Leo Kolivakis's blog

Last week’s market rally, in which the prior week’s carnage was reversed, occurred without any major economic or market news and blunted talk of a double-dip recession. What will occur over the next several weeks, however, is a string of major earnings releases with little margin of error, owing to a consistent ratcheting up of expectations in 2010.

"The short story is that a 2019 go-broke date for New Jersey pensions seems very reasonable."

From next January increases in UK's private pensions will be linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) instead of the Retail Prices Index (RPI). Ministers insist the switch in the way annual pension increases are ­calculated was a technical change that would have ­little impact on incomes. But a backlash is spreading among pensioners, savers and experts who say it's another covert raid on the savings of Middle Britain.

In what is surely one of the more unusual approaches to a pensions shortfall, Diageo, the drinks group, has offered up a veritable lake of its whisky as collateral for the growing shortfall in its benefits scheme. In my opinion, this is a bad idea. If pensions want to drink themselves silly, they should be focusing on the liquidity tsunami driving risk assets higher.

As the heat wave sizzles North America and Europe, global pension heat is rising. Let's hope stock markets keep sizzling instead of fizzling because at this rate, it won't take long before we reach the pensions boiling point.

The Canada Pension Plan's investment arm is spending $250 million for a piece of privately held Laricina Energy Ltd. — the fund's first direct foray into northern Alberta's oilsands industry. But the politics of oilsands are very messy, both in the US and in Canada where politicians have just mysteriously cancelled an oilsands pollution probe, tearing up draft reports.

"We saw in 2008/09 that the endowment approach is not immune to downturns, but these are some of the smartest minds in the investment industry and the high value of their investment proposition is obvious over the long term."

Let's go over a few myths on austerity, shall we?

What's driving bond yields to their lowest level since April '09? Could it just be an ominous 1930s echo...

Anemic but don't throw in the towel just yet....

Thursday was Canada Day but most people up here are fixated on what's going on Down South.

After maintaining a low-risk real estate strategy for decades, studies commissioned by Calpers show that it switched gears in 2002, embracing higher levels of risk even as the real estate market began to top out in 2005. By mid-2009, Calpers had a one-year loss of 48.8% in its real estate portfolio and was reporting among the lowest returns of any large pension fund in the country.

“We will have a financial crisis again — it’s just a question of the frequency,” said the economist Kenneth Rogoff, who, with Carmen M. Reinhart, wrote a terrific book titled “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” The title says it all. We’ve been through this before and will go through it again.

Despite Krugman's poor choice of words, I also worry that policy blunders and this myopic focus on austerity to assuage bond vigilantes will kill any recovery going on right now. And make no mistake, the recovery is gaining traction.

From Mauldin to BCA Research to Ned Davis Research: everything you want to know about the odds of a recession but are afraid to ask.