Farmer Diaries

So the IMF things the magic number will be 0.9%, Citibanks things 1.4%, and HSBC 1.5%.  Who is right?  really not important, what is important is that growth is substantially lower than the 3% that AMLO was hoping to achieve in 2019 and 2020.  But this almost irrelevant There are three issues here (1) Domestic generated growth, (2) foreign investor generated growth via investments and (3) US import driven growth.  AMLO has the ability to influence the first two; needless to say that over the past 12 months AMLO has made sure that foreign investors feel "unwelcomed", mainly because of his decision on "reforming" Mexico's energy sector -- the first is the shutting down of all new energy project.  Now for most builders a solar and wind farms the use of PPA -- where the government (via CFE) buys all the power is the easiest and cheapest; using a combination of export credit agency funding and private equity finding CFE has the ability to acquire energy.  It's...

I got a call, early early this morning from a friend in Tokyo.  Actually, it was last night, he's a kind of a specialist, in fact, he doesn't deal with clients, his client is his employer, he works in the equity derivatives risk management team for DB.  He got a notification of risk (figure out that a bank like DB would use such convoluted wording) basically he (and his whole team) were told that they were at risk of losing their job pending a complete review. Basically, its a kindness of sort, it means to prepare yourself, don't buy anything extravagant and work the network because you could be out.  His job is fascinating, basically, he manages the bank's derivatives exposure thereby reduce capital utilization.  It's a supremely important job since he's basically the reason the bank will make a profit of 12% instead of 6%.  Now he doesn't take any risk himself, he's not a trader he's a really really smart guy who's seen this business under al...