Irish (CPAs') eyes are smiling

From today’s FT.  Any comment would be superfluous, except that Irish eyes are smiling, along with those in Germany and Canada.

Shareholders in London express revulsion to excessive compensation

British firms are apparently now required to submit executive compensation plans to binding shareholder votes. Over 40% of Standard Chartered's shareholders have just voted against the company’s plan because the incentives were tied to annual rather than longer performance. 

WIth Barclays' downsizing, there is no longer any British bank in the bulge bracket

Barclays is cutting 7000 jobs from its investment bank (one quarter of the staff) and moving over half its investment banking-related assets into a bad bank.  Barclays’ focus will be the U.K. and the U.S.  Higher capital requirements and more deferred pay put at a disadvantage, they say, UK banks compared to those in France, Germany, and the U.S.  Wasn't the U.K. supposed to benefit from banking restrictions on the continent?  The banking sector worldwide is in secular decline as debt/GDP shrinks.  According to the FT, Deutsche and the Wall Street players will be the only bulge bracket banks left.  Where does this leave London and Paris?

Informed money launderers prefer dollars to bitcoins.

CNBC just had a discussion of bitcoins and a couple of similar digital currencies that I had never heard of.  Concern was expressed that miscreants and low-lives could use bitcoins to launder money. 

I asked myself the following question:  If 99% of all money laundering is in US dollars, which it is, isn’t it the security of the dollar the issue? The dollar's vulnerability is putting too much of a burden on the intermediaries to police transactions, which is driving up transaction costs. The provenance of each bitcoin is contact within its code so every transaction is recorded automatically.  Why can't this be done with digital dollars?

It's getting easy to find a job in the USA, if you want one.

Dr. Yellen says that the JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report) is an important indicator of the labor market that she watches it carefully.  The March JOLTS came out this morning and the key phrase in the BLS’ commentary is "March was little changed from February."  The labor market was on cruise control.  The press commentary that followed the announcement opined that the report shows no pickup in activity and will not satisfy Mrs. Yellen that conditions are improving.  She can be expected, they think, to remain very dovish.

I find this puzzling. Doesn’t the key chart of JOLTS data above, the “Number of unemployed per job opening,” look great?

Climate change and the art of lawn maintenance

Who are you going to believe?  A bunch of distinguished scientists or your own lying outdoor thermometer?  I saw a headline today that said it has been the coldest winter in the US since 1912, and another that gave another more recent comparison date.  One specified that it has been the coldest winter if one counted only the months since the beginning of this year.  Etc.  Anyway, it's been cold recently.  Here on the Massachusetts coast, the trees are only now budding, which is on the late side.  Today it was 54° when I got up; yesterday it was 39° and the day before 34°. 

Doubts are spreading about the global warming thesis, and the recent UN report confesses that the models they had been using were not working; they suggest that weather is too complex to model.  The climate issue has, unfortunately, become a political football, or fireball, or snowball, as the case may be.  It is confusing.  Anyway, I know that I am not as worried about warming as I was ten years ago when it seemed imminent.  Perhaps we should look to the medieval author of The Cloud of Unkowning and put aside any preconceptions.  I know one this for sure, however, and that is that this cold, wet weather seems to have worked for the new lawn I put in behind the house.  The grass seeds have germinated and are coming in evenly.  In my neighborhood, all politics are local.

Nigeria's war on corruption; We wish them the best of luck.

At the World Economic Forum in Abuja President Goodluck Jonathan announced the “Clean Business Practice Initiative.”  The goal is for corporations in Nigeria to become less corrupt.  Of course, the only way for corporations to be corrupt is to bribe government officials; they certainly don’t bribe each other.  Putting that aside, President Jonathan is to be commended on his fine sense of irony in light of the $20 billion that recently disappeared from the state oil company and his efforts to suppress any inquiry. 

As for reducing corruption I can only say, "Good luck."