Categories
Economics

Levered Monkeys

As Oxford’s poet-philosopher Ludovic Phalippou once put it, “we are all just levered monkeys!” What did Phalippou mean by this comment? Well, as I explained to my corporate finance students this week, the use of debt by companies is called “financial leverage”. That is, debt acts like a lever which can magnify the size of both gains […]

Categories
Economics

Interest rate on 10 year government bonds

A picture says a thousand words BACK IN 1995, which country had the second highest 10 year government bond yield? As Europe’s third largest economy, Italy is too big to bail out.  Past performance is not a predictor or future performance.  However, if historical bond yields provide us with any insight about the Europe’s future, […]