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

• Michael Lerner and Ethan Hill (GOOD.is): The new Nostradamus, October 1, 2009. Can a fringe branch of mathematics forecast the future? A special adviser to the CIA, Fortune 500 companies, and the US Department of Defense certainly thinks so.

• Paul Lim (The New York Times): 10 years later, a much less expensive Dow 10,000, November 14, 2009. Investors may take some comfort now that the Dow Jones industrial average is back above 10,000 after slipping to around 9,700 at the end of October. But the return to 10,000 also serves as a bitter reminder that stocks have gone virtually nowhere, on balance, for more than a decade. Look a bit

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

• Daniel Gross (Newsweek): The greatest trade ever, November 10, 2009. How hedge fund manager John Paulson bet against the real estate bubble and made $15 billion in a single year.

• abc News: SocGen’s top analyst sees market lows next year, November 9, 2009. Albert Edwards, a top analyst with French bank Societe Generale, expects global markets to hit a new low in 2010, adding that he would not be surprised if the global economy enters another recession next year. Edwards, one of the leading equities bears and a long-term critic of the policies of Western central banks, is skeptical of popular opinion that extreme policy response will safeguard the West against a repeat of Japan’s lost decade of the 1990’s.

This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Fred Bergsten (Foreign Affairs): The dollar and the deficits: How Washington can prevent the next crisis, November 2009. If the US is serious about recovering from the global economic crisis, it must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Weak dollar equals strong stocks, for now, October 14, 2009. As long as there is no ready substitute for the dollar, Wall Street can celebrate the currency’s steady decline. And U.S. GDP will be boosted by a cheap greenback’s spur to exports and deterrent to imports. This cannot go on forever, however. The dollar’s fall may not have started on President Obama’s watch, but it may become his problem.

The business world loves a good economic indicator. Chief executives, budget planners, small-business owners, and others who must make assumptions about the health and direction of the economy take a keen interest in popular indicators such as consumer confidence, gross domestic product, housing starts, stock prices, employment data, and even the price of gold.

Economic indicators may take on extra significance when the nation is in a recession and anxious for signs of a recovery because the national psyche plays a key role in business cycles. People who are not experiencing any personal financial problems may nonetheless rein in their spending or alter the timing of major purchases when the news is telling them that the national economy is in difficult straits.

When investors and economists anticipate that the economy is approaching a turning point, they may look in some unusual places for early indications of a shift in

In the absence of the “Words from the Wise” review while I am traveling, this post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find interesting.

• Paul Krugman (The New York Times): How did economists get it so wrong?, September 2, 2009. It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes - or so they believed - were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. Last year, everything came apart.

• Daniel Gross (Slate): Failure caucus, September 1, 2009. Who is rooting for the economy to tank again?

• Ralph Atkins and Norma Cohen: (Financial Times): G20 plans for stimulus exit, September 3, 2009. World leaders have set out

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

• Richard Bernstein (Financial Times): America is for now still blowing bubbles, July 20, 2009. By preserving capacity to avoid taking pain today, the US is following the approach that led Japan into a lost decade.

• Kenneth Scott and John Taylor (The Wall Street Journal): Why toxic assets are so hard to clean up, July 21, 2009. Despite trillions of dollars of new government programs, one of the original causes of the financial crisis — the toxic assets on bank balance sheets — still persists and remains a serious impediment to economic recovery. Why are these toxic assets so difficult to deal with? We believe their sheer complexity is the core problem and that only increased transparency will

Edward is already plugging this article by Daniel Gross over at Demography.Matters but I think it is important enough to deserve circulation here at Alpha.Sources too. Basically, Daniel gets to the heart of the matter in terms of Japan when he argues that one of the principal reasons that Japan is not rising is that it has failed to do the homework in the human capital department or as Gross phrases it; while Japan is still leading in engineering, this is not the case with respect to social engineering.

Japan still retains its lead in engineering. A showroom at Panasonic's headquarters displayed a heated, multifunction toilet seat that conserves energy. (Wouldn't leaving the seat cold conserve even more?) The sleek Shinkansen bullet trains roll up to their appointed spots on time. TKX, an 87-year-old Osaka-based company that makes abrasives, has adapted its expertise to cutting silicon ingots into wafers

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

• Samuel Brittan (Financial Times): A new guide for the perplexed, July 10, 2009. Attempts to make sense of the financial crisis often lead to even more confusion, writes Samuel Brittan. Here is an attempt to outline the main issues.

• Beat Balzli and Michaela Schiessl (Spiegel): Global banking economist warned of coming crisis, July 8, 2009. William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007’s subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy.

• Janet Morrissey (Time): Advice from an economist who saw 1929, July 9, 2009. The Obama Administration should stop bailing out corporate disasters and

This post provides links to some thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): US bonds sale faces market resistance, May 24, 2009. The US Treasury is facing an ordeal by fire this week as it tries to sell $100 billion of bonds to a deeply skeptical market amid growing fears of a sovereign bond crisis in the Anglo-Saxon world.

• Donald Luskin (SmartMoney): The mysteries of the Treasury market revealed!, May 22, 2009.

• Jamil Anderlini (Financial Times): China stuck in “dollar trap“, May 24, 2009. China’s official foreign exchange manager is still buying record amounts of US government bonds, in spite of Beijing’s increasingly vocal fear of a dollar collapse, according to officials and analysts. Over the long term, Beijing hopes to reduce the size of its enormous

Another week and another batch of fascinating video clips about bailouts, economic woes and other crisis-related matters. As to be expected, the good-news videos are in rather short supply. A number of the more interesting clips that have attracted my attention are shared below.

Some of my favourites included in this compilation are: “Peter Schiff uses analogies to describe crisis” (first one up) and “Dr Doom [Marc Faber] - Buffett’s approach to investing is dead” (further down). If you want to view only two of these clips, make sure to see these two.

Please post any interesting video links that you would like to share with the Investment Postcards community, in the comments section.

YouTube: Peter Schiff uses analogies to describe crisis “Ron