July 2009

The list of countries with deflation is growing by the month.  We have Spain, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland.  Now add Germany. German consumer prices fell for the first time in 22 years in July, official figures have shown.…

Yesterday, I mentioned that the housing data, while generally positive (the first uptick nationally in 34 months), contained some negative news due to seasonality. The crux of the problem lies in the strong tendency for house prices to…

Rio Tinto executive arrested in China 'was protester in Tiananmen Square’ – Telegraph worked for a state-run company, was forced to quit over Tiananmen Square. Harvard Professor Says Some Stupid Things – 538 Differences…

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for May 2009 were released today and the data showed a marked contrast to previous months. Fully 14 of 20 markets showed an increase in home prices in that month, making it the first time since…

Update: These clips have sadly been removed from YouTube. Clips from the 1987 PBS Film called Trader featuring famed investor Paul Tudor Jones are catching everyone’s imagination all of a sudden.  Is it that we are all secretly…

msnbc.com:Study: Texting drivers 23 times more likely to crash Don't do it! Google Sells Stake in AOL, Loses $717 Million Au pair lockar i sämre tider - DN.se Swedish article. Everyone wants to be an Au Pair now in this downturn.…

From the FT. Iceland’s bid to join the European Union received a boost on Monday when the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers agreed without delay to ask the European Commission for its opinion. The swift decision means that Iceland,…

Alcohol used to seen as a recession-proof good. This downturn is changing that thinking as evidence of cutbacks in spending, consumption, and on-premise drinking abound.  Back in the Spring of 2008, Nielsen conducted a bunch of surveys…

Jeremy Grantham is out again with a very important investment strategy piece entitled “Boring Fair Price!”  He leads off by talking about how markets went from extremely overvalued a year ago to cheap back to a state which he considers fair…

In late June, I posted two items China’s present growth story is built on malinvestment and Chinese stock market bubble inflating, on the building bubble in Chinese lending and asset markets.  The crux of the posts was that China, in its…