Saturday, November 21, 2009

World Financial Report, Nov 20, 2009

click here to listen

Stewart: Common Sense to Sell Now

Those who are in the market now may want to start selling, as the “common sense system,” or buy low, sell high strategy, dictates, writes financial journalist James Stewart in SmartMoney magazine.

“Many people equate a decision to sell with a prediction the market is going down,” writes Stewart.

“Who am I to dampen the festive atmosphere of a big rally? But I don’t try to predict short- or even medium-term moves in the market. All I’m trying to do is sell higher, buy lower, and thereby outperform a strict buy-and-hold approach. So far it has been working.” (more)

Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.

"The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong." (more)

Goldman Bonuses: An Intriguing Reason Why Treasury Yields Are Going Negative

Short-term US interest rates turned negative on Thursday as banks frantically stockpiled government securities in order to polish their balance sheets for the end of the year.

The development highlighted the continuing distortions in the financial system more than a year after Lehman Brothers’ failure triggered a global crisis.

The growing appetite for short-term government debt reflects an effort by banks to present pristine year-end balance sheets to regulators and investors – an effort known as “window dressing” on Wall Street, analysts said. (more)

$4.8 trillion - Interest on U.S. debt

Here's a new way to think about the U.S. government's epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.

More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.

If that's hard to grasp, here's another way to look at why that's a problem.

In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due - $533 billion - is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group. (more)

The Economist (November 21st - November 27th 2009)

FREE magazine download click here

FREE audio download click here

Business Week - 30 November 2009

FREE download click here

Marc Faber on Bloomberg: Sky Will Be the Limit for Gold Prices

Alan Grayson and Eliot Spitzer take aim at the Fed