Remember the 1970s? “It was the decade of strikes, electricity shortages and piles of rotting rubbish on the street,” recalls a BBC report. Your editor is old enough to remember homework by candlelight, the three-day week and grim-faced militant union leaders such as Arthur Scargill barking pay demands every night on the TV news.
A “silent tsunami” unleashed by the food crisis threatens the lives of 100 million of the world’s poorest people, the United Nations warned today.
And being rich is no guarantee of insulation from the food crisis. The Times reports that Japan has become the first industrialized nation to run out of butter.
“Why are food prices high?” asks Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning.”Normal agricultural cycles, is one reason we gave yesterday.
The Japanese have gone on a shopping spree. In the last six months, two of Japan’s biggest drugmakers in have scooped up two midsized U.S. biotech firms at nothing short of whopping valuations. This international binge bodes well for us biotech investors.
Qatar’s Central Bank Governor, Shaikh Abdullah bin Saud al Thani, has CONFIRMED plans for a single currency among the Gulf States. It’s on track for 2010.
We promised yesterday to review for you the Reserve Bank’s Financial Stability Review, published late Thursday. It is a more daunting task than we imagined. So we are going to do the hard yards this weekend, when we have a bit more time to pore over the data on Australian housing.
Worst consumer confidence since 70’s, behind the market rally, Wall Sreet job losses, gas prices and more!
“All the papers in France agree with your friend Porter,” said Gabriel this morning. “They say that this is a once-in-a-generation chance to buy financials as cheap as they are going to get. It is everywhere. They say the selling is a kind of ‘irrational excess’.”
The news from European and Asian markets is grim today.
“European shares have followed the lead from Asia and fallen in early trading, reports the BBC, “with investors troubled by signs that the US housing market is deteriorating.”
London’s FTSE 100, Frankfurt’s Dax and the Paris Cac 40 all fell by just over 1% in morning trade.
