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

• Rob Arnott (Research Affiliates) The “3-D” hurricane force headwind, November 2009. The heroic rally of the past eight months has many thinking the good ole days are back and that mainstream 60/40 investing is alive and well. But flourishing pines at the mountain’s base do not constitute a thriving and shelter-providing forest in the heights above. A longer term perspective reveals that some powerful gales of inflation may surprise us on the trail to real returns over the coming decades. Most investors have very little invested in assets that are likely to serve them well in that brave new world. None of these observations is likely to help us in the weeks and months ahead. But, the long term does matter; institutional

...

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

• George Soros (Financial Times): Do not ignore the need for financial reform, October 25, 2009. It is not the right time to enact permanent reforms. The financial system is far from equilibrium. The short-term needs are the opposite of what is needed in the long term.

• Paul Sandison: The two main threats to democracy and modern capitalism, October 20, 2009. In the present burgeoning economic crisis, already well over a hundred million people across the globe have been thrown into poverty, despair, sickness and are struggling to avoid a premature death. Billions of people abroad are vowing never to allow the United States and the United Kingdom to do this to them again. The remaining question is whether the

...

As negative as I am, I am not on the bandwagon for a "Depression" - while I think unemployment is mightily understated by our government [Nov 7: October's Unemployment Rate Reaches "6.5%"] and probably will reach levels (in real terms, not government terms) that will be debilitating in the next 18 months, it is hard to take much credence in the 1930s figures because how accurate was "25% unemployment" then? Many women were also not in the work force so it is very hard to make comparisons. But the 2 keys on how bad this is going to be are (a) availability of credit and (b) availability of jobs. I do think there are some very serious structural changes that have been going on quietly under the surface that "good times" (i.e. cheap credit) of the past 7-10 years were ...