China's largest denomination is 100 yuan ($15) ...

AOK - A quick and (to me) fascinating account of some of the results and reasons for China's largest currency bill being less than $20-equivalent. If we did that here in North America we'd have more muggings, but then of course we don't consider robbery a capital offense. Hey, that's got to have some deterrent effect.  

Ugly Feedback Cycles- Are Europe's Solvency II insurer regs driving bond yield lower?

AOK - I always find these issues intriguing - where well-minded constraints are introduced into a dynamic system in an attempt to achieve a straight-line first-order effect, but end up going horribly wrong in the reality of a multi-player environment with response lags and feedback issues. Let's stay tuned to see how this one evolves ...

UNESCO declares Mexican cuisine - Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

AOK - The first? Before France? Nobody likes a Romany-expelling bigot ('coz they're dark & mysterious & proud and tell fortunes and all that. The Romany, not the bigot, although thinking about it some more ...)  and you end up getting it jammed back in all kinds of ways, like having jalapenos beat foie gras to the "heritage" cup ...

A trio of articles on Asia's debt markets

AOK - Bill, I think you're totally spot on to get on top of this issue; Asia's capital markets are evolving rapidly and capturing an opportunity to draw in global investment allocation for both credit diversification and off the relative strong economic growth stories. The larger longer-term opportunity is for bond issuance into the deep East Asian saving pools, although that will require the development of effective intermediaries to deliver investment services to the middle classes. Don't think the Asian banks will like this much though, they love having monstrous deposit pools to deploy into corporate loans that can be leveraged into lucrative relationships. Too bad ... 

Mexico issues $1bn 100-year USD bond into strong demand

AOK - amazing sign of the appetite, nay hunger, for yield and for   developing economy exposures; Brazil's so damn sexy these days I bet they could have done $10bn at sub 6%. Watch for Colombia, Chile or Peru to take up the challenge, they are all darlings these days too.

 

GS Energy Weekly: Crude oil prices advance as US inventories decline

AOK - a quick note from GS

Update on Russia - VTB Capital relays Finance Ministers comments

AOK - This is a quick and useful read for a glimpse of the Russian government's current desired storyline - I'm seeing several other news & blog items out there that IMHO hint at an interest by Putin (oh please, we all know he's the only one who really counts) to try to improve international, and particularly investor/corporate, interest and get inflows going. Less sabre-rattling, more "forums", more directed press regarding economic opportunity and stability. But all a bit ham-handed, if you'll excuse my cynical eye, a bit like the old (and as far as the Japan incident goes, new again?) Chinese attempts to direct foreign commentary and opinions. Maybe the Russian regime is looking at the "New Normal" and discovering some looming issues? 

Anyways, read on ,and perhaps Bill will favour us with some more snippets .. 

Another Record Week for Intermodal Rail Traffic

by Mark J. Perry on 30 Sep 2010

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported that U.S. railroads saw the highest weekly intermodal volume for 2010 and highest container count on record for the second consecutive week.

High Speed Rail doesn't make sense for North America

We Can't Afford the Luxury of High-speed Rail by Randal O'Toole, in USA Today on October 1, 2010. This past Tuesday, Amtrak proposed to spend more than $100 billion increasing the top speeds of trains in its Boston-to-Washington corridor from 150 to 220 miles per hour. In August, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood estimated that President Obama's proposal to extend high-speed rail to other parts of the country will cost at least $500 billion. No one knows where this money will come from, but President Obama argues that we need to spend it because high-speed rail will have a "transformative effect" on the American economy. In fact, all it will do is drag the economy down.

Complexity kills, at least if you're Mayan

by Clay Shirky

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The Collapse of Complex Business Models
I gave a talk last year to a group of TV executives gathered for an annual conference. From the Q&A after, it was clear that for them, the question wasn't whether the internet was going to alter their business, but about the mode and tempo of that alteration. Against that background, though, they were worried about a much more practical matter: When, they asked, would online video generate enough money to cover their current costs?
That kind of question comes up a lot. It's a tough one to answer, not just because the answer is unlikely to make anybody happy, but because the premise is more important than the question itself.
There are two essential bits of background here. The first is that most TV is made by for-profit companies, and there are two ways to generate a profit: raise revenues above expenses, or cut expenses below revenues. The other is that, for many media business, that second option is unreachable.
Here's why.

* * *

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon.

Greek Bonds & Petrobras - Shell games?

China Becomes Lender Of Last Resort To Failing Greece
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/02/2010 13:07 -0500

Here is how you kill two birds with one stone, all the while confirming that Europe has been about a step away from a full collapse. Greece, which like Ireland, has been unable to peddle its bonds to anyone now that Bunds spreads are back to all time record levels, has just seen the last white knight of the Keynesian system come to its rescue: China. As Bloomberg reports, the European lender of last resort is no longer the ECB: "China has already bought and holds its Greek bonds,” Wen said in joint comments with Papandreou today, which were carried live on state-run ET-1 television. “It commits, very positively, to buy new bonds to be issued by Greece." Yet herein lies the rub: in exchange for the Chinese last-ditch rescue financing, which by the way is so transparent that everybody, except maybe for the Norwegian wealth fund will see right through it, Greece, in what is an almost identical replica of the Petrobras shell game, will use the money to turn around and buy Chinese ships.