Arctic ice thickness ‘plummets’ BBC
Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes New Scientist
The New Infidelity New York Times
Insight: Volatility returns with a vengeance Gillian Tett, Financial Times
Worse this Time Michael Panzner
Free at last: female slave who dared to take Niger to court Times Online
Some Russia/China sightings from reader Chris:
China may lend Russia $25 bln as part of oil deal Reuters
Closer Russia-China ties help both countries amid financial crisis Xinhua
Governments May Have Caused Stocks Selloff: Dr. Doom CNBC (hat tip reader Megan)
An Ugly Marriage of Convenience Andrew Clavell
Smaller US banks fear predators armed with bail-out money Guardian
Pocketful of Multipliers (II): Options for Stimulus Packages Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser, Important for the policy minded.
Antidote du jour:
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I find Faber’s comments somewhat of a stretch. Does anyone actually believe that if the governments had not increased guarantees for bank deposits, worried investors would have lined up to withdraw their money from banks so they could invest in the stock market? Of course they might have bought gold, and Faber has been advocating gold as a smart trade all along (rather than stocks). Perhaps his remarks were prompted by the actions in the gold market recently. A case might be made that the dismal performance of gold has been (at least partly) the result of government intervention in the financial markets.
The Russia-China deal is exactly the kind of thing I would expect China to do with its winnings. And the design is a hard bargain very much in the Chinese model. The didn’t give something for nothing, but locked in exactly the kind of collateral they would be looking for, advanced their long-term strategy, and bolster a major partner. China also did this without buying Russian assets outright, something they understand but the West doesn’t. It ain’t over till the contracts are initialed, but the wheel turns, here.
Now for some good news:
Bad weather was good for Alaska glaciers:
For decades, summer snow loss has exceeded winter snowfall. Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008.
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/555283.html
Don’t believe that every scientific report, such as the BBC item above, is free from bias particularly in this field of study in which the participants are funded to investigate global warming and not global cooling – a slight difference.
You have to love the anti-global warming diehards. They are quick to accuse scientists of bias without producing a shred of evidence. For instance, a claim above that the researchers were out to investigate global warming.
Given the group involved, the University College London re for Polar Observation and Modelling – part of the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation – it looks like they investigate the poles! Plus this effort may also have been part of the International Polar Year investigations.
The IPY has taken place three times over the last 125 years. The most recent was 1957-59, long before anyone was even thinking about global warming.
And 9:26 couldn’t be bothered to read the article carefully. The study was based on a WINTER measurement of ice thickness LAST winter, as in IN THE COURSE OF the cold winter that 9:26 touts, versus the previous five. The Telegraph reports that the study measured ice thickness from October to March.
But hey, you can say whatever you want if you don’t care about fidelity to facts.
Faber: “Now that deposits are guaranteed, basically I as an investor have no incentive to hold equities so I sell them and put my money in bank deposits”
I’m sure faber has great sources but this doesn’t make any sense.
I can’t imagine investors of any consequence were willing to tolerate equity risk just because they were waiting around for insured bank deposits. There are a ton of less-risky assets other than insured deposits that investors would have been motivated to move into (and have been) long ago.
If anything, the unintended consequences of insured bank deposits would be the draining of capital out of low-yielding treasuries or out of mmkts.
In fact, you could almost say CNBC’s incessantly hyperbolic “IS YOUR MONEY SAFE” headlines have driven more investors out of equities than a new risk-free option.
Thanks to you and Megan. The Faber remarks are just one more of a set of remarks I’ve been collecting on the issue of government intervention and guarantees and their effects on investors.
Don the libertarian Democrat
I hate this picture, it makes me angry, like Roubini, who is angry too. Think of the risk in that slippery, hair-infested tub — and what if some rouge Higgs boson particle from the Large Hadron Collider were to get into that tub –WTF then, eh? Will the owner/owners be able to save all three, or should they have used maybe just a little microscopic amount of common sense and thereby diversified these precious little assets? What do people use for brain cells these days, you’d think they have sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or some mutation which absolves them from acting like they should be suspended in soap bubbles with a drool cup!
See: http://pythonline.com/blogs/bromaynardg/paranoid
… The very next day the most popular Internet commentary was about Sarah Palin emptying McCain’s drool cup.
“SNL – Michael Palin/The Doobie Brothers
Episode Number: 76 Season Num: 4 First Aired: Saturday January 27, 1979
MILES COWPERTHWAITE: The horrible, disgusting, tragic story of poor Miles Cowperthwaite begins with nerve-wracking job of emptying drool buckets from an epileptic. (Palin, Aykroyd, Belushi, Curtin, Morris, Murray, Newman)