Goldman Sachs London conducted a poll of fund managers today that had interesting results. The poll demonstrated that fund managers are expecting deflation more than inflation and that they expect the U.S. or Asia to escape the downturn first (and certainly not Europe or the UK). I imagine that funds are positioned accordingly.

Here are the poll results:

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Twitter, Communication, and My Intermittent Inner Luddite – naked capitalism (Yves Smith doesn’t like the always on culture. Neither do I. I use all the new media but I have similar misgivings about them)
Fin24.com – SA house prices still falling

FT.com – China to go on European spending spree

Dublin ‘worst value’ in Europe [...]

I just picked up two reports on California’s desperate situation. California, whose legislature and Governor have been hold up in around the clock negotiations, is now issuing IOU’s instead of cash. They have also been downgraded by Moody’s credit rating agency. The first story came from the well-known political site Monsters & Critics. And it demonstrates that California is on the verge of bankruptcy:

What are the Swiss doing selling dollars? I don’t have an answer to this question. But, I thought I would posit it because a reader tipped me off to a development via the Blog Alea:

Happy Groundhog Day. By the way, the word on the street is that Germans who came over to Pennsylvania wanted to use hedgehogs in this mythical are-we-going-to-have -six-more-weeks-of-winter ritual. But, because there are no hedgehogs, they used groundhogs. This could be totally made-up rubbish, but that’s my contribution.

By, the way Punxatawney Phil saw his damn shadow. Winter is in full effect, as Londoners will attest.

The ISM Manufacturing Survey came out. The PMI index was 35.6, up from 32.4 in December. It was bad (50 is the tipping point between recession and growth), but it’s not all bad. There were two industries with growth: textiles and petroleum. Moreover, the declines in new orders, productions, backlogs, etc. were not accelerating the way they were last month. Perhaps a bottom is forming here – especially on pricing.

The statistics coming out of Japan have been truly awful of late. In my last post, you saw a small video connecting reduced spending in the U.S. to Japan. However, I need to be more explicit about how things are unraveling in Japan. The industrial production number that was released this past Friday was a wake-up call that Depression has arrived, at least in Japan. Industrial production fell a stunning 9.6%, the most since statistics began in 1953. This is a figure that translates into a GDP of 10% — and this in the world’s second largest economy.

U.S. consumer spending contracted more than anticipated in December 2008, declining by 1.0%. However, this number is a look into the past and does little to help predict how spending will trend going forward.

Everyone should be concerned about the increasing tone of trade friction in the global economy. While Chinese Premier Wen and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown are setting a positive tone in London today regarding bilateral trade agreements, the U.S. is doing its best to put off trading partners. In fact, in Canada, there seems to be a lot of rancor regarding the ‘Buy America’ provision now being attached to the U.S. stimulus package.

A survey in China has determined that job losses amongst migrant workers are three times worse than had been reported. In fact, 20 million workers in China have already lost employment.