If it's Friday, it's time for yet another installment of Five for the Weekend. So let's get started on some items you might wish to check out between now and Monday.
- Portfolio holding BCE (BCE/NYSE) today knocked down rumors that a new offer will be made for the company. Speculation has been that an alternative would involve parties taking stakes in BCE, with BCE remaining a publicly-traded company. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank in particular have reportedly indicated they are not interested in funding such a proposal. BCE says it is still talking with KPMG.
- James Altucher's latest Financial Times column lists some very crazy things about this very unfunny market. Here's one of them: "Credit default swaps on Berkshire Hathaway are trading at double the price of credit default swaps of Boeing or JPMorgan. In other words, people are betting that the safest company on the planet, run by Warren Buffett, the best investor ever, is twice as likely to go bankrupt as the company that supplies aircraft to the bankrupt airline industry. There have been plenty of articles on why this is crazy and yet it still happens."
- Matthew Lynn argues in The Spectator that gold isn't money. He writes: "Other safe havens have done much better. Government bonds have gone up — foreigners have been pumping $1.5 trillion a week into US Treasury bills since the start of the crunch. So has the Swiss franc, a traditional financial port in monetary storms. Some new safe havens may be emerging: intriguingly, the Israeli shekel has risen strongly, and Merrill Lynch now describes it as among the world’s safest assets." Long-time readers know I don't own gold, but find it potentially appealing as a hybrid investment/insurance play. Worth keeping an eye on.
- Staying with The Spectator, Aida Hartley writes about the Somali pirates. Hartley was born in Africa (his parents served in the old British Colonial system), lives there now (in Kenya), and has covered Somalia for 17 years (even meeting Somali pirates, unlike most reporters writing dispatches from the safety of London and Nairobi). Great piece, be sure to read it all.
- And now let's stay with Africa. You've read my links to the publication Africa Confidential. They've fairly recently launched a sister publication called Africa-Asia Confidential, covering the increasing connections between Asian money and African resources (to be simplistic about it all). The lead story in the latest issue describes the complications arising between China and Nigeria.
Have a great weekend. See you next week, if not before.
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