The Frontier Financier

AmCiv: A New Exchange Open For All

6.07: The opening of the American Civics Exchange in New York marks an interesting turning point in the marketplace for US Political trading on exchanges.  Predicting the Prediction markets has rarely looked more interesting, but is it really relevant to the mainstream legacy exchanges?

TransAtlantic Tensions

5.09: Yes, Gordon Brown may be a totally appalling incompetent who has helped bring Britain to the edge of Bankruptcy but is "Team Obama" actually working on foreign relations or is it just too tired, (as it has claimed) to make foreign policy work while "fixing" the US economy...

UK: The Abyss

5.24: Hello, Good Evening and Welcome to the latest Reality Gameshow format...it's the Quantitative Easing Show... Is this growth I see before me? Or is it the Abyss for the UK???

UBS: Another New Broom!

3.33: The changes in the C-Suite at UBS are coming faster than some Swiss Private Bankers allegedly used to squeeze the diamonds out of the toothpaste tubes....

Now the brilliant CEO Ossie Grubel is to work alongside, not Peter Kurer (wow, doesn't it seem just ages ago since Marcel Ospel was in situ?) but by a new Chairman, a financial politican of considerable repute but intriguingly not a banker, what does this mean for Swiss Banking and indeed Switzerland Inc? (Actually had you been a subscriber you would already have known at least part of the answer from our Premium podcast of last week on the topic! - Can you afford to wait for the juiciest analysis? If not, hit the "Premium Subscribe" button).

Cars, Classic Cars & Alternate Assets

5.16: Let's start the week on a slightly different note by examining the current state of the car industry and classic cars too.  Nevertheless, key asset messages are here and as ever it's a lesson about the force of the Sell Side when trying to broker an asset! For the uninitiated, I actually know a reasonable amount about this topic, having been closely involved on and off since childhood in historic motorsport and even dealing in cars, classic cars and racing cars...

The UK: This Time It's Different?

The shocking sad tale of a country once brought back from the dead by a progressive woman who handbagged Britain back to prominence and has seen her legacy destroyed by simply the worst government in UK history (itself somewhat of a major achievement!).

The Future of LCH.Clearnet

The most popular Podcast to date, this is a discussion of some of the issues surrounding the future status of Europe's largest independent CCP clearing house.

The New Frontiers of Freight

Freight rates have had the most dramatic move of all in recent months. Their spike in the boom has turned to a genuine bust with prices of a big fat  zero (plus sundries) being transacted. The marketplace itself has suffered some significant problems with counterparty risks against this highly volatile background. Here, I discuss the options going forward for freight trading...

More Keynes Vicar?

As the world looks to the concepts of Keyens with everything, I couldn't help but wonder...

GUBU!

In hommage to the passing of Conor Cruise O'Brien, it seemed only fair to append his infamous description of a remarkable government event to a podcast discussing the markets and "personalities" such as Mr. Madoff and their GUBU acts...