Credit Matters

Born into a perfectly normal American family in Dillon, South Carolina, our hero did not exhibit any extraordinary powers in childhood. With a pharmacist father and a schoolteacher mother, there was no hint of what he might one day become. But now, as the US stands on the precipice of potential disaster, his every act could decide the fate of a nation...

Our entrepreneurial credit analyst, Gary Jenkins, has hatched a plan to make his and our fortunes: an investment fund dedicated to contingent capital. He promises his fees will be low, his holidays long and the small print barely legible.

There is no mistaking the image that the new European agencies wish to transmit as you approach their large new building in Canary Wharf. It is all about grandeur on an imposing scale while demonstrating stability juxtaposed with modern form.

You want your company logo on the new £10 note? No problem, writes Gary Jenkins. Want to sponsor Buckingham Palace? Step this way Mr Pandit.

The future has never been easy to predict, so our mystic credit analyst Gary Jenkins leaves the hard work to others. However when it comes to the EFSF, it was all too predictable what the rating agencies would say.

Our intrepid credit analyst is off the rollercoasters and on to the regulators. But his mind is also on his old boss Bob.

Was the Federal Reserve’s extension of quantitative easing this week a sop to the market or an important monetary boost? Gary Jenkins worries that policy has started to imitate 1980s anti-drug advertising campaigns.

Equity and credit indices have screamed back in, capital markets are back open and companies are making more money than expected. Yet, the yield on the two year Treasury hit a record low this week. Confused? Gary Jenkins is. Luckily for him, he’s heading off on holiday, armed with bucket and spade. If he digs deep enough down into the sand, he might unearth some clues as to where the economy is going.

Gary Jenkins finds it more than a little ironic that the European banking sector can fly through the stress tests but still needs the proposed new Basel III regulations to be watered down.

Just like the Romans in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the rating agencies are universally despised, handy scapegoats to blame for everything that goes wrong. But do they really deserve such a bad reputation? Absolutely, says Gary Jenkins, who is not the Messiah, but a very naughty credit analyst.

Stuck in a global debt crisis? Can’t work out whether to cut costs and conserve cash or spend your way out of trouble ? Gary Jenkins, no sucker himself, says let the cephalopod choose what to do.

It’s stressful being a credit analyst but our very own Gary Jenkins is feeling pretty relaxed. He’s been kicking back, happy in the knowledge that the publication of the European banking stress tests will sweep away many of the problems and uncertainties facing the markets. He knows it’s true: Christine Lagarde has said so.