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

• Joseph Stiglitz (The National Interest): Death cometh for the greenback, October 27, 2009. Whichever path we take, like it or not, we will be moving away from current arrangements, the dollar-reserve system. There are only two questions: will the movement away be orderly or disorderly, and will America play a part in shaping the new system that will emerge?

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Earnings likely to trend lower, October 27, 2009. Underpromising and overdelivering is the oldest game in the investor relations handbook, as earnings expectations are often cagily crafted by corporate managements. In turn, many Wall Street analysts, emulating Ralph Wanger’s zebras, follow that company guidance in adopting a herd mentality that morphs into a Wall

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

Just over a year after economic calamity brought promises of reform to Washington, many now say that the recession is nearing an end. But is it business as usual for Wall Street, and have future financial crises been averted? Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) join Bill Moyers for a report card on the bailouts, an update on the state of the U.S. economy, and to find out whether efforts of reform have been derailed.

Click here or on the image below to view the video clip

Click here for the full transcript.

Source: PBS, October 9, 2009.

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

• Michael Ehrmann and Panagiota Tzamourani (European Central Bank): Memories of high inflation, September 2009. Inflation has been well contained over the last decades in most industrialized countries. This implies, however, that memories of high inflation are likely to fade, because over time larger parts of the population have never experienced high inflation, whereas those who have might forget. This paper tests whether memories of high inflation affect agents’ preferences about the importance attached to price stability, using a large database covering over 52,000 survey responses from 23 countries over the years 1981-2000. It finds that memories of hyperinflation are there to last, whereas those of less drastic inflation experiences tend to erode after around 10 to 15 years. The recent decline in

In a lively discussion with Simon Johnson, Lawrence Fish deconstructs the near collapse of the banking system and points out the multiple factors that have contributed to the financial crisis.

Topics in the discussion include the banks that did not fail, how Canadian and other countries’ banking systems also did not fail, the political landscape of banking regulation, ethics, bonuses in the banking industry and the ethics oath signed by 50% of the students at the Harvard Business School.

This is a must-view video clip, but be warned that it runs for 53 minutes.

Source: MIT World, September 24, 2009 (hat tip: Infectious Greed).

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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.

• Robert Reich (The Huffington Post): Why the Dow is hitting 10,000 while everyone else is cutting back, September 22, 2009. So how can the Dow be flirting with 10,000 when consumers, who make up 70 percent of the economy, have had to cut way back on buying because they have no money? Jobs continue to disappear. One out of six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed. Homes can no longer function as piggy banks because they’re worth almost a third less than they were two years ago. And for the first time in more than a decade, Americans are now having to pay down their debts and start to save.

• David Weidner (MarketWatch): The three

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.

• Dan Holland (RealClearMarkets): An interview with Doug Kass, September 21, 2009. Hedge fund manager Doug Kass has been called many different names over the course of his storied and successful, nearly forty-year investing career. Names like the “Bear of Boca”; “The Peerless Prognosticator of Palm Beach”; as well as the “Anti-Cramer.” He’s earned them all. As a noted short seller unafraid to swim against the tide of consensus, he seems to relish his self-appointed role bucking Wall Street groupthink and profiting handsomely from betting against the crowd.

• Intelligent Investing Transcript (Forbes): Jean-Marie Eveillard, September 14, 2009. An interview by Steve Forbes of Jean-Marie Eveillard, is senior adviser of First Eagle Funds.

• Peter Boone and Simon

In general I liked the speech, but think that the steps he has proposed are, at best, only a good first step. I hope that the proposals are strengthened in Congress, but have zero hope of that happening. More likely they will be watered down significantly. The end result is that we will face another market meltdown in the future; the only question is when.

Regulation of the financial industry is one of those extremely important, yet dry and dull subjects, that the general public will ignore, and the lobbyists will own. The bank lobby is extremely powerful and is going to fight things tooth and nail. Obama got a distinctly cool reception from the financial executives in the audience, with only a single round of applause.

However, one year after the government spent hundreds

In the absence of the “Words from the Wise” review while I am traveling, this post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find interesting.

• Paul Krugman (The New York Times): How did economists get it so wrong?, September 2, 2009. It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes - or so they believed - were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. Last year, everything came apart.

• Daniel Gross (Slate): Failure caucus, September 1, 2009. Who is rooting for the economy to tank again?

• Ralph Atkins and Norma Cohen: (Financial Times): G20 plans for stimulus exit, September 3, 2009. World leaders have set out

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. Please also add the links to any other thought-provoking articles you would like to share to the comments section.

• Paul Marson (Financial Times): Cause for caution on US earnings, August 12, 2009. The US second-quarter earning season is now ending, apparently on a good note as nearly three quarters of US companies have beaten consensus expectations. But a closer look at these earnings shows there is cause to be more cautious about the health of corporate America than the headline numbers would suggest. The cloud of euphoria that followed recent results had more to do with extraordinarily low expectations, than to any meaningful and lasting improvement in prospects, which still require a rapid recovery in economic activity. This suggests