Giovanni B. Ponzetto - O Canada! Profile picture
independent financial consultant, ex-fund manager, 1997 insurance. history, politics, finance. Italian/English, Rt not endorsement.
Mar 12 14 tweets 9 min read
Richard...sorry but I disagree on that. Deposit insurance is the most worthy and LESS costly of banking supervisory features, but it needs to have a maximum, and I will tell you why. (/) @INArteCarloDoss @Banqkys @MarketElf @GrayConnolly @jeuasommenulle @AlessandroPonz4 Deposit insurance is there to avoid runs on banks, where depositors all want to cash in all at once. But the key word is "cash", i.e. the number each of us sees at the #ATM machine or on the bank site as his own cash balance. However that's not cash. (/)
Mar 11 7 tweets 4 min read
Eric, we've been through a decade of easy money, finance centric solutions of 2008 which was the key to the deindustrialization of the west. Now to some extent is better and to some is worse.(/) The better part is that goods producing companies have NEVER returned to the blind trust in the banking system they had before. Less leverage, and slamming the door in bank salesmen's faces helped. (/)
Mar 9 9 tweets 4 min read
"you need to have a longer time horizon" roughly translates in my book in "Run for your lives !!".
For one, if you are a final saver... you rarely HAVE a time horizon, nor you need one. Incidentally that's proof of who wrote #MIFID.(/) MIFID questionnaires have a mandatory section on time horizon. Why that measure? because while for an individual saver that concept is basically meaningless, for those meant to be KEPT from pushing unnecessary risk onto savers it's daily bread.(/)
Jan 5 5 tweets 4 min read
Actually, the best idea would be a three piece set of similar scale:(/) @Ed___________0 @EdPheil @luisbaram @Nuklearia @Moms4G @CarloStagnaro @andrepaltry @staunovo @INArteCarloDoss piece 1: #Olkiluoto3 world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Olkil…, with its yearly production specs, a brief history of its cost overruns etc... and its 60 year design life. (/)
Jan 5 11 tweets 7 min read
wsj.com/articles/exxon… People in the US have no clue at how effed up #EU legal system is. So allow me to tell you the nightmare scenario: (/) @INArteCarloDoss @CNBCJou @moutet @GemmaTognini @Jkylebass @ResearchRonin @eshow1969 @Halsrethink @DukeMarcude It's not the first time that an #EU country imposes an extraordinary, TARGETED tax on energy companies profit. And as always, if there is a way to eff up, you can count on us Italians being the tip of the spear. One was imposed by then minister #Tremonti in June 2008. (/)
Jan 3 5 tweets 4 min read
A mix of desperate need and marketing. It takes a willing suspension of disbelief to think that institutions the size of #Blackrock or #Vanguard actually manage money. To all practical purposes they are barges down a river, they depend on the current. (/) As long as markets are reasonably favorable, that is not readily apparent. Amazingly, even events like 2022, with BOTH bonds and stocks falling more or less equally, are not a problem. That changes if one of two things happen:(/)
Nov 20, 2022 7 tweets 8 min read
#Italy DECLARES, according to #Eurostat principles, an higher GDP etc.
Yet, as @michaelxpettis asserted today about #China;
1. Most of it is "directed" by the government;
2. "Government" GDP measures activity, not value added, and it's usually one for one with debt. (/) As such, just google "Italian GDP and Debt to GDP" , and see what happens; #Italy has lost two decades vs. The rest of the #EU , in a "the tortoise and the SLOWER tortoise" parody of "the Tortoise and the hare". (/)
Oct 12, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read
mmmm... my views may be skewed by my long frequentation and love for the UK, but there is no way in Heaven or Hell that it might even come close to Italy in financial risk and political terms. Having said that, oversight has gone down the drain everywhere.(/) As to Pension funds and such, I had the privilege to become acquainted and friend with a well placed expert. We are still in contact, and I have no doubt he is as appalled as I am at the total miss in risk assessment. But that's the nature of the beast.(/)
Sep 12, 2022 10 tweets 8 min read
The #Italy angle: (/) (H/t @Danjsalt)
@jeuasommenulle @GrayConnolly @CaroDiRusso @GemmaTognini @AvidCommentator @nglinsman @AlessandroPonz4 @moutet @CNBCJou @aciapparoni @Capezzone @galietti82 @Halsrethink While pollsters and pundits gave an advantage to the center-left sitting government in #Sweden's elections, results have edged to the right, irrespective of the final count. This is not a surprise to an Italian, but frankly it should surprise no one. aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/12… (/)
Sep 11, 2022 4 tweets 6 min read
Yet, there are TWO wars. One, is in #Ukraine, and Ukraine has consistently "punched above its weight". One is in #Europe, where the main Russian weapon has been #Germany./ @Halsrethink @TomekDeptuch @RobertMCutler @pietercleppe @nglinsman @pmakela1 @ResearchRonin @BaldingsWorld While there are undoubted successes on the ground in #Ukraine, #Russia is still playing its card much better on #Europe. Keeping tensions high about #ZaporizhzhiaNuclearPowerPlant played into keeping #Germany from restarting its #NuclearPower plants.(/)
Sep 10, 2022 5 tweets 4 min read
This interests my friend @MarcoCantamessa , since we were chatting about that the other day: #BUMF kills. (/)collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/eng…
@ResearchRonin @ektrit @pietercleppe @RobertMCutler @petunianelsole @galietti82 @moutet for personal reasons, I was checking on an interesting site maintained by the #EU:single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/…
Apparently, there has been a drive to make it simple to register for business in any EU country. But check what I wrote against the official wording: (/)
Sep 9, 2022 8 tweets 6 min read
Well... that requires a clarification. Lest people think the #German government hadn't spent two decades working on the country's demise.(/) @Halsrethink @ektrit @jeuasommenulle @nglinsman @Ed___________0 @petunianelsole @LorenaLuVi @andrepaltry @AlessandroPonz4 @eshow1969 "Competitive advantage" comes from "Competition", i.e. trying to be on average better or at least adequate in a game where may players are involved and where everyone sees everyone else. Think "bicycle race". (/)
Feb 12, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
The weapon the three Police officers in the back hold is probably a Milkor grenade launcher, six round capacity, 40mm grenades. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkor_MGL @eshow1969 @RebelNewsOnline @FoxNews (/) Those can use crowd control rounds, like "bean bags", rubber balls, or sponge. Yet, even given the reduces charge of those rounds, those policemen have been incorrectly deployed (/)
Feb 12, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
Correction:
They are trying to build ONE plant, which is way over budget and behind schedule (Flamanville);
They "persuaded" #GE to sell back to a French company a plant which builds the steam turbine component. (/) That technology has nothing to do with the ability to build #NUCLEAR plants, that component might as well be part of a coal based generator. Yet, the media sold that news as relevant.
Nothing has been done in order to make the bureaucratic/approval process more streamlined.(/)
Feb 12, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read
Their only hope to have it fail spontaneously would be that.
Incidentally, one of my "pregnancy tests" of men and ideas is "would this happen without coercion, and if so, what would it take?" (/)
@chigrl @nglinsman @RobertMCutler @BaldingsWorld @DukeMarcude That gives a clearer perspective, imho. On #Canada, the point now is NOT vaccinations. If vaccines don't work with rates over 85%, they never reliably will. Also, no one asks how many protesters ARE vaccinated. But authorities avoid checking that like the plague(/)
Feb 10, 2022 9 tweets 3 min read
Just so you know: I served my conscription in a "Carabinieri" batallion, which as a corp is technically part of the Military but whose main duty is policing Italy , mainly outside the main cities ("Territoriale") and provide men from the Batallions for public order.(/) After a 3 month training I served 9 in one of those batallions. Soccer games, guard duties, public protests, Tribunal work etc. Also beef up ordinary patrols like the one depicted here.
It was 1987 so it was another Era and another country, but... this troubles me. (/)
Jan 22, 2022 17 tweets 6 min read
Just for the foreign crowd, NO lay person in Italy knows that #Germany actually HAS a president of the republic, let alone who the person is. Yet the election for the Italian one makes "Cat on a hot tin roof" an image associated with Xanax. (/) That's because contrary to other countries, in Italy the President wields enormous power and he's not afraid to use it. We have a decent track record of things which are intuitively against our Constitution that are not only signed into law, but are then defended by pundits.(/)
Jan 22, 2022 5 tweets 6 min read
The terrible truth is, #Putin know that the West will NEVER in his lifetime have such a poor political AND military leadership for a decade at least, and he's not getting any younger. (/) @Halsrethink @nglinsman @BRyvkin @RobertMCutler @amlivemon @vtchakarova Even countries who traditionally compensate a small military instrument with either technology/ training (Israel) or "Élan" (France) are hampered now.
If anything, what hampers #Putin, ironically, is *NOT* his adversaries.(/)
Jan 22, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
"Italians received first energy bill 2022: +100% from last years for households, up to +300% for industries. This is BECAUSE Italy invested 220 bln in renewables in the last 10 years."
There, fixed that for you. (/)
@jacopogiliberto @chiccotesta @CarloStagnaro @pietercleppe just so you know, THIS is the most expensive and newest western European Nuclear plant: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto…
Let's make it a round 10 bn. EUR instead of 8.5 bn.
220 bn is 22 power plants at 1.600 MW nameplate, marginal cost of fuel is negligible.(/)
Jan 20, 2022 8 tweets 4 min read
Part of a common misconception: Europeans have always had a coherent strategy, that is NOT to become militarily independent. That makes sense, but not at the force-on-force level: (/) @Halsrethink @nglinsman @RobertMCutler @vtchakarova @pietercleppe @Danjsalt @moutet Ostensibly this enabled them to quieten the leftist/pacifist part of their political spectrum (remember the Euromissiles fracas?) but again, that was only a superficial issue. There was a real one tough. (/)
Dec 4, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read
*cough* forse sarebbe il caso di ricordare che la gran parte dei vaccini obbligatori, in termini di efficacia rispetto a questo, sono un Iron Dome paragonato ad un cannoncino. FUNZIONANO e basta, quindi il vaccinato non ha controindicazioni di salute dai non vaccinati.(/) Il che in parte spiega le blande sanzioni presenti su chi "evade" i vaccini obbligatori: perdonerete la brutalità ma in sostanza la collettività dice "cavoli suoi". Qua "ricadono anche sugli altri" perché contro i virus anti influenzali c'è... un aleatorietà. (/)