No currency movement to speak of… Buffett calls out the deficits… PIMCO does too! SNB selling francs to stem gains… nd Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Another day with the medicine in my knee and it feels better yet today… I did have to ice it last night though, I guess I’m still not out of the woods here, but I can see the exit!

There was very little in the way of movement in the currencies yesterday. The euro moved to 1.4150, but was brought back down

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With investors trying to figure out the most likely direction of stock markets, the US dollar, government bonds, commodities and gold attracted a fair bit of attention - also from the producers of this week’s video footage.

Commentators in the selection below include Josh Rosner, Byron Wein, Stephen Jennings, Paul McCulley, Ed Yardini, Doug Kass and David Rosenberg.

The compilation kicks off with Congressman Alan Grayson uttering some harsh words at The Big Picture Conference - Capitalism After Crisis & Recession, and concludes with a fun ditty - a Wild Life Boogie, AKA The Economy Song.

Yahoo Finance, Tech Ticker: Cost of Fed expansion of balance sheet is $30K per American

“Those were just some of the harsh words Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida had this morning regarding Washington’s handling of the financial crisis so far. His remarks were part of The Big Picture Conference - Capitalism After Crisis &

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After months of talk, one of the most exciting launches yet in the exchange traded fund (ETF) business is set to happen today: Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) is now an ETF provider.

PIMCO is the leader in fixed-income management, so it’s fitting that their first offering  is the PIMCO 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index Fund (TUZ), which focuses on low-yielding short-term Treasuries. The launch is especially exciting, because it’s going to go head-to-head with the grandfather of Treasury ETFs, iShares Barclays 1-3 Year Treasury Bond (SHY).

PIMCO recognizes that competition is fierce, but they are also sensitive to the fact that current yields are close to historic lows. To lure those looking for a strong fixed-income brand name at a reasonable price, the fund will have a 0.09% expense ratio after waiving a portion of the fees for at least a

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In a move that could shake up the clubby business of exchange-traded funds, bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. is poised to launch its first ETF early this week.

The move by Pimco, a unit of Allianz SE co-founded by bond guru Bill Gross, marks the first time in years such a high-profile mutual-fund company has tried to muscle its way into the ETF business, long dominated by a handful of large-but-lesser-known asset managers that specialize in indexing, such as Barclays PLC and State Street Corp.

ETFs, baskets of stocks or bonds that trade on an exchange, have been rapidly gaining popularity with investors, and took in tens of billions of dollars in 2008. But many big-name mutual-fund companies have shrugged off ETFs because these offerings were traditionally just index funds with low management fees, which ensured that profit margins were measly.

Pimco’s

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In a move that could shake up the clubby exchange-traded fund business, bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. is poised to launch its first ETF early next week.

The move by Pimco, co-founded by bond guru Bill Gross, marks the first time in years such a high-profile mutual fund company has tried to muscle its way into the ETF business, long dominated by a handful of large-but-lesser-known asset managers that specialize in indexing, such as Barclays PLC (BCS) and State Street Corp. (STT).

ETFs, baskets of stocks or bonds that trade on an exchange, have been rapidly gaining popularity with investors, taking in tens of billions of dollars in 2008 as similar amounts fled conventional funds.

But many big-name mutual fund companies have shrugged off ETFs because they were traditionally all index funds, making it hard to distinguish new offerings and keeping

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By Michael McKee and Matthew Benjamin

April 17 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration’s bank- rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, isn’t large enough to recapitalize the banking system, and the administration hasn’t been direct in addressing that shortfall, he said. Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama’s advisers have close ties to Wall Street.

“We don’t have enough money, they don’t want to go back to Congress, and they don’t want to do it in an open way and

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India Cuts Repurchase Rate to 5%; Private Employers Cut 697,000 Jobs in Feb.; U.S. Auto Sales Down 41% in February; Oil Rallies to Six-year High; Merrill’s Top 10 Execs Paid $209 Million Last Year

The Reserve Bank of India reduced its repurchase rate from an already low of 5.5% to 5.0%, its fifth cut since October. “We see a significant slowdown in investment,” Sailesh Jha, a senior regional economist at Barclays Capital Plc in Singapore, told Bloomberg. “There is scope for more significant rate cuts.” ADP Employer Services said that U.S. private employers cut 697,000 jobs in February, an acceleration of the revised 614,000 jobs lost in January. The figures mark the biggest job loss since the report’s ...

TheTreasury Department’s new bailout plan would require participation from private investors and would include government guarantees to limit losses. The details remain explained, but skepticism and fears of another crash are running high. For more information, read the following article from Money Morning:

By relying on asset-backed securities, large amounts of leverage and unregulated hedge funds as its key elements, the U.S. Treasury Department’s overhaul of the banking-system bailout plan is essentially relying on some of the same ingredients that caused the financial crisis in the first place.

This time around, someone should take the punch bowl away before the party even gets started. Otherwise, as Yogi Berra once said, it will be “Déjà vu all over again.”

The only difference this time around is that the U.S. Treasury Department is calling the plays.

Backdrop on a bailout

In a press conference Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy …

By relying on asset-backed securities, large amounts of leverage and unregulated hedge funds as its key elements, the U.S. Treasury Department’s overhaul of the banking-system bailout plan is essentially relying on some of the same ingredients that caused the financial crisis in the first place. This time around, someone should take the punch bowl away before the party even gets started. Otherwise, as Yogi Berra once said, it will be “Déjàvu all over again.” The only difference this time around is that the U.S. Treasury Department is calling the plays. Backdrop on a Bailout In a press conference Tuesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner unveiled the long-awaited successor to the Bush administration’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).  The reaction was swift. Stocks plunged after the 11 a.m. press conference began when Secretary Geithner introduced a new rescue plan that was light on ...

Treasury TIPS Coming Back into Fashion

Alexander Wissel, Editor in Chief, Investment U

Editor’s Note: From Bloomberg, (TIPS) are starting to look good again. For years their yield wasn’t high enough to justify the speculation, but that’s starting to change. There’s a brief excerpt from Daniel Kruger’s article below. In addition, we’ve included a brief overview on TIPS and where you can find more about them.

“At a time when central banks are attempting to prevent deflation, the hottest investments in the government bond market are securities that protect debt holders against rising consumer prices.

Inflation-linked debt from the U.S. to Japan returned 5.77 percent since November, including price gains and reinvested interest, compared with 1.55 percent for the government-bond market, according to indexes compiled by New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co.

Pacific Investment Management Co., Vanguard Group and

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