February 11, 10 by Mark75
An interesting chart from a Bank of Italy research shows that “older” people witnessed a significant increase of their income in 2006-2008, while “younger” ones suffered a contraction in the same period. And with “younger” people we are talking about under 55 of age. This appear to confirm what even some member of the Government was admitting: in the last 10-20 years, Italy maybe “gave too much” to older people, ad “gave too few” to younger people.
Reddito equivalente per classi di età (fonte: Supplemento al Bollettino Statistico della Banca d'Italia, n° 8)
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Italia paese per vecchi? L'evoluzione del reddito medio sembra confermarlo
February 09, 10 by Mark75
Here’s an interesting chart that shows dynamcs of bank deposits and bank loans (to households and to companies) average interest rates in Italy, compared to main Italian Government Bonds and European Central Bank rates. The chart shows clearly how every rate has decreased in 2009, with the average interest rate on bank deposit that reaced a low of 0.68% in December 2009.
Interest rates in Italy: comparison between bank depostis (average), bank loans (average), government bonds and ECB rates.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Andamento dei tassi di interesse in Italia nel 2009
February 08, 10 by Mark75
Security is extremely important in an online bank account, to the point that some users worried about it avoid using an online bank, even when it would be cheaper and more effective for their needs. Yet, users appear to be the weakest link in the “security chain”, since quite often they do not pay enough attention to their behaviour.
A Trusteer research shows that a significant number of online bank customers, uses the same password to access the online account and less critical services, such as forums. This may appear a minor sin, but it paves the way to identity thefts, since non-critical website do not protect data in the same way as banks do. So, it would be possible to steal passwords from a forum and use them to access a bank account — and remember that this kind of attacks are conducted automatically and in wide scale, so the odd are relevant.
The lesson is the same of the one we often highlighted for finance in general: surely there is the need to improve things, but the user/customer must improve his knowledge and pay more attention on what he is doing.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Sicurezza dei conti online: gli utenti non prendono le dovute precauzioni?
February 04, 10 by Mark75
We often pointed out that, on average, Italian companies do not invest enough in innovation. An MPS research shows that this may have costed as much as a 5% total GDP growth between 2000 and 2008. In fact, Italian enterpreneurs and politicians usually blame China’s competition for Italian export difficulties, that suffers the low prices of goods produced in countries where labor cost is very low. But the research shows that, between 2000 and 2008, Italy lost competitivity most of all against the other Eurozone countries, and Germany first of all.
If Italy had the same productivity development as Germany, they could have had a $78 billion export growth, that equals 5% of GDP.
There are several reasons, and I’d say they are well-known since even here we talked about them quite often:
- under average productivity: even if Italian salaries are under EOCD average, labor cost per product unit are well above
- insufficient development of hi-tech industries: Italy is too focused on low added value industries, and did not re-positioned itself as other EU countries were able to be.
- low attractiveness for international investors: international investor think twice before investing in Italy, given the high tax rate (that, summing all different taxes, reaches 68% of profits, compared to a 44.5% European average). But also judicial system slowness deter investor, since they may have doubt of how contracts will ultimately be enforced.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
L'insufficiente Ricerca & Sviluppo costa all’Italia 5 punti di PIL
February 01, 10 by Mark75
In January, €-coin indicator rised to 0.78%, compared to 0.68% in December. The rise of the indicator (that estimates real-time Eurozone underlying GDP growth) is slowing, compared to previous months: not a big problem, but since we often looked at the slowing of the decline, I think we should also consider the slowing in the recovery.
The rise of €-coin in January, as over the last few months, has been mainly driven by the greater optimism ofconsumers and firms, and by the slow normalization of financial markets. Industrial production and foreign trade have played a minor role: this may rise the doubt that maybe we are witnessing the hope of a recovery, instead of a “real” recovery.
€-coin Jan 07 - Jan 10 (data:Bank of Italy, chart:banknoise.com)
€-coin Jan 1999 - Jan 2010 (data:Bank of Italy, chart:banknoise.com)
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Indicatore €-coin a gennaio sale ancora (ma più lentamente)
January 31, 10 by Mark75
Italian Senate passed a law proposal to strictly limit manager compensation, although it won’t be conclusively approved since it appears to be unconstitutional.
I always thought that focusing on manager compensation and manager bonuses is misleading.
In fact, there’s nothing wrong in giving a “good manager” lots of money: if someone make you earn $100 million, you can easily give him even $1 million. But even if things turn bad a manager can be worth his bonus, say if he limits losses (say that he could drive the company to lose “only” $10 million instead of $100 million).
But there’s a major premise: we’re talking about “good managers”. And not every manager is a good manager. And this rises some interesting thoughs.
- Why companies keep “bad managers”? Maybe there isn’t enough competition for manager position, or maybe a company with a good management isn’t adequately rewarded.
- Who is a good manager? The answer isn’t that easy if we consider both point of view of shareholders and of overall economy. The problem is that companies (and managers) are usually heavily focused on the short-term, while sustainability comes from a long-term strategy.
If we face the problem starting from these two questions, there are good chances that many economic problems will be solved: on the contrary, if we only look (enviously?) at manager compensation, nothing will be really solved.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Perché imporre per legge un tetto agli stipendi dei manager è sbagliato
January 29, 10 by Mark75
As you surely know, Apple presented the new iPad. This gave me the opportunity to ask a simple question: why is Apple considered part of the good guys? To the point that often you can recognize the “bad guy” in a tv show because he’s the only one that has a PC.
Let me explain. If you ask an Apple user of why he/she likes Apple products, often you’ll hear answer such as “it has evereything you need“: for example, the first time you turn on an iMac you already have lots of application, even to edit video. Windows hasn’t anything like that. But… Microsoft was nearly denied to put the web browser in Windows, in Europe, because it was considered unfair competition. So why those rules does not apply to Apple?
Apple has maybe created the most strictly closed environment — the iPhone store is a good example of how the user is constrained — and it appears that the new iPad won’t be anything different. Such a closed environment shouldn’t put Apple between the “bad guys”? Often people talk about Apple and Linux in opposition to the “evil” Microsoft: but personally, I wouldn’t put Apple and Linux on the same level…
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
iPad: Apple è il vero "demonio"?
January 28, 10 by Mark75
Here’s a chart of Italian 3, 6 and 12-months Treasury Bills (BOT) yield from January 2009 to January 2010. You can notice that after a small rebound in Q4 2009, yield appear to decrease again.
Prezzo di assegnazione nelle aste di collocamento 2009-2010. Dati Banca d'Italia, elaborazione www.banknoise.com
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Grafico: rendimento dei BOT 2009-2010
January 28, 10 by Mark75
In 2009, hit and run cases increased nearly 50% in Italy, compared to 2008. You may say it is coward, or vile, but surely it isn’t surprising. While someone appears to be baffled from this increase, but it should be easy lo link it to the higher sanction introduced for motorsits.
This is aggravated from the fact that Italian motorists are (more or less consciously) convinced that highway code exists only to allow municipalities to rake up some money, and has nearly no relation to security. And higher sanctions are seen mainly in this light.
Unfortunately, local governments gave reasons for this belief, since they often use tickets and fines as some sort of “hidden tax” — and in fact there are more tickets and fines in the second half of the year (when they usually need more money), than in the first one
What it would be needed to increase road security in Italy is to increase checks, instead of sanctions. But increasing police checks has a cost: that will be difficult until road security is considered as a way to make money.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
La sicurezza stradale è affrontata nel modo sbagliato?
January 27, 10 by Mark75
Stock market is fundamental for companies, since allows them to gather capital to consolidate and grow. In Italy, however, most companies do not have their shares listed: and this is maybe one of the reason of the small average size of Italian companies.
To cope with this problem, Italian Banks Association and Borsa Italiana (wned by London Stock Exchange Group) have reached an agreement to support Small and Medium Enteroprises toward the listing in stock exchange. Among other actions, the creation of investment funds specialized in SME will be incentivated.
Surely, one may say that stock market listing doesn’t solve every problem, on the contrary sometimes it may create some distortion (when the company management ends up worrying more of shares prices than of the “real” business), but indeed stock market is one of the best path to raise company capital and attract investors, that is necessary to companies (and, in the end, economy) growth.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Accordo ABI-Borsa Italiana per incentivare le imprese verso la quotazione
January 26, 10 by Mark75
In Italy there is a debate on how to cope with the “problem” of many 30-years old (and more) people still living with parents. Besides many things one may say, the issue is that many people do not choose to live on their own simply because they can’t afford it: and this is confirmend by the fact that people go out parent’s house when they marry, i.e. when there are to incomes to match the expenses.
Now, in my opinion avoiding expeneses one can’t afford should be considered a virtue, not a fault. In fact, it was the reduced debt load of Italian households that prevented Italy from suffering worse consequencies of financial crisis.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
I "bamboccioni" hanno salvato l'economia italiana?
January 25, 10 by Mark75
Italian Government implemented European Payment Service Directive (PSD), even if with a little (usual) delay: the Directive was to be implemented by November 1st, 2009.
The PSD brings some interesting novelties: the most interesting one for main street consumers is maybe that bank transfers shall be executed within one day.
Overall, the PSD should increase transparency and competition between banks, even if the complete implementation will still require a few time (for example, Italian implementation provides that bank transfers execution time could be prolonged to three days until end 2011).
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
La Payment Service Directive approvata dal Consiglio dei Ministri
January 22, 10 by Mark75
Italy’s economy strongly rely on export: in 2008 they amounted to nearly 29% of GDP. This pushes someone to say that the crisis was in fact “imported”, since it wasn’t caused by internal factors, but by difficulties of destination countries (e.g. Germany). This is true only to some extent, since Italian economy has several undeniable weaknesses — and relying much on exports may very well be one of them.
Italian export (seasonally adjusted) 2008-2009
Italian export (seasonally adjusted) 2006-2009
If we look a bit closer to the exported goods, we can see that durable goods and semi-finished goods appear to have suffered more than consumption goods, that is consistent with a decrease in production and investment in some important target markets such as Germany.
Esportazioni per tipologia di bene 2008-2009
Looking at destination EU countries, we can see that export contraction involves nearly all countries, even if the contraction in Italian main export markets (Germany, France, Spain, UK) in the EU. It’s worth noticing that many “wise” Italian companies are starting to target emerging countries, starting to consider them not only a competitor in production, but also a target market, most of all if considered that the number of high-income people, even if small in percentage, is huge in absolute value.
Export in UE countries - 2008-2009
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
La crisi italiana causata dalle difficoltà dell'export?
January 19, 10 by Mark75
A research shows that Italian newscast over-report small criminality, leading viewers to have a distorted perception of security issues. This report comes when many are criticizing newscasts and newspapers for under-reporting economic crisis.
Here’s some interesting result from the research:
- there is no correlation between the number of small crime news and actual crime levels
- there is a strong correlation between the number of news and viewers’ perception of criminality
- in 2007 and 2008 (in the months preceding elections), there was something like a “crime news bubble”, with newscast increasing the number of crime-related news, even if actual number of crimes was diminishing. In 2009, the number of news came back to 2006 levels.
- number of crime-related news in Italian newscast is consistently higher than other European countries (double than Spain and nearly twenty times German newscast)
- small crimes (“common” car crashes, small thefts, small robberies) appear to be reported only in Italian national newscast, while they seem to be ignored by other countries’ newscast
- crime-related news are often “serialized” with update (even without no real new information), transforming them nearly in a soap opera.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
La "bolla mediatica della criminalità"
January 18, 10 by Mark75
We often said that Italian approach to public spending issues is misleaded, focusing on “cuts” instead of “rationalizing“. The problem is that if you simply cut (without looking at how and what), this does not mean that you increase efficiency, because you could compromise effectiveness, actually increasing the waste of money, and most of all missing goals.
A good example of this is what is happening with a new telescope that was built by Italian Astrophisics Institute, that costed nearly 67 million euros, but now the institute does not have funding to employ the personnel needed to manage it, and so it might be left unused: a saving on salaries that could totally jeopardize the project. But this isn’t the only example, since similar things happens also in many public services.
The problem is that public spending isn’t faced with a strategic approach: every “problem” is considered separately (“now we built, later we will think how to manage it”). If you focus on “spending” an not on “investment”, it’s no surprise if you have no return on investment.
BankNoise.com [http://www.banknoise.com]
Spesa pubblica: quando tagliare è uno spreco
