Money and Finance
- Prem Watsa's 2013 Shareholder Letter - Fairfax Financial
Link to: Prem Watsa's 2013 Shareholder Letter Signs of speculative excesses are everywhere – even though the U.S. economy is still very tepid. The world might muddle through as it did in 2013, but the grand disconnect between stocks and bonds, and...
- John Mauldin: The Mother Of All Painted-in Corners
I wrote several years ago that Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. And in January I wrote that 2013 is the Year of the Windshield. The recent volatility in Japanese markets is breathtaking but characteristic of what one should come to expect from...
- Richard Duncan Quotes
Longer excerpt from The New Depression (taken from my Kindle highlights, so the excerpts aren’t necessarily the paragraphs I have put them in below, and there may be things in between that I didn’t highlight). “As central banks accumulate foreign...
- Reuters Special Report - China's Answer To Subprime Bets: The "golden Elephant"
Found via Mish. The Chinese investment vehicle known as "Golden Elephant No. 38" promises buyers a 7.2 percent return per year. That's more than double the rate offered on savings accounts nationally. Absent from the product's prospectus is any...
- The Absolute Return Letter - February 2011: Find The Hat
I suspect there is not one but many hats hidden in the national accounts of China and, thanks to Wikileaks, we now have a very public figure admitting as much. In a leaked 2007 cable Li Keqiang, who is the favourite to become the next premier, confided...
Money and Finance
Jim Grant: The world Has Never Seen The likes of China’s Credit Frenzy
Via ValueWalk:
HERETOFORE UNIMAGINED The world has never seen the likes of China’s credit frenzy. From year-end 2008 through the third quarter of 2013, assets on the balance sheets of Chinese banks grew by $15.1 trillion to $24.3 trillion. That growth in assets is greater than today’s $14.6 trillion stock of assets at American commercial banks. For further perspective, China’s GDP is reported to sum to $8.9 trillion, America’s to $16.7 trillion. (U.S. national income data should be taken with a grain of salt; for China’s, empty the cellar.) China’s bank footings represent 33.1% of world GDP, though China’s economic output amounts to just 12.2% of world GDP. In 1994, when Japan had the world on a string, Japanese output peaked at 17.9% of global production; in the same year, Japanese banking assets topped out at 27.3% of world GDP. Nineteen years later, Japan’s share of earthly GDP has shrunk to 6.8%, its banking assets to 11.8% of that all-in figure.
- Prem Watsa's 2013 Shareholder Letter - Fairfax Financial
Link to: Prem Watsa's 2013 Shareholder Letter Signs of speculative excesses are everywhere – even though the U.S. economy is still very tepid. The world might muddle through as it did in 2013, but the grand disconnect between stocks and bonds, and...
- John Mauldin: The Mother Of All Painted-in Corners
I wrote several years ago that Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. And in January I wrote that 2013 is the Year of the Windshield. The recent volatility in Japanese markets is breathtaking but characteristic of what one should come to expect from...
- Richard Duncan Quotes
Longer excerpt from The New Depression (taken from my Kindle highlights, so the excerpts aren’t necessarily the paragraphs I have put them in below, and there may be things in between that I didn’t highlight). “As central banks accumulate foreign...
- Reuters Special Report - China's Answer To Subprime Bets: The "golden Elephant"
Found via Mish. The Chinese investment vehicle known as "Golden Elephant No. 38" promises buyers a 7.2 percent return per year. That's more than double the rate offered on savings accounts nationally. Absent from the product's prospectus is any...
- The Absolute Return Letter - February 2011: Find The Hat
I suspect there is not one but many hats hidden in the national accounts of China and, thanks to Wikileaks, we now have a very public figure admitting as much. In a leaked 2007 cable Li Keqiang, who is the favourite to become the next premier, confided...