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.

• Martin Wolf (Financial Times): The rumours of the dollar’s death are much exaggerated, October 13, 2009. Recent figures have proved that the dollar’s fall is a symptom of success, not of failure. All the same, the dollar-based global monetary system is defective. It would be good to start building alternative arrangements.

• E.S. Browning (The Wall Street Journal): Dow at 10000 as crisis ebbs, October 14, 2009. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to 10015.86, passing the symbolic 10000 level much faster than expected and racking up a 53% gain in just seven months. Wednesday’s trading marked the first time the Dow touched 10000 since October last year, when markets were unraveling after the collapse of Lehman Brothers

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By the time you read this column, Goldman Sachs will have probably reported a dazzling result for the second quarter. The rumors preceding this celebrated event sparked a stupendous 185-point rally on Wall Street yesterday.

But the trading day was not all about mere rumors. It was also about hearsay, hype and giddy optimism…

Meredith Whitney, “The Woman Who Called Wall Street’s Meltdown,” according to the Fortune Magazine cover of August 18, 2008, upgraded the shares of Goldman Sachs to a “Buy,” and predicted the stock would rise 30% from current levels. “Goldman has all the benefits of the capital markets in general,” said Whitney, “Without the ‘junk in the trunk’ as I like to call it.” Goldman shares jumped 5.3%.

Based on Whitney’s upgrade, and the subsequent market action, gullible investors could have deduced that the credit crisis has ended. The rest of us could have deduced that the

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The first few days of the week have been characterized by a fresh wave of risk aversion as uncertainty over the global economic outlook took its toll on stock markets and investors favored safe-haven assets such as government bonds, the US dollar and Japanese yen. However, yesterday brought some relief for risky assets - now in corrective mode - and it remains to be seen whether the S&P 500 Index will close down for a fourth consecutive week as the US earnings season gets on the way.

The usual debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets dominated the video channels over the past few days, but interesting snippets on the IMF’s improved forecast for the global economy, the viability of the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP), the US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the prospects for the earnings-reporting season and President Obama’s visit to Russia were also

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Well it's pretty clear to me at least that there is now one, and only one, major and outsanding topic towering head and shoulders above all those other pressing and important problems those of us following the EU economies currently find lying in our macro-policy in-trays: the issue of wage cuts. Not since the 1930s has the possibility of such a generalised reduction in wages and living standards loomed out there before policymakers, and doubly so if we now hit - as I fear we may well for reasons to be explained at the end of this post - systematic price deflation in a number of core European economies. br /br /The issue that has suddenly and even violently erupted onto the European macro horizon over the last week (as if we didn't already have sufficient problems to be getting on with) is, quite simply, how, if they either ...

Given the implicit government guarantees, Eric Roseman says it is likely that investors will soon start to switch from low-yielding Treasury bonds to high-grade corporate debt. The Fed’s balance sheet is now polluted by the toxic debt it has taken on from banks. And demand for Treasuries will not keep pace with the deluge of supply in the coming year. Eric says this could make investment grade corporate debt the new safe haven in bonds in 2009.

This from Sovereign Society:

Several segments of the credit markets have come back to life in December after crushing losses recorded in September and October. Though it’s too early to celebrate a broad-based credit revival, the largest issuers of investment grade debt surged this month as yields plunged. Mortgage-backed bonds, or agency debt, have also rallied sharply in December on the heels of government guarantees and the Fed’s plan to spend $500

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A chronology of the recent global market chaos:

September 14/15 - Investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings files for bankruptcy protection; Merrill Lynch to be taken over by Bank of America Corp.

September 16 - U.S. Federal Reserve announces plan for $85 billion (49 billion pound) loan to American International Group in return for an 80 percent stake in the insurer; Barclays buys parts of Lehman’s North American assets for $1.75 billion.

September 17 - British bank Lloyds TSB Group agrees to rescue rival HBOS, scooping up Britain’s biggest home loan lender in an all-share deal.

September 19 - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls for the government to spend billions of dollars to take toxic mortgage assets off financial companies. Stock markets soar.

September 20 - Details emerge of the $700 billion U.S. plan.

September 21 - Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley become bank holding companies regulated by the Fed.

September 22 - Nomura Holdings says

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Alternative Investment Leaders2008 Top Alternative Investment ManagersInstitutional Investor is out with a new list of the top alternative investment firms in the industry. This was created as part of their 2008 Top 300 Money Managers list. I took the top 10 firms and ran an analysis to see who really controls the most assets (or did).Data Used: Firm Name Assets in Millions Goldman Sachs 95,694 Bank of New York Mellon Corp 91,698 JP Morgan Asset Management 84,742 ...

India's inflation held steady in the week to September 13, rising 12.14 percent from a year earlier, thus maintaining the same pace as in the previous week. The rate has now been trending slightly down from the recent peak of 12.63 percent hit on the 9 August. If this trend continues it should give the central bank the necessary room to hold borrowing costs unchanged and thus avoid placing funding pressures on a banking system which is struggling in the wake of the most recent bout of financial turmoil in the United States.

India's financial system is evidently showing signs of strain as the impact of both local policy tightening and the global credit crunch steadily take hold. The rate at which Indian banks lend to each other climbed to an 18-month high of 15.125 percent on Sept. 19, following the

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Four of the nation’s largest financial institutions, whose collapses have contributed significantly to the need for the pending government action plan currently being discussed in Washington, have also drawn attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI has stated its intent to commence fraud investigations of insurer AIG, investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings, and mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Limited information regarding the investigations was given, as they are in the beginning stages, but it was noted that senior officers of the financial institutions would come under the greatest scrutiny.

Let us hear your thoughts below:

We were all misled by the assurances of 'experts' over this crisis, says Gary North in The Daily Reckoning. The $700 billion Paulson plan will not be the last bailout. And the ever-growing national debt will never be paid off with the US dollar at its present value. Gary says it is time to name and shame those who tried to deceive us...