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

• John Arlidge: (Times Online): I’m doing “God’s work”. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs, November 8, 2009. The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world’s most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank.

• Martha White (The Big Money): The Dow is too high, November 9 2009. What’s holding up the stock market? (It’s not the economy.)

• Rob Smyth, Bill Ryder and Ken Liu (Riverfront): Ten conditions for a sustainable recovery, November 9, 2009.

• The New York Times: Jobless recovery, November 7, 2009. We know that more stimulus spending and government programs are a fraught topic. But they are exactly what the country needs. It may be the only way to prevent a

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By Cees Bruggemans, Chief Economist FNB.

The SARB leading indicator peaked at 127.2 in March 2007, thereafter declining for two years, initially gradually during 2007 but acquiring freefall proportions in 2008.

This indicator hit a cyclical low of 105.3 in March 2009, thereafter rising very rapidly to 112.5 by August 2009.

Given the events of 2008 and early 2009, there presumably exists no surprise regarding the indicator’s freefall in 2008. But what has made it rise so phoenix-like rapidly since March this year?

As per the June 2007 issue of the SARB Quarterly Bulletin, this leading index today is a composite of twelve individual time series which together offer superior forward-looking ability regarding the South African business cycle, leading turning points by some six to nine months.

The twelve time series can be grouped in four distinct sub-categories, each making a peculiar contribution to the behaviour of the composite

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Woohoo!…U.S. stocks racked up their biggest quarterly advance since 1998! The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index soared more than 15% between March 31 and June 30 - lifting its year-to-date performance marginally into the black, and breaking a streak of six consecutive quarterly declines for the S&P 500, the longest since 1970.

This champagne-cork-popping performance obscures a few trends that should be worrisome to the celebrants. First, the S&P 500 has gained no ground whatsoever since May 8, the first trading day after the Federal Reserve triumphantly announced the results of its banking sector “stress tests.” Second, the BKX Index of financial stocks has DROPPED more than 16% since May 8. (As we have noted in prior editions of the Rude Awakening, the finance sector has been leading the overall stock market - both to the upside and downside - for the better part of four years.

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Reports surfaced in London on Sunday that at least three new bids for iShares have surfaced.  

(Editor's note: The following was submitted by IndexUniverse.com's Murray Coleman in San Francisco and IndexUniverse.EU's Paul Amery in London.)

The recently announced $4.4 billion deal by Barclays Global Investors to sell its exchange-traded funds business to private equity manager CVC Captial Partners could be in jeporday. 

Reports surfaced in London on Sunday that at least three new bids have surfaced. The Daily Telegraph is naming private equity groups Apax, BC Partners and Hellman & Friedman as parties expressing an interest in bidding more for iShares than the original terms offered by CVC Capital.

A Barclays spokesman told the paper that it was too early to tell if any new offers would turn into anything concrete. But he did tell

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Reports surfaced in London on Sunday that at least three new bids for iShares have surfaced.  

(Editor's note: The following was submitted by IndexUniverse.com's Murray Coleman in San Francisco and IndexUniverse.EU's Paul Amery in London.)

The recently announced $4.4 billion deal by San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors to sell its exchange-traded funds business to private equity manager CVC Captial Partners could be in jeporday. 

Reports surfaced in London on Sunday that at least three new bids have surfaced. The Daily Telegraph is naming private equity groups Apax, BC Partners and Hellman & Friedman as parties expressing an interest in bidding more for iShares than the original terms offered by CVC Capital.

A report by the Sunday Times of London also listed BC Partners. In fact, the paper says that the firm is now willing

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It’s the zeitgeist, dear reader, and a wonderful way for governments who got us into this mess to deflect attention from their less than stellar performances as stewards of the economy.

Although it’s difficult to believe, the Irish economy soared even higher than the U.S. economy during the boom years… and has fallen even further. (It even managed a higher debt-to-GDP than the U.S.) Now, just like poor old Icarus, it’s paying the price for its lofty heights.

“The contraction of the Irish economy is the worst anywhere since the Great Depression. Well, not anywhere, anywhere among the industrial countries since the Great Depression. You have to allow for countries like Zimbabwe,” said Alan Barrett of the think tank the Economic and Social Research Institute recently

The contraction in Irish GDP will be a - 9.2% this year. And the county is looking at a total contraction in GDP of - 14%

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Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has said that he would like Russia to act as a transit route for Azerbaijan gas to Europe.  Medvedev feels Gazprom has a 'very high chance of entering into a full agreement' on buying gas from Azerbaijan.  Gazprom Neft will sell $299 million of bonds in rubles as a first offering of domestic debt.  In the future, Russia could export as much 40 million tons of biofuels to Europe.  Lukoil is apparently interested in entering the Italian wholesale and retail distribution market.  Rosneft has declined to comment upon reports in the Sunday Times that it may make a bid for Sibir Energy.  Chinese company CNOON says it will not purchase foreign oil firms during the global recession period.  Hungary's new prime minister, Gordon Bajnai, is 'unhappy' with the Surgutneftegaz and ...

Reports are listing a San Francisco-based private equity firm as the leading candidate in the bidding war over ETF leader BGI.

That shouldn't come as a big surprise to those following the next evolution of a changing iShares brand.

In case you missed it, weekend stories in papers ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Sunday Times reported that a list of finalists has emerged in the auction of Barclays Global Investors by its parent London bank. Insiders are indicating that Hellman & Friedman LLC could wind up as the leading candidate to assume control of BGI.

As pointed out in the WSJ, that's a private equity firm also based in San Francisco with a history of past relations with the asset manager. Other possibilities, according to the paper, are Bain Capital and other private equity rivals such as TPG and Apax Partners LLP.

Although we've heard some industry

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Alex’s Notes: My favorite part of this article was this:

Bluffing Into the Nuts

We’ll close with a quick poker analogy.

In No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, to hold “the nuts” means you can’t be beaten – that your hole cards in combination with the board give you the best possible hand.

Needless to say, it is useless to bluff a player who is holding the nuts. Why would they fold? They know they have the best hand. If you raise such a player, they will happily call… or better yet shove their own stack in the middle, a reraise to put you all-in.

If the Fed or the IMF were to dump gold onto the market in this environment, I believe it would be the poker equivalent of bluffing into the nuts. I don’t think the powers that be are that dumb.

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Written by Justice Litle, Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group  

Is

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Is there a Sword of Damocles hanging over gold’s head? Here’s why U.S. and IMF gold holdings aren’t as big a deal as some think…

Last week, I promised to answer this popular question:

“Hey JL, what about all that gold in the vaults of the IMF and Fort Knox? Aren’t you worried they might try to dump it on the market?”

But before we get to that, a quick correction. In Friday’s piece, Europocalypse, I made reference to Colonel Kurtz as a “deranged flyboy lost deep in the Congo.”

The film-buff contingent among you corrected me with relish. Kurtz was in Cambodia, not the Congo, at the height of the Vietnam War when the movie took place.

My apologies… in Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is a rogue ivory trader lost in the Congo. (Conrad himself drew on personal experiences

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