Top 10 at 10: 'The poverty effect'; China's rare metals hunger; Mothballed ships; Dilbert

Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome any additions and comments in the comments below or please send your suggestions to me at bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz There are no industry standards at interest.co.nz... 1. John F Wasik at Bloomberg explains the 'poverty effect' of a loss of US$7 trillion in household wealth is an albatross around the neck of the United States economy.

This dour effect is clipping a robust recovery. Millions who have little or negative home equity are shackled to houses they can't sell and a debt burden that keeps them from moving ahead. They can't save, either, although they desperately need to boost their cash reserves. Not a week goes by when I don't hear from a friend or neighbor who can't sell their home or get a decent price for it. They were counting on the proceeds to fund retirement or simply get on with their lives and careers. They weren't planning to go out and buy boats and big-screen TVs. Most Americans are suffering from the opposite of the wealth effect: a creeping sense of poverty. The loss is about $54,000 per home if you average out the $7 trillion among 130 million U.S. housing units (including rentals), according to an estimate by the economic blog http://www.newobservations.net, based on Federal Reserve data.

2. Tim Colebatch at The Age simply doesn't believe the figures showing Australian GDP rose 0.6% in the June quarter. HT Wally.

In the year to June, the production data showed GDP fell 0.7 per cent. On the income data, it fell 0.3 per cent. Yet on the expenditure measure, GDP growth accelerated despite the recession to 2.9 per cent. And it is the average of these three that gives us the official figure of 0.6 per cent. Something is very wrong, and there's an obvious suspect. The bureau reports that between December and June the value of our exports plunged 22 per cent. Yet it says exports actually grew, and the slump was due solely to a 24 per cent plunge in prices for everything we sell. Sorry, I don't buy that. I predict it will be revised, and take the GDP down with it.

3. Some of the big and savvy US hedge fund managers are betting on a slump in US markets, including Paul Tudor Jones, the fund manager who outperformed his peers last year, Bloomberg reported. HT Troy Barsten via email.

Tudor, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm started by Jones in the early 1980s, told clients in an Aug. 3 letter that the stock market's climb was a "bear-market rally." Weak growth in household income was among the reasons to be dubious about the rebound's chances of survival, Tudor said. "Some critical initiatives have been cut short," Tudor said. "As a result, toxic assets remain on balance sheets and credit growth is likely to be subdued for a long period."

4. This came out a wee while ago, but still fairly shocking. Ambrose Evans Pritchard at the Telegraph has pointed out that China is about to ban exports of a bunch of rare metals used in catalytic converters, superconductors and a bunch of other high tech goods. It's all part of China's desperation to get and keep its hands on hard commodities. HT Troy via email.

A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs. China mines over 95pc of the world's rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The move to hoard reserves is the clearest sign to date that the global struggle for diminishing resources is shifting into a new phase. Countries may find it hard to obtain key materials at any price.

5. There are now rows and rows of cargo ships mothballed in the seas around Singapore after the 20%-plus slump in global trade in the last year, according to the New York Times is this piece from Singapore.

Hundreds of cargo ships "” some up to 300,000 tons, with many weighing more than the entire 130-ship Spanish Armada "” seem to perch on top of the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a dozen feet out of the water. So many ships have congregated here "” 735, according to AIS Live ship tracking service of Lloyd's Register-Fairplay in Redhill, Britain "” that shipping lines are becoming concerned about near misses and collisions in one of the world's most congested waterways, the straits that separate Malaysia and Singapore from Indonesia.

6. Another New York Times story digs deeper into the ongoing slump in US commercial real estate and what it means for the banking system there. Bailouts are in the wind, it seems.

These days, the people who buy and sell office buildings, shopping centers, warehouses, apartment buildings and hotels are hardly in a festive mood, despite some recent encouraging signs relating to the job and housing markets and a recent increase in sales of small office buildings. Even though industry lobbyists were able to persuade Congress to extend a loan program aimed at prodding the stalled securitization market back to life, several analysts said it was unlikely to head off a spate of defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies that could surpass the devastating real estate crash of the early 1990s. "It will prop up a few deals, but you can't stop the wave that's coming," said Peter Hauspurg, the chief executive of Eastern Consolidated, a New York brokerage firm. The distress is still in its early stages, analysts said. "We are between the first and second inning," said Richard Parkus, who directs research on commercial mortgage-backed securities for Deutsche Bank. "We're going to have to get through a very difficult period."

7. Societe Generale strategist Albert Edwards has some interesting ideas on why bond yields are staying relatively low despite the huge supply hitting the market, FTAlphaville pointed out. He also thinks stock markets are wildly overpriced. It's all about deflation.

In the US and elsewhere, where commercial bank exposure to government paper is still close to all-time lows, the unwinding of grotesque over-exposure to bubble sectors like real estate will continue to underpin the secular bull market in government bonds. Once again, equity participants are missing the big picture. Despite clear signs from the business surveys of some sort of H2 recovery, firm evidence is emerging that the global economy is sliding towards a full-blown deflationary episode once this recovery falters.

8. This will be another movie to watch out for: 'American Casino'. It digs deep into the sub-prime mortgage debacle. The New Yorker has a review, which describes one scene where a Bear Stearns banker details his dealings with a ratings agency.

Here's the drill: when the bank assembled a group of mortgage-backed bonds as an investment product, it submitted them to a ratings agency. But the agency, rather than run its own computer models on the trustworthiness of such bonds, he says, merely handed the job back to the bank, which ran its models. Having received a fee of perhaps a hundred thousand dollars for not doing anything, the agency then signed off on the phony ratings.

You can read about a scam like that in a newspaper and be surprised, but when the perpetrator actually explains it to you your reaction falls somewhere between nausea and hilarity. It's as if the Russian Mafia had paid a Colombian drug cartel to certify its integrity.

9. This is a cracking story about how a famed short seller Jim Chanos told World Bank and other officials in April 2007 of a coming crisis. He was ignored. It seems Gordon Brown and Timothy Geithner were at the meeting. New Deal 2.0 has the story, which is well worth a read. It made me angry all over again.

Rob Johnson: Let's talk about how people reacted to you then and then in the aftermath of the meeting. What - without picking on particular policymakers, what - how did they look at you? How did they react? Were they curious? Were they dismissive? How would you describe it? Jim Chanos: Well, there was a lot of sort of - you have to keep in mind this was Sunday afternoon. You're at the end of the conference. But I think we were seen probably as much as an annoyance as anything else from people who wanted to catch a plane or get home. But there was some uncomfortable paper shuffling. There was sort of, you know, that looking at the ceiling across the table. There was a bit of eye rolling. There's no doubt about that. And at the end of my talk the fellow running the meeting asked if there was any questions. There were literally no questions and at that point the Chair of the meeting said, "Well, that's all very interesting and now what do you think about insurance."

10. Here's a comedian talking about credit card debt. Really. It's funny.