Author: JanMusschoot

Life insurers are the real yieldbugs

Pseudonymous banking expert Johannes Borgen recently discussed the impact of low interest rates on European life insurers. Because insurers discount the value of their liabilities, low rates are a huge problem.

But as Johannes Borgen points out, the regulator lets insurers use a hypothetical long term rate that “is a f**** joke. IT IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY LOOKING LIKE REAL WORLD INTEREST RATES ; which mean that all insurer liabilities are grossly undervalued.”

Yikes.

You can read his thread here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1184391852046409729.html

By the way, yieldbug is a term used by Bloomberg journalist Joe Weisenthal to troll people who believe they deserve to receive interest on their risk free investment.

Toon Vanheukelom over de jobbonus

Onze fiscaliteit is heel complex, met allerhande tarieven, uitzonderingen, kortingen en bonussen. Toon Vanheulekom en André Decoster, onderzoekers aan de KULeuven, hebben een analyse gemaakt van de jobbonus die de nieuwe Vlaamse regering wil invoeren.

Hun studie bevat verrassende inzichten, zoals de impact op het gezinsinkomen (figuur 3) en de zeer hoge marginale aanslagvoeten op de loonkost voor lage lonen (figuur 5).

Ook andere posts op Toon’s blog zijn meer dan de moeite waard voor wie geïnteresseerd is in fiscale thema’s.

44.000

De Europese banken hebben sinds het begin van dit jaar aangekondigd dat ze meer dan 44.000 banen gaan schrappen. België is dus geen uitzondering op de structurele transformatie van de sector.

Update: De dag dat deze post geplaatst werd, kondigde bankreus HSBC aan dat het wereldwijd 10.000 ontslagen plande. Een dag later kwam het nieuws dat er in Duitsland 9.000 jobs verdwijnen bij Deutsche Bank.

What is financial geography?

I recently started working at the Social and Economic Geography research group of Ghent University, in the team of professor Ben Derudder. We study financial networks in collaboration with the team of professor Sabine Dörry at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research.

But why am I at the department of geography instead of economics? In other words, what exactly is financial geography? I have to admit that I didn’t know until a couple of months ago.

This post is an attempt to describe what financial geography is, and what sets it apart from other fields that study finance.

Continue reading “What is financial geography?”

Alweer minder bankiers

KBC kondigt aan dat er 1400 jobs verdwijnen in België.

De tewerkstelling bij de banken gaat al jaren in dalende lijn.

Bron: De Tijd

De redenen zijn gekend. De digitalisering, delokalisatie en procesverbeteringen zorgen ervoor dat er minder bankiers nodig zijn.

Toch blijven de banken ook gespecialiseerde werknemers aanwerven. Mijn tips voor studenten kan je nalezen in Zo word je een topbankier.

Technology, growth and value

“In Europe, the relative underperformance of value [stocks] versus growth has not been as sustained since the early 1980’s. In the US, according to research by O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, investors have to go back to 1926-1941 to find a comparable period of sustained relative performance.”

That’s from Inflection Point, a blog post in which Marc Rubinstein takes a long term look at the valuation of stocks and the impact of technology on markets and the economy. The article has a lot of references.

Update: Chris Meredith of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management talked about his research on Odd Lots.

Luxembourg is eating Trump’s lunch. Sad!

President Trump couldn’t buy Greenland from Denmark. In response, he tweeted that most NATO members don’t pay their fair share.

For example, Belgium, home of the NATO headquarters, spends only 0.93% of its GDP on defense. But the worst offender is Luxembourg at 0.55%.

Defense expenditures of NATO member states. Graph tweeted by Trump.

At the same time, Luxembourg is enabling massive tax arbitrage for American multinationals like Amazon.

Source: Brad Setser

Luxembourg should pray it doesn’t wake up to the following tweet 🙂

Luxembourg has to pay BILLIONS in tribute for U.S. Military Protection! Its secret deals with Jeff Bozo (Amazon Washington Post) cost our great Nation so much. Grand Duke Henry should fix soon!

What’s behind the low valuation of European banks?

Great explanation by Johannes Borgen on Twitter:

In summary: banks are more robust than they used to be, but they have profitability issues.

To learn more about bank stocks, listen to the recent episode of Odd Lots with John Hempton.

See also this thread by Marc Rubinstein:

I also blogged about bank stocks in my 2017 post A lost decade (for bank investors).

Back in business

A lot has happened since my last blog post.

I have changed jobs! I’m back at Ghent University, studying financial networks. I intend to use this platform to share thoughts on my research, in addition to the usual topics.

Posts about local issues (e.g. Belgian taxes or personal finance) will be written in Dutch and sometimes crossposted on the Facebook page of my book Hoe bankiers geld scheppen.

Verdeling van de personenbelasting

Je hebt nog tot 11 juli om je belastingaangifte te doen via Tax-on-Web.

Maar hoeveel (personen)belasting betalen de andere Belgen? De onderstaande tabel toont de verdeling van de inkomsten en bijhorende belastingen. De hoogste tien procent is verder uitgesplitst.

Meer details over de belastinginkomsten, onder andere over de geografische spreiding, kan je vinden op de website van StatBel.