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

• Gillian Tett (Financial Times): Could sovereign debt be the new subprime? November 22, 2009. I hope that the current calm in sovereign debt markets does not lull politicians into thinking that they can indefinitely avoid the need to take difficult fiscal choices. For if they do, those “safe” government bonds might start to look considerably less secure - not just to bankers, but to everybody.

• National Association for Business Economics: Recovery soon to lose “jobless” label, November 23, 2009. Reaffirming last month’s call that the Great Recession is over, NABE panelists have marked up their predictions for economic growth in 2010 and expect performance to exceed its long-term trend. “While the recovery has been jobless so far, that

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This post is a guest contribution by Vitaliy N. Katsenelson*, author of Active Value Investing: Making Money in Range-Bound Markets and director of research at Investment Management Associates.

The stock market has dropped. Corporate profits have collapsed. And profit margins have reverted toward the mean. What is next?

Before I dive into the discussion, let me explain the chart below, which I named appropriately, “The pain of mean reversion.”

I looked at reported earnings for S&P 500 and compared them to the “average case” earnings scenario. In the “average case” scenario I took reported earnings of S&P 500 in the early 1990s and grew them at 6% – an average growth rate of GDP over the last century which happens

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American Express Company (NYSE:AXP) shares are down 50% in the last 3 months and trading under $20 a share.  Why care?  First off, Berkshire Hathaway is its largest stockholder with 151 million, or 13%, of AXP shares. Barron's says "Berkshire's stake suggests the company's stock may be near a bottom". At Barron's: American Express: Nowhere Near Its Credit Limit By ANDREW BARY

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AmEx CEO Ken Chenault is considered among the best

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Warren Buffett says buy. Jeremy Grantham says it will get worse. Both are celebrated value investors. Who is right? It all depends upon your view of the third derivative of investing. Today we look at valuations in the stock market. This is the second part of a speech I have given in the past few weeks in California and Stockholm. I am updating the numbers, as the target keeps moving. 

While from one perspective things look rather difficult, from another there is a ray of hope. What can you expect to earn from stocks over the next five years? It should make for an interesting letter. Note: this will be a little longer than usual, but part of it is there are a LOT of charts.

I likened this to the economic situation we are in now. With consumer spending “resetting” to a new lower level, we are going to have to

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