ounce.   

Gold rose $13.50 or 1.03% yesterday to $1,323.70/oz. Silver climbed $0.39 or 1.82% at $21.83/oz.

Gold is marginally lower today but is 0.3% higher for the week. A higher weekly close today will be the third week of consecutive gains which would be bullish from a momentum and technical perspective.

Gold in U.S. Dollars – 5 Day – (Bloomberg)

Concerns about emerging markets including China, the U.S. economy and worries about global economic growth are underpinning gold’s safe haven appeal. This has led to the 6% gains in February and the 9% gains so far in 2014. Yet prices are 45% below the nominal record high of  $1,915 an ounce reached in 2011.

Investment and store of wealth physical demand is underpinning prices and led to gold reaching 3 month highs of $1,332.45/oz last Tuesday.

Premiums for gold bars in Singapore were steady as they were in Hong Kong, but fell in Tokyo because of sharp gains of gold in yen terms.  Premiums for gold bars in Singapore were little changed at $1.20 to $1.50; Hong Kong premiums were at $1.30 to $1.70 according to Reuters.

The most active December gold contract on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange rose 43 yen/gram to 4,346 yen, within sight of a five-month high of 4,366 yen/gram hit on Tuesday on the back of a weakening yen.

Gold in Japanese Yen, 5 Years – (Bloomberg)

The technicals suggest that after a pullback, the precious metal may continue to rise. A period of correction and consolidation would ordinarily be expected after such rapid gains. The question is – do we see it now or after further gains?

If gold closes lower today and for the week, it would be bearish in the short term as follow through technical selling would be expected. A higher weekly close should lead to more gains next week.

To sum up, gold is vulnerable after the recent sharp gains. In the short term, technicals and momentum may dictate, rather than the positive fundamentals.

Gold traders and analysts are divided on the outlook for gold next week. The weekly Bloomberg gold survey shows that 14 are bullish, 15 are bearish and 4 are hold.

Gold in U.S. Dollars, 5 Years – (Bloomberg)

Last week reports showed retail sales and factory output unexpectedly fell in January and housing starts slumped causing renewed concerns about the U.S. housing market. The anemic economic recovery in the U.S. is very dependent on the fragile U.S. housing recovery.

Macquarie analysts said in a report this week that the annual gold demand figures for 2013 may signal a ‘mystery buyer.’ The World Gold Council’s ‘Gold Demand Trends’ report released Tuesday showed OTC investment, stock flows of 595 tonnes in 2013, with 317 tonnes in Q4, plus “excessive” Chinese gold imports. This “has given rise to much market speculation about a ‘mystery buyer’ of gold in 2013,” Macquarie said in a report picked up on by Bloomberg.

OTC investment demand includes opening of gold deposit accounts and other gold-backed products, especially in Turkey and China. Macquarie estimated stock build in China of about 300 tonnes. The WGC “did not rule out the possibility that some of the unknown demand was caused by unidentified central bank buying.”

The People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) stealth gold reserve diversification programme likely continues.

IMF Gold Reserves – U.S., China, Germany and Russia (Bloomberg)

Russian gold buying slowed down in January. Russian January gold holdings were unchanged at 33.3 million troy ounces. The Russian gold reserves are valued at $41.7 billion as of the end of January versus $40.0 billion as of the end of December, the Russian central bank reported on its website.

The Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society is prepared to spend at least HK$ 1 billion to set up a gold vaulting warehouse in mainland China that will be able to store a massive 1,500 tonnes of gold.

President Haywood Cheung Tak-hay told the South China Morning Post of the development. Society members, who include all gold jewellery makers and jewellery and bullion retailers in Hong Kong, support the planned project in Qianhai.

A key issue, Cheung said, is for the warehouse to be given special status by Beijing so members can freely transfer gold and silver between Hong Kong and Qianhai. China still has capital controls and only 11 mainland banks are allowed to import gold.

Qianhai, about an hour by car from Hong Kong, was named in July 2012 as a testing ground for the free flow of yuan and other policies to encourage overseas investment. “At present, many foreign gold investors dare not trade in China as there are too many restrictions. They prefer to trade in Hong Kong which is a free market. If we can have a Qianhai warehouse, it would further increase our attractiveness,” said Cheung.

The 7 Key Allocated Gold Storage Must Haves
A diversification into gold remains prudent and will again protect investors, both retail and institutional, pensions owners and savers, over the medium and long term. However, this is only the case if the gold owned is physical bullion coins and bars and not digital gold, pooled gold or paper gold. Fully segregated and fully allocated gold coin and bar storage remains the safest way to own gold.
 
There are a number of key storage must haves and we have compiled the absolute benchmark allocated gold storage list that will enable those seeking an allocation to physical gold to evaluate potential bullion and more importantly storage partners.

The 7 Key Allocated Gold Storage Must Haves

1. Ability to take delivery: Ensure that can you take delivery of your bullion when you want and where you want
2. Bullion authenticity: Ensure your gold bullion is produced and stored within the LBMA chain of integrity
3. Gold bullion audits: Ensure your bullion is audited daily, and annually by internationally recognised auditors
4. On-Line storage inventory: Ensure that you can log-on to view your bullion item description for bars or coins, quantity, gross weight, fineness and item value
5. Being able to visit and view holdings: Ensure that you can arrange to visit and view your physical gold coins and bars
6. Insurance of bullion at storage facilities: Ensure that your bullion provider and its storage partners have adequate insurance cover
7. Guarantee of bailment: Ensure that the legal ownership of the bullion remains with you

Conclusion
Guarantee of bailment is potentially the most important point. In the event that the company you store your bullion with is nationalised – insolvent governments are known to nationalise companies of a strategic value –  or goes into liquidation, your gold could be forfeited.

Some gold services offer ultra cheap storage, in many cases below the actual vaulting costs of ownership. This means that the storage rate you are getting is being subsidised by some other revenue stream, such as interest on currency deposits or possibly profits from speculation. If this is the case your bullion may be at risk. When choosing your provider steer away from the deep discounters and seek quality, otherwise, may then get exactly what you paid for in terms of access.

Thus owning gold directly and in a fully allocated and fully segregated account remains vital.   

Download your copy of 7 Key Allocated Gold Storage Must Haves here.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bRK6RM GoldCore

“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war,” warns a senior Russian government official. The FT reports Russia is prepared to fight a war over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea (where the largest ethnic Russian population lives and they have a military base). Conjuring images of the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, the official told the FT, “they will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia.” The Kremlin regards the Georgian conflict as the biggest stand-off between Russia and the west since the end of the Cold War and it has fed determination in Moscow to push back against what it believes to be western attempts to contain Russia.

 

 

Via The FT,

“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war,” the official said. “They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia.” In August 2008, Russian troops invaded Georgia after the Georgian military launched a surprise attack on the separatist region of South Ossetia in an effort to establish its dominance over the republic.

 

…

 

The brief conflict with Georgia pitted Russia indirectly against the US and Nato, which had earlier tried to put Georgia on a path to Nato membership. The Kremlin regards the Georgian conflict as the biggest stand-off between Russia and the west since the end of the Cold War and it has fed determination in Moscow to push back against what it believes to be western attempts to contain Russia.

 

…

 

The warning of a similar scenario comes because Ukraine’s civil conflict has fanned tension in Crimea. On the peninsula, located on the northern coast of the Black Sea where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is stationed, ethnic Russians make up almost 60 per cent of the population, with Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars accounting for the rest.

 

…

 

Volodymyr Konstantinov, speaker of Crimea’s parliament, said on Thursday that the region might try to secede from Ukraine if the country split. “It is possible, if the country breaks apart,” he told the Russian news agency Interfax. “And everything is moving towards that.” Russian media also quoted him as saying Crimeans might turn to Russia for protection.

 

…

 

The Kremlin has been eager to stress that it is not interfering in Ukraine. …

 

However, many government officials say in private that Ukraine falls inside Russia’s sphere of influence. “We will not allow Europe and the US to take Ukraine from us. The states of the former Soviet Union, we are one family,” said a foreign policy official. “They think Russia is still as weak as in the early 1990s but we are not.”

So while some suggest the “agreement” today is great news, we suspect it solves absolutely nothing as the corruption at the core remains and the push-pull of East-West tensions remains as the only thing that matters – it sadly appears – is who controls the pipelines.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bRK4ZZ Tyler Durden

All you need to know about the New Normal breed of crony capitalism and unbridled hypocrisy is once again best exemplified by the following quote by Charlie Munger – the lifetime business partner of crony capitalist par excellence Warren Buffett – from May 2013, in which he said that “I think it is very stupid to allow a system to evolve where half of the trading is a bunch of short term people trying to get information one millionth of a nanosecond ahead of somebody else. It’s legalized front-running. I think it is basically evil and I don’t think it should have ever been allowed to reach the size that it did. Why should all of us pay a little group of people to engage in legalized front-running of our orders?”

Noble, noble words Charlie. What Munger, however, did not disclose is that as part of the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Business Wire news service, the company was enabling just this “basically evil” frontrunning, by allowing some, those who could afford the hefty fee of course, to make Munger and Buffett even richer and to subscribe to BW’s HFT direct news access which gave them a few millisecond headstart and in the process frontrun everyone else.

So a few weeks ago, our friends at Nanex caught Business Wire redhanded, and in the process of leaking direct access. The WSJ reported:

At 4 p.m., Ulta’s stock was changing hands for about $122 a share. About 150 milliseconds after 4 p.m., Business Wire released Ulta’s earnings, according to people familiar with the timing of the release. The earnings results missed analyst expectations, a sign for traders to sell. Within about 50 milliseconds, in a series of rapid-fire trades, about 6,200 shares of Ulta’s stock were sold on New York stock exchanges for nearly $122, totaling nearly $800,000.

 

While it’s possible that the trades were executed by a firm that doesn’t subscribe to Business Wire, traders say the size of the trades indicates they were likely made by a firm, or several firms, with knowledge of the results. A spokesman for Ulta Salon said the company doesn’t comment on stock-market action.

 

At the time of the first wave of trades, newswires hadn’t yet distributed Ulta’s earnings. Bloomberg L.P.’s Bloomberg News issued the release 242 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Dow Jones & Co., which owns The Wall Street Journal, received the release 296 milliseconds after 4 p.m. and issued it 168 milliseconds later. About 700 milliseconds after 4 p.m., Ulta’s stock reached its closing price of $118 a share on Nasdaq, a price that took account of the orders placed after Business Wire and other news services distributed Ulta’s earnings, according to data analyzed by Nanex LLC, a market data provider, and people familiar with the trading.

 

Nasdaq stocks often settle a few tenths of a second after 4 p.m. as its computer systems seek to reconcile all trades, according to people familiar with the exchange’s practices.

 

Because of the heavy trading action, T. Rowe Price got $118 a piece for its 26,000 shares, say people familiar with the trading. That’s a difference of about $100,000 from what it would have gotten if the stock hadn’t taken a hit from the earnings report in the first second after 4 p.m. Such heavy, rapid-fire trading could explain why market volatility in the seconds after the 4 p.m. Eastern time stock-market close has increased in recent years, says Eric Hunsader, founder of Nanex.

Fast forward to last night when the firm that was exposed as enabling such “basically evil” frontrunning, Berkshire, pulled the plug on Business Wire’s direct access:

After publication of the Wall Street Journal article “and in consultation with Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman, Warren Buffett, Business Wire has made the decision to no longer allow high-frequency trading firms to license direct feeds from Business Wire,” Ms. Baron Tamraz said in a statement.

…

 

The company said the decision was made after conversations between Business Wire Chief Executive Cathy Baron Tamraz and Mr. Buffett, whose company purchased the San Francisco press-release distribution company in 2006. The conversations with Mr. Buffett took place after The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 6 that Business Wire was selling direct access to news releases to high-speed trading firms, as well as to more traditional media and other securities-industry customers.

 

Mr. Buffett’s personal involvement in the decision by Business Wire to end the practice is unusual for the legendary investor, who generally takes a hands-off approach to the business decisions of companies owned by his conglomerate. Mr. Buffett didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

But before anyone congraultates the octogenarian billionaire for “doing the right thing”, it appears he had some legalistic prodding:

Business Wire also had conversations with officials in New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office about the issue. The officials expressed concerns about the practice and pushed the company to end it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

“Business Wire’s decision to voluntarily step forward and stop selling its clients’ information directly to high-speed traders is a tremendous victory for our effort to eliminate advance trading on market-moving information,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement.

 

In a September speech, Mr. Schneiderman said trading on early access to publicly released information is a “new form of market manipulation” that requires action from regulators and lawmakers in Washington. Mr. Schneiderman’s focus until now has largely been on high-speed traders getting early access to economic reports.

So congratulations to Nanex and Eric Hunsader for exposing yet another hypocrite, and congratulations to Buffett for doing the right thing… when there were no more options. And now we turn our attention to the other newswires who still provide the HFT parasites with the “basically evil” frontrunning info they so desperately need to make a mockery of the market:

Business Wire isn’t the only press-release distributor that has been providing traders direct access to releases. High-speed traders are also paying Marketwired, a Toronto company majority-owned by OMERS Private Equity Inc., which distributes earnings releases and the ADP monthly employment report, to get direct access to the news. Marketwired had no immediate comment.

Sadly, at this point even if one were to root out all of these symptoms of an HFT-driven market that we have been writing about for five years, it would still be too late to fix a terminally broken market, where while HFT is the means by which manipulation is performed, the underlying cause was, is and remains the Fed. Until both HFT and the Fed are eliminated, one can only joke that the US capital markets are anything resembling “fair and efficient.”

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1da64dt Tyler Durden

All you need to know about the New Normal breed of crony capitalism and unbridled hypocrisy is once again best exemplified by the following quote by Charlie Munger – the lifetime business partner of crony capitalist par excellence Warren Buffett – from May 2013, in which he said that “I think it is very stupid to allow a system to evolve where half of the trading is a bunch of short term people trying to get information one millionth of a nanosecond ahead of somebody else. It’s legalized front-running. I think it is basically evil and I don’t think it should have ever been allowed to reach the size that it did. Why should all of us pay a little group of people to engage in legalized front-running of our orders?”

Noble, noble words Charlie. What Munger, however, did not disclose is that as part of the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Business Wire news service, the company was enabling just this “basically evil” frontrunning, by allowing some, those who could afford the hefty fee of course, to make Munger and Buffett even richer and to subscribe to BW’s HFT direct news access which gave them a few millisecond headstart and in the process frontrun everyone else.

So a few weeks ago, our friends at Nanex caught Business Wire redhanded, and in the process of leaking direct access. The WSJ reported:

At 4 p.m., Ulta’s stock was changing hands for about $122 a share. About 150 milliseconds after 4 p.m., Business Wire released Ulta’s earnings, according to people familiar with the timing of the release. The earnings results missed analyst expectations, a sign for traders to sell. Within about 50 milliseconds, in a series of rapid-fire trades, about 6,200 shares of Ulta’s stock were sold on New York stock exchanges for nearly $122, totaling nearly $800,000.

 

While it’s possible that the trades were executed by a firm that doesn’t subscribe to Business Wire, traders say the size of the trades indicates they were likely made by a firm, or several firms, with knowledge of the results. A spokesman for Ulta Salon said the company doesn’t comment on stock-market action.

 

At the time of the first wave of trades, newswires hadn’t yet distributed Ulta’s earnings. Bloomberg L.P.’s Bloomberg News issued the release 242 milliseconds after 4 p.m. Dow Jones & Co., which owns The Wall Street Journal, received the release 296 milliseconds after 4 p.m. and issued it 168 milliseconds later. About 700 milliseconds after 4 p.m., Ulta’s stock reached its closing price of $118 a share on Nasdaq, a price that took account of the orders placed after Business Wire and other news services distributed Ulta’s earnings, according to data analyzed by Nanex LLC, a market data provider, and people familiar with the trading.

 

Nasdaq stocks often settle a few tenths of a second after 4 p.m. as its computer systems seek to reconcile all trades, according to people familiar with the exchange’s practices.

 

Because of the heavy trading action, T. Rowe Price got $118 a piece for its 26,000 shares, say people familiar with the trading. That’s a difference of about $100,000 from what it would have gotten if the stock hadn’t taken a hit from the earnings report in the first second after 4 p.m. Such heavy, rapid-fire trading could explain why market volatility in the seconds after the 4 p.m. Eastern time stock-market close has increased in recent years, says Eric Hunsader, founder of Nanex.

Fast forward to last night when the firm that was exposed as enabling such “basically evil” frontrunning, Berkshire, pulled the plug on Business Wire’s direct access:

After publication of the Wall Street Journal article “and in consultation with Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman, Warren Buffett, Business Wire has made the decision to no longer allow high-frequency trading firms to license direct feeds from Business Wire,” Ms. Baron Tamraz said in a statement.

…

 

The company said the decision was made after conversations between Business Wire Chief Executive Cathy Baron Tamraz and Mr. Buffett, whose company purchased the San Francisco press-release distribution company in 2006. The conversations with Mr. Buffett took place after The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 6 that Business Wire was selling direct access to news releases to high-speed trading firms, as well as to more traditional media and other securities-industry customers.

 

Mr. Buffett’s personal involvement in the decision by Business Wire to end the practice is unusual for the legendary investor, who generally takes a hands-off approach to the business decisions of companies owned by his conglomerate. Mr. Buffett didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

But before anyone congraultates the octogenarian billionaire for “doing the right thing”, it appears he had some legalistic prodding:

Business Wire also had conversations with officials in New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office about the issue. The officials expressed concerns about the practice and pushed the company to end it, according to a person familiar with the matter.

 

“Business Wire’s decision to voluntarily step forward and stop selling its clients’ information directly to high-speed traders is a tremendous victory for our effort to eliminate advance trading on market-moving information,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement.

 

In a September speech, Mr. Schneiderman said trading on early access to publicly released information is a “new form of market manipulation” that requires action from regulators and lawmakers in Washington. Mr. Schneiderman’s focus until now has largely been on high-speed traders getting early access to economic reports.

So congratulations to Nanex and Eric Hunsader for exposing yet another hypocrite, and congratulations to Buffett for doing the right thing… when there were no more options. And now we turn our attention to the other newswires who still provide the HFT parasites with the “basically evil” frontrunning info they so desperately need to make a mockery of the market:

Business Wire isn’t the only press-release distributor that has been providing traders direct access to releases. High-speed traders are also paying Marketwired, a Toronto company majority-owned by OMERS Private Equity Inc., which distributes earnings releases and the ADP monthly employment report, to get direct access to the news. Marketwired had no immediate comment.

Sadly, at this point even if one were to root out all of these symptoms of an HFT-driven market that we have been writing about for five years, it would still be too late to fix a terminally broken market, where while HFT is the means by which manipulation is performed, the underlying cause was, is and remains the Fed. Until both HFT and the Fed are eliminated, one can only joke that the US capital markets are anything resembling “fair and efficient.”

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1da64dt Tyler Durden

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1l5gcw5 williambanzai7

Most people in the world believe you get what you pay for. Furthermore, the dream of a meritocratic society remains alive and well in the corporate world. As the following chart shows, however, the US (and perhaps even the world) better hope that they don’t get what they are paying for…

 

 

As Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes, Mario Draghi was paid $518,264 last year, according to the ECB’s annual accounts released yesterday. That is more than twice as much as the $201,700 Janet Yellen is set to receive and the $235,400 earned by Haruhiko Kuroda. Mark Carney is paid the most of the major central bankers – earning a total of $1.46 million.

 

Of course, such comaprisons are absolutely idiotic when one considers the cost of living in various countries, something “1st tier” economists are completely unable to grasp when they compare wages (and minimum salaries) across nations.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1gQZCwp Tyler Durden

Six months ago a “glitch” halted all ATM withdrawals, and Credit and Debit card transactions for Russia’s largest bank but today, the CEO of the huge bank has no such “glitch” to blame:

• *SBERBANK SEES RUN ON ITS BANK MACHINES IN UKRAINE, GREF SAYS
• *UKRAINE SITUATION IS PRESSURING RUBLE: SBERBANK CEO GREF
• *SBERBANK HALTS LENDING IN UKRAINE, GREF SAYS

We suspect that whether an agreement is in place or not, this will continue.

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1gQZCg3 Tyler Durden

Six months ago a “glitch” halted all ATM withdrawals, and Credit and Debit card transactions for Russia’s largest bank but today, the CEO of the huge bank has no such “glitch” to blame:

• *SBERBANK SEES RUN ON ITS BANK MACHINES IN UKRAINE, GREF SAYS
• *UKRAINE SITUATION IS PRESSURING RUBLE: SBERBANK CEO GREF
• *SBERBANK HALTS LENDING IN UKRAINE, GREF SAYS

We suspect that whether an agreement is in place or not, this will continue.

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1gQZCg3 Tyler Durden