In its annual rant against confusing and impenetrable jargon, the Local Government Association's list of gobbledegook this year includes 'goldfish bowl facilitated conversation' (meeting), 'trialogue' (meeting for three people) and 'clienting' (meeting customers).
But none of these has anything on the Lehman Brothers practice of 'repo-105ing'. Good old fashioned 'repos' are repurchase agreements whereby bank A sells a security to bank B at one price and agrees to buy it back after a specific period of time at another price.
The difference between the two prices reflects the difference between the yield of the security and the, wholesale, interest rate for the holding period.
With a repo, bank A can finance its asset without actually borrowing money. Bank B's 'loan' is collateralised by the security it temporarily holds.
So much for the 'normal' repo; now enter Repo 105.
For some reason a new US accounting standard, SFAS 140, allowed bank A to ignore its contingent liability to buy back the security. It was able to treat what was really a round trip as a single sale.
Using repo 105, Lehman was able to erase $50 billion of liabilities from its balance sheet and to hide the fact that it was even more highly leveraged than the market thought.
Critics argue that Britain's private finance initiatives amount to much the same thing, in that they ignore the government's obligation to see them through.
UniCredit Bank has been examining the totality of Britain's debt and has published a research note predicting that the government will have serious problems selling enough gilts to finance it.
It sounds a bit rich for an Italian bank to have a pop at Britain's debt problems but there is little in the paper that has not been said by others.
Investors will also be wondering just how robust would be a future Labour government's approach to cutting back that debt after a comment by Liam Byrne yesterday.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said on TV there would be no tax increases if his party were to win the general election.
But investors were not unduly bothered by any of it. They are already fully in tune with the debt situation and they will surely have taken the pre-election tax promise with a generous pinch of salt.
With no hard economic data to hold it back the Pound was able to edge higher for a second day. In contrast with Wednesday's performance it also managed to gain ground against the Euro and the Swiss Franc, giving it a clean sweep.
The day's ecostats, such as they were, went through on the nod. Canadian and US trade figures were both a little better than forecast. Weekly jobless numbers in the States were slightly worse.
The Swiss National Bank held its policy interest rate unchanged and repeated its threat to intervene in the market if the Swiss Franc appreciates excessively. The SNB's statement was peppered with hints that it is gearing up for a tightening of policy but there was no sense that such a move is imminent.
According to Morgan Stanley, the Bank of Japan could also be preparing for a round of intervention to hold down the value of the Yen. The investment bank makes the prediction on the back of its computer model, which calculates there is a 47% chance of intervention.
Figures released overnight showed a stronger than expected +0.8% rebound in New Zealand retail sales. The REINZ house price index went up by +0.4% in February despite a -3.8% fall in the number of transactions.
Japanese industrial production increased by +2.7% in January after a very similar increase the previous month.
Eurozone industrial production figures later this morning can hardly fail to be better than the -1.5% decline achieved by Britain in January.
There are no other pan-Euroland figures and nothing from the UK today so it will be North America that makes the running once again.
The Canadian employment report, unemployment rate and monthly change in employment, will be important to the Canadian Dollar and there are two top-division figures from the States.
Retail sales have become one of the most closely-watched indicators of domestic activity and the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index is an important pointer to where that level of activity will be in the future.
Rather harder to foretell will be the market's reaction to good or bad figures. At the last count, stronger US data meant increased risk-appetite among investors and so a weaker Dollar.
But that was last week. Thought processes might have evolved since then.
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'FX Day Trading', Article by Moneycorp, last update: 12-Mar-10
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