Archive - Feb 17, 2010 - Blog entry

According to Jack Mintz, the Canadian pension crisis is all a myth. Tell it to Nortel's disabled that are still fighting for their pensions and benefits, and like many other disabled Canadians are caught in the disability poverty trap.

Why gridlock is good for investors. The government claims that because Washington D.C. was practically shut down by Snowmageddon we taxpayers were losing $100 million per day from lost productivity of federal employees. Then Evan Bayh announced he will not run for re-election as senator from Indiana because the lack of bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans resulted in legislative gridlock ("the peoples' work is not getting done").

I thought the folks at ZH who could not attend last month's talk by yours truly sponsored by the Columbia University Center for Financial Engineering & NYU Courrant Institute of Mathematical Sciences would like to listen to the audio file. The link below downloads an 8MB WAV file, so don't try to listen on your PDA/cell phone.

To be fair, this article could just as easily have been called “Waking a Zombie World”. While various people and governments point to the USA as the bad actor in this mess, in fact it has taken dozens of nations to form this conga line to hell and the rest of the world is far from blameless. Nor is America the sole residence of the world’s zombie population.

Pending bond maturities due in 2010 are paving the way for the next wave of the Pan-European Sovereign Debt Crisis - Supply, potentially in excess of demand, which portends higher yields and more onerous debt servicing at a time of record fiscal spending!
This is how the crisis will spread through western Europe...

They may resolve Greece, but not Portugal, Spain, or Italy. The US economy is heading for the “square root” scenario. Buy gold against sterling. US stocks are going nowhere. China, Brazil, Canada, Australia, and Indonesia are another story. The early players shorting Treasury bonds could get bled dry. The January crop report is a total game changer. An exclusive Hedge Fund Radio interview with trading legend Dennis Gartman. (CANADIAN DOLLAR), (AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR), (FXI), (EWZ), (EWC), (EWA), (CORN), (IDX), (FCX), (X)