Ray Dalio on Deleveraging

Ray Dalio was featured in Barron’s at the weekend. He spoke about the various options available to affect a private sector deleveraging. He sees three ways which he calls austerity, restructuring, and money printing.

Below is an excerpt of his commentary

Graphite: Time to Invest, or Flavor of the Day?

Graphite has been getting a lot of buzz recently, raising bullish expectations among some investors and even talk of a future bubble. Why? The price has risen steadily over the past couple of years and attracted a lot of attention. Let’s have a look at why some market participants are excited about this mineral and see if it’s worth our investment dollars

Chart of the day: What’s driving US inflation?

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) in the U.S. increased 2.9 percent in February before seasonal adjustment. These BLS charts and table illustrate what is driving the increase

Model on food prices and social unrest predicts crisis in 2013

The people at NECSI sent me the following interesting blurb on the relationship between rise food prices and social unrest

The Protein Bomb

Question for you: Which distinctly British asset class has offered the most attractive returns over the past decade? Central London property? Not even close, even if it has done rather well. UK farmland is the answer, having more than tripled in value over a decade which will otherwise not be remembered for its outsized returns (see story here). The rise in farmland values is not only a British phenomenon. All over Northern Europe and North America farmland values have responded well to higher commodity prices. Last year alone, farmland prices in the US Midwest appreciated by 22% on average

Chart of the Day: Don’t Blame the Gas Station for Price Spike

Here’s a cool graphic from the EIA on what drives the price of a gallon of gasoline in January 2012. We paid $4.20 last night in California!

India: Land of Energy Opportunity

Quick, what country is the economic engine that will power world growth? If you answered “China,” you’re far from alone. But there’s another country that deserves as much attention and better yet, is much friendlier to investment: India, home to 1.2 billion people. To electrify all those houses, power the industries that keep all those people employed, and fuel the vehicles that more and more Indians own, India’s energy needs are shooting skyward

Green Energy – Too Many Subsidies, Too Little Performance

Any politician who talks of a green, utopian US – where wind and solar produce most of our energy, electric cars put power back into the grid, green fields of corn produce clean fuels, and millions of Americans work in green technology factories – is creating a fanciful vision so far detached from reality it should really be called a lie. Such tales are designed to encourage a public that is increasingly despondent about the future, but the policy moves that have been made in support of these fantasies have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars

Chart of the Day: Market Year in Review

Wow! Who would of thunk it. The Dow the only major global equity index positive for the year. U.S. Treasuries up 15-20 percent, the dollar index (Dixe) positive; Brazil and Chinese equities down 20 percent and India down almost 25 percent. Copper was on everybody’s buy list at the beginning year, finished down over 20 percent; and foodstuffs had nowhere to go but north, finishing flat after spiking earlier in the year and taking most of the political leaders in North Africa with them

Footnote 2011: Being cautiously optimistic was right

In January, I wrote my prognosis for 2011. The title was “Cautiously Optimistic Into 2011″. I intend to write another post like this early in 2012 with asset allocation and market calls for the new newsletter. But right now I just want to review the basic outlook I presented.

I had seven major conclusions. Here’s what I said and how well it has stacked up

Nonlinear Thinking: The Robot Farmer

In the ongoing series of posts on technology’s threat to existing labor roles, Global Macro Monitor highlights this video on robot farmers

Thoughts on Europe and the global synchronised slowdown

We are in a second synchronised global growth slowdown. Moreover, the policy response must be more muted this go round as the public sector is more indebted and has less policy space than in 2008 or 2009. Expect policy inaction followed by fits of volatility due to inaction. This points to a risk off a lot more than a risk on environment