Greetings from Montreal
World is global. I blogged from Siem Rep Cambodia, Cairo Egypt, Washington USA, several airports in Europe, Polish mountains, and today I am sitting in a hotel in Montreal, Canada. I will attend Government Borrowers Forum held in Montreal this year, we will listen to a number of important speakers (including Canadian Mninister of Finance James Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge. I will present my paper on Global Reserves Management at the conference.
I read Robert Shiller “The New Financial Order” book on the plain, it was long overdue reading. I keep wandering to what extent CDSs, CDOs, CPDOs, houses-turned-into-ATMs are steps towards picture painted by Shiller (slashing, repackaging and distributing risk). When Amaranth fell and USD6bn evaporated there was no domino effect amid good risk sharing. This is still far from insuring wage inequality risk or solving intergenerational disputes, but hedge funds and investement banks never stop short of a new idea, new products to hedge longevity risk are being developed.