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’The silver crowd
The wonders of Google auto-suggest, silver vox pop edition:
Which is the perfect lead-in to John Kemp’s excellent take on the generalised commodities sell-off of recent days.
As the Reuters columnist wrote on Thursday:
James Montier on the bond bubble
GMO’s James Montier has added his two-penneth to the bond bubble debate.
He reckons it is a largely sterile conversation because what investors should be asking themselves is whether bonds are a good investment at their current low levels.
Missing the Housing Bubble 101
Here’s an, erm, brave discussion paper out from the Boston Fed.
In it, authors Kristopher S. Gerardi, Christopher L. Foote, and Paul S. Willen examine “optimism” and “pessimism” about the US housing market before the recent crash.
Henderson’s Hong Kong property dream falls through
Fresh from Hong Kong — a headache for property giant, Henderson Land.
Late on Tuesday, the company controlled by billionaire Lee Shau-kee let slip that it would take an HK$734m charge (USD$94m) on 20 cancelled Hong Kong apartment sales.
Boringness of central banks to blame for bubbles
As former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan argues that the pre-financial crisis bubble was the result of mortgage rates megabanks subprime expansion a global savings glut simply (uncontrollable) appetite for risk,
China’s banks, more liquid-hot than ever
And the great Chinese credit bubble leap forward continues, with Tuesday’s datapoint coming from Bank of China.
After all, the bank led the charge on Tuesday with some really not too shabby results.
The bubble in British railways, 1830s edition
The following ars technica headline caught the eye of FT Alphaville on Monday: ‘Historian finds tech bubble that didn’t pop (180 years ago)’.
Ars cited a fresh batch of research by Andrew Odlyzko, author of a paper with an even more intriguing headline,
Greenspan says, je regrette quelque chose
The Crisis, by Alan Greenspan.
It sounds like an airport novel. But the 66-page paper is the closest we’ve ever gotten to a mea culpa from the former Fed chief, who chaired the US central bank in the midst of a growing housing bubble.
Wen, will property cool?
Amid the flurry of media attempts to parse the assurances of elusive Chinese mandarins, one announcement on Monday from the housing ministry looked like it might actually tell us something about the direction of Chinese economic reform.
China’s metropoli bubble fear
We believe that we now have a bubble in many cities, particularly the big ones. The central government is trying to deflate these bubbles gently, rather than pop them. The fact that prices have been at these levels before suggests this can be accomplished,
Rosenberg’s ‘Not So Great Depression’
Gluskin Sheff’s David Rosenberg has taken umbrage with the term ‘The Great Recession’ to describe the current global economic malaise.
According to the seasoned economist, it’s quite clear what we experienced last year was not a recession but a depression.
China is ‘the most obvious area of concern’, Fitch says
Here’s something you may have missed — not least because it comes from a Reuters chat room.
Regardless, the comments from James McCormack, managing director of Asia Pacific sovereign ratings at ratings agency Fitch,
Pimco looks to Asian bonds
When Pimco moves in, you know there’s money to be made.
Amid signs of both currency appreciation and economic recovery among various Asian countries, Bloomberg reports on Friday that Pacific Investment Management Co.,
China’s liquid real estate bubble
That is the building which houses the most expensive apartment in Hong Kong. The five-bedroom apartment sold for $56.6m on Wednesday, sparking further speculation that the city — and the rest of China — might be in the grips of a real estate market bubble.
China’s land boom, a datapoint
This is Guangqu Road in Beijing.
And this, courtesy of the analysts at Mitsibushi UFG, is the sale price of a circa 280,000 square-metre plot of land on the road:
A plot of land at No. 15 Guangqu Road in Beijing sold for RMB4.06bn in mid-June,
Of con men, spivs and ‘gangreenous’ stocks
The headline on a recent Bloomberg stock market report out of Japan said it all: “Japan Stocks Rise on Green Technology Optimism”.
We’re seeing a growing number of headlines in that vein. Indeed, the rising wave of investor optimism on everything and anything related to so-called “green technology”
New American bubbles
Were bubbles really the best choice of graphic for the USA’s Economic Recovery Act?
Related links:
Bank bubble trouble – FT Alphaville
Investments – Recovery.gov
Serial bubbles
Dresdner has some interesting charts out today, depicting bubbles — and lots of them. Specifically in housing and equities in the UK, US and Japan.
You can see from the charts that a characteristic of post-2000 housing bubbles in the US and UK is their lack of correlation with equity markets.
Will CDS spreads tumble in February?
Fortis certainly thinks so.
The bank’s analysis, which is based on Didier Sornette’s research into bubbles (think US housing and oil circa 2008), holds that recent increases in CDS spreads in both US and European markets have reached unsustainable levels and are due for a correction – sharpish.
Ponzi meets treasuries bubble
Well, Goldman aside, talk of a bubble in US treasuries is gaining pace.
To wit, the latest missive from Bill Gross, managing director of Pimco, the world’s biggest bonds fund. In his investment outlook,
Hormone bubbles
We’re not sure how new this is but thought it might be worthwhile given talk of oil bubbles, China bubbles, hyper-bubbles, et al. recently.
From New Scientist, via Infectious Greed, and further reinforcing the notion that traders are more jacked up on hormones and herd mentality than a Texan longhorn.
Is oil bubbling over?
Paul Kedrosky triggered an outbreak of comments on his Infectious Greed blog with his assertion that oil has out-bubbbled tech in terms of both duration and percentage gain.
He backed up his assertion with a chart (see below) from Bespoke Investment Group comparing the bubbles in housing and technology sector with the run-up in oil.