Credit Matters

The soaring price of gold is a perfect backdrop for the return of the New Romantic standard bearers Spandau Ballet. Investing against inflation fears may well be sensible but if the gold price is so high, why are 10 year Treasury yields so low? Gary Jenkins dons his tartan and ruffled shirt to consider the delicate balancing act the central banks face over policy tightening

Too little, too late. That’s Gary Jenkins’s damning verdict of the authorities’ response to preventing another financial crisis and stopping bankers walking away with the booty from the mess they created in the first place. But talking of booty, our own long-legged credit analyst has spotted one potential solution: paying investment bankers like lap-dancers.

Does football really have anything to do with banking? Gary Jenkins, the analyst who has never knowingly dribbled, says that the financial industry is starting to resemble the upper echelons of the English Premiership. And it makes him as sick as a parrot.

Returns go up, returns go down, but nothing much ever changes for credit investors. That’s the lesson that Gary Jenkins, the analyst who never rehashes old research, has learnt.

A trip to New York with his family gives Gary Jenkins a new insight into the risk/reward decisions being taken by equity and fixed income investors, and why those markets are indicating contrasting economic paths.

How can asset prices rise so spectacularly when there is so much supply, and so soon after so many investors were wiped out? Gary Jenkins, the credit analyst who has spent as much time comparing the markets as any, has the answer.

How do you solve a problem like bonuses? The UK’s Financial Services Authority has put forward some sensible principles but it has an almost impossible job, writes Gary Jenkins. A faster jobs merry-go-round could be just one of the unintended consequences of its attempts to tie pay-outs to risk taking.

The credit crunch celebrated its second birthday at the start of the week. With markets back in party mood, Gary Jenkins, the credit analyst who never strays far from a punch bowl, takes a look at some of the key events.

Risk markets have recovered in spectacular fashion since the nadir of March — faster even than a credit analyst with swine flu. But sustaining that rally in risk will require stability in long term government bond yields, says Gary Jenkins.

Recent financial history is just like a game of cricket, says Gary Jenkins, the credit analyst who always uses the straightest of bats. Despite the upturn, risk taking is still off the agenda.

Inspired by Morgan Stanley inviting a teenager to write about his friend’s media habits in a research report, Gary Jenkins asks his three daughters for the lowdown on the global banking system and what should happen to all those naughty bankers who got us into this all this mess.

While Bernie Madoff appeared to live in Neverland, and Michael Jackson really did live in Neverland, the US and UK governments are just living on the never never. Gary Jenkins finds that the mixture of celebrity grief, the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme and huge deficits is making him have strange thoughts.