- 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: