The day after I wrote my last post–that is, the Monday after I clocked a fourteen hour day to get this documentation for our new software done on schedule–they canceled the project. As suddenly as we began this new software implementation we ended it. Evidently when someone actually looked around at the different software in Click Here to continue reading.
Over at my Ape Man blog, I have discussed New Urbanism on occasion (largely because I read Architecture + Morality and I sometimes desire to contribute to the discussion). I am generally sympathetic to the aesthetics of New Urbanism, but I doubt current American values will ever enable it to work.
I am not happy Click Here to continue reading.
Vindication for all those paranoid types that thought that putting fluoride in drinking water was a bad idea. From Reuters….
“Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of fluoride can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland,” reports Scientific American editors (January 2008). “Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift,” writes author Dan Fagin.
This week’s poem of the week is Animal Satisfaction. Andrew latter revised it and called Animal Sensation. Comparing the two is educational.
This rant went nicely with this week’s essay of the week.
Political endorsements are not usually worth much. By design they are vacuous attempts to pretend that this or that candidate truly is the ideal when anyone with half a brain knows that this is not the case. But Spengler’s political endorsement for president of the United States is sufficiently full of dry irony and considered real politic to be worth reading.
There was a time in my life when I thought and read a lot about Japan. I was just starting to get interested in economics when Japan was at the height of its boom and everyone was talking about how they were going to take over the world. Then came the crash and Japan became Click Here to continue reading.
Sooner or later this is going to affect you personally (from News Target)…..
Nearly five percent of patients in U.S. hospitals may have acquired a particular antibiotic resistant staph infection, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
Researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 hospitals and other health care facilities from all 50 states, and found 8,000 patients infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — or 46 out of every 1,000. This suggests that up to 1.2 million hospital patients across the country may be infected every year.
Colonized patients are those who were found to be carrying the bacteria in or on their bodies, but who had not showed any symptoms of disease.
“This rate is between eight and 11 times greater than previous MRSA estimates,” APIC wrote.
The majority of the infections had originated within the medical facility; 67 percent arose in patients being treated for general medical conditions (such as diabetes or pulmonary or cardiovascular problems) and not in intensive care patients.
There is all this talk about stimulus plans and cutting interest rates. But there is only one thing that is keeping America from going down the tubes. And it is this….
China’s government added $430b to its foreign exchange reserves.
Russia’s government added $150b to its foreign exchange reserves.
China’s state banks likely – this is the only point here where there is some real doubt – added around $150b to their foreign portfolio, or would have, had China not made it harder to borrow from abroad and thus forced them to pay down some of their external debt. The state banks’ dollar purchases reduced the central bank’s need to intervene in the market (apparently the exchange rate risk remains with the government). The central bank basically told the state banks to hold more of their required reserves in dollars.
Brazil’s government added a bit over $90b to its reserves. Brazil’s Treasury holdings are up close to $70b for through November, in another kind of reverse bailout.
India’s government added a bit under $90b to its reserves, almost none of which seems to have been invested in US Treasuries.
The China Investment Corporation likely had about $17b to invest abroad – as the majority of the funds it raised in 2007 were used to buy the central banks’ stake in the state banks and to recapitalize China Development Bank. It will get something like $105b early in 2008. Maybe $45b to $50b of that is already committed to the recapitalize the domestic banking system, leaving up to $60b more to invest abroad. But the CIC is still the smallest official investor among the BRICs.
Sum it up and the BRICs added just a bit under $800b ($760b) to their formal foreign exchange reserves (the total would top $800b if I counted China, Russia and India’s valuation gains) even without counting the Chinese banks. Counting the state banks and the CIC, the total is more like $900b. I was conservative back in July.
Goldman started dreaming of the BRICs well before energy traders started dreaming about $100 a barrel oil. The Gulf can hardly be left out of the discussion today.
The Saudi Monetary Agency’s foreign assets likely increased by $75b in 2007 — they were up over $60b through November (Table 8a, in Saudi riyal). Saudi pension funds added another $5b.
The Gulf’s other central banks likely added close to $50b to their reserves – though we are still waiting for data from the Emirates for the second half of the year.
The big existing Gulf investment funds – the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (which, incidentally is likely to be bit smaller than the $875b to $1 trillion total that is commonly cited; see Mohsin Khan’s statements in the FT), the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority and the confusing jumble of Dubai investment funds (some belonging to Dubai, run by Sheik Mohamed, and some belong to Sheik Mohamed, ruler of Dubai) – likely added around $100b to their assets. The $100b total doesn’t count any additional funds that they borrowed to finance some of their more aggressive strategies, or the capital gains on their existing holdings. $100b is what the funds got from their countries surplus oil revenues and the interest on their existing holdings.
Gulf central banks and sovereign funds collectively added about $225b to their foreign assets, and maybe $150b to their dollar assets. The rapid growth in central bank reserves (still mostly in dollars) likely offset the diversification done by various wealth funds.*