This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find enjoyable.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Sooner or later, the piper must be paid, August 28, 2009. My view is that investors will shortly see through the current sugar high and the better-than-expected earnings cycle and will begin to look over the valley at the chronic and secular issues that have emerged from the past cycle and from policy decisions aimed at returning the domestic economy toward self-sustaining growth.

• Michael Kahn (Barron’s): Dollar and frothy sentiment are new worries, August 26, 2009. There’s a fine line between risk taking and risk ignoring. Bulls may be doing both.

• Economist.com: Has the tide turned for corporate profits?, August 27, 2009. The recent rally in shares has

...

Alex’s Notes: Ultimately, history repeats. History tells us that fiat currency cycles end in failure of the currency. Failure of the currency generally means that the newly accepted form of currency has to be relinked to a stable measure of value. History also shows us that the stable measure of value most commonly used when currencies fail is gold (why do you think Central banks hold so much of it?).

I am not saying we should go to a pure gold standard (ie I trade you a piece of gold for a haircut).

What I am saying is that for currency to have value as a medium of exchange, it has to have the confidence of the people using it. If the medium of exchange does not have the confidence of the people, then the currency crashes (kind of like what we are seeing today).

To use SDR’s as

...

Notes from the Investment Underground Friday, March 20, 2008 Portland, Oregon, USA

Foreigners gang up on the dollar… Ben’s bitter irony… A chartist’s view on the buck… Why the Fed’s “quantitative easing” is a game changer… Investing in the “poor man’s gold”… And more!..

[Your Notes editor will be spending the day in battling Argentine bureaucracy. (It’s a long story. But basically I am trying to get residency down here.) So, today I’ll be leaving you in the capable hands of Crisis Strategy Alert senior analyst Charles Delvalle.]

*** Is this the end of the buck?

Next week a UN panel will recommend that the world drop the US dollar as the reserve currency and instead use a shared basket of currencies.

This from Reuters:

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters ...