by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaClaus Vistesen and I are both proud and happy to be able to announce that we have been invited to work as "featured analysts" with a new Boston-based start-up - Emerginvest. Manuel has also offered to contribute material covering the relevant political developments in the countries we will be following.We feel this arrangement is ideal for both parties as Claus and I will now have the opportunity to put some of our theoretical ideas to the test in a very practical context, while we hope that Emerginvest will be able to offer to their visitors and clients the sort of high quality, state of the art macroeconomic analysis which readers of this blog have become used to over the last 18 months. Claus and I have established a new, updated, methodology - based on an evaluation of both demographic and institutional parameters ...

In Bob Pisani’s blog post, “Global Theme: Inflation Worries” how many nations does he specifically name?

In China, a measure of inflation at the factory rose 8.2 percent in May, the highest in nearly four years, thanks to higher raw material costs. Inflation in Asia is a particular concern, because many countries there have very little account surpluses, heavily subsidize their citizens’ fuel consumption, and import much of their food and energy. This includes Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Elsewhere:

1) Ford (F) has already said it would be putting off its plan to return to profitability. Now, it’s assembling a plan to rapidly shift entire truck plants in the U.S. to car production, specifically some of the small cars it is producing in Europe, according to The Detroit News.

That’s six by my count.

...

Roel Landingin and Javier Blas writing in the Financial Times:The Philippines failed to buy enough rice on Tuesday to boost its inventories and faced prices more than 40 per cent high­er than two months ago in the latest sign of a rapid tight­­ening of the global rice market.The failure underscores the risk that rice could be in short supply in south-east Asia countries, where the grain is a staple food. It also signals further food inflation pressures in the region, where consumer prices are rising quickly.The world’s largest rice exporters, including Vietnam, India and Egypt, have imposed foreign sales restrictions to keep their domestic markets well supplied, tightening further the global market. More curbs are likely in the coming months as the rice market faces strong demand and lagging supplies, the US Department of Agriculture has warned. Global rice stocks are set to ...

We were asked how a U.S domiciled investor can cover the world on a country basis with no-load, low expense ratio, index funds without creating gaps or unintended overlapping country holdings. That is probably something a lot of people would like to know. This article provides the options.