by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /Two weeks ago a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/economics-country-briefings/are-the-imf-and-the-ecb-lining-up-against-the-eu-commission-over-latvia/"I drew attention to a revealing press conference given by IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky and European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer/a where it seemed a rather different posture was being taken on the Latvian question than that which is being transmitted from Brussels. Then a href="http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/the-european-union/is-the-latvia-intervention-team-assembling/"P O'Neill found a message on Twitter/a which suggested the topic of the Latvian budget had been unexpectedly added to the EcoFin agenda.br /br /Today a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601095amp;sid=aPlxlddcc8lI"Bloomberg report/a that Barclays Capital’s chief economist for emerging Europe Christian Keller thinks that the IMF's posture of continuing to withhold funds even after the approval of the spending cuts “signaled that the rift between the IMF and EU has widened” .br /br /Now I don't want to see connections were there are none, but it is a coincidence that Christian Keller works for ...

The following appeared in June’s Business Diary Botswana:

Private equity (PE) has long been considered a viable way to achieve risk-adjusted returns that exceed those possible in the public equity markets (though per University of Chicago scholar Steven Kaplan, during the three decades ending in 2005, the average private equity firm’s annual return was no better than that of Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index). Accordingly, institutional investors include private equity (or even funds of funds) in order to concurrently achieve optimal diversification and risk premia. And while such “limited partnership interests” demand that investors lock-in their contributions for an appreciable time period, such that general partners can commit to any number of strategies, in recent years the once highly illiquid asset class has given way to a vibrant secondary market available for sellers of private equity assets, which in turn has spread risk and further fueled

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The World Bank downgrades its world economic forecast, A few lessons from the school of German-style hyperinflation, Will we be seeing you in Vancouver this year? And plenty more…

Wait…scratch that…make it negative 2.9%.

Somebody must have slipped a few Rude pages to the honchos over at The World Bank. It seems the Washington-based lender is hedging its bets. A 2.9% contraction in the global economy this year is a far cry from its March estimate of 1.7%. But growth will be back to 2% next year, the bank assures us, slightly down from the 2.3% they originally expected.

What went wrong during the springtime, we wonder? Didn’t unprecedented levels of stimulus flow from government taps around the world? Weren’t Bernanke and Geithner manning the pumps? Didn’t the global media confirm sightings of green shoots? Or were they recovery saplings? Your editors were too busy “calling B.S.” to keep up with all those flowery

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The World Bank is prepared to lend Russia 'several billions of dollars' over the next two years to aid social programs.  VTB Capital has announced that Russia's economy contracted at a slower rate last month, at a rate of 4.7%, compared with a shrinkage of 5.4% in March.  Is government intervention in economic matters a hindrance rather than a help? asks the Moscow Times.  Russia's exports decreased by 48% in January-March in comparison with 2008's figures.  President Medvedev has spoken out against Russia's tendency to promote development of nanotechnology through large state firms such as Rusnano alone.  The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has drawn up amendments to allow banks outside of the top 100 to engage in mergers and acquisitions of competitor banks, without the sanction of a watchdog.  Billionaire Alexander Lebedev has told journalists that after ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - April 27, 2009 - Zacks Equity Research picks Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) as Bull of the Day and Amgen, Inc. (AMGN) as Bear of the Day. In addition, the analysts at Zacks Equity Research discuss the latest on Wells Fargo (WFC), US Bancorp (USB) and SunTrust (STI).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at: http://at.zacks.com/?id=2678

Bull of the Day

We are initiating coverage on Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA) with a Buy rating and a price target of $52. We are impressed with the company's strong performance in 2008 despite the global slowdown and are optimistic on growth prospects.

We expect Teva to continue posting strong revenues and earnings going forward thanks to new product launches, both generic and branded. We are also pleased to see Teva's progress with its branded and biogenerics pipeline. Biogenerics should help drive growth in the long-term.

Meanwhile, the

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Highlights include Citigroup, Inc. (C), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), U.S. Bancorp (USB) and SunTrust Banks, Inc. (STI).Starting today, finance officials from the Group of Seven Nations (G7) and Twenty Nations (G20) -- which includes major emerging nations such as China, Russia, India and Brazil -- are meeting in Washington for 3 days of discussions on the global economy.We would characterize the comments made yesterday by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as an attempt to keep these pending meetings on course. Ms. Strauss-Kahn urged the U.S. and Europe to do more to remove distressed assets from banks' balance sheets, and while "We still have long months of economic distress in front of us, postponing such steps would result in the postponement of a recovery."To that end, Ms. Strauss-Kahn and ...

Introduction

PART ONE Some Signs of a Trend Reversal from Bear to Bull

We think these would be some important signs of a major,  sustainable trend reversal:

1. Visual clues to trend reversal (price chart and multiple moving averages pointing up).  That has not yet happened.

S&P 500 Daily for 1 Year

S&P 500 Weekly for 3 Years

S&P 500 Monthly for 10 Years

2.  An end to the legislative and rescue package “house on fire” activity, announcements and actions by the US President, Legislature, Treasury and Federal Reserve.  That hasn’t happened yet.  Every new rescue program simply reveals deeper and perhaps longer lasting fundamental problems.  Uncertainty abounds.  Uncertainty is not good for stock prices.

Wall Street Journal (March 19) … The Fed had already cut its benchmark interest-rate

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelona br /br /Well reading the press this morning it would be fairly easy to reach the conclusion that nothing really happened yesterday in Brussels, and that a great opportunity was lost. The latter may finally be true, but the former most certainly is not. br /br /Let's look first at what was not decided on Sunday. The leaders of the 27 member countries in the European Union most certainly did not vote to back a proposal from Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany for a 180-billion-euro ($228 billion) aid package for central and eastern Europe. They did not back it because it was not even seriously on the agenda at this point. These people move slowly and we need to talk them throught one step at a time. So what was on the agenda. EU bonds for one, and a href="http://edwardhughtoo.blogspot.com/2009/02/let-east-into-eurozone-now.html"accelerated euro membership for the East for ...

The breakdown of international trade is key threat to the global economy in 2009, says Chris Mayer. Several countries have already taken action to protect domestic industries, including the US with its auto bailout. If this trend continues, Chris says the global downturn could become even deeper than imagined.This from The Daily Reckoning:

Where trade flourishes, business is good. But trade does not always flourish. The linked forces of globalization move in fits and starts.

The authors of Power and Plenty, a new book on trade over the last thousand years, tell us as much. “If anything,” they write, “history suggests that globalization is a fragile and easily reversible process.”

One of the looming threats in 2009 is the reversal in trade flows and increasing barriers to trade.

For the first time since 1982, The World Bank predicts global trade volumes will shrink in 2009. Undoubtedly, global trade

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The World Bank lowered its 2008 growth projection for China from 9.8% to 9.4%. It also a title=world bank target=_blank href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122764073537457243.html?mod=googlenews_wsjchopped its 2009 forecast/a from 9.2% to 7.5%.