Macro-financial strategist -- shipping, monetary structures, and off-balance-sheet finance

Contact ~ Cargo & Collateral ~ CV ~ LinkedIn ~ ORCiD

Financial systems are claims and obligations: who owes what to whom, on whose balance sheet, funded how. Read that way, a rearmament programme is a working-capital cycle before it is a capability, and freight is a credit business wearing logistics clothes -- where the credit is what breaks first. The method came out of the euro area: repo, collateral, TARGET, sovereign debt. It does not stay there.

Macro strategist and financial analyst in the shipping industry, based in Greece. Associate Researcher at the Global Climate Forum, Berlin, behind the balance-sheet models of the OBFA-TRANSFORM Project and the Monetary Architecture Online Tool. PhD in economics, SOAS University of London: monetary subordination in the euro area, under Prof. Costas Lapavitsas; lecturer there to 2025. To September 2026, defence economist at the UKDSC, inside the Ministry of Defence ecosystem -- author of reports that contributed to shaping MoD policy on measuring defence-industrial productivity, evaluating programme viability, assessing supply-chain resilience and vulnerability, and defining industrial readiness. Dual Italian-British national.

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Four lines of work

1 · Shipping and trade finance

The freight rate is the output; the credit chain is the mechanism. Chartering and freight rates, port throughput and tonne-mile demand, forwarder and carrier working capital, and the financing behind a single shipment -- read from inside the industry rather than off a screen.

Cargo & Collateral reads seaborne trade and monetary systems the same way: ship finance, marine insurance and trade finance on one side; repo markets, debt management offices and euro-area settlement plumbing on the other. Read it on Substack · Subscribe

2 · Macro-financial strategy and research

Where the pressure sits in a system, and what it takes to move it. Commissioned structural reads for ship finance and freight, and for allocators and credit funds -- on a sovereign, a sector or a market structure. Scope and terms: Work with me.

3 · Defence and security economics

Capability is downstream of industrial structure and financing. The defence-industrial base read as an economy: where supply-chain and strategic dependencies concentrate, what industrial resilience actually requires, and whether sustained rearmament can be financed at all.

Input-Output models of inter-sectoral linkage and dependency, gravity models of defence trade and burden-sharing, and frameworks for measuring defence-industrial productivity and capability shortfalls. The work: Defence & Security Economics.

4 · Monetary architecture and hierarchy

Money is a hierarchy of interlocking balance sheets; a crisis is the moment they stop clearing. Collateral, repo, TARGET and subordination in the euro area, mapped that way -- with the Global Climate Forum's OBFA-TRANSFORM project and its public Monetary Architecture tool. The projects: Research Projects.

All with academic roots

Peer-reviewed work on the euro area: monetary hierarchy, repo markets, TARGET balances, subordination. Not a line of work in itself -- it is why the reads hold up.

• Lapavitsas, C. & Giordano, M. (2026). "ECB monetary policy in a quandary", European Law Open.
• Giordano, M. (2025). "Monetary Subordination in the Eurozone: Pillars and Asymmetries", Competition & Change.
• Murau, S., Goghie, A. & Giordano, M. (2025). "Encumbered Security? Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area", Journal of Financial Regulation.
• Murau, S. & Giordano, M. (2024). "Forging monetary unification through novation: the TARGET system", Socio-Economic Review.

Full list on Publications and ORCiD. Presentations and workshops: Talks & Conferences. The full record: About & CV.

Affiliations

• Global Climate Forum, Berlin -- Associate Researcher, OBFA-TRANSFORM
• SOAS University of London
• UKDSC -- UK Defence Solutions Centre (to September 2026)
• SPARCollective -- Founding Member
• European Research Network on Economic and Social Policy (EReNSEP)
• Young Scholars Initiative (YSI), Institute for New Economic Thinking

Disclaimer

The content on this website -- including research, publications, opinions, and other materials -- represents my personal work and views. Nothing on this site should be interpreted as representing the views, positions, or policies of any past or present employer, including the UK Defence Solutions Centre (UKDSC), the Ministry of Defence, or any defence industry primes. All content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and nothing on this site is investment advice.