Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 2 pm, brought to you in association with New Zealand Mint for your reading pleasure.
I welcome your additions and comments below, or please send suggestions for next year's Top 10s at 10 via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz. I'll pop any surplus suggestions I get into the comment stream.
This is my last Top 10 for 2010. Best holiday wishes to you all. Many thanks to NZ Mint for helping to make this possible every day. A usually enjoyable rod for my own back. I'm back on January 24. Las Vegas here I come. Las Vegas doesn't appear thrilled about it. cheers
1. Now there's a Christmas present - This is a case of only in America. Cerberus Partners is giving out discounts on guns that its Remington Arms division makes to its clients and staff, NYTimes' dealbook reports. Better than a bottle of wine or a wall calendar?
The attached flier noted that the offer applied bolt-action rifles, repeating shotguns and .22 caliber rimfire rifles. A quick check of the Remington program’s Web site shows an average discount of about 33 percent.
So if one were considering, say, the Model 870 Express Shurshot pump-action shotgun , expect to pay about $371.14 instead of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $553.94.
2. This is just not sustainable - Almost 200,000 New Zealand students received a student loan last year after the number after the number joining the scheme rose 11.3% to a record high 198,723, Stats NZ reports.
The number of tertiary students who borrowed in a year through the student loan scheme increased 11.3 percent in 2009 (up 20,211) to reach 198,723 borrowers. This is the largest increase in the number of borrowers since the beginning of the scheme. The number of students who received a student allowance increased 25.4 percent in 2009 (up 16,368), to reach 80,703 allowance recipients, the largest increase recorded in the allowance data series, which started in 1999.
The increase in the number of students who borrowed or received an allowance in 2009 is due to a greater proportion of students accessing loans and allowances. This reflects the ongoing impact of the interest-free loans policy introduced in 2006, as well as an increase in the number of students enrolled in tertiary education.
3.Is doomsday approaching in the US 'muni' market?- Meredith Whitney, the analyst who caused/predicted the meltdown in US banking stocks in late 2008 has now warned that the US municipal (local city and state government) bond market is set for a meltdown as they get ready to declare bankruptcy. Felix Salmon at Reuters has the story.
4. Perhaps not a coincidence - Bloomberg reports investors are pulling money out of their mutual bond funds in the United States at a great rate of knots.
5. A whole lot of cars - Bloomberg reports there were a record 33,000 cars registered in Beijing last week, bringing the total in the capital city to 4.76 million. It is now the largest car market in the world. Now the problem is congestion...
6. How the hedge fundies live - Business Insider Blackstone Capital and its boss Stephen Schwarzman are renowned as one of the biggest of the private equity funds in New York. They held a little party last week. Here's a few of the highlights.
The PE giant hired out the ENTIRE museum. The main event took place in the Sackler Wing - home to the Egyptian relics. Steve Schwarzman - in an orange Hermes tie - shook hands at the door. There were year-end prizes and a sweet raffle: One winner went home with a trophy and a $10,000 check; a raffle winner scored a trip to Vancouver; and someone else is scheduling in a vacation in Curaçao.
There was a huge multilayered cake, which had miniature landmarks from each city where Blackstone has offices, sitting on top of it.
One of the little replicas on the cake was emblazoned with the word: ACCOUNTABILITY.
7. How a Euro crisis might play out - Scott Minerd of Guggenheim Investments looks at the potential for an Irish bank run and how that might spread to Europe. HT Zerohedge.
The Irish banking system is literally experiencing a run on its banks. According to the most recent banking update from the Central Bank of Ireland, total deposits in Irish banks declined more than 5 percent (28 billion euros) between August and October alone.
Year-over-year, deposits declined 10.5 percent, and foreign investors are pulling their money out at an even faster rate of just over 20 percent per year. If the October data was that brutal, I cringe at the thought of what the November and December numbers may reveal. Even more disconcerting, domestic deposits have begun to contract. It’s one thing for foreign depositors to lose confidence, but now even the domestic deposit base is losing faith.
8. How Basel III got watered down - Bloomberg has an excellent long article detailing what happened during the Basel III process and how banks managed to fight off more regulation and tougher capital rules. They have been watered down to such an extent as to be useless any time in the near future.
The Bankers won.
Good luck to us.
We'll need it.
The committee’s most significant achievement, members say, an agreement to increase the amount of capital banks need to hold, won’t go into full effect for eight years. Other measures that regulators had hoped would prevent future crises -- liquidity standards, a capital surcharge on the biggest lenders and a global resolution mechanism for failing firms -- were postponed, allowing banks to escape the toughest rules that would force them to change the way they do business.
Banks carried out a yearlong campaign to blunt international regulations, arguing that efforts to rein them in would curb lending and impede economic recovery. The lobbying effort was led by the Institute of International Finance, which represents more than 400 financial firms around the world and is chaired by Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank AG’s chief executive officer.
Ackermann and other IIF members wrote hundreds of letters to the Basel committee, met with regulators and addressed forums from Seoul to Washington. In June, the group published a report estimating that the proposed capital rules would result in 9.7 million fewer jobs being created and erase 3.1 percent of global economic growth -- estimates the Basel committee later challenged.
Banks also reached out to their home regulators, arguing that some rules would disadvantage them more than other nations’ lenders. That helped draw the battle lines inside the Basel committee, according to an account pieced together from interviews with half a dozen members .
9. Totally Goooooaaaaaalllllll video. HT NZKoz.
10. Totally Christmassy video - Courtesy of some clever possums who spend way too much time online. Bit like me...
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