Economies and markets may be at the mercy of long-term forces - the Economist

THE financial world seems to be obsessed with the short term. Fund managers are usually judged on their performance over a three-month period. The television news highlights daily moves in stockmarkets. Lots of hedge funds think in terms of milliseconds.
But some commentators take the opposite tack, arguing that history is subject to “long waves” that cause economies and markets to change direction at regular intervals. Roger Babson, an investment adviser who predicted the 1929 crash, claimed the markets were driven by Newton’s third law of motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Mind you, he also wrote a pamphlet entitled “Gravity—Our Number One Enemy”

http://www.economist.com/node/16994730

U.S. Economy "Close to a Destructive Tipping Point," Glenn Hubbard Says

"America is very close to a destructive tipping point," co-authors Glenn Hubbard and Peter Navarro warn in their new book Seeds of Destruction. "We must change how we conduct our politics and economics...or we will inevitably go the way of all once-great nations and suffer an irreversible decline."
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/u.s.-economy-%22close-to-a-destructive-tipping-point%22-glenn-hubbard-says-535457.html?tickers=%5EGPSC,%5EDJI,SPY,UUP,UDN,TBT,TLT&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=

10 Signs The U.S. Is Losing Its Influence In The Western Hemisphere

Even if the U.S. hadn't crashed into a financial crisis, there are demographic, material, and political forces that have been spreading power around the Americas for decades. Brazil is first among the BRICs (Brazi, Russia, India, and China) -- four economies that are supposed to overtake the six largest Western economies by 2032. Mexico is first among the MAVINS (Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa) -- six economies we expect to blow away expectations and become leading powers in their regions relatively soon.
Canada and Venezuela are oil powers of the distant future. Peru and Chile are sitting on a fortune of metals and minerals. All these countries are cranking up, while America faces plenty of fiscal and demographic problems at home.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/10-signs-the-us-is-losing-its-influence-in-the-western-hemisphere-535456.html?tickers=eem,ewz,fxi,eeb,jjm,^dji,xle

and article in the Economist - http://www.economist.com/node/16990967?story_id=16990967

AP: Oil slides below $76 as traders eye US supplies ( so what ? day before it was at $77 )

Oil prices slid below $76 a barrel Tuesday as traders awaited the latest U.S. supply figures for clues about the strength of demand for crude.
By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for November delivery was down 67 cents to $75.85 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract added 3 cents to settle at $76.52 on Monday.
Crude inventories likely rose 2.2 million barrels last week, according to analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos. The American Petroleum Institute plans to announce its inventory numbers later Tuesday while the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reports its weekly supply data -- the market benchmark -- Wednesday.
Oil prices have snaked around the $75 a barrel level for most of the last year as U.S. crude demand remains sluggish amid an uneven economic recovery. Brimming crude storage levels are also weighing on prices.
"The existing fundamentals could kick prices down to half or less of what they are right now," Cameron Hanover said in a report. "Many traders opt to keep their powder dry until more definitive signals are presented" about the economic outlook, it said. Investors will be closely watching the latest U.S. indicators due this week including gross domestic product, car sales and industrial production. "With prices still stuck in tight trading ranges, there is little indication that they will break out one way or another, at least for the time being," said Edward Meir at MF Global in New York. "We still suspect the eventual break will be to the downside once the hurricane season is over."
Oil production can be affected when oil rigs and refineries are in the path of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. In other Nymex trading in October contracts, heating oil fell 1.51 cents to $2.1077 a gallon and gasoline dropped 0.70 cent to $1.9418 a gallon. Natural gas gained 3.0 cents to 3.830 per 1,000 cubic feet. In London, Brent crude fell 52 cents to $78.05 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Vanguard Mutual Funds - top 5

Founded by John C. Bogle in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's largest investment management companies. With over $1.4 trillion of assets under management, the company offers nearly 160 domestic funds and 50 funds for foreign markets. It offers asset management and financial planning services to clients from over 80 countries. Vanguard stands apart from other mutual fund companies because it is owned by the funds themselves. The company believes that this structure helps management focus better on shareholder interests.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Top-5-Vanguard-Mutual-zacks-955602742.html?x=0

A Sound Strategy for an Uncertain Time - SmartMoney

We know the market anticipates economic activity, which is why it's pointless to buy stocks only after good news has been published. Stock prices are one of the leading economic indicators used by the government to forecast economic activity. The rule of thumb has always been that stocks anticipate the broad economy by about six months.
But now that it's official, and we know from the National Bureau of Economic Research that the Great Recession began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, the market's crystal ball is looking a little cloudy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/110829/a-sound-strategy-for-an-uncertain-time

Did somebody say "Glycoscience" ?

In 2002, the base sequence of the human genome was decoded. This breakthrough has revealed that the number of human genes is only around 22,000. This was followed by progress in research targetting proteins in the field of life science, producing significant achievements, but there remains a question as to whether identifying proteins will explain all human physiological functions.

Dr. Hisashi Naramitsu, director of the Research Center for Medical Glycoscience (RCMG) at the national Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is a poineer in glycoscience. In 1985 he became the first to discover a gene that produces glycosyltransferase, or an enzyme that transfers a sugar to a carbohydrate chain and extends it, while researching at the National Institutes of Science (NIH) in the US.

( check out AIST - http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/aist_laboratories/1lifescience/index.html )

Blaming China Won’t Help the Economy - NYT OpEd

IT is a safe bet that Asian currency intervention was not on the minds of Republican primary voters in Delaware this month when they selected a Tea Party favorite, Christine O’Donnell, as their Senate candidate. But the pendulum swings in American politics are a key concern of Wen Jiabao and Naoto Kan, the prime ministers of China and Japan, respectively, who both met with President Obama in New York on Thursday, with the loss of American jobs to Asian competition high on the agenda.
The Asian nations’ interest in American politics stems not just from America’s standing as the sole global superpower, but also from a growing belief among Asian leaders that the era of United States hegemony will soon be over, and that the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27kaletsky.html

Your ETF Will Not Collapse - Morningstar Report

It's another autumn since the financial crisis of 2008. The air is getting brisk, children are returning to school, and financial pundits are fresh from their summer holiday and ready to identify the next innovation to destroy the global markets and economies. That can only mean one thing: a new crop of scare stories about exchange-traded funds. The most recent offender came out a little over a week ago, under the title "Can an ETF Collapse?" by investment firm Bogan Associates LLC. It quickly spread to the typically excellent FT Alphaville and even front page commentary on CNBC.com.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Your-ETF-Will-Not-ms-2838311577.html?x=0&.v=1