This Week’s Most Popular Posts

By Edward Harrison On Nov 1, 2010

Real Estate Investors or Speculators?: Casey Research’s thoughts on risk management amongst real estate investors makes one wonder how much real estate activity is purely speculative.
The Problem With QE2: Comstock Partners explains why QE2 will not be successful in increasing economic output in the face of a secular trend toward deleveraging.
Graph of the Day: Annual RMB Export Growth vs. RMB-USD Appreciation: A chart showing an amazing correlation between Chinese export growth, domestic demand and the USD-RMB exchange rate. The question goes to cause and effect.
Deflation, Reflation, Inflation: Annaly Capital Management’s look at Ben Bernanke’s reflation efforts to prevent deflation with good charts on comparison to Japan’s efforts.
FDIC Loses $25 Billion in One Year: Casey Research notes that the FDIC has lost a lot of money resolving bankrupt financial institutions. These costs are borne by the remaining banks but one wonders about residual costs to taxpayers.
It isn’t easy being green: Michael Pettis runs through the numbers on China’s capital account surplus. He concludes that the Chinese currency cannot achieve major reserve currency status without a reform of the Chinese economy and government.
Why You Should Be Checking the VIX Daily: Casey Research notes the recurrent spiking in stock market volatility and suggests that we should be prepared for another one.
The Subprime Debacle: Act 2, Part 2: John Mauldin writes on why the foreclosure crisis is really just the tail end of the same events which brought us crisis in 2007 and 2008.
MMT: A few thoughts on austerity, currency wars and exchange rates: Marshall Auerback puts together a roundhouse view on exchange rates and ‘currency wars’ in light of government retrenchment. He demonstrates that the retrenchment ultimately creates preconditions that lead to trade and currency tension.
The Silver Sleuth: Casey Research writes on the bullish case for silver.
Grantham: Night of The Living Fed: A review of Jeremy Grantham’s latest quarterly newsletter which is a scathing denunciation of the Federal Reserve. His piece also contains a hilarious Halloween-inspired graphic.
Gross: The Bull Market In Bonds is Over: Bill Gross warns yet again that yields are not going to be able to go much lower. Gross hits the Federal Reserve hard for creating a "Ponzi" scheme and laments the decay of American politics. His latest monthly commentary was a very good and very populist piece.
Unemployment and Foreclosures: John Lounsbury shows us some interesting statistics on unemployment and its correlation to foreclosures.
Another Piece of the Yen Puzzle: Marc Chandler gives us a few well-considered reasons why the Yen remains strong in the face of so much easing by the BoJ.
On Liquidity Traps and Quantitative Easing: My review of John Hussman’s piece on liquidity traps which demonstrates how QE is just an asset swap, but one that is effectively a term structure change by the Treasury – more short-term debt. Again, this will not benefit the real economy except to the degree that it affects interest rates.

Older posts of interest last week: