It’s Good to Know: Financial Times interview with Jim Rogers

Browsing, browsing, browsing I have found on FT.com a very interesting interview to Jim Rogers, George Soros’ Quantum Fund founder.
Comodities, water recycling in China, hyperinflation on the making, the dawn of the dollar… I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, I am pretty sure that the 20′ are worth your while:
From South [...]

On what happens to a Central Bank’s balance sheet when a client bank goes bursts

Dear Hobbes,
The other day I was discussing the current financial turmoil with a friend and we got to a dead end we couldn’t find an answer to. I have been trying to research the issue but I haven’t been able to get a clear response.
Central Banks around the world are pumping liquidity (creating money backed [...]

On the rise of the cost of living and the ones who really carry the can

Going back to how to spend it you have plenty [On billionaires spoiling artists and the hard life of the super-rich, May 26], from 2000 to 2007 the super-rich (dwellers of the 95th percentile of the income distribution) saw their real wages increase about 9% compared to an average 3% for the rest of mortals. [...]

On the future doom and gloom of the oil snatchers, we haven’t seen anything yet

Hobbes, the crude oil spot price for a Brent barrel of crude closed last Friday (last Monday was bank holiday in the UK) at $132.73. And yesterday London got gridlocked courtesy of hundreds of lorry (truck) drivers. Toyota would make a fortune out of a successful hybrid truck. So far FedEx has the largest fleet [...]

On oil price at $200 and business as usual

The guys at Goldman Sachs have done it again. They raised the benchmark for the oil barrel to $200. GS’s boys believe that due to inadequate supply growth oil prices are increasingly likely to hit between $150 and $200 a barrel over the next six to 24 months.
Last year the markets thought they were crrrrazy [...]

On food price rises and Malthusian catastrophism

Exorbitant food prices seem to be the song these days. After wheat’s race to heaven, the price of rice more than doubled since January –up 50 per cent in two weeks- and producing countries are cutting down or even banning exports to ensure local consumption. The sharp increase -Thai medium-quality rice, a global benchmark, traded [...]

On supermarket tricks and greedy, careless grownups

Funny enough, before my cheespedition to hunt some wild cheese, I happened to have read an -as usual- interesting article by Tim Harford on his March 15 Dear Economist column on the Weekend supplement of the FT: Sweet Justice. An enjoyable short read that let me apply some field work to my cheese obsession.
While I [...]