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.

• Edmund Andrews (The New York Times): World bankers suggest rebound may have begun, August 21, 2009. Central bankers from around the world expressed growing confidence on Friday that the worst of the financial crisis was over and that a global economic recovery was beginning to take shape.

• Rich Miller and Alison Sider (Bloomberg): World economy emerging from worst recession since World War II, August 22, 2009. The global economy may be coming out of the worst recession since World War II as record-low interest rates and trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus spur demand.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): Bernanke sees a recovery - how would he know?, August 24, 2009.

Nouriel Roubini

I argued for bank deposit insurance scheme bank in March and at the beginning of last week. But I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t encouraged the politicians to get busy because this deposit guarantee scheme dumped on us is an unholy and dangerous mess.

I realise things had to be done in a hurry because Australia was about to announce its own deposit guarantee scheme and all hell was breaking loose on global markets, but the scheme proposed by Prime Minister Helen Clark in her re-election campaign launch on Sunday is a dogs breakfast. It  must be cleaned up before it putrifies into something so ugly and painful it could:

* Kill the stock market stone dead.

* Trigger a massive shift of cash from managed equity funds and corporate bonds to banks.

* Unleash a new generation of toxic finance companies.

* Vastly increase the cost of government borrowing.

* Mean deposit rates are all the same, or to be regulated to the same level, regardless of