L'Information est d'Or

French President Sarkozy gives a summary of his actions as head of France. He has done a lot - some say too much, 55 reforms started! - but has also created some deceptions that he will need to tackle. It's too early to judge his actions but my opinion is that he should focus on increasing France's economic competitivity. Come on France, you need to move on!

Apple's vertical strategy of controling both the software and the hardware was the reason why it lost to the PC (Microsoft-Intel alliance) in the 90s. At a time were technology was evolving at a record speed (Moore law stated that the speed of microprocessors would double every 18 months), exercising a tight control on the manufactoring chain left Apple trailing the more innovative PC business. But now that computers have become a mature market, the edge is not anymore to have a fast machine but to have an electronic device that looks and feels good. And Apple has the experience and structure to deliver such hit products. How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong Yahoo! Finance Quote for AAPL/

How he could have saved Bear Sterns "Buffett says he 'got a call' about Bear Stearns, but bailing out the investment bank with only two days for due diligence, he says, 'took some guts that I didn't want to match.'" - And why he didn't. Quick lesson on the CDOs - "I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous. And of course,...

Subprime Losses Reach $232 Billion. Here is the breakdown by banks as gathered by Bloomberg. UBS, Merril and Citigroup head this table. Only writedowns and provisions that have filtered through to the income statement are included. Asset value reductions that some banks preferred to keep on their balance sheet and not charge against earnings are excluded. All numbers are in billions of U.S. dollars, converted at today's exchange rate if reported in another currency. They are net of financial hedges the firms used to mitigate losses . Read more in Bloomberg If you are victim of subprime losses, get advice on http://www.subprimelosses.com/

ECB will continue to keep interest rates high as opposed to other central banks (Fed and BOE) who slash them. European economy being not as flexible as US economy, an economic slow-down does not necessarily produce deflation, hence reducing the ability of the central bank to play with the interest rate instrument to help growth. Read-on IHT article

Babyboom is a problem because we will have to pay for all those people retiring at the same time? Relax, they will gather in senior enterprises and keep the economy going! At least some of them... Ingénieurs, commerciaux, voire PDG, ils n'avaient pas envie de raccrocher arrivés à la soixantaine. Pour valoriser leur savoir-faire, ils ont choisi le statut de l'EURL. Témoignages et conseils de seniors dont la petite entreprise ne connaît pas la crise. Read on this Les Echos article .

I hope he will be the man to take this wonderful country back to its rightful place at the forefront of European economic development. Cyrille

This is really sad to hear. More troubles to come... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,346590,00.html

Interesting extract from an article from a Bloomberg journalist: By James Pressley April 4 (Bloomberg) -- For 20 years, George Soros haschallenged the theory that markets, however choppy, always movetoward equilibrium. Now a meltdown has handed him rich evidence that thehypothesis isn't just flawed, it's dangerous. We are facing the worst financial crisis since the GreatDepression, Soros writes in ``The New Paradigm for FinancialMarkets,'' a book rushed online this week. The culprit, he says,is a misconception that markets can correct themselves, no matterhow we short-circuit them with easy money, massive leverage andbrain-bending synthetic instruments. ``The belief that markets tend towards equilibrium isdirectly responsible for the current turmoil,'' the billionairephilanthropist writes. ``It encouraged the regulators to abandontheir responsibility and rely on the market mechanism to correctits own excesses.'' His solutions, laid ou...

Bonds have overperformed equities since the credit crisis began. By looking at the stock to bond ratio (expressed as S&P500 / 10Y Treasury price), this trend can continue for a long time before it reaches the bottom of 2003.

Ça va plus vite et c'est plus facile a garer qu'un éléphant!

Here is what a JPMorgan economist said about the current economic situation: For a number of months now, clouds have been gathering over the global economy as the interaction of credit turmoil, housing weakness, and rising energy prices has weighed on growth and sentiment. The recent slide in consumer confidence across the major economies has been particularly notable: this week, the US Conference Board measure of household expectations fell to its lowest level since December 1973. However, the slowdown in overall economic activity has remained modest . Global GDP expanded at a trend-like pace of 2.7%q/q, saar in 4Q07 and is currently tracking a 1.7% gain this quarter. Even the US economy—which is at the locus of downward momentum—looks to be eking out a small positive GDP gain this quarter. The continued resilience of the global economy reflects the fundamental health of the nonfinancial corporates across the globe. Where drags on growth are external—as is the case for the Emerging M...