Five for the Weekend #76

Well, this was a week that saw a single state-wide election potentially change the direction of the nation. As long as it really means the death the proposed health care reform in Congress, I'll be happy. Now let's get on to five items you can check out this weekend.

• Eric King of King World News recently interviewed Bill Laggner of Bearing Asset Management. You might recall Laggner and his partner Kevin Duffy were recently interviewed in Barron's. Lots of interesting stuff on the corruption of America's political and financial systems, and how Bearing Asset is short the "political economy" and long the "real economy."

• Martin Wolf wrote an important op-ed in the Financial Times this week, explaining why the financial troubles in Greece deserve a global audience. A bit: "Having falsified its figures for years, violating the trust of its partners, Greece is in the doghouse. Yet, even if it bears much of the blame, the task it is undertaking is huge. In particular, unlike most countries with massive fiscal deficits – the UK, for example – Greece cannot offset the impact of fiscal tightening by loosening monetary policy or depreciating its currency."

• Equally important in the world of op-eds is Mort Zuckerman's in Friday's Wall Street Journal, titled "The Great Recession Continues." It starts with this: "The December jobs report has doused the hope that we were at the beginning of a sustained economic recovery. The unemployment rate managed to hold at 10% in December only because of an extraordinary shrinkage in the labor force: Some 661,000 gave up looking for a job."

• Africa-Asia Confidential runs a feature on China's investment in Africa. The amount of trade and investment last year was disappointing, due to the financial crisis globally. The Chinese insist their investment in Africa will return to previous levels. A bit: "For now, because of their richness in natural resources and as a nod to South-South solidarity, African countries may at times punch above their weight in China’s strategic considerations. Yet China’s relations with Africa are just a small piece of its foreign policy when seen in a global context, and African countries would do well to remember that."

• Writer Robert B. Parker died on Monday at age 77. He is most known, of course, for his widely-popular Spencer novels. Tom Nolan penned an excellent remembrance in The Wall Street Journal this week: "He wrote dialogue that at once informed, amused and gave a sense of character; and he conjured characters a reader wanted to spend more time with—especially Spenser, a fixed point in a footloose world, take him or leave him. A pragmatist whose ethics were situational. A tough and decent type who did what needed to be done in the service of a moral cause, affirming the worth of the individual regardless of race, sexual orientation, social status, age or occupation. He made timeless points that need to be remade every generation, in a society ever able to find ways to betray the public and private trust."

Rest in peace, Mr. Parker. And to everyone else, have a great weekend.

Comments

[David]

Thanks for the heads up on the latest Bill Laggner's interview. I read his and Duffy's recent Barron's interview w/ interest, & was just trying to catch up w/ some of their past interviews as well!

[John]

David: I don't know much about Bearing Asset Management, but they sound very interesting. And I, too, found their Barron's interview leading me to searching for more interviews with either Laggner or Duffy or both.