Morning Links: 2009-09-02

"Albert Edwards is back!…after 20 years of more or less permanent overvaluation of US equities, we saw just five months of under-pricing through the March trough. Do bursting global equity valuation bubbles really end like this? Of course they don’t."

Ford’s US sales rose 17pc in August, a second consecutive month of increases, bolstered by the US government’s "cash for clunkers" incentive programme, the automaker said yesterday.

Meltdown casualties Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM and AIG soared in August, with tons of shares changing hands. But don’t be fooled; they’re worthless.

This is a browser I used on Windows Mobile. I switched to Android and now use the native browser. Skyfire is very good though.

I don’t know what discipline Meltzer wants to join, but if he rejects those two goals he is certainly nothing that I can recognize. It starts badly, with what I can only call disingenuity:

As much about geoplitics as about economics. Worth a read

Hat tip Prieur du Plessis. “The economy is no longer in freefall and, as a result, there’s an enormous amount of complacency from politicians, in particular, about what will happen next. I believe politicians have given away the opportunity to restructure the banks and reconfigure the system.”

the business cycle is tied to feedback loops involving speculative price movements and other economic activity — and to the talk that these movements incite.

This is a small part of a lengthy statement released a few hours ago by Laura Ling and Euna Lee since they were released from North Korea prison. It’s their first statement since their ordeal, and although they leave out many details, it’s still gut-wrenching.

BP has announced a "giant" deepwater oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico that could potentially boost its production in the area by 50pc.

Central Asian ethnic groups are more defined by societal rules than ancestry. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genetics found that overall there are more genetic differences within ethnic groups than between them, indicating that separate ‘ethnic groups’ exist in the mind more than the blood.

A majority of independent voters disapprove of how Barack Obama’s handling his job as president, according to a new national poll.

The nation’s big four banks are now writing virtually every new mortgage in Australia, reigniting fears that more than two decades of competition has been unwound and major lenders will emerge from the economic downturn with too much power.

Wells Fargo & Co. plans to repay the U.S. bank bailout program “shortly” without raising equity, a tactic that would protect the value of stakes held by investors including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

When Lehman, AIG, and Merrill Lynch were in crisis a year ago, Chris Flowers could be found at the scene. He survived the maelstrom – but now he has his own billion-dollar problems to worry about.

Oh look, the nice people at S&P are noticing that Mexico’s post-oil budgetary math doesn’t add up. Apparently if you develop an air pocket in something (oil) that represents 40% of your state’s income it could impact your credit rating. Whoa, there’s a shocker.

Miyuki Hatoyama, set to become the next first lady of Japan, says her husband has been nicknamed "alien" because he is different from old-style politics, and she feels she and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama share a "sensibility."

Over the past decade mobiles have undergone another revolution. Phones are no longer just devices to make and receive calls and texts, they are also for checking emails, Facebook and Twitter as well as browsing the internet. News last week that Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, is to launch a new "super-smartphone" and start making mini-laptops, is the dawn of a third revolution, which could lead to a blurring of the lines between phones and laptops.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plans for the development of the country’s offshore oil fields stripped Petroleo Brasileiro SA investors of $7 billion in a day.

The bank isn’t offering to repay all of its $45 billion in aid from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, as several other banks have done. Instead, BofA is suggesting it could start with the $20 billion of additional aid supplied in January when the bank was hesitating to complete its takeover of loss-ridden Merrill.

A mother-of-four was murdered by her partner days after she changed her Facebook status from "married" to "single", a court has heard.

Economics teaches us that taxes and other public interventions to correct distortions and other market failures should be targeted directly at the distortion or failure in question. What distortion is a tax on financial transactions targeted at?

Distraction of the Day: Terrell Owens (now no longer a member of the hated Dallas Cowboys)