La BCE comprerà obbligazioni governative e corporate. Cochrane, Cannata, Buffett, Goldman Sachs e le gioie del fallimento.

Proprio come ci aspettavamo: insieme al superbailout da 750 miliardi di euro (!! potete approfondire la sua composizione qui e qui) è arrivata la notizia che la BCE comprerà obbligazioni governative e corporate. Scrive il Wall Street Journal che:

The European Central Bank, in an aggressive move announced after European governments unveiled their latest response to a spreading sovereign-debt crisis, said it will buy European government and private bonds "to ensure depth and liquidity in those markets which are dysfunctional."
The Federal Reserve quickly joined with the ECB, agreeing to reopen a program employed during the 2008 financial crisis in which it lends U.S. dollars to the ECB in exchange for euro, allowing the ECB to lend dollars to European bankers starved for the U.S. currency. The Fed said it also would make dollars available to the British, Canadian, Japanese and Swiss central banks. (...)
The ECB decision to buy public and private debt came just three days after ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said ECB officials "did not discuss this option" at their meeting Thursday. But the reaction of markets around the world—and the agreement of fiscal authorities to put substantial sums on the table—apparently changed the ECB's stance.
The ECB insisted the move won't affect the total amount of credit it provides to the euro zone. "In order to sterilize the impact of the above interventions, specific operations will be conducted to reabsorb the liquidity injected," it said. It also said that "in light of tensions" in European money markets it would open lend unlimited amounts for three months at a fixed rate at the end of May and June.(...)
Fed officials believe the swap program was one of its most successful interventions aimed at stemming a global crisis, when many banks overseas became strained for dollar funding. In their normal course of business, they borrowed dollars in short-term lending markets and used those dollars to finance holdings of long-term U.S. dollar assets, like Treasury or mortgage bonds. When those markets dried up, the swap lines helped to prevent overseas bank funding crises in 2008. Fed officials see the swaps as a low-risk program, because its counterparties in these loans are foreign central banks, and not private entities.

Già qualche settimana fa John Cochrane avvertiva come la Grecia potrebbe diventare il primo atto di una crisi del debito sovrano globale.
Autorevole esponente dei freshwater economists Cochrane è preoccupato da una possibile ripresa dell'inflazione e consiglia l'investimento nei TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities), le obbligazioni governative USA indicizzate all'inflazione.

Qualche giorno fa il Wall Street Journal ha dedicato un articolo a Maria Cannata, direttore generale del Tesoro incaricata delle aste dei titoli di stato.

Warren Buffett si è schierato in difesa di Goldman Sachs:

His support for Goldman came in a question-and-answer session at the annual meeting in Omaha of Berkshire Hathaway, the giant insurance and investment firm Mr. Buffett runs. Berkshire owns $5 billion of preferred stock in Goldman.(...)
In wide-ranging comments that spanned from Goldman to a proposed overhaul of financial regulation to Greece’s debt crisis, Mr. Buffett said the global economy had largely improved. That was reflected in Berkshire’s first-quarter results: $3.6 billion in net income, a sharp swing from the $1.5 billion loss it posted at the same time last year.
Still, what drew the most attention was Mr. Buffett’s full-throated support for Goldman. He drew upon some of the same points that Goldman has used in its own defense, including the sophistication of the investors the S.E.C. says were defrauded by Goldman’s lack of adequate disclosure in the deal. He said those investors should have conducted better due diligence. Of one investor, he said, “It’s hard for me to get terribly sympathetic when a bank makes a dumb credit bet.”
He also stood behind Mr. Blankfein. When asked whom he would select if Goldman needed to find a new leader, Mr. Buffett replied, “If Lloyd had a twin brother, I would vote for him.”
Mr. Buffett has a significant investment in Goldman. In 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis, Berkshire invested $5 billion in preferred shares. Those shares carry a 10 percent interest rate, meaning that Berkshire is earning about $500 million a year from its holdings. (Or as Mr. Buffett put it, $15 a second.)
Though Mr. Buffett said the S.E.C. lawsuit had not yet negatively influenced his opinion of Goldman, he said he would revise his thinking if new evidence came to light.
Mr. Buffett added that Goldman is a longtime adviser that “helped build Berkshire Hathaway” by selling them businesses for more than 50 years.
Mr. Buffett’s longtime lieutenant, Charles Munger, tempered his boss’s kind words. Mr. Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman, said that there is a difference between behaving legally and behaving ethically — and that a business should not simply follow the former.
Mr. Buffett also weighed in on the financial regulation overhaul bill that is pending in the Senate, which include provisions that may force investors in derivatives contracts to add more collateral to their holdings. (Berkshire has lobbied against such provisions.) Mr. Buffett said that Berkshire was unlikely to be forced to “put up a dime” in additional money on its existing contracts, though he added that the firm would do so if required. 





Avete mai pensato che c'è chi dai fallimenti ci guadagna, eccome!