Patrick Schotanus's Contributions

By Patrick Schotanus – Cryptocurrencies, or simply cryptos, are all the rage these days. Bitcoin’s rise to fame has become exponential and its price is approaching $20,000, after starting the year around $1000. Bankers, including central ones, have expressed...

Doris has passed, other storms may be brewing, but is spring approaching? Metaphorically, this is what investors have been wondering as the reflation trade gathered steam. The economic outlook undoubtedly looks bright with macro...

The myth of the killer (or evil) clown has a long history, dating back to at least the nineteenth century. Apart from Stephen King’s Pennywise, modern culture has produced a number of exemplary specimens, including the Joker in the Batman movies. It is their “double-faced” trickery...

Stagflation combines the worst extremes of a deflationary bust with an inflationary boom. Parts of the global economy risk entering a phase of stagflation - and Brexit could make the UK an early victim. Metaphorically speaking...

I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, ‘the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it’. Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction. Indeed, each...

Normally, nature determines the boundaries between land and sea. Dunes, riverbeds, and cliffs are examples of natural boundaries. But we humans have not always been content with nature’s laws and decided to move the boundaries or create our own...

Productivity is hot. As a topic that is. As a measure, however, it has cooled as Chart 1 below shows for both emerging and developed markets. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported the first sequential...

Looking at growth and debt beyond developed countries, Moody’s forecasts that GDP growth for 2014 across the 20 largest emerging markets, excluding China, will only amount to 2.1%. Data from Thomson Reuters shows that 2014 is turning into a record year for issuing...

A number of researchers (most recently Nassim Taleb with his anti-fragility thesis) have pointed out that repressing naturally occurring behavior, for example because it is unpleasant, will exactly cause it to build up, sometimes elsewhere in the system.

We live in a world of big and growing data, where investors are “forward guided” to focus on particular areas, like unemployment, corporate earnings and regulations.

As economic inequality grows, measured for example by the Gini coefficient for countries like the UK, US and China, so does the attention to this problem.

We just ‘celebrated’ the fifth anniversary of the demise of Lehman. Let’s go back to that moment, in 2008. Do you remember how it felt? Those of us who were ‘in the market’ at the time most vividly do.

Recently, in what has become known as his “Tapering speech”, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, upset investors when he implied that quantitative easing (QE), the buying of bonds by the Fed to suppress yields, was likely to be scaled down or ‘tapered’.

In light of the potential tapering of quantitative easing investors are trying to read the mind of US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. A good starting point is to explore his papers and speeches for clues.

Earlier this month the Bank of England warned of the dangers to the economy of ‘zombie’ households, companies and banks. Let’s consider a zombie bank. It is an ‘undead’ bank, a corporate corpse allowed to walk but without free will.