George Soros: Urges To End CDS Markets

Mr Soros, the Hungarian-born US fund manager, said that the swaps were ‘truly toxic’, grossly distorting risk, encouraging speculation and with the potential bring ruin on financial institutions and companies.

Citing the recent bankruptcy of General Motors in America, Mr Soros said that some bondholders had stood to gain more from bankruptcy than re-organisation as a result of their CDS positions.

“It’s like buying life insurance on someone else’s life and owning a licence to kill him,” he said of the swaps, which pay the buyer face value if a borrower defaults, in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent.

In remarks to a meeting of international bankers and financiers in Beijing, Mr Soros set out his vision for a new regulatory system for global finance that would require regulators to intervene to stop the kind of credit and asset bubbles which precipitated last year’s banking crisis. Full Story

Failed Promise of Innovation

"We live in an era of rapid innovation." I'm sure you've heard that phrase, or some variant, over and over again. The evidence appears to be all around us: Google (GOOG), Facebook, Twitter, smartphones, flat-screen televisions, the Internet itself.

But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if outside of a few high-profile areas, the past decade has seen far too few commercial innovations that can transform lives and move the economy forward? What if, rather than being an era of rapid innovation, this has been an era of innovation interrupted? And if that's true, is there any reason to expect the next decade to be any better?

These are not comfortable questions in the U.S. Pride in America's innovative spirit is one of the few things that both Democrats and Republicans—from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama—share. Full Story

IMF BONDS : Big Blow To US Bonds

The International Monetary Fund is putting final touches on its plans to issue its first bonds. Russia has already said it would buy $10 billion of the bonds, which would be priced in the IMF’s quasi-currency, “special drawing rights.” SDRs are a basket of currencies consisting of the euro, yen, pound sterling and U.S. dollar. As of Friday, 1 SDR equals $1.55.

China, Brazil and India also have said they are interested in buying IMF bonds, with China likely to purchase more than $20 billion of instrument. The IMF wants to issue bonds as a way to build up its lending war chest as the global economic nosedive continues.

But don’t start lining up at the IMF to buy some yourselves. Only the IMF’s 185 member nations and some central banks will be eligible to purchase them and trade them — among themselves. Some at the World Bank worry that the IMF bonds might push up borrowing rates somewhat for the Bank, though IMF officials doubt the IMF bond issuance will be large enough to affect World Bank borrowing costs much Full Story