I wrote a note regarding the Q1 2009 GDP report which mentioned that the price deflator showed a large pick up in actual inflation. While I don’t think we are off to the races immediately, I do see inflation as a medium-term threat and this was a reminder.

The guys over at Brown Brothers Harriman take a different tack. So, in the interest of giving you a different view, I am posting what they had to say. I will bold the parts that I believe are most important to their argument. While I would point out that the Price deflators have accelerated, it is hard to debate the logic in much of what they say regardless of your medium-term concerns about inflation.

With the stress test results coming out, it is a wonderful thing for Citigroup that it has been able to sell its Japanese brokerage unit to Sumitomo Mitsui, and at a good price of $7.8 billion.
Here’s an excerpt of the FT story:
Citigroup on Friday sold its Japanese brokerage and some parts of its local investment [...]

Australian real estate values rise
House and flat prices in Australia increased in value by 1.6% in the first three months of the year, according to RP Data-Rismark, helped by a scarcity of supply, lower interest rates and incentives to first-home buyers. The slight recovery in Australia “has been driven by the 40% fall in home [...]

I have grown pretty frustrated with FeedBurner, the RSS Feed Service now owned by Google.  Often, my posts have not  gone out immediately. There are significant ‘outages’ where the service is just plain broken.  And their Feed count reporting has become pretty screwy.  So, I have switched to FeedBlitz, a new competing service.  If you [...]

This video seems to be making the rounds. I saw it over at Calculated Risk first. The video shows new homes in Victorville, CA, just south of LA, being destroyed because it costs more for the banks to keep them up than to demolish them. That’s one way to pare the housing inventory glut.

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