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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I argued the bull case for gold in my posts over the past few months (see “Gold bullion - regaining its shine?“, “Gold bullion glitters bright” and “Gold bullion - challenging $1,000“. With the gold price scaling fresh peaks and closing in on $1,100, it would certainly seem as if renewed interest in the yellow metal is being stirred up, especially subsequent to the purchase by India’s central bank of 200 metric tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund.

As printing presses are running at full speed to produce ever-increasing quantities of fiat money as governments engineer the greatest asset price reflation in human history - and the US greenback is heading South - the longer-term fundamental case for the yellow metal is arguably positive.

“The gold bug has caught several big hedge fund managers this year including John Paulson of Paulson & Company, Kyle

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David Einhorn, highly respected hedge fund manager of Greenlight Capital and author of “Fooling some of the people all of the time” yesterday delivered the keynote address at the Value Investing Congress. His full speech can be accessed here, but Rolfe Winkler of Reuters has very handily published the highlights, as posted below.

On Bernanke and Geithner: Presently, Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner have become the quintessential short-term decision makers. They explicitly “do whatever it takes” to “solve one problem at a time” and deal with the unintended consequences later. It is too soon for history to evaluate their work, because there hasn’t been time for the unintended consequences of the “do whatever it takes” decision-making to materialize.

On too big to fail and the true lesson of Lehman: The proper way to deal with too-big-to-fail, or too inter-connected to fail, is to make sure

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If we’re right about where the price of gold is headed, the general public will someday clamor to buy all things gold. While gold stocks will be where the real leverage is, the rush will start with gold itself. As a gold editor, I have a very natural question: is there enough to go around?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 6.783 billion earthlings. Meanwhile, CPM Group, a highly respected industry organization, estimates there are 4.8 billion ounces of above-ground gold in the world. And this includes jewelry, electronics, and dental. So, even if everyone around the world volunteered to have their chain, cross, or tooth melted into a coin, we’re already short. Those towards the end of the line are out of luck.

However, it’s worse than that. Of all the physical metal ever mined…

2.1 billion ounces, or 43%, is found in jewelry, decorative, and religious items. Private stock – ...

Greenlight Capital partners letter Stansberry & Associates Investment Research

Buffett’s imaginary economy Reuters

The must read libertarian quote of the month The Daily Crux

Trader alert: Oil trading at critical levels The Daily Crux

Confidence in Obama drops from 60% to 49% Bloomberg

Krugman: Obama’s trust problem NYT

Danger for the dollar The Daily Reckoning

Socialized healthcare versus the laws of economics Whiskey and Gunpowder

Robert Rubin’s agony The Daily Beast

Armageddon averted…or was it? Forbes

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE:BRK.A) is finally starting to offload its 20% stake in ratings agency Moody’s Corporation (NYSE.MCO).

Here are listed sales in the filing, courtesy of 24/7WallStreet.com:

· 7/20/09… 1,817,000 at $28.7269 average in open market sale.

· 7/21/09… 3,915,100 at $26.9188 average in open market sale.

· 7/22/09… 2,254,200 at $26.6425 average in open market sale.

What took Buffett so long to start selling Moody’s? We have no idea. Moody’s runs one of the biggest scams on Wall Street. It charges the companies whose securities it rates (just like Standard & Poor’s and Fitch also do).

So what do you think these ratings agencies did when presented with a whole load of junk mortgage-backed securities to rate? They assigned them investment grade status and pocketed the cash.

If these ratings agencies had instead acted honestly and responsibly (rather than pimping

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Gold declined gently throughout Far East and early European trading on Tuesday…and by shortly after lunchtime in London…had given up around four bucks. From there, a smallish rally developed that made an attempt to continue rallying on the Comex, but got cut off at the knees [at its high of the day] shortly after 9:10 a.m. Eastern time. This decline lasted until 1:15 p.m. in New York…and by the time electronic trading ended at 5:15 p.m. yesterday afternoon…gold was back to virtually unchanged from Monday’s close. Silver didn’t do much. It lost a dime in choppy trading.

I mentioned yesterday that the open interest decline on Friday [in that short-covering rally] would have been somewhat offset by the big rally that we had on Monday. Well, I was only partially right. Open interest for Monday’s big day showed a staggering increase…up 12,999 contracts to 393,536…on big volume of 139,361 contracts. Friday’s

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I've been looking at taking a position in MEMC Materials (WFR). They sell silicon wafers for two segments: electronics, and the solar industry. They have been hit hard with a drop in demand, but the company is in good financial shape with plenty of cash, and will benefit when demand resurfaces.br /br /David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital took a large position in MEMC earlier this year. In his letter he cited some of the same reasons to be bullish and I also see value in the shares at these prices.br /br /I also saw a a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/05/18/chips-morgan-stanley-turns-bullish-the-restock-rally/"bullish note on semi's in today's Tech Trader via Barrons. MEMC recieved and upgrade today as well./abr /br /I don't see a lot of downside risk at current levels, and the upside is sizeable.br /br /br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VQGtBvsQTCg/ShGAqFhPuGI/AAAAAAAAAqA/Bmm7YForgxk/s1600-h/WFR.png"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; ...

The fund filings are out. If you're wondering, these are the funds I like to track, and sometimes follow by buying the same stocks:br /br /-George Soros (Soros Fund Management)br /-Seth Klarman (Baupost Group)br /-John Paulson (Paulson amp; CO.)br /-Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway)br /-David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital)br /-Bill Ackman (Pershing Square Capital Management)br /-Steve Cohen (SAC Capital Advisors)br /br /Today, I'm going toa href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchiveamp;sid=a_RT.rEuHt4M" take a quick look at Soros' holdings/a.br /br /blockquoteSoros Fund Management LLC, the investor’s hedge-fund firm, sold 5 million U.S. shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based firm’s remaining 32 million shares of the state-controlled oil company were valued at $963 million at the end of the quarter.br /br /The hedge fund also held 5.6 million shares of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Potash at the end of the quarter, compared ...

By Henny Sender in New York and Javier Blas in London

Published: March 8 2009 18:13 | Last updated: March 8 2009 18:13

Hedge fund investors who made money last year by betting against investment banks are now buying gold as a way of betting against central banks.

The gold bulls include David Einhorn, founder of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, who last year came under the spotlight for his short selling of shares in Lehman Brothers, after arguing that the bank did not have enough capital to offset its exposure to falling property prices. Other funds looking at gold include Eton Park and TPG-Axon, investors said.

Their belief in bullion is being expressed even as gold prices have retreated from last month’s break above the $1,000 an ounce level. Spot gold in London closed last Friday at $939.10, after falling last week to $900.95 an ounce.

Investors such as Mr Einhorn

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