Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. Of late, there have been a lot of worries about he potential for inflation in the U.S. Marc Faber is the most noted pundit in this regard. Over-the-top comments he made back in May about hyperinflation in the U.S. may have been a catalyst for all of the […]
Read more...Carnivorous Clock eats bugs, begins doomsday countdown Engadget Surge in Jackson sales allays debt fears Financial Times Gruma Says ‘Doubt’ Will Continue as Going Concern Bloomberg. Death by derivatives Where did Madoff’s missing billions go? Investigators face uphill task Guardian Two Ways JPMorgan Tightens the Screws on Debtors Minyanville The Two Sides of the Balance […]
Read more...Martin Wolf is pessimistic about the whether the financial system can be reformed, but nevertheless offers some toughminded suggestions. Oddly, he seems to see the big obstacles not as political, but as practical, that markets are too big and interconnected, and sees that as an intractable problem. I agree that it will almost certainly not […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.A follow-up on my last comment where I criticized the Financial Post article, Bonus flap puts Canada Pension’s strategy at risk. While it is true that paying hefty fees to external managers costs large pension funds hundreds of millions, the article makes it seem as if CPPIB is […]
Read more...Remember SIVs, financial public enemy number one of late 2007? Henry Paulson spent a lot of time failing around trying to come up with a remedy that involved only the government knocking heads together. That was a resoudnig Then it appeared that everyone shrugged their shoulders and decided this wasn’t such a big deal after […]
Read more...Lion prides form to win turf wars BBC Bottoms up for winning artist The Sun Sowell: Obama Will Lead to Sharia Matthew Yglesias. This is the political equivalent of a Weekly World News story, but at least the WWN folks were sufficiently in contact with reality to know they were making the stuff up. I […]
Read more...Um, how come this story is in the Sydney Morning Herald (as of about 20 hours ago) and not the US/UK business media? This is a pretty major development. Yes, commodities heavy Australia is most affected, but Oz is hardly alone in seeing the ramifications. While the US dollar is weakening, the Australian dollar has […]
Read more...One way of shaping the news is the framing of stories. Readers are sending articles on a daily basis pointing to a bullish bias in quite a few stories. In most, it not blatant, which is why I don’t parse them, here, in that it would seem like overkill. But in fact the subtle spinning […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. I begin with a message from Diane Urquhart: You are welcome to put links on your Pension Pulse blog to these letters between Parliamentary Secretary of Finance Ted Menzies and myself. They are about whether preferred status for pension fund deficits and severance would increase the cost […]
Read more...Americans on average are more liberal than sterotypes about US attitudes would suggest. So why do most Americans, and more important their representatives, act as if the country is conservative-leaning? The cynical take is the most persuasive: while the numbers may be skewed to the left, the money is weighted to the right. With TV […]
Read more...‘Oldest musical instrument’ found BBC Sex feels the credit squeeze in Nevada Independent How To Save The Newspapers, Vol. XII: Outlaw Linking TechCrunch Obama is choosing to be weak Clive Crook, Financial Times. Crook is measured but the substance of the article is damning. Pecora Whirling Robert Knutter, Huffington Post A Tangled Policy Web Tim […]
Read more...Readers may recall that it wasn’t all that long ago that China’s banks were sitting on big losses and the analysts debated how bad the mess was. In 2003, for instance, the damage was pegged at $500 billion, a stunning figure given the size of the economy, and meant the banking system was insolvent. Even […]
Read more...The Bank of International Settlements, mindful of the importance of its role, would never say anything as crass as the translation I offered in the headline. But that is nevertheless a message in its newly-released annual report. From the Guardian (hat tip reader DoctoRx): Taxpayers around the world still face potentially large losses because governments […]
Read more...If Alan Greenspan were serious about rehabilitating himself, he could hire himself out to central banks and instruct their officials in the art of Looking Serous and Appearing to Say Important Things While Actually Communicating Nothing. This is a crucial skill for anyone in an important bureaucratic position. The Chinese could use a few lessons. […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. In my last comment on the ‘Golden Cross‘, I warned people not to be overly reliant on technical signals. Someone on Naked Capitalism commented that it is better to use the exponential 50 and 200 day moving averages, which lends more weight to more recent data. While […]
Read more...