Masters Markets As

(Reuters) - In a ramshackle township in northwest China's Shaanxi province, red Communist Party banners call on a nearby steel mill's workers to seek "progress" and avoid making "backward steps". The slogans demonstrate the hybrid nature of China's floundering steel sector, which as it tries to serve the twin masters of the state and the market has seen margins plummet and racked up a mountain of debt. Beijing's attempts to tackle the problems by forcing lumbering state-owned mills to consolidate or push up the value chain look likely to aggravate rather than solve the problems of a sector that accounts for 3-4 percent of China's GDP. An obvious solution - to allow the worst performers to go out of business - seems unlikely in an industry identified by Chairman Mao Zedong nearly half a ...

Wall Street's biggest banks are locked in an increasingly frantic struggle with the Federal Reserve over the right to retain the jewels of their commodity trading empires: warehouses, storage tanks and other hard assets worth billions of dollars. While the battle over proprietary trading and new derivatives regulations has taken place largely in public view since the 2008 financial crisis, the fight by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to retain or expand their prized physical commodity operations - most acquired in only the past six years - has remained hidden. The debate is nearing an inflection point: Within 18 months, the Fed will likely either allow banks more freedom to invest in the physical commodity world than ever; or force them to sell off the assets that many ...

Blythe Masters, JPMorgan's global head of commodities, has steered the bank's expanded franchise to record revenues exceeding $2.8 billion in 2011, more than long-time industry leaders Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the three banks' data showed this week. The more than threefold surge in revenues marks a dramatic turnaround for British-born Masters, one of the top female executives on Wall Street, who came under pressure in 2010 as revenues fell following the acquisition of RBS Sempra's large metals and energy trading desks, according to sources and company data. By contrast, Wall Street's commodity trading pioneers have stumbled, with Morgan Stanley's revenues shrinking for a third consecutive year -- the worst streak since at least 1995 -- and Goldman Sachs commodity unit J. Aron is ...

(Reuters) - Blythe Masters, JPMorgan's global head of commodities, has steered the bank's expanded franchise to record revenues exceeding $2.8 billion in 2011, more than long-time industry leaders Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the three banks' data showed this week. The more than threefold surge in revenues marks a dramatic turnaround for British-born Masters, one of the top female executives on Wall Street, who came under pressure in 2010 as revenues fell following the acquisition of RBS Sempra's large metals and energy trading desks, according to sources and company data. By contrast, Wall Street's commodity trading pioneers have stumbled, with Morgan Stanley's revenues shrinking for a third consecutive year -- the worst streak since at least 1995 -- and Goldman Sachs commodity ...

We can learn a lot from the Argentines. When it comes to messing up an economy, they’re Numero Uno. They’re Olympians of financial legerdemain and masters of the old false shuffle. In 2001, the country was deeply in debt. The government was out of money. And the currency was losing value fast. What did the Argentines do? First, they broke their promise to investors and savers, cutting the peso loose from the dollar. Then, they seized control of banks and bank accounts. People had been saving money in US dollar accounts in order to avoid problems with the peso. But the Argentine feds forcibly converted their accounts to pesos, just as the peso was losing 2/3rds of its value. The next thing was to take the reserves in the central bank and use them to pay current expenses — which caused ...

A serious question, Fellow Reckoner: Would you, if given the choice, be alive at any other time? We’ll get back to that in a second. First, our regular beat… Markets went precisely nowhere yesterday. It was as if everyone agreed to stay home…or go fishing…or to become reacquainted with that strange person living in their house and sleeping in their bed. Among other things, investors are waiting to see what happens with Greece. We’ll save them some time. Nothing will happen. Nothing different, anyway. Here’s Bloomberg, with more news on the same old story: Greek political leaders struck a deal on a package of austerity measures, clearing the way for a swap to cut the nation’s debt and win its second rescue in two years. Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos called European Central Bank ...

U.S traders are growing extremely cautious overnight as the latest development in debt-choked Greece took the stage amid lack of first-tier economic data from the world's largest economy. Still, markets are waiting for Greece's politicians to pass spending cuts to receive a vital financial aid and for the Fed chairman to testify before a Senate Committee. Stock-index futures were barely changed ahead of the opening bill on Tuesday. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were nearly flat, adding 0.03 percent to 12772, while Standard & Poor's Futures gained no more than 0.1 percent to 1337.80. Positive data will likely lift up the equities today, otherwise, the rout will probably be resumed. Yesterday, U.S equities joined declines in eurioean shares, trimming a five-week rally for ...

Several of the ‘Capitalism in Crisis’ thinkers — even those who should have known better — thought the government needed to invest more money in education. Kenneth Rogoff, for example, concludes that “improved education alone will not resolve the flaws inherent in today’s capitalism, but it essential first step down any path to a solution.” Oh? We never quite figured out the connection. The problem in a nutshell is that developed countries have too much debt and not enough growth. And their debt is growing faster than their output. How then does spending more on non-productive behavior increase GDP output or decrease debt? Contemporary education is a dead end. The industry has been taken over by zombies. Huge amounts of money — public, private, charitable, debt, savings, earnings — are ...

We begin another look at Zombieland with this editorial from Martin Wolf in The Financial Times: Why did it take so long? It is over four years since the financial crisis began. Yet only now are anti-capitalist protests emerging, including at St Paul’s Cathedral. So is this the beginning of a resurgent leftwing politics? I doubt it. Are the protesters raising some big questions? Yes, they are. Socialism failed as a way of running economies. It did, however, succeed in establishing welfare states. Socialism is a conservative force, dedicated to defending entitlements built up over a century. Meanwhile, organised labour is only strongly entrenched in the public sector. This gives it the same conservative agenda: defending the welfare state. Strikes by UK public sector workers against the ...