Powerline: Global Warming Bombshell

"The emails show beyond any reasonable doubt that these individuals are engaged in politics, not science."
Powerline to read the rest.

Don Coxe Nov 20

Thanks to Prieu du Plessis
here is Mr. Coxe

Update: fixed link so I hope it works now. Hat tip to Patrick

Classic

From Investors Business Daily

Buffettt's filing of stock purchases

Bloomberg:

Buffett’s Berkshire Discloses Exxon, Nestle Stakes

Investors mimic Berkshire’s stock picks to duplicate Buffett’s investing success, and an academic study in 2007 found that using the strategy for 31 years would have delivered annualized returns of about 25 percent, double the S&P’s return.

Go here for the article and the stock names

Hugh Hendry on CNBC Europe with his always individual view on the economy and the market.
Incidentally, cnbc europe is vasly superior to the US version. They get guests on and actually let them talk for awhile and present their ideas for longer than 30 seconds between commercials.

Donald Coxe friday conference call for nov 13 2009

Mr. Coxe call

Chart he mentions of the  KRE

Politico:Is China headed toward collapse?

Is China headed toward collapse?

But there’s a growing group of market professionals who see a different picture altogether. These self-styled China bears take the less popular view: that the much-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is nothing but a paper dragon. In fact, they argue that the Chinese have dangerously overheated their economy, building malls, luxury stores and infrastructure for which there is almost no demand, and that the entire system is teetering toward collapse.
A Chinese collapse, of course, would have profound effects on the United States, limiting China’s ability to buy U.S. debt and provoking unknown political changes inside the Chinese regime.
The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.

Jim Chanos is no fool. When he speaks pay attention.

related topic:  China has more steel capacity than India and J apan combined.

Hmm, hmm, good!

For those of you who don't know what to have for Thanksgiving
thanks to the Instapundit for pointing this out.

Lord Rees-Mogg on Gold as a reserve currency again

From the TimesOnLine site:

Which will come out on top: paper or gold?

Last week the price of gold rose to $1,100, the highest ever recorded. Gold is still an important measure of the world economy. The theory of the 19th-century gold standard was that gold was “real money” in the same way as landed property was “real estate”. All types of paper money are capable of being created by banks or governments, so the supply is potentially unlimited. It was observed that gold holds its purchasing power over centuries, whereas paper money tends to depreciate towards the value of zero.

Of course, the rise in the gold price reflects the weakness of the dollar as well the strength of gold. I have been writing about the significance of the gold price since the early 1970s. The latest rise in price reflects the significance of gold as part of the world’s monetary reserves. cont'd here

Obama and Pelosi to stop develoment of new Miracle Drugs

The democratic health care effort has now become "get something passed" , anything good or bad but we have to be able to say we passed a bill. They are now trying "win politically" not reform health care.
NY Post:

Shutting off the miracle-drug spigot

Democrats in Washington are out to cut health-care costs at the expense of the research-intensive (as opposed to generic) pharmaceutical industry. Yet drugs often improve the span and quality of life in a remarkably cost-effective way.

Innovative new drugs have helped many patients avoid costly hospitalization, for example. From 1980 to 2000, the number of days in the hospital per 100 people fell from 129.7 to 56.6, a drop of 56 percent -- so that Americans avoided 206 million days of hospital care in 2000 alone, according to Medtap International, which provides health economics and outcomes-research services.

And a study in 2000 sponsored by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research concluded that increased use of a blood-thinning drug would prevent 40,000 strokes a year, saving $600 million annually. A 1997 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the costs of treatment per episode of major depression fell by 25 percent from 1991 to 1995, largely as a result of new medicines.

New drugs are also generally better than older ones at reducing mortality. In a study of patients who took drugs between January and June 2000, those who took newer medications were less likely to die by the end of 2002.

Yet Washington has grown increasingly hostile to the industry. R&D investments per new-drug introduction nearly doubled between the early '80s and early '90s -- but government approvals have been dropping. Even after drugs are approved for marketing, only about three in 10 now recoup their development costs.

And now Congress is out to make the climate for new-drug development significantly worse. The president has bragged that he intends to eke out huge cost savings at drug companies' expense: "The pharmaceutical industry has already said they're willing to put $80 billion on the table," adding, "We might be able to get $100 billion out or more." The industry was willing to "give" back its profits because it was told it wouldn't have a seat at the negotiating table if it didn't go along.

But now Pelosi has set up her own "negotiating table" -- nearly doubling the amount Washington would confiscate from the industry and planning vast cuts in what Medicare would pay for drugs -- a provision that the industry was assured was off the other table. Give 'em a hand, they'll take an arm.

Nor are the drug companies the only target. The Pelosi bill has $20 billion in "user fees" (read: taxes) on medical-device manufacturers. New devices such as artificial joints, pacemakers and insulin pumps are often developed by small startup companies -- those least capable of paying these punitive up-front regulatory expenses. And the working Senate bill aims at $40 billion from the industry.

The tactics employed by the administration and Congress add up to sheer bullying -- and while they're battering the drug industry, patients are the ones ultimately getting beaten up.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/shutting_off_the_miracle_drug_spigot_NEQ7uNHG2p940Ufg9Po0LM#ixzz0WCGbRuTE

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Don Coxe nov 6 2009 conference call

the link to Mr. Coxe

Telegraph: It is Japan we should be worrying about, not America

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the moribund Japanese economy and its dismal prospects.

Japan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis. For 20 years the world's second-largest economy has been able to borrow cheaply from a captive bond market, feeding its addiction to Keynesian deficit spending – and allowing it to push public debt beyond the point of no return.

"The debt situation is irrecoverable," said Carl Weinberg from High Frequency Economics. "I don't see any orderly way out of this. They will not be able to fund their deficit. There will be a fiscal shutdown, a pension haircut, and bank failures that will rock the world. It is criminally negligent that rating agencies are not blowing the whistle on this."

This is a big time problem and Mr. Pritchard lays it out very nicely. Read it all.

Blodgett: Don't Be Snookered By That+3.5% GDP Report

I want to reassert that Obama officals claiming responsibility for this GDP improvement means they now own any setback from this point. This article from Henry Blodgett  illustrates the likelihood of set backs. From Clusterstock:

The real picture of housing "improvement"

from Tyler Durden and Blytic Data. 
On the mortgage delinquency at FNM