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

• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): Is $6,300 fair value for gold? November 19, 2009. The last parabolic spike in gold took off when central banks joined the fray in the 1970s, hoarding bullion with the same enthusiasm as gold bugs. Dylan Grice from Société Générale says it smells much the same today. He sees an eerie similarity between the decision of India’s central bank to buy half the IMF’s entire sale of gold, and the move by France’s central bank to start converting dollars into gold in 1965.

• Gregory Zuckerman (The Wall Street Journal): John Paulson making big new bet on gold, November 19, 2009. John Paulson, who scored about $20 billion of profits between 2007 and early

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

• Economist.com: Jobs gloom, with glimmers, November 6, 2009. America’s jobless rate passes 10% but the job market should start to improve soon.

• Paul Krugman (The New York Times): Why not a WPA? November 6, 2009. A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question. As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through private contractors. You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective.

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

• Michael Mackenzie, Saskia Scholtes and Aline van Duyn (Financial Times): Trepidation as Fed prepares to end easing, October 29, 2009. As the Federal Reserve’s programme of buying mortgage debt edges towards $1,000 billion this week, investors are starting to worry about what happens once the central bank starts to slow down and exit from this key plank of its monetary easing policy.

• Quint Tatro (Minyanvile): Seven lessons from a legend, October 29, 2009. Jesse Livermore was wealthy and broke several times over during his tumultuous life, which ended in his suicide. His ability to make and lose millions garnered him many lessons which the trading community have enshrined over the decades since his death. Yet these lessons and

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.

• Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): German “wise men” fear credit crunch in 2010, October 15, 2009. Germany’s leading institutes have warned that the pace of economic recovery is “unsustainable” and that the country’s banks may face a fresh crisis over the next year as bad debts surface in earnest.

• Lasse Heje Pedersen (NYU Stern School of Business): When everyone runs for the exit, August 2009. The dangers of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater are well understood, but the dangers of rushing to the exit in the financial markets are more complex. Yet, the two events share several features …

• Anthony Bolton (Financial Times): Are developed or emerging markets the future of investing? October 16,

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

• Caroline Baum, Bloomberg Bond traders are boubters, lemmings or sissies, September 28, 2009. Where are those gunslingers of yesteryear, ready at a moment’s notice to assert themselves in the marketplace, challenge the Fed on its easy-money stance and punish the federal government for its profligate spending? Why are bond traders so blasé when short-term interest rates have nowhere to go but up, the US economy is recovering, the Fed is ending its purchases of Treasury notes and bonds, the Treasury is continuing to sell notes and bonds, the dollar is sinking, and foreign central banks are making noises about the out-of- control US budget deficit?

• Jeremy Warner (Telegraph): The dollar is dead - long live the renminbi, September 25, 2009.

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.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): Conditional expectations and September seasonality, September 14, 2009. One of the arguments we’ve seen a lot lately is the idea that September and October have historically been the worst months for the stock market, coupled with rebuttals by bullish analysts along the lines that the discussion of this historical tendency by the bears makes it likely that nothing bad will happen this time. The fact is that yes, on average, the combined September-October period has historically produced slight declines for the S&P 500 whether you look back since 1870, 1900, 1940 or 1970. But the variance around that slightly negative return is large enough that it’s really misguided, in my view, to base predictions on it.

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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

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.

• Edmund Andrews (The New York Times): World bankers suggest rebound may have begun, August 21, 2009. Central bankers from around the world expressed growing confidence on Friday that the worst of the financial crisis was over and that a global economic recovery was beginning to take shape.

• Rich Miller and Alison Sider (Bloomberg): World economy emerging from worst recession since World War II, August 22, 2009. The global economy may be coming out of the worst recession since World War II as record-low interest rates and trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus spur demand.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): Bernanke sees a recovery - how would he know?, August 24, 2009.

Nouriel Roubini

“If gold is ‘past its day’, what of toxic derivatives and today’s deluge of US Treasury bonds…?” Just like poor Pip Dickens’ Great Expectations, central banks keep inheriting unwelcome bequests.

Today’s “legacy assets” are toxic derivatives; a decade ago it was gold reserves. Both are proving hard to shrug off, but for very different reasons. Both legacies also come thanks to previous central-bank history; the fossils remain only too livid today.

And 10 years from now, if not sooner, just how welcome will the current central bank must-have become – freshly printed government debt, bought with money that doesn’t exist until the central bank wills it?

Seeking first to defend against inflation and war, the West’s central banks built up huge reserves of the ultimate hard money –gold bullion– during the early-to-mid 20th century. Long before the turn of the millennium, however, these hoards grew to look quaint and expensive. Unyielding and relatively

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

• Bill Gross (Pimco - Investment Outlook): Investment potions, August 2009. A 3% nominal GDP “new normal” means lower profit growth, permanently higher unemployment, capped consumer spending growth rates and an increasing involvement of the government sector, which substantially changes the character of the American capitalistic model. There is no investment potion for this new environment other than steady income-producing bond and equity investments in companies with strong balance sheets and high dividend yields, as well as selectively chosen emerging market commitments where nominal GDP growth prospects are tilted upward as opposed to gravitating to new lower norms.

• Economist.com: After the fall, July 27, 2009. The collapse in world trade has stopped, but there is no sign of a