This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.
• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Waiting for a correction, January 12, 2010.
When things look too good to be true (read: the markets persistently rise), they usually are!
• Paul Farrell (MarketWatch): Dow Industrials hit record, top 15,000 by 2011? January 12, 2010
Gary Shilling’s 17 picks: 6 buys and 11 sells.
• Brian Wesbury & Robert Stein (Forbes): The recovery we could have and the one we do, January 12, 2010.
In the past year, equity values have soared and a wide array of economic data has turned upward. But pessimism is still rampant. While different people worry about different things, conservatives focus on jobs and government policy. But none of these things will derail the V-shaped recovery.
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph): America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels, January 10, 2010.
Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.
• Irwin Stelzer (Times Online): Soaring deficit starts to frighten America’s voters, January 10, 2010.
The focus of American politics is about to shift. This means that voters’ attention will focus more on the burgeoning budget deficit. And soon. Early in the new session, Congress will have to raise the statutory limit on the federal debt lest the government be unable to pay its bills and shut down.
• Jon Hilsenrath, Brian Blackstone and Jaeyeon Woo (The Wall Street Journal): Crisis threatens to curb central banks, January 12, 2010.
Politicians are taking bolder actions to influence monetary policy, signaling that the global financial crisis may end up reining in the independence of many central banks.
• David Glovin and Thom Weidlich (Bloomberg): Federal Reserve seeks to protect US bailout secrets, January 11, 2010.
The Federal Reserve asked a US appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in US history.
• Dylan Ratigan (Clusterstock): The case against Tim Geithner, January 11, 2010.
Instead of acting as our cop, Secretary Tim Geithner has become central to what may be a cover-up of the greatest theft in US history.
• Andrew Ross Sorkin (The New York Times): What the Financial Crisis Commission should ask, January 11, 2010.
• Alan Blinder (The Wall Street Journal): When greed is not good, January 11, 2010.
They say markets are alternately ruled by greed and fear. Well, our panic-stricken financial markets have been ruled by fear for so long that a little greed might serve as an elixir. But everybody knows you can overdose on an elixir.
• Robert Reich (Financial Times): Why Obama must take on Wall Street, January 12, 2010.
It has been more than a year since all hell broke loose on Wall Street and, remarkably, almost nothing has been done to prevent all hell from breaking loose again.
• Investor’s Business Daily: Is China really growing that fast? January 11, 2010.
A spate of new reports show China leapfrogging other nations on its way to economic superpower status. Time to concede the global economic lead to the world’s most populous nation? Hardly.
• Martin Wolf (Financial Times): What we can learn from Japan’s decades of trouble, January 12, 2010.
Japan’s experience indicates that when fast growth begins to slow in a catch-up economy with high corporate savings and comparably high fixed investment, demand may well prove hard to manage.
