MacroMan makes an interesting case for monitoring how tighter monetary policy will affect the fortunes of two consumer debt junkies – Australia and South Korea – over the coming months.
The comments section points out the data used in the Australian case is not relevant right now (see @Anonymous 11.43AM comment) and possible flaws with the South Korea case (see @Skippy 1.35pm comment). Nonetheless, the overall thrust of MacroMan’s logic seems sound.
I am not normally a huge fan of thematic investing but this is very interesting:
MarketFolly notes hedge fund Passport Capital publishes some interesting research about their positions. Their latest piece is on the investment case for farmland – worth noting the recent investment by buyout funds/venture capital in Chinese dairy farming and also for those that get the Gloom, Boom & Doom reports the section on Ukranian farmland are based on similar logic.
A copy of Passport’s full 36 page report is here.
Jesse’s Café American does the necessary digging and pieces together how much gold the Fed & Treasury are holding. The short answer btw is 261,499,000 fine troy ounces, but the post is still worth a read, including the light it sheds on the Fed’s Gold Certificates.
Also… Wikipedia has this list of officially reported gold reserves.
Given how miserable its economic outlook is, I’m sure Latvia probably wishes it had a bit more gold, although at number 66 on the list it has more than Hong Kong.
Anyway, the aptly named Creditwritedowns weighs in with its own platter of solutions for the poor folks in Riga watching their economy going down the tube.
Recommendation number two sounds good:
“Don’t answer the phone when the foreign creditors call the government.”
Not exactly responsible advice but then who cares when everyone loves the trashiest sovereign credit right now anyway.
Does anyone else also find it disturingly ironic that the IMF is once again putting the screws on an emerging market economy with policy recommendations that no G7 politician would dare contemplate and it’s up to a former IMF economist (Simon Johnson) to point out the unhealthy degree of sway big finance has over politicians in the U.K. and U.S.?
Creditwritedowns also takes another look at the U.S. saving rate with a bevy of factoids and graphs.
“Savings rates averaged 9% through 1982. They were consistently above 7% through 1992.”
Falkenblog focuses on the flawed thinking behind the media lauding of analysts who make the most prescient recent market calls.
Oaktree Capital made a very similar point all the way back in 1996 (opens straight into a pdf).
