Stubborn Mule

Leni Riefenstahl

15 December 2011

As a change from the usual fare of economics and finance, I recently read  Jürgen Trimborn’s biography Leni Riefenstahl: A Life about Hitler’s favourite film-maker, Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl was a highly controversial figure. Her films Triumph des Willen, chronicling the 1935 Nazi party rally in Nürnberg and Olympia, documenting the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were critically [...]

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More spreads

17 November 2011

To provide a bit more context for the French government bond spreads discussed in the last post, the chart below shows the 5-year spreads to German bonds for a few more European countries. With spreads over 4300 basis points (43%), the chart is dominated by Greece, so here is the chart again with Greece removed. [...]

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French spreads

17 November 2011

Changes of leadership in both Greece and Italy were initially well-received by markets, but investors are getting nervous again. Attention is shifting to France, and French government bonds seem to be on the nose. The chart below shows the “spread” between French and German 5-year government bonds. Measured in basis points (1/100th of 1%), the [...]

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Sculptures by the Sea

13 November 2011

It has been quite a long time since art was the subject of a post here on the Mule, but today we took the kids to see Sculptures by the Sea. Held each year, this exhibition consists of a series of large sculptures arranged along the coast from Bondi beach to beach. As usual, parking [...]

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More colour wheels

6 November 2011

In response to my post about colour wheels, I received a suggested enhancement from Drew. The idea is to first match colours based on the text provided and then add nearby colours. This can be done by ordering colours in terms of hue, saturation, and value. The result is a significant improvement and it will capture all of [...]

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Colour wheels in R

5 November 2011

Regular readers will know I use the R package to produce most of the charts that appear here on the blog. Being more quantitative than artistic, I find choosing colours for the charts to be one of the trickiest tasks when designing a chart, particularly as R has so many colours to choose from. In [...]

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Melbourne Cup

1 November 2011

I have been resting on my laurels for too long. Two years ago I had Shocking success tipping a winner for the Melbourne Cup. Needless to say the analysis was entirely bogus, but it was fun. Since then I have been reluctant to tarnish my spotless prediction record, but fortune favours the brave, so I [...]

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The oldest bank in the world

29 October 2011

Yes I am back. I know it has been a while. What can I say? I have been quite busy! One of the things taking up my time during the week was preparing for and then giving a talk for the Q-Group on operational risk capital modelling. It sounds arcane, I know, but there was [...]

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What will the Reserve Bank do this week?

3 October 2011

It has been a while since I have had a Reserve Bank poll here on the Mule. The Bank will be sitting down on Tuesday to decide whether or not they should adjust monetary policy. Westpac chief economist, Bill Evans, was the first of the bank economists to start predicting that the next move in [...]

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Ring-fencing rogue traders

25 September 2011

Kweku Adoboli managed to cost UBS over $2 billion with his rogue trading, and has now cost chief executive Oswald Grübel his job. While this time the buck stopped at the top, it is more than can be said for many previous rogue trading cases. Grübel was called out of retirement to take the helm [...]

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