International Investing

The Economist puts up the sentence (headline) and the chart of the day in this article on housing prices.
Unfortunately, new figures this week reveal that house prices have already fallen by more over the past 12 months than in any year during the Great Depression. The S&P/Case-Shiller national index fell by 14.1% in the year [...]

Outside of Fortune, very few publications write good business stories. The Wall Street Journal has interesting articles and does good reporting, but rarely writes about the internal drama of Wall Street in such a readable way. It’s like something Bethany McLean or Kurt Eichenwald would have written. Part 3 will be out tomorrow. Read part [...]

Gartman sounds the alarm:
Noting the Hunt silver problem back in ‘79, Dr. Verlager wrote:
Dennis, There are clearly big problems in the dated crude contracts (Dec 11 to Dec 2016). One or more firms that sold the oil is trying to get out. They have a problem, though. The parties that are long do not want [...]

It is surprising how unsophisticated the swap market is as described in this Bloomberg article. It seems that, when it counts, no one really knows anything about pricing/trading this instrument. Not even the supposed experts. This section of the article is almost humorous. This is how literally 10’s of millions of guarantees are put into [...]

Great chart and analysis from Sudden Debt:
There have been millions of pages written about Peak Oil, both pro and con, and I don’t claim to be an expert. But I do want to add just one fact based on common sense. Exxon is the world’s largest non-state oil company and the largest publicly traded corporation [...]

Very interesting interview from Knowledge@Wharton:
The market events of August 2007 ended a robust 2003-2007 fundraising cycle. Currently, sentiment is one of caution. Thematically, investors are seeking counter-cyclical and risk-mediating investment strategies, such as distressed/turnaround and mezzanine. At the same time, investors recognize that their 2001-2003 fund investments outperformed due to the market conditions. Now may [...]

From The Daily Reckoning. This headline was the most important thing I read today. The follow with:
On the basis of credit default swaps, which are used to speculate on a government’s ability to repay debt, the 10-year note reached a record high of 16 basis points on March 12. German bonds traded at [...]

Me either. 
In December, the Fed had $775B worth of Treasury securities. That stock will soon have dwindled to $300B, give or take. The difference, about $475B, represents an investment by the central bank in risky assets of the US financial sector. $475B is an extraordinary sum of money. It is as if the Fed [...]

China was once the largest economic superpower in the world. This excerpt from The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace could have been written last week:
In the Chinese bazar are hundreds of small shops in which a miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry goods are to be found and where many things are sold wonderfully [...]

From the Daily Reckoning:
“On the household front, millions of homeowners haven’t even finished paying their heating bills from last winter, and over six million Americans asked for energy assistance funds so their power wouldn’t be shut off. (In California alone, 1.7 million households are behind on their utility payments.)
“Signs of the stretched [...]