- Rather than outright default, many countries attempt rather successfully to keep nominal interest rates lower than would otherwise prevail.
- Over the long term, this “financial repression” results in a transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers.
- Investors shouldn’t give their money away, and at the moment, the duration component of a bond portfolio comes close to doing just that – because it doesn’t yield enough relative to inflation.
Showing posts with label current affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current affairs. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2011
William H. Gross, Buy Cheap Bonds with Safe Spread, PIMCO, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Matthew McGough, The Lazarus File, The Atlantic, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years - and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science - before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history.
Monday, May 16, 2011
James Pach, Fixing Japan’s Fiscal Mess, The Diplomat, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Massively indebted, Japan needs new funds to pay for recovery efforts and kick-start its economy. It's time to be innovative.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Wil S. Hylton, What Happened to Air France Flight 447?, The New York Times, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- On May 1, 2011 the data cylinders from the plane’s black boxes were found on the floor of the South Atlantic Ocean and are expected to be analyzed in the coming weeks.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Steve Coll, Notes on the Death of Osama bin Laden, The New Yorker, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- No doubt there will be time to reflect more deeply about the news announced by President Obama last night. For now, I thought it might be useful to annotate some of the initial headlines.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Suzanne Goldenberg, Has BP really cleaned up the Gulf oil spill?, The Guardian, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Officially, marine life is returning to normal in the Gulf of Mexico, but dead animals are still washing up on beaches - and one scientist believes the damage runs much deeper.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
A. A. Gill, Dubai on Empty, Vanity Fair, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Its skyline erupting from the desert in just two decades, Dubai is a cautionary tale about what money can’t buy: a culture of its own.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Acid Sea, National Geographic Magazine, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- The carbon dioxide we pump into the air is seeping into the oceans and slowly acidifying them. One hundred years from now, will oysters, mussels, and coral reefs survive?
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Ami Sedghi, Fukushima nuclear power plant update, guardian.co.uk, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Japan is racing to gain control of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plan. Where does the most detailed data come from? Updated daily.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Paul M. Barrett, Glock: America's Gun, BusinessWeek, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- How Austria's Glock became the weapon of choice for U.S. cops, Second Amendment enthusiasts, and mass killers like the alleged Tucson gunman Jared Loughner.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Michael Lewis, When Irish Eyes Are Crying, Vanity Fair, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country - from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Andrew Hyde, The Tragedy of Nepal, andrewhy.de, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- A developing nation with deep problems becoming worse by the month with tourism hastening the poisoning of the well.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Paul Krugman, Can Europe Be Saved?, The New York Times Magazine, 2011
Rating: 4/5 Link
- The Road to Economic Crisis Is Paved With Euros.
- There's something peculiarly apt about the fact that the current European crisis began in Greece. For Europe’s woes have all the aspects of a classical Greek tragedy, in which a man of noble character is undone by the fatal flaw of hubris.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Alfred McCoy, How America will collapse (by 2025), Salon, 2010
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Four scenarios that could spell the end of the United States as we know it -- in the very near future.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The Fall of Niagara Falls, BusinessWeek, 2010
Rating: 4/5 Link
- Decades of decay, corruption, and failed get-rich-quick schemes have made the city one of the most intractable disasters in the U.S.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
The euro crisis: A contagious Irish disease?, The Economist, 2010
Rating: 4/5 Link
- The proposed Irish bail-out has not calmed the financial markets. And now their attention is moving on to new victims in the Iberian peninsula.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
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