I'm a bit disturbed by the lack of mainstream media attention to this issue. I receive virtually all of my news from Yahoo! Finance and Bloomberg.com, but will periodically check CNN.com and other similar sites to get a more bird's-eye view. There has been nothing on these sites about this issue. I find it eerily reminiscent of mid-2008 period when things stared heating up and most journalists were not attempting to get to the bottom of anything but instead screaming, "What the hell is going on!" and "This is what's going on this is whose fault it is!"
I understand the MSM's hesitation to get involved. It is a very complex, complicated issue, is quite technical and probably boring to most people, and doesn't, as of this moment, directly affect Americans, unlike say the fall of Lehman and Bear.
But that doesn't erase the fact this is an extremely serious situation that deserves attention. If you are looking for more info, the blogosphere has been doing an excellent job over the past few months.
I hate to just parrot Krugman, but what he's saying is exactly what I learned in my International Finance class (which makes sense considering Krugman wrote the book, literally in one case, on Intnl. Fin.). All the furor over Greek debt is missing the point. Yes, defecits can be dangerous, yes there were some funny things going on with Greece's numbers (why not let Goldman bail out Greece, after all they are catching the blame for skewing the numbers), and yes it is a troubling indicator of what could happen to other countries. Take a look at the Baltics to get an idea of how bad this could get.
ReplyDeleteThese three issues are all important to keep an eye on, however, Greek budgetary irresponsibility is just the cigarette next to the burning house! The EMU is the root cause of these coming debt crisees, not lax budgetary controls.
Also, Will if you want to makes strong short play you might want to look into shorting Lats and going long on the Ruble. That should hedge out some regional economic factors and protect you against a rise in oil while leaving you to make a play on Latvian devaluation. I'm going to stick to my boring dollar cost averaging and a life cycle fund. Who's all about market effeciencies now?
Haha, you're right! I remember talking to my Dad around four or five months ago and him saying buy and hold was going to be a dead investment strategy in the near future. I think he's right.
ReplyDeleteI put in an order to sell by gold ETF over the weekend figuring it would be adversely hurt short-term by a strong dollar, then noticed a half hour before the market opened this morning it was up over 2% pre-opening. So, yeah, it's very unpredictable out there.
Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely take a look.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7467f85e-1b30-11df-953f-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
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