Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions and comments below or please email your suggestions for Thursday's Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz 
1. Fleeting visit - It seems John Key is very keen to get back from Copenhagen so he can go to the Fleetwood Mac concert in New Plymouth, Fran O'Sullivan points out in her NZHerald column. He can't stop thinking about tomorrow...and he may go his own way...
Theoretically, the Prime Minister could still make it back to New Plymouth in time for Fleetwood Mac's second concert on December 20. But he would be pushing it to make the first concert unless he left Copenhagen early by skipping the vital second of the leaders' meetings at which superstars such as US President Barack Obama will be present. Fat chance. At times like these Key must wish that New Zealanders would just get over themselves and approve the purchase of a Government jet. But the reality is if he had decided to stay home, it would simply have given the impression that New Zealand isn't committed to playing its part in the fight against climate change.
2. Middle class collapse - Elizabeth Warren has been a rare voice of reason among America's opinion leaders. In this video below she talks about the coming collapse of America's middle classes under a mountain of debt. HT Rob Mackintosh via email. Here's his thoughts in his Stormworvil blog after analysing spending data for a median US family from 1970 to 2004
There was a 76% increase in monthly mortgage payments despite lower interest rates and little change in the size of the average dwelling. Health care, transportation, and other necessities also went up significantly. Once these core costs are covered two income families today are left with less disposable dollars than their one income parents. Don't even think about being a single-income family today. The middle-classes are slowly being ground down to a subsistence existence. As we now know cheap credit is all that's kept the wheels of consumerism turning this long. That dirty well is about to run dry.
3. Hey gold bugs! - Bloomberg has a story here saying that even after the recent stunning rally, returns on gold haven't matched those of money put in a cheque account since 1980. Comments below please.
Investors who paid $850 an ounce back then earned 44 percent as gold reached a record $1,226.56 on Dec. 3 in London. The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index produced a 22-fold return with dividends reinvested, Treasuries rose 11-fold and cash in the average U.S. checking account rose at least 92 percent. On an inflation-adjusted basis, gold investors are still 79 percent away from getting their money back. "You give up a lot of return for the privilege of sleeping well at night," said James Paulsen, who oversees about $375 billion as chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. "If the world falls into an abyss, gold could be a store of value. There is some merit in that, but you can end up holding too much gold waiting for the world to end. From my experience, the world has not ended yet."
4. Yo Gold Bugs! - This is an entertaining piece from Kenneth Vogel at Politico about how gold coin salesmen are advertising on right wing talk shows in America to capture all the nutters who believe the world is about to end and they need to hoard gold. It seems Glenn Beck is paid money to say things. Comments below please.
Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, which advertises on Beck's show, says gold retailers expect favorable coverage from commentators on whose shows they pay to advertise. "You pay anybody on any network and they say what you pay them to say," said Epstein. "They're bought and sold." Beck, who through a publicist declined to comment for this story, addressed the Media Matters allegation on his Thursday show, saying "So, I shouldn't make money?" And he made the point that he touted gold before he became a Goldline endorser, and urges viewers to study and pray before investing in it"¦ "I could care less what people think of him," Merit's Epstein said of Beck. "We advertise on Fox because it makes the phone ring."
5. The death of credit - Phil Seefried gives this brief and useful explanation of the source of the global credit crisis. 6. Break them up - Former IMF economist Simon Johnson makes a strong case for a hard cap on the size of banks' liabilities as a percentage of GDP to try to reduce the 'Too Big to Fail' problem. He reckons about 4% of GDP is about right. If that was applied in New Zealand and Australia then our Big 4 would need to be broken up. HT Felix Salmon at Reuters.
There is a strong precedent for capping the size of an individual bank: The United States already has a long-standing rule that no bank can have more than 10 percent of total national retail deposits. This limitation is not for antitrust reasons, as 10 percent is too low to have pricing power. Rather, its origins lie in early worries about what is now called "macroprudential regulation" or, more bluntly, "don't put too many eggs in one basket." This cap was set at an arbitrary level "” as part of the deal that relaxed most of the rules on interstate banking "” and it worked well (until Bank of America received a waiver). Probably the best way forward is to set a hard cap on bank liabilities as a percent of gross domestic product; this is the appropriate scale for thinking about potential bank failures and the cost they can impose on the economy. Of course, there are technical details to work out "” including how the new risk-adjustment rules will be enacted and the precise way that derivatives positions will be regarded in terms of affecting size. But such a hard cap would the benchmark around which all the specifics can be worked out. What is the right number: 1 percent, 2 percent, or 5 percent of G.D.P.? No one can say for sure, but it needs to be a number so small that we all agree any politician who cares about our future would have no qualm letting it fail, and when doing so have confidence that our entire financial system is not at risk as it fails. A hard cap at 4 percent of G.D.P. seems about right for a bank with the most conservative possible portfolio. This would mean no bank in our country would have no more than about $500 billion of liabilities, even with a relatively low risk portfolio. On a risk-adjusted basis, most investment banks would face a cap around 2 percent of GDP.
7. Dubai the terrible - Marla Singer at Zero Hedge picks up on a Morgan Stanley research note on the size of the problems behind Dubai's debt debacle. It's ominous. Essentially no one knows how much quasi-government debt has been issued by the Dubai government.
Opacity is a way of life in Dubai. It is no accident that many (if not most) "pictures" of the Dubai skyline are actually "artists conception" pieces. This is not the first time we have pointed out that for some time now, and not unlike DeBeers, Dubai's chief export has actually been illusions. Leveraging that takes some kind of talent. (Or dictatorial control over the financial press).
8. Three decades - Of stagnation. Japan announced a new US$80 billion stimulus programme yesterday. But to give you an idea about how broken the system is there, here's a Bloomberg report about how Japan may ban manufacturers from hiring temporary workers. Hide-bound bureacracies and restrictive labour and trading practices abound. Rampant corruption means established businesses are favoured over new competitors or foreign competitors. Japan is stuffed.
The government is preparing legislation "that will stop manufacturing firms from employing temps and encourage them to hire full-timers," Nagatsuma said yesterday on a business program broadcast by public network NHK. Japanese companies have cut jobs to remain profitable in an economy struggling with deflation and as a strengthening currency erodes export earnings. Unemployment rose to a postwar high 5.7 percent in July, while the yen has gained 2.8 percent against the dollar in the past three months. Companies started replacing retirees with temporary workers after deregulation in 2004, creating a two-tiered labor market in which mostly younger workers enjoy less security and fewer benefits.
9. Curious slowdown - BusinessInsider points to a curious 15% slump in Brazilian iron ore exports to China in November and a slowdown in iron ore vessel bookings from Australia.
A 2010 Chinese iron ore slow-down would have negative implications for more than just steel prices. It would probably be indicative of a greater slow-down of commodity-consuming Chinese economic activity, such as construction. Thus a slow-down in Brazilian iron ore imports reflects a slow-down in Chinese demand. Given that China is such a massive proportion of commodities demand these days, thus could also be a red flag for generalized commodity-price weakness ahead. One month's data doesn't make a trend, but this Brazilian blip is surely something to stay aware of.
10. Totally irrelevant and short video 10. Totally irrelevant video - For Batman fans, including my daughter. It seems there's a few plot problems.
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