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 [...]

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 [...]

From the WSJ, showing scary near-term projections:

Like every other investment, this one is probably over prices and won’t beat the index in the long run. But so what? Even if it’s value goes to zero, you can still drink it:
Most wines around the world go on sale only after they are bottled. But in Bordeaux the process starts far earlier. International [...]

The new leader is going to make some tough political choices. Very likely this will cause the currency to strengthen. Bloomberg has the details:
Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG predict gains of as much as 4 percent in the next six months. They say pressure will mount on the [...]

In From Dawn to Decadence Jacques Barzun noted that, “A decadent culture offers opportunities chiefly to the satirist.”  Maybe so, but these days it is nearly impossible to distinguish satire from fact:
The Federal Reserve, along with other central banks, said Friday that it was increasing the funding it is providing to banks and announced [...]