Economics

September 22, 2013

The Northwest Passage is Open for Business

Nordic Bulk Carriers A/S have just announced in a press release that:

The international shipping industry is these days witness to a historic event, when a vessel for the first time ever is sailing from Vancouver in Canada to Finland through Arctic waters. One of the world’s few modern ice-class bulk carriers – MV NORDIC ORION – will carry a cargo of 73,500 tons of coal via the so called North West Passage through Arctic waters to Finland. A Danish pioneer in operating ice-classed bulk carriers Nordic Bulk Carriers A/S is behind the historic North West Journey

Despite all the recent erroneous publicity about "ice bound" yachts in the Northwest Passage and "60% more ice",  Christian Bonfils who is managing director of Nordic Bulk Carriers goes on to say that:

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September 10, 2013

The Yong Sheng docks in Rotterdam as the Nordvik is holed on the Northern Sea Route

As econnexus.org.uk reported back in March:

The Russians and Chinese [are] obviously extremely keen on the idea of saving many billions (and hence making many billions!) of dollars by shipping many billions of tonnes of stuff across the Arctic Ocean in the very near future.

As the Financial Times reported on August 11th:

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July 4, 2009

The Great American Bank Robbery

Another long video, but essential watching nonetheless. This is a lecture given at UCLA's Hammer Museum by William K. Black. He investigated the 1980s Savings and Loan crisis when he was at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. In this talk he discusses how more money was recently lost by one single bank, IndyMac, than during that entire crisis:

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February 14, 2009

Reflections on the Financial Crisis

Here's a video (over an hour long!) which was recorded at the Edge "Reflections on a crisis" event held in Munich earlier this year. In it Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ex derivatives trader and now Professor of Risk Engineering and author, discuss how a toxic combination of corporate greed and human failings created the current economic crisis:

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September 29, 2008

The Financial Crisis Goes Global – European Banks Need a Bail-Out Too

Another day dawns, and the list of failed banks grows ever longer.  Congress has renamed the Bail-Out as The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.  The House has just rejected the latest draft by 228 votes to 205. George W. Bush said he was "very disappointed". Whilst Congress were extending the new act to a total of 109 pages over the weekend, banks around the world were dropping like flies as the virus spread.

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