Thursday, March 26, 2009

Decline of the dollar

From Jesse's Cafe Americain:

Decline of the dollar as the world's reserve currency

EMRATIO, Civilian Employment-Population Ratio

From the St. Louis Fed:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO?cid=12

Added The Bond Tangent

The Bond Tangent is a blog covering the municipal bond market. It also has a handy set of links for all manner of bond related statistics.

Gentlemen prefer bonds.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Added Accrued Interest

The Across the Curve blog will be going mostly "for-pay" on April 11. It is a great blog, great writer, great content, but I can't afford $25/mo. The insights are worth every penny, but as a non-professional bond trader, I can't afford it.

In light of the coming change, I've added another bond trader blog, Accrued Interest, to help fill the void.

Monday, March 23, 2009

China calls for new world reserve currency

In a post on the People's Bank of China web site, China proposed dumping the U.S. dollar in favor of an enhanced SDR (special drawing right) using a basket of 20 or so currencies instead of the 4 that now make up the SDR.

http://www.pbc.gov.cn/english/detail.asp?col=6500&id=168

Down we go, further down the dollar death spiral.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

$11 Trillion in debt

On January 20, 2009, the total public debt was 10,626,877,048,913.08.

On March 17, 2009, the total public debt was 11,033,157,578,669.78.

Removed Marginal Revolution

I removed Marginal Revolution from the blog roll. There was nothing unique in the content and the analysis was marginal.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Hedge fund gates put downward pressure on market

From Marketwatch, the Mariner distressed debt fund erected a redemption gate for the first quarter of 2009:

Mariner raises 'gate'

The article mentions at least 75 other hedge funds that have also put up gates to prevent what they consider fire sales of their assets. They have locked the horses in the burning barn. I would be very upset if I had money locked in a losing hedge fund.

This means there is great pent up demand for people to exit the stock and bond market. That's why every small rally is sold into furiously by hedge funds to try to meet their redemptions. It is made even worse by the degree to which each hedgie is levered. Until redemption demand works its way out, the market will continue to grind down.

Get out...if you can.