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Showing posts from September, 2011

Sunday Spectacle CXLI

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Impact of the Recession on USA (click for larger image) (source: Graphic by Amanda Buck. " How the Recession Changed Us ," The Atlantic. January/February 2011.)

Sunday Spectacle CXL

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Emergence of Eastern Cities (source: " Urban economic clout moves east ," Richard Dobbs, Jaana Remes, and Sven Smit,  McKinsey Global Institute. March 2011.) Projections to 2025...who knows how the future will turn out. It'll be interesting to see how correct this is in 20 years.

Sunday Spectacle CXXXIX

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(source: Graphic from certificate for Zweig Total Return Fund Inc. Downloaded from Scripophily.com )

Follow up to the bond yield scenario during deflationary busts

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Given the drastic changes in bond yields of late, I thought I would update the charts I produced a few years ago showing bond yields during three major deflationary busts. It's almost as if we had gone full-circle over the last two years. The present yield (as of end of August, 2011) on the 10 year US Treasury is lower than what it was back in 2008! You may want to read the original post I wrote to get more details about the following charts and the source of the data (the original post also has a few more charts I didn't update). American Bond Yields in the 2000's The following chart shows the bond yield of the 10 year US Treasury, up to the end of August of 2011.

Sunday Spectacle CXXXVIII

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( Cartoon by Christopher Weyant for The New Yorker . October 13, 2008 )

Articles for the first week in September of 2011

Inflicted with a painful wisdom tooth problem... hopefully your life is feeling better... Here are some articles I found interesting. Hope you find them worth checking out. As usual, some articles may be old so aware of that. Wireless payments via smartphones (Bloomberg Businessweek): One of the reasons the mobile phone industry is attractive—one key reason I'm still closely following companies like Nokia—is because it has potential to revolutionize society beyond communications. This article presents the scenario of carrying out payments through NFC (Near-Field Communications) embedded in smartphones. Futuristic, out-of-reach, concepts like 'virtual wallets' are so close to reality. Not sure who profits from all this though. (Recommended) Understanding overall market P/E ratios - Part 1  - Part 2 (Ed Easterling for Advisor Perspectives): Very good explanation of P/E ratios. Anyone interested in evaluating overall market valuation based on P/E ratios should check out