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

• John Authers (Financial Times): Financialisation genie set loose, October 7, 2009. Not long ago, there were three asset classes: stocks, bonds and cash. Some were not even sure if cash counted as an asset class. The last few decades, however, have seen the “financialization” of swathes of the world economy where prices were not previously set by markets, or at least not by markets led by the same investors who also set the prices of stocks and bonds. But financialization has led to controversy since last year’s crisis.

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Away from Wall Street, credit keeps contracting, October 8, 2009. Financial markets party on Fed largesse, little of which flows to Main Street.

• Eamon Javers