You can’t go back. So don’t assume that as the U.S. and the West recovers, they’ll attract foreign capital just like they did before the recession. It’s a far different landscape now. The easy-credit bubbles are gone. And they’ve left us with a hellacious debt burden.

The U.S. debt is expected to zoom to $16.2 trillion by 2012, almost equal to its projected GDP. Italy’s debt is expected to reach 120% next year. France’s debt will approach 90% next year (if President Nicolas Sarkozy goes ahead with his fiscal blitz). All told, by next year, Europe’s debt should rise to about 80 percent of GDP. And then there’s Japan. Its public debt is headed toward unfathomable depths. It should reach 240% of GDP by 2014.

After buying $600 billion in U.S. assets last year, China, for example, is having second thoughts. It won’t come close to matching that number this

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Bernanke sticks to the script…  Pound sterling comes under pressure…  China starts shopping for assets…  BRIC MarketSafe lights up the phones… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… We had a very busy day on the desk yesterday, as our newest MarketSafe offering, based on the BRIC currencies, is making the phones ring off the hook. But while we were busy, the currency traders had another slow day as the dollar just drifted throughout the day. The return chart for the last 24 hours shows only one currency made more than a .5% move vs. the US$; and that was the South African Rand which increased .75%.

The markets were watching Ben Bernanke’s congressional testimony through most of the day, but those waiting for a surprise were disappointed. Bernanke stuck to the script which he had laid out the day before in the Wall Street Journal, and the members of the House Financial Services Committee couldn’t get

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Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has said that he believes the dollar is in 'good shape' and does not need to be replaced as a global reserve currency.   Russia will not 'significantly' change the structure of its reserves, he added.  The Moscow Times examines the place of Russia within BRIC, as its economy falters and its lack of a 'properly developed financial sector' becomes problematic.  At the first formal summit of the BRIC nations, new global reserve currencies will not be discussed, but reforming international financial institutions will be.  Russia and Canada will support Germany's deal to sell Opel to Magna.  China Development Bank has extended a $1 billion credit line to VEB.  Oleg Deripaska has invited two of Putin's allies, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, to ...

With Exxon Mobil Corp.’s (XOM) new oil discovery off the coast of Brazil - the latest in a series of such offshore finds and potentially the largest Western Hemisphere discovery in three - the South American nation has taken another giant step in its quest to become a global energy superpower.

Exxon’s Azulao-1 well tapped a reservoir that reportedly contains as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, says Luiz Lemos, a partner at TozziniFreire Advogados, a Brazilian law firm that represents foreign energy companies.

“This is very huge,” Lemos told Bloomberg News.

So is the potential benefit for Brazil. If Lemos’ estimate is accurate, this new Azulao find will rival the nearby Tupi oil field as the largest discovery on this side of the planet since Mexico’s Cantarell field was discovered in 1976.

Lemos’ estimate is unconfirmed, but Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Officer Rex

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With dropping oil prices and the current global attitude on commodities, Horacio Marquez of Money Morning recommends this offshore drilling company as a top performer in its sector.

This stock is just waiting to explode. He recommends you take advantage of this investing opportunity and says, “because of its strong dividend policies, investors will be well compensated while they wait for that oil-price rebound.”

This from Horacio:

In the face of the global financial meltdown, the price of oil has plummeted from a record high of almost $150 a barrel in July to less than $40 recently. And now it seems to be bottoming.

Clearly, this isn’t the precise moment to call a market bottom, but it is reasonable to think about a bottom around this range for a few reasons.

For starters, the forward curve of oil futures prices is showing a very marked upward slope, known in the commodities business as

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China Development Bank, one of China’s largest state-owned enterprises, has agreed to lend $10 billion to Brazil’s Petrobras (PBR) in exchange for a long-term supply of oil - the latest illustration of how Beijing is using the global downturn to further its domestic agenda.

Money Morning first reported in January, that China was building stakes in some of the world’s largest natural-resource companies, which have been made vulnerable by depressed commodities prices, tumbling profits and falling stock prices. In the scant few weeks since that Money Morning report was published, Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. (ADR: ACH), or Chinalco, has invested $19.5 billion in Australian/British mining giant Rio Tinto PLC (ADR: RTP), and China Minmetals Corp. acquired Australian zinc miner Oz Minerals Ltd.

China Development Bank has

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(Adds Transneft comment in paragraphs 4-5)

By Robin Paxton and Vladimir Soldatkin

MOSCOW, Feb 17 (Reuters) – China has agreed to lend Russian oil companies $25 billion in return for supplies from huge new East Siberian oilfields that will power its economy for the next two decades.

Russia’s state oil champion Rosneft (ROSN.MM) and pipeline monopoly Transneft (TRNF_p.RTS) on Tuesday signed a long-delayed deal to borrow the money from China Development Bank during talks in Beijing, sources close to the deal told Reuters.

“We agreed on supplies of 15 million tonnes of oil every year over a period of 20 years,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told state news channel Vesti 24. He said a separate loan deal was signed but gave no further details.

Transneft Vice-President Mikhail Barkov said his company would receive $10 billion of the

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nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;December 30, 2008 - Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE) is one of the midstream solar companies we touted in 2008, and continue to think is well-positioned in the group. That being said, the stock has been hammered, along with all of the other midstream solar firms. The stock opened on January 2, 2008 at $39.01. Yesterday, the stock closed at $5.34, trading at 0.66x our forecasted sales for 2008 of $1.05 billion (which would represent 88% Y/Y revenue growth, and at about 6x our forecasted 2008 income for YGE at $115.5 million (which would represent 116% Y/Y income growth). So the question is whether the stock is oversold at current levels, and whether it is timely now.nbsp;The current stock price reflects a relatively downbeat Q3 earnings report (see below), concern about declining ASPs (management estimates that ASPs will decline by about 15% to 20% in the Q4, and by about ...

December 30, 2008 ndash; Yingli Green Energy (NYSE:YGE) is one of the midstream solar companies we touted in 2008, and continue to think is well-positioned in the group. That being said, the stock has been hammered, along with all of the other midstream solar firms. The stock opened on January 2, 2008 at $39.01. Yesterday, the stock closed at $5.34, trading at 0.66x our forecasted sales for 2008 of $1.05 billion (which would represent 88% Y/Y revenue growth, and at about 6x our forecasted 2008 income for YGE at $115.5 million (which would represent 116% Y/Y income growth). So the question is whether the stock is oversold at current levels, and whether it is timely now. The current stock price reflects a relatively downbeat Q3 earnings report (see below), concern about declining ASPs (management estimates that ASPs will decline by about 15% to 20% in the Q4, and by about ...