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

• Business Intelligence: Marc Faber has short term concerns about commodities, says gold may drop to US$800, November 6, 2009. Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor said he has some short-term concerns about commodity prices including gold. He is also reluctant to invest in bonds.

• Aline van Duyn (Financial Times): Why dollar carry trade faces hidden dangers, November 7, 2009. Most investors agree that it is out there. What is less clear is how big it is, or how worried investors should be about it. The “it” in question is the dollar carry trade. This is an investment strategy that has recently been extremely profitable and as a result has become increasingly popular.

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CNN Money is running an interesting feature by David Goldman entitled "10 countries, 10 solutions" which details the particularities of the global economic crisis facing 10 key countries. In typical old-media fashion, the layout makes no sense from a user-friendliness perspective, so I'm going to take significant liberties in reposting their original content. They also have a single table layout of the 10 countries here. Time Warner lawyers, if you're watching this, get your editorial guys to put their content into a more sensible format that doesn't require constant clicking and I won't have to go such lengths to discuss it and in turn will actually drive more traffic to your site. Got that? Good. Now then, first some

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“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

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So much fuss was raised over the comments made by Joe Biden about Russia a few weeks back, as suddenly so many of his political opponents were concerned about hurting the feelings of the besieged siloviki or the derailment of reset diplomacy - which they had also criticized.  However, one thing that Biden pointed out was beyond argument - that Gazprom's bullying conduct has resulted in a much more serious and assertive European Commission, advancing a number of strong policies and pushing forward with the Nabucco pipeline project (although Iron Joe seemed to be under the impression that it was an oil pipeline, but whatever...).  Finally, it seemed, that Europe was getting its act together in acting for a common energy policy, instead of the bilateral relations preferred by Moscow, which allowed for disaggregation and greater political leveraging against Eastern ...

In late January, Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), the world’s most ubiquitous oil giant, capped off a whipsaw year in the global oil markets by reporting net income of $45.2 billion, an all-time record for corporate profits that shattered the former record it had set a year before.

The number was so big and the results beat Wall Street estimates by so much at a time when the credit crisis was wreaking havoc on so many other sectors that Oppenheimer & Sons (NYSE: OPY) oil analyst Fadel Gheit couldn’t help but quip that he didn’t think Exxon “will be lining up for any TARP money or government handout anytime soon.”

Exxon wasn’t the only heavyweight reaping the benefit of a zooming energy market that had seen crude oil climb to an all-time record of $147 a barrel in July. The combined revenue for

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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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Jobs data skewed by ’seasonal adjustments’…  BOE surprises the market…  Oil falls below $60…  China’s reserves continue to grow… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day…Chuck has a bevy of doctor’s appointments today, so he decided to let me take over the Pfennig. Unfortunately it will go out a little later than usual, as I always struggle to get all of my thoughts together so early in the morning. Its not that I come in late (I was here two hours before everyone else) but it just takes me much longer than Chuck to get it all on paper. But enough of the excuses, I’ve got to get writing.

Weekly jobless claims released in the US yesterday morning fell below 600k for the first time since January but the continuing claims continue to rise, hitting another record. The slight improvement in the weekly numbers was distorted by the automotive sector. Car companies typically shut down plants in

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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may impose stricter limits on commodities speculators who are believed to be behind the main force behind wild swings in the futures markets over the past two years. The investigation has the support of politicians seeking greater price stability for the global economy and consumers, but traders argue that such restrictions will only reduce market liquidity and not necessarily prices.

CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler said his agency will hold a series of hearings from July through August to determine whether or not it should place new limits on energy futures contracts.

Right now, the CFTC sets limits on the amount of futures contracts in some agricultural products that can be held by market participants. But futures exchanges are free to determine what, if any, position limits should exist for energy futures.

The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) currently restricts oil traders to 10,000 net futures

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The stock market seems to be rolling over. Investors read the news. It’s probably becoming clear to them that the economy is not going back to normal any time soon.

Yesterday, the Dow lost another 131 points. Another big day down and it will be in the 7,000-range. Oil sank too – down to $62. The dollar, bonds, and gold stayed about where they were.

Economists are still talking about an “exit strategy.” But in view of what is actually going on in the economy, they’ll probably want to stay on this highway a lot longer. This is the long road to ruin, of course. It may be fatal, but it is not – yet – unpopular. Broadly, what is happening is exactly what should be happening.

The stock market rally is getting old…and may have already peaked out. The consumer is running out of time, money and credit. He has no choice but to

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This is the age where politicians get their chance to run up huge debts.  “Politics is about what works,” said Hillary Clinton. At least, we think it was Hillary Clinton. Someone said it. Someone who is an imbecile.

Politics is not about what works, it’s about what you can get away with. And what you can get away with is often exactly what doesn’t work at all.

Our beat is money, here at the Daily Reckoning. We specialize in fraud and folderol. We leave the homicide beat to someone else.

What the US is getting away with, from a financial point of view, in addition to counterfeiting, is very grand larceny on a Super-Madoff scale. It is borrowing trillions of dollars even though it has no way to honestly pay back the money.

Still, so eager are the lenders to part with their money that the yield on the 10-year T-note fell

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