Uwe Ohse
Sendedatum 2009-08-02 14:32:25
Ausgabe 85
Hallo,

hier eine weitere Ausgabe des beliebten Newsletters für Masochisten und Weltuntergangssekten. Je nach Newsreader kann die Darstellung weniger als perfekt befriedigend sein, daher könnte sich ein Blick auf die Onlineversion lohnen, die außerdem verschlagwortet ist.

Links: Blog und Digest

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Inhalt:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7949314.stm
Zitat:Two decades after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, radiation is still causing a reduction in the numbers of insects and spiders.

According to researchers working in the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl, there is a "strong signal of decline associated with the contamination".

The team found that bumblebees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies and spiders were affected.
[...]
The two researchers previously published findings that low-level radiation in the area has a negative impact on bird populations.


Es gibt natürlich auch eine Gegenmeinung:
Zitat:Dr Sergii Gashchak, a researcher at the Chornobyl Center in Ukraine, dismissed the findings. He said that he drew "opposite conclusions" from the same data the team collected on birds.

"Wildlife really thrives in Chernobyl area - due to the low level of [human] influence," Dr Gashchak told BBC News.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/29/2639694.htm?section=justin
Über das Artensterben im Bereich Ozeanien:
Zitat:The review has found that from Polynesia and the Pacific Islands to New Zealand and Australia, humans are having a dramatic impact on biodiversity and continue to present large-scale threats to plant and animal species.
[...]
"They are certainly a lot higher than the background rates of extinction that you would see in the evolutionary record.

"Maybe 1,000 to perhaps 10,000 times that rate and that is occurring right across all organisms.
[...]
"Whether you look at the land biodiversity, the freshwater biodiversity, or the marine ecosystems, we are in some way having a major impact on all of those."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8176292.stm
Dasselbe Thema wie in Stock-Market Strategy Halts Fishing Collapse:

Zitat:There is fresh hope that the world's depleted fisheries can be saved from collapse, says a team of researchers.

They said that efforts introduced to halt overfishing in five of the 10 large marine ecosystems they examined were showing signs of success.

A combination of measures - such as catch quotas, no-take zones, and selective fishing gear - had helped fish stocks recover, they added.

Details of the two-year study by 21 marine scientists appear in Science.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/27/world-warming-faster-study
Zitat:The analysis shows the relative stability in global temperatures in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


Nein, wer hätte denn das gedacht? Das IPCC irrt sich? Nein, soetwas...

http://www.acea.be/index.php/news/news_detail/commercial_vehicles_registrations_decline_by_356_in_first_quarter_2009
Hey, die Krise ist wirklich vorbei...

Zitat:Over the first quarter of 2009, the European* market registered 451,137 new commercial vehicles, or 35.6% less than over the same period a year ago. In March, registrations were down 32.9%, with a minus of 31.1% in Western Europe and 48.7% in the new EU Member States. There were on average three more working days in March this year.

LKW/Transporter/Bus-Verkäufe in Prozent gegenüber Vorjahresquartal:


März Q1
UK -41.7 -43.8
D-Land -15.6 -25.4
Spanien -46.1 -53.8
EU-Alt -31.3 -34.8 Alte EU-Staaten
Westeuropa -31.1 -34.5
Europa -32.9 -35.6
Estland -70.3 -71.8
Litauen -82.8 -80.9
Lettland -69.4 -76.5
Bulgarien -74.6 -68.3
EU-Neu -48.7 -44.2 Neumitglieder
EU-Gesamt -33.1 -35.8

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/07/27/rudds-essay-is-on-the-money/

Wenn man die Geschwindigkeit des Schuldenabbaus Australiens 1890 und 1930 auf heute überträgt, erhält man
diese wenig lustige Graphik:

Deleveraging 1890, 1930, 20010...

Zitat:Taking 50% of GDP as a level at which normal economic activity might resume (higher than the 40% level that applied in the 1920s and 25% level of the 40s-60s), this implies that deleveraging could take anywhere between 15 years (at the accelerated 8% rate) and 30 years (at the “natural maximum” 4% rate).

Oops.

Detail:
2010 bis 2040


http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3823
Der Ausbruch aus der Bevölkerungsfalle:
Zitat:To raise incomes in a Malthusian setting, death rates have to rise or fertility rates have to decline. We argue that a number of uniquely European characteristics – the fragmented nature of politics, unhealthy cities, and a geographically heterogeneous terrain – interacted with the shock of the 1348 plague to create exceptionally high mortality rates. These underpinned a high level of per capita income, but the riches were bought at a high cost in terms of human lives.

At the same time, there are good reasons to think that it is not entirely accidental that the countries (and regions) that were ahead in per capita income terms in 1700 were also the first to industrialise. How the world could escape the Malthusian trap at all has become a matter of intense interest to economists in recent years (Galor and Weil, 2000, Jones, 2001, Hansen and Prescott, 2002). In a related paper, we calibrate a simple growth model to show why high per capita income at an early stage may have been key for Europe’s rise after 1800 (Voigtländer and Voth, 2006).

In the “Three Horsemen of Riches”, we ask how Europe got to be rich in the first place. Our answer is best summarised by the smuggler Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles in the 1948 classic “The Third Man“:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

We argue that a similar logic held in economic terms before the Industrial Revolution. Europe’s exceptional rise to early riches owed much to forces of destruction – war, aided by frequent disease outbreaks and deadly cities.


http://mpettis.com/2009/07/i-wasn’t-impressed-by-china’s-high-reserve-and-gdp-growth-numbers/
Zitat:The fact that China’s reserves have surged will in no way make it easier for the US to fund its fiscal deficit even though, as I have argued for a very long time, China has no choice but to invest these additional reserves in US Treasury bonds.

Why? Because besides valuation changes and interest income there are two reasons for the increase in the reserves – the very high trade surplus and net capital inflows into China. Take the second reason first. If money flows into China for investment purposes, it must flow out of somewhere else, and that somewhere else for the most part means the global pool of dollar savings which would anyway have been available to fund the US fiscal deficit directly or indirectly.

In that sense China is acting as kind of upside-down bank that takes risk-seeking money and intermediates it into low-risk assets – as an aside almost the opposite of what the US does, and whereas the US profits from this intermediation, China runs a significant negative carry. Of course the fact of intermediating risk money into low-risk assets will have some impact on US Treasury rates, but the impact is minimal (technically risk-free rates will decline a tiny bit and credit spreads will increase by the same amount).


Kurz gesagt: Die Tatsache, daß viel ausländisches Geld nach China fließt, heißt auch, daß die Geldgeber keine amerikanischen Staatsanleihen kaufen können - und daß das Geld fließt, heißt auch, daß China als sicheres Investment gesehen wird.
Zitat:
Was China’s “surprisingly” high GDP growth numbers a big surprise? Not really. I have argued several times since last year that in fact China can achieve very high growth numbers by throwing a huge amount of resources into achieving short-term growth, but the real question is whether these policies are sustainable and whether the kind of growth they achieve is in China’s best interest.

Er hat Recht - auch Verschwendung ist positiv für's BIP.

Seufz.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9a36b342-280e-11de-8dbf-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Zitat:Property prices in China are likely to halve over the next two years, a top government researcher has predicted in a powerful signal that the country’s economic downturn faces further challenges despite recent positive data.

von welchen positiven Daten redet die FT da bloß? Den überaus glaubwürdigen Regierungsdaten?

Aber eine solche Ankündigung aus regierungsnahen Kreisen ist eine echtes Alarmsignal.

Zitat:The property market, along with exports, were leading drivers of the booming Chinese economy over the past decade and the slumps in both have taken a heavy toll.
Cao Jianhai, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a leading government think tank, said an apparent rebound in the property market was unsustainable over the medium term and being driven by a flood of liquidity and fraudulent activity rather than real demand.

Wer hätte das nur gedacht? Die Blase ist geplatzt, und schon stellt man fest, daß sie nur aufgrund von übermässig billigem Geld und Betrug zustande gekommen ist.

Zitat:He told the Financial Times he expected average urban residential property prices to fall by 40 to 50 per cent over the next two years from their levels at the end of 2008.

Ich hoffe, er hat recht - denn meine Einschätzung ist, daß die Verhältnisse in China noch verheerender sind.

http://www.chinastakes.com/2009/7/real-estate-developers-strapped-for-cash-resort-to-irregular-tactics.html
Zitat:Statistics show that from May 1 to July 24, which seemed to be good days for Shanghai's real estate market, many housing projects were seeing over 30% cancellations, and the cancellation rate of some projects was as high as 125%. Behind the "boom" of the housing market are irregular behaviors such as getting bank loans by cheating and making fake housing purchasing contracts.

Soso, _gute Zeiten_ haben über 30% Stornierungen?

Zitat:The high housing contract cancellation rate has also occurred in Nanjing. July statistics show, in one housing project alone, 29 deals being cancelled. In Beijing, the cancellation rate in some housing projects has reached 40% or higher.

Zitat:Yin Bocheng, director of the Real Estate Research Center of Fudan University, thinks the boom is a mirage. "This is only fake prosperity." This ploy has been used before to simulate growth in the real estate market. Developers getting bank loans with fake deals will add to credit risk in a long run.

http://in.biz.yahoo.com/090727/137/batya2.html
China: Einnahmen
Diese Graphik sagt eigentlich schon eine ganze Menge aus. Chinas schafft es, um 8% zu wachsen, obwohl die Steuereinnahmen um 2.4% fallen, statt, wie wohl gewünscht, zu steigen.

Ansonsten verbreitet der Artikel allerlei Unfreundliches über China:

Zitat:Thanks to successive years of fast economic growth and even faster government revenue growth, the official debt-to-GDP ratio was 17.7 percent at the end of last year, far lower than almost any other major economy.

The trouble is that excludes local government borrowing, the current surge in loans backstopped by Beijing and bad assets cleared from the banking system but still floating about.

When all are thrown into the pot, analysts estimate that China's debt may be closer to 60 percent of GDP, putting it in virtually the same league as the United States, which was at 70 percent at the end of 2008 before it launched its massive economic stimulus programme.


So ist das halt mit Zahlen: Man kann schöne Spiele mit ihnen veranstalten...

Zitat:Government revenues declined 2.4 percent in the first half compared to a year earlier, well shy of the official goal of an 8 percent rise. Expenditures were ahead of target and set to surge in the second half on the back of infrastructure projects.

Tax intakes are, of course, closely tied to economic activity, so China's upturn should deliver cash to government coffers. But improvement in June came mainly from land sales, a one-off revenue source that masks the difficult road ahead.


http://mpettis.com/2009/07/squeezing-out-the-exporters/

Zitat:The problem is illustrated in two interesting recent pieces. My friend Dan Rosen, of the Rhodium Group, has a very illuminating July 17 report that shows the composition of Chinese growth in the past decade. He shows that for the past five years net exports accounted for about 10% to 15% of Chinese GDP growth, before collapsing to minus 41% in 2009 YTD.

Until recently investment’s share of GDP growth peaked at around 65% in 2003 – a very high share by any standard – and going back the full thirty years of China’s reform period achieved an historical high astonishing of 81% in 1985. From 2005 to 2008 the investment share of GDP growth averaged around 40% – still high – and then in the first half of this year accounted for a mind-boggling 88% of this years GDP growth.


nun kommen 88% des chinesischen BIP-Wachstums aus Investitionen...
Oder anders gesagt, 7 der 8 Prozentpunkte, um die das BIP gewachsen ist, stammen aus Investitionen. Der Exportanteil am Wachstum ist massiv rückläufig (keine Überraschung).
Was heißt das wohl?

Zitat:This year’s growth, in other words, is almost wholly a function of the massive increase in investment, and this increase in investment started out largely in the form of reopening production facilities and producing more “stuff”, without any significant rise in consumption. As we know, when production increases faster than consumption, either the trade surplus or inventories must rise.

China produziert also schon mal die Lager voll... positiv gesehen sind die damit für den kommenden Superaufschwung bestens gerüstet.

Oder ist das nur eine gewaltige Fehlallokation von Resourcen?


http://mpettis.com/2009/07/notes-on-a-real-estate-trip-in-china/
Immobilien in China:
Zitat:I don’t know how much you travel around China. Tom and I do a fair bit, and most recently we were in Guiyang. I thought I’d seen insane excess in the past – 200 thousand square meter malls completely empty next to apartment complexes with 40 thousand units and 30% occupancy rates, etc. etc. But what we saw over there is rather hard to fathom. It seems the Guiyang city mayor had the same idea as the Shenzhen mayor – to move the old downtown to a piece of undeveloped land.

Of course Guiyang has a quarter the population and probably a quarter the per capita income of Shenzhen. They built sprawling new government buildings about a 20-minute drive north of town. And then the residential high rise projects started going up. From driving around the area, Tom and I figured well over 100 20+ storey buildings.
[...]
The only buildings that were occupied were six-storey towers built to accommodate the peasants who had been displaced by the construction.


Fehlallokation? Ach, was. Wer hätte je davon gehört, daß es Immobilien schadet, leer zu stehen?

http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/property/flood-of-money-buoys-beijing-property-bubble-44306.aspx
Zitat:"Beijing has prescribed a strong remedy" for the Chinese economy by flooding it with money, says Wei Gu on Reuters.com. Since lending restrictions were removed in November, outstanding loans are up 30% year on year.

This flood of money has buoyed asset prices: the Shanghai stockmarket is up 69% since the start of the year, while investors are now returning to the property market after the government clamped down on an emerging bubble there in 2007. Today, "long queues increasingly form whenever new apartments go on sale" in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.


Als Maßnahme gegen das Platzen einer Blase tun wir was? Wir blasen den nächsten Ballon in derselben Farbe auf. Das ist in der Tat eine ganz neue Idee...

Aber was kann schon schlimm daran sein, Fehlallokation fortzusetzen?


http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/finanzdienstleister/:Befreiungsschlag-Fehlanzeige-Moody-s-pinkelt-Banken-ans-Bein/542693.html
Zitat:Nachdem das neue Bad-Bank-Gesetz nun vorliegt, bekräftige die Ratingagentur Moody's am Montag ihre skeptische Sicht auf das Regelwerk. Es habe "einen sehr begrenzten positiven Einfluss auf die Bonitätseinstufung der Banken - wenn überhaupt", schreibt Moody's. Bessere Bonitätsnoten erleichtern den Banken ihre Refinanzierung, da sie Anleihen weniger hoch verzinsen müssen.

Ok, ich weiß, Moody's ist nicht unbedingt das, was man glaubwürdig nennt, aber so lange - aus mir vollständig unverständlichen Gründen - deren "Ratings" (das ist ein Euphemismus) noch Gehör finden...

Wenn ich mich nicht ganz falsch erinnere, war es der Zweck des Bad Bank Gesetzes, die Banken vor dem Müll zu schützen, den sie mal für wertvoll hielten. Moody's - die den Müll selbst mit Preisschildern versehen haben - scheint das Gesetz im Wesentlichen für nutzlos zu halten.

Hat Moody's mal einen Anflug von Realitätssinn?

Zitat:Moody's begrüßt zwar, dass die Bad Banks die Institute im Hinblick auf die regulatorischen Anforderungen an das Eigenkapital entlasten. Allerdings verblieben die Risiken "anders als in anderen Ländern" am Ende bei den Banken. Die Vorteile würden zunichtegemacht durch die Haftung für künftige Verluste.

... was sich aber langfristig als Vorteil für die Staatsfinanzen erweisen könnte.
Naja, Moody's hat trotzdem Recht. Was nützen die etwas weniger ruinierten Staatsfinanzen langfristig schon? Außer als Reserve für Wahlgeschenke, natürlich...

http://www.ftd.de/boersen_maerkte/immobilien/:Deutsches-Subprime-Omas-H%E4uschen-verliert-drastisch-an-Wert/504149.html
Zitat:Der Preisverfall für Ein- und Zweifamilienhäuser hat sich in den ersten drei Monaten des Jahres verschärft. Die Wirtschaftsflaute dämpft die Kauflaune und setzt Verkäufer unter Druck.

Nach dem allgemeinen Hypoport-Index, der die tatsächlich erzielten Verkaufspreise für Gebäude umfasst, haben Ein- und Zweifamilienhäuser im Bestand seit Jahresbeginn durchschnittlich neun Prozent an Wert verloren. Seit Dezember verbilligten sich diese Objekte demnach im Bundesschnitt von 185.000 Euro auf nur noch 168.375 Euro Ende März. Es handelt sich um den stärksten Preisrückgang binnen einem Quartal seit Beginn der Indexberechnung im Januar 2005. Damals kosteten Häuser im Bestand im Schnitt noch 204.856 Euro. Seither haben existierende Eigenheime den Indexdaten zufolge im Schnitt rund 18 Prozent an Wert verloren. Einzig Immobilien in Innenstadtlagen erweisen sich als wertstabil.


Das ist eine Katastrophe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8175289.stm
Zitat:German consumer prices fell for the first time in 22 years in July, official figures have shown.

Prices fell 0.6% in July from a year earlier - the first fall since March 1987, when they declined by 0.3%.

The decline was largely due to falls in energy prices, which peaked in summer 2008, and analysts said Germany was unlikely to see a deflationary spiral.


An der Argumentation mit dem Ölpreis ist etwas dran, aber technische Argumente helfen gegen das psychologische Phänomen Preisverfall nicht unbedingt.

http://www.en.rian.ru/world/20090313/120552217.html
Gelebte Demokratie und Zivilisation in Griechenland:
Zitat:At least 40 shops and several cars were damaged in Friday's riots in the Athens, local police said.

About 150 hooded youths, armed with sledgehammers and steel bars, entered the Kolonaki district in central Athens on Friday afternoon, smashing shop windows and cars. The attackers fled after police used tear gas, scattering leaflets identifying them as members of anarchist groups.

No casualties have been reported, and no arrests were made.

Greece has seen regular street violence since last December's worst riots in decades, sparked by the killing of a teenager by police. Last week a home-made explosive device went off outside a Citibank branch in Athens.


Nur damit nicht in Vergessenheit gerät, daß Griechenland immer noch brennt...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a03OABeRmCiA
Zitat:India will resist pressure from the Obama administration to accept legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the South Asian nation’s environment minister told visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have been among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Jairam Ramesh said at a meeting today with Clinton in Gurgaon near New Delhi, according to a statement he issued to reporters. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”


Indien will sich von den USA nicht unter Druck setzen lassen,den CO2-Ausstoß zu reduzieren.

Vielleicht würde es helfen, wenn die USA mal mit gutem Beispiel voran gingen?

[Update, 2.8.2009]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80a9200e-7dfe-11de-8f8d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Zitat:India will not discuss signing up to legally binding obligations to make absolute cuts in greenhouse gas emissions for at least 10 years, Jairam Ramesh, the country’s environment minister, said on Friday.

“In 2020, it’s conceivable that we might look at a limited target. But in 2009, no way,” said Mr Ramesh.


http://www.ireland.com/home/Over_job_cuts_proposed/maxi/fast/news/irnews/234360
Zitat:The 'Bord Snip' report has recommended axing 17,358 jobs across the public sector, including eliminating some 6,000 jobs in the Department of Health and Children and 7,000 in the Department of Education.

17000 entspricht, auf die USA hochgerechnet, locker einer Million Stellen.

Und 13000 von diesen 17000 Stellen im den Bereichen Kinder, Gesundheit und Ausbildung einzusparen, ist eine langfristig sehr, sehr schlechte Sache.

Aber hey, irgendetwas auf der Welt muß ja wachsen - warum nicht die Zahl der Armenhäuser?


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9490f6ec-7d8f-11de-8f8d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Zitat:Unemployment in Japan surged to a six-year high as the country set a new record for core consumer price deflation in June, data released on Friday showed.
The 1.7 per cent year-on-year fall in consumer prices, excluding fresh food, and the 5.4 per cent jobless rate highlight the continuing troubles of the world’s second-largest economy, despite a sharp rebound in industrial output over the past four months.

While the falling energy prices that have been the main driver behind the decline are no bad thing for resource-poor Japan, analysts increasingly worry that deepening deflation – fuelled by job insecurity and massive manufacturing over-capacity – could undermine economic recovery.
The fall in “core-core” consumer prices, excluding food and energy, accelerated to 0.7 per cent in June. More recent July price data for urban areas of Tokyo showed a fall of 1.1 per cent.

http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/07/full-blown-deflation-hits-japan.html
Econompicdata hat den Preisverfall mal aufgeschlüsselt.
Preisverfall Aufgeschlüsselt nach Sektoren


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=atCV_eLwvOCE
Zitat:Japan’s retail sales fell for a 10th month in June, extending the longest losing streak since 2003 as job losses and wage cuts forced households to trim spending.

Sales slid 3 percent from a year earlier, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News predicted a 2.5 percent drop.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/federal-pension-plan-books-227-loss/article1229050/
Kanadischer Pensionsfonds meldet große Erfolge:
Zitat:The pension plan for federal government workers lost 22.7 per cent in the latest fiscal year, but paid partial bonuses to its top executives for meeting their individual objectives for the year.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board reported Thursday it was buffeted by the financial crisis that began last year, seeing its assets fall by $5.1-billion to $33.8-billion as of March 31, 2009, down from $38.9-billion a year earlier.


-22%!

Das muß doch ein Erfolg sein, denn sonst würden doch keine Boni gezahlt...

Zitat:The fund's annual report, released Thursday, said Mr. Fyfe's compensation totalled $1.42-million in fiscal 2009, up 11 per cent from $1.28-million last year.

His pay included a $485,000 base salary, an annual bonus of $189,122, a deferred incentive plan payment of $611,100, benefits and other compensation worth $35,876, and accrued pension benefits worth $98,500.


http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Alberta+seniors+need+welfare+soaring/1831736/story.html
Zitat:The number of seniors needing provincial welfare to get by has swollen by 36 per cent in a year, likely part of a troubling trend as the country's population ages.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aPKO1WpS8h3o
Ein Land, auf das das Motto dieser Artikelserie - nämlich "Alles wird gut" - nicht zutreffen wird, ist Mexiko. Ich möchte nicht, wie [a href=http://www.theoildrum.com/user/jeffvail]jeffvail in Mexico: A Collapse Update[/a], so weit gehen, daß Mexiko zusammen- und auseinanderbrechen wird, denn vielleicht passiert ja noch ein Wunder - und sei es nur, daß die USA mal aufwachen -, aber nach Happy End sieht es in Mexiko nicht aus.

Zitat:Petroleos Mexicanos, Latin America’s largest oil company, is likely to miss its 2009 output goal even after lowering its production forecast, forcing the company to seek other sources of financing to pay for its largest-ever capital spending plan.

Pemex, which hasn’t increased production in 3 years, needs to raise output by at least 1.6 percent in the final six months of 2009 to reach a goal of 2.65 million barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Mexico City-based Pemex lowered its forecast yesterday on an earnings conference call.
[...]
Pemex says it will seek $10 billion in bank loans and bonds this year to finance its $19.5 billion capital budget.

The company plans to spend $19.9 billion annually from 2010 through 2012. Oil producers including ConocoPhillips, the third- largest U.S. oil company, slashed their budgets amid plunging energy prices because of the recession. ConocoPhillips cut its capital budget 37 percent to $12.5 billion this year.
[...]
This year will be the first time Pemex raises total debt levels since 2006. Total debt as of June 30 was $47 billion. The company has also agreed to borrow as much $900 million from the U.S. Export-Import Bank this year.

Mexico’s Energy Ministry has set a goal of having production rebound to 3 million to 3.1 million barrels a day by the end of President Felipe Calderon’s term in 2012. The estimate is based on the incorporation of new fields and mature fields like Ku-Maloob-Zaap reaching their peaks.


Ich glaube nicht, daß das klappt.

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article184924.ece
Zitat:Poland has failed to strike a gas deal with Russia that would secure supplies sufficient to meet its needs starting in 2010, but talks would continue, the Economy Ministry said in a statement today.
[...]
Poland, which imports about two-thirds of the gas it uses from Russia, would be short of some 2.5 billion metres annually starting from 2010 with Russia the only supplier capable of filling the gap.

Poland receives gas from Russia through the Yamal pipeline, which is capable of carrying about 30 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Europe, but the government wants to diversify from its dependence by building a liquefied natural gas terminal.


http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009 - Spring/full-Eberstadt.html
Über die Bevölkerungszahl in Rußland:
Zitat:A specter is haunting Russia today. It is not the specter of Communism—that ghost has been chained in the attic of the past—but rather of depopulation—a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation. The mass deaths associated with the Communist era may be history, but another sort of mass death may have only just begun, as Russians practice what amounts to an ethnic self-cleansing.

Rußland hat dieses Problem bereits mehrfach gehabt, aber diesmal ist es anders:

Zitat:
Russia has faced this problem at other times during the last century. The first bout of depopulation lasted from 1917 to 1923, and was caused by the upheavals that transformed the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union. The next drop took place between 1933 and 1934, when the country’s population fell by nearly 2 million—or almost 2 percent—as a result of Stalin’s war against the “kulaks” in his forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture. And then, between 1941 and 1946, Russia’s population plummeted by more than 13 million through the cataclysms and catastrophes of World War II.

The current Russian depopulation—which began in 1992 and shows no signs of abating—was, like the previous episodes, also precipitated by events of momentous political significance: the final dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of Communist Party rule. But it differs in three important respects. First, it is by far the longest period of population decline in modern Russian history, having persisted for over twice as long as the decline that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, and well over three times as long as the terrifying depopulation Russia experienced during and immediately after World War II.


17 Jahre sind ein übel langer Zeitraum - und da es keine externen Ursachen gab, muß jedwede Veränderung von innen kommen. Die ersten Putinjahre lassen nicht erkennen, daß es sie gegeben hat...

Zitat:
A comparison dramatizes what is happening in Russia. Between 1976 and 1991, the last sixteen years of Soviet power, the country recorded 36 million births. In the sixteen post-Communist years of 1992–2007, there were just 22.3 million, a drop in childbearing of nearly 40 percent from one era to the next. On the other side of the life cycle, a total of 24.6 million deaths were recorded between 1976 and 1991, while in the first sixteen years of the post-Communist period the Russian Federation tallied 34.7 million deaths, a rise of just over 40 percent. The symmetry is striking: in the last sixteen years of the Communist era, births exceeded deaths in Russia by 11.4 million; in the first sixteen years of the post-Soviet era, deaths exceeded births by 12.4 million.

1976-1991: 36 Mio. Geburten, 24.6 Mio Sterbefälle, zusammen +11.4 Mio.
1992-2007: 22.3 Mio. Geburten, 34.7 Mio. Sterbefälle, zusammen -12.4 Mio.

Zitat:What accounts for the Russian Federation’s low levels of fertility? Some observers point to poor health conditions. And indeed, as we will see, Russia’s overall health situation today is truly woeful. This is especially true of its reproductive health.

A consortium headed by the World Health Organization estimated that for 2005 a woman’s risk of death in childbirth in Russia was over six times higher than in Germany or Switzerland. Moreover, mortality levels for women in their twenties (the decade in which childbearing is concentrated in contemporary Russia) have been rising, not falling, in recent decades.


=> Auf dem Weg in die dritte Welt.

Das ist aber gar nicht das Hauptproblem:

Zitat:
But Russia’s low fertility patterns are not due to any extraordinary inability of Russian women to conceive, but rather to the strong and growing tendency among childbearing women to have no more than two children—and perhaps increasingly not more than one. The new evident limits on family size in Russia, in turn, suggest a sea change in the country’s norms concerning family formation.

denn _das_ ist das Problem: Verzicht auf Kinder.

Was natürlich nicht heißen soll, daß Rußland sonst keine Probleme hat:

Zitat:
These losses were recovered during the Gorbachev period, but even at its pinnacle in 1986 and 1987, overall life expectancy for Russia was only marginally higher than it had been in 1964, never actually managing to cross the symbolic 70-year threshold. With the end of Communism, moreover, life expectancy went into erratic decline, plummeting a frightful four years between 1992 and 1994, recovering somewhat through 1998, but then again spiraling downward. In 2006—the most recent year for which we have such data—overall Russian life expectancy at birth was over three years lower than it had been in 1964.

Allgemein steht es schlecht um die Gesundheit dort, und die Lebenserwartung:
Zitat:By 2005, male life expectancy at birth was fully fifteen years lower in the Russian Federation than in Western Europe. It was also five years below the global average for male life expectancy, and three years below the average for the less developed regions (whose levels it had exceeded, in the early 1950s, by fully two decades). Put another way, male life expectancy in 2006 was about two and a half years lower under Putin than it had been in 1959, under Khrushchev.

Das heißt wohl in der Praxis, daß die Lebenserwartung russischer Männer kleiner als 60 Jahre sein könnte.

Zitat:By any reading, the situation in Russia today sounds awful. The Russian Federation is afflicted with a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic; according to UNAIDS, as of 2008 somewhere around 1 million Russians were living with the virus. (Russia’s HIV nexus appears to be closely associated with a burgeoning phenomenon of local drug use, with sex trafficking and other forms of prostitution or “commercial sex,” and with other practices and mores relating to extramarital sex.) Russia also faces a related and evidently growing burden of tuberculosis. As of 2008, according to World Health Organization estimates, Russia was experiencing about 150,000 new TB infections a year. To make matters worse, almost half of Russia’s treated tubercular cases over the past decade have been the variant known as extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).

Aids, Drogen und TB. Nichts davon verheißt eine glorreiche Zukunft.

Zitat:Over the subsequent decades, unfortunately, the level of CVD mortality in the Russian Federation veered even further upward. By 2006, Russia’s CVD mortality rate, standardizing for population structure, was an almost unbelievable 3.8 times higher than the population-weighted level reported for Western Europe.

Herz/Kreislaufbedingte Todesfälle: 3.8 mal so hoch wie hier.

Zitat:In Western Europe, age-standardized mortality from injury and poisoning, as tabulated by the World Health Organization, fell by almost half between 1970 and 2006. In Russia, on the other hand, deaths from injuries and poisoning, which had been 2.5 times higher than in Western Europe in 1980, were up to 5.3 times higher as of 2006.

Verletzungen und Vergiftungen: 5.3 mal so viele Todesfälle wie hier.

Zitat:Russia’s patterns of death from injury and violence (by whatever provenance) are so extreme and brutal that they invite comparison only with the most tormented spots on the face of the planet today. The five places estimated to be roughly in the same league as Russia as of 2002 were Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. To go by its level of mortality injury alone, Russia looks not like an emerging middle-income market economy at peace, but rather like an impoverished sub-Saharan conflict or post-conflict society.

=> Dritte Welt auch in Punkto gewaltbedingte Tode.

Und dann ist da der Suff:

Zitat:How many Russians are actually drinkers, and how heavily do they actually drink? Officially, Russia classifies some 7 million out of roughly 120 million persons over 15 years of age, or roughly 6 percent of its adult population, as heavy drinkers. But the numbers are surely higher than this. According to data compiled by the World Health Organization, as of 2003 Russia was Europe’s heaviest per capita spirits consumer; its reported hard liquor consumption was over four times as high as Portugal’s, three times that of Germany or Spain, and over two and a half times higher than that of France.

Yet even these numbers may substantially understate hard spirit use in Russia, since the WHO figures follow only the retail sale of hard liquor. But samogon—home-brew, or “moonshine”—is, according to some Russian researchers, a huge component of the country’s overall intake. Professor Alexander Nemstov, perhaps Russia’s leading specialist in this area, argues that Russia’s adult population—women as well as men—puts down the equivalent of a bottle of vodka per week.

Zitat von Fazit:It is not obvious that Russia will be able to recover rapidly from its health katastroika. There is an enormous amount of “negative health momentum” in the Russian situation today[...] On today’s mortality patterns, a Swiss man at 20 has about an 87 percent chance of making it to a notional retirement age of 65. His Russian counterpart at age 20 has less than even odds of reaching 65. Harsh excess mortality levels impose real and powerful disincentives for the mass acquisition of the technical skills that are a key to wealth generation in the modern world. Thus Russia’s health crisis may be even more generally subversive of human capital, and more powerfully corrosive of human resources, than might appear to be the case at first glance.

Putin’s Kremlin made a fateful bet that natural resources—oil, gas, and other extractive saleable commodities—would be the springboard for the restoration of Moscow’s influence as a great power on the world stage. In this gamble, Russian authorities have mainly ignored the nation’s human resource crisis. During the boom years—Russia’s per capita income roughly doubled between 1998 and 2007—the country’s death rate barely budged. Very much worse may lie ahead. How Russia’s still-unfolding demographic disaster will affect the country’s domestic political situation—and its international security posture—are questions that remain to be answered.


die werden nie wieder Supermacht.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b39b7184-7e84-11de-999d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Zitat:South Korean exports in July fell less than market expectations, data showed on Saturday, adding to hopes for a sustained recovery in Asia’s fourth-largest economy and providing further support to the won currency.
[...]
Exports in July slid 20.1 per cent from a year ago, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said, slightly better than a forecast of a 20.6 per cent drop and after a revised 12.4 per cent fall in June.

Licht am Ende des Tunnels: Nur 20.1% der Wirtschaft tot, nicht 20.6%.

http://ukhousebubble.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-will-pay-for-those-pensions.html
Wachstum der Rentnerzahl
Zitat:The Office of National Statistics [...] projects that there will be around 14 million people aged 65 or older. In the absence of a geriatrically targeted plague at least one person in 5 will older than today's retirement age.

Das ist ganz, ganz schlecht für ein Land, dessen Reichtum lange vorher im Nichts aufgeht.

http://ukhousebubble.blogspot.com/2009/04/ageing-britain.html
Wachstum der Zahl über 90 jähriger Briten

Zitat:Population dynamics fascinate me. It is like waiting for an accident to happen. The UK is undergoing a dramatic transformation and we are simply not ready for it. Most people aren't even aware of the extraordinary ageing of the UK population that is now underway.

Take for example, citizens over 90; there has been a three-fold increase since 1971. The number is likely to triple again by 2031. Over-90s incur major medical costs. While we might be able to delay the retirement age by a couple of years, the typical 90 year-old is extremely unlikely to be a financially self-supporting member of the community.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/pensions/article6728738.ece
Zitat:Britain's pensioners have the fourth highest level of poverty in Europe, according to figures published today by the European Commission.

The over 65’s in Britain are, on average, worse off than their counterparts in Romania, Poland and France.

The research, which compared relative poverty in the 27 member states, showed nearly one in three UK over-65s were at risk of poverty - the same proportion as in Lithuania (30 per cent).

Only pensioners in Cyprus (51 per cent), Latvia (33 per cent), and Estonia (33 per cent) came out worse. The EU average was 19 per cent.


Seufz. Mitteleuropas kommendes Armenhaus.

http://ukhousebubble.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-labour-will-bankrupt-us.html
Zitat:The Treasury compiles a measure of public sector net worth. It adds up what the government owns - buildings, land, capital equipment, cash, assets, foreign reserves etc - and then subtracts what it owes. Currently, the government's balance sheet is positive - it owns 28 percent of GDP more than it owes. By 2014, it will be in the red.

Das sind absolut keine guten Aussichten für .UK: 2014 wird der Staat weniger Besitz als Schulden haben.

UK: Nettowert des Staates


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/5866522/Recession-forces-a-million-to-work-part-time.html
Zitat:Almost a million people are being forced to work part-time because they cannot get a full-time job, according to official figures that shed light on the hidden cost of the recession for thousands of families.

In the past year more than 250,000 extra people who would like to be in full-time employment have found themselves working four days a week or fewer, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is an increase of more than a third on the previous year, and illustrates the extent to which companies are trying to cope with the downturn by reducing staff hours, rather than just laying them off.


"Wachstumbranche": +33% Teilzeitarbeit.
Schade bloß, daß die Leute das nicht freiwillig tun.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2009/07/nationwide-uk-house-prices-up-strongly-for-third-month.html
Zitat:UK house prices have now risen for three months consecutively and four months in five according to statistics released by Nationwide Building Society this morning. The rise for July was a very robust 1.3% month-on-month, which translates into almost 17% on an annualized basis. Clearly, housing is doing very well during this summer selling season.
[...]
I should also note that mortgage applications have been increasing strongly, evidence that first time home buyers are coming back to the market. This underlying demand may be buoying prices.

Overall, the data cannot be seen as anything but bullish.


Kinder, Kinder. Eine Schwalbe macht noch keinen Sommer. Und bei rund 2% Inflation und 2% Wertverlust des Pfunds in den letzten 3 Monaten bin ich mir noch nicht mal sicher, daß das, was da zu sehen ist, eine Schwalbe und keine Fata Morgana ist...

Ja, vielleicht ist das der Tiefpunkt. Aber mir ist nicht klar, warum man deshalb bullish sein sollte.


http://ukhousebubble.blogspot.com/2009/07/bank-lending-to-business-down-8-percent.html

Credit-Crunch in .uk


http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2009/07/29/bank-of-china-offers-uk-mortgages/
Vielleicht erholt sich der UK-Immobilienmarkt ja tatsächlich - eine neuer Hypothekengeber tritt auf.

Zitat:British landlords and homeowners will soon be able to mortgage their properties with the Bank of China.

Mortgages from the Chinese bank are offered via four brokers, starting at 2.5% above the base rate.

Bank of China previously focussed on lending to Chinese communities in the UK, but is now widening its scope.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=asvejtieUyRc

Zitat:The highest inflation-adjusted yields in 15 years are helping provide the Treasury with record demand at auctions as the U.S. prepares to sell $115 billion of notes this week.

Treasuries are the cheapest relative to inflation since 1994 after consumer prices fell 1.4 percent in June from a year earlier. The real yield, or the difference between rates on government securities and inflation, for 10-year notes was 5.10 percent today, compared with an average of 2.74 percent over the past 20 years.


aus irgendeinem Grund müssen die USA - Hort der finanziellen Solidität - an die Abnehmer ihrer Staatsanleihen mehr Zahlen als sonst je seit 1993.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/04/federal-reserve-assets-continue-to.html

Zweifelsfrei ist die Krise besiegt...
Graphik: Wachstum der FED-Bilanz


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124897332666294327.html
Daß Fannie und Freddie dem US-Steuerzahler nicht alles werden zurückzahlen können, was der zur Rettung der beiden Unternehmen "geliehen" hat, kommt nun nicht wirklich überraschend.
Zitat:"My view is that some assets in the senior preferred will have to be left behind as they come out of conservatorship," Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James B. Lockhart said Thursday in response to a question at a panel discussion in Washington. "That will mean that some of the losses will never be repaid."

The Treasury has agreed to pump $200 billion into each company in order to keep them solvent. In exchange, the government receives senior preferred stock that pays a 10% dividend. So far, it has injected $85 billion in total into the companies, but Lockhart said that figure was likely to rise in the coming months.


Einige der Verluste werden also nicht zurückgezahlt werden können.
Hmmm....

Zitat:
Mr. Lockhart said Fannie and Freddie would likely see their reserves continue to decline next year, but could return to strong profits in two to three years. But he cautioned that the companies' thin capital and huge exposure to the mortgage market make it unlikely they will be able to repay the government in full.

Ich bin sicher, es gibt irgendeinen Fachbegriff für "starke Gewinne" von Unternehmen, die ihre Schulden nicht zurückzahlen können. Aber momentan wollen mir nur "Milchmädchenrechnung" und "Insolvenz" einfallen.

Zitat:
Mr. Lockhart said Fannie and Freddie aren't likely to burn through all $400 billion of government capital available under their agreement with the government. He cited stress tests that showed the total draws would remain below that level.

Naja, maximal 400 Mrd. Da geht's uns mit HRE ja noch gut...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31aig.html?ref=business
Zitat:
In the months since A.I.G. received its $182 billion rescue from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, state insurance regulators have said repeatedly that its core insurance operations were sound — that the financial disaster was caused primarily by a small unit that dealt in exotic derivatives.
Wir wissen ja, AIG war fundamental gesund, nur das Geschäft mit den Finanzmassenvernichtungswaffen war nicht so gut...

Aber was wissen wir schon sicher, jedenfalls bei Unternehmen, die der Bilanzierungspflicht unterliegen?

Zitat:But state regulatory filings offer a different picture. They show that A.I.G.’s individual insurance companies have been doing an unusual volume of business with each other for many years — investing in each other’s stocks; borrowing from each other’s investment portfolios; and guaranteeing each other’s insurance policies, even when they have lacked the means to make good. Insurance examiners working for the states have occasionally flagged these activities, to little effect.

AIG hat also schon mal recht eigenwillige Geschäfte zwischen den Geschäftsbereichen getätigt, zum Beispiel Garantien ausgesprochen, selbst wenn ein Geschäftsbereich wußte, daß er das gar nicht konnte.
Naja, nichts Neues auf der Welt, das macht der Staat ja ständig...

Zitat:
The companies’ weaknesses emerge in their filings with state insurance regulators — particularly when several are reviewed together. But that appears not to happen often, because there are so many. A.I.G. has more than 4,000 units in more than 100 countries.

Ok, 4000 Geschäftseinheiten... wer würde je gedacht haben, daß da irgendwelche Risiken verschleiert werden könnten?

Beispiel:

Zitat:... American Home Assurance, an A.I.G. subsidiary that has taken $23.1 billion of obligations off National Union’s hands. In a New York filing, American Home reports total assets of $26.3 billion, but part of that consists of assets that cannot be used to pay claims, like furniture. It too includes a number of investments in other A.I.G. companies.

In addition, American Home has “unconditionally” guaranteed the obligations of 16 other A.I.G. subsidiaries, bringing the total it might have to pay to $140.6 billion.

26 Mrd. Assets, 140 Mrd. Garantien.


http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/04/fdic-woefully-underfunded-problem.html
Zitat:
The latest Quarterly Banking Profile shows something most of us inherently knew: The FDIC is ill prepared for more bank failures.

  • The DIF Balance Declines by $16 Billion, and Insured Deposits Grow by 4.6 Percent in the Fourth Quarter
  • DIF Reserve Ratio Declines to 0.40 Percent
  • Twenty-Five Insured Institutions Fail During the Year; Another Five Insured Institutions under the Same Holding Company Receive Assistance

Die DIF Reserve Ratio ist das Verhältnis der Reserven des Deposit Insurance Funds zu den versicherten Einlagen. Es ist nun so niedrig, dass auf jeden Investierten Dollar 0.4 Cent Sicherheit kommen... Oh, und noch ein Quartal, und der DIF ist leer.

Die Deposit Insurance Fund Reserve Ratio

Ich zitiere mal ein paar Headlines aus http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/quarterly/2009_vol3_1/Quarterly_Vol3No1_entire_issue_FINAL.pdf:

Zitat von none:
Industry Reports First Quarterly Loss Since 1990
Provisions for Loan Losses Are More than Double Year-Earlier Total
Full-Year Earnings Fall to Lowest Level in 19 Years
Reserve Coverage Ratio Slips to 16-Year Low
Failures and Assistance Transactions Rose to 15-Year High in 2008

Ganz sicher ist die Krise vorbei oder wenigstens das Schlimmste überstanden!!!

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/07/hurt_by_the_ste_1.html
Zitat:Hurt by the steep decline in the stock market last summer, the Massachusetts state pension fund reported its worst year in its modern history.

The fund lost 23.6 percent, or $12.8 billion, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to Michael Travaglini, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Reserves Investment Management Board, which runs the state pension fund. Assets are now down to $37.8 billion.


http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/07/bank_walkaways_from_foreclosed.html
Zitat:Renetta Atterberry thought she had lost her East 102nd Street house. So she was shocked to learn in January -- five years after her mortgage company filed for foreclosure -- that it was still in her name.

Worse, the long-vacant rental home had been vandalized and she faced a raft of housing code violations. Since then, she has been saddled with debts of about $12,000 to pay for demolition and back taxes.

"I thought I had nothing else to do with that home," said Atterberry. "I was so embarrassed and humiliated by this."


Da wird man aus dem Haus geworfen, und bekommt 5 Jahre später eine Rechnung, weil man noch Hauseigentümer ist?

Zitat:Lenders or mortgage companies decide they don't want homes they have already foreclosed on, sometimes because the value has plummeted or they believe the homes could become costly liabilities if they are socked with housing code violations.
[...]
"It's a growing issue. It's all over the state. It's not just Cleveland," said State Rep. Mike Foley. "That kind of lack of respect for communities that banks have made a ton of money off of in the past is infuriating."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBURZpfwyFKc
Zitat:Banks have failed to make adequate provision for the losses on loans and securities they face before the end of next year, Moody’s Investors Service said.

U.S. banks may incur about $470 billion of losses and writedowns by the end of 2010, which may cause the banks to be unprofitable in the period, the ratings company said in a report published today.


Soso, 470 Mrd. Verluste und Abschreibung bis Ende 2010 läßt die Banken unprofitabel werden?
Wie wäre es statt dessen mit dem Wort insolvent.

btw: Die Summe dürfte einige der ganz, ganz großen Banken umfassen.


http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/03/16/todays-tic-data/
[TIC ist "Treasury International Capital" - Geldströmungsstatistik der US Treasury]
Interessant ist der Gegensatz zwischen den aktuellen Daten und den einen Monat älteren (Foreign money continues to pour into US).

Zitat:today’s TIC January data was a disaster. $150 billion in (net) capital outflows (-148.9 billion to be precise) cannot sustain even a $40 billion trade deficit.

Wenn ich Setser richtig interpretiere, beginnt die Flucht aus dem Dollar:

Zitat von Kapitalabflüsse:1) US investors bought a bunch of foreign bonds. That is a change. US investors had been net sellers of foreign bonds and equities through out the fall.

2) Banks stopped piling into US assets. In October — at the peak of the crisis — private investors abroad bought $64 billion US t-bills and increased their dollar deposits by $196 billion (see line 29 of the TIC data; “change in banks own (net) dollar-denominated liabilities). In January, credit conditions eased a bit, and private investors reduced their t-bill holds by $44 billion and the banks reduced their (net) dollar deposits by $119 billion.

Zitat von Zuflüsse:Incidentally China is still buying Treasuries. It bought $12.2 billion in January, including $11.6b in short-term Treasury bills. It also is still selling Agencies — its Agency holdings fell by $3.1 b.

Russia also, interestingly, added to its holdings of short-term Treasury bills. The Gulf reduced its dollar deposits (now at $114.3b, down from a peak of $125.5b in November) whether to support its domestic banks or to cover stretched budgets. The Gulf (and Brazil) also bought a decent number of long-term Treasuries. Most official buying, though, came at the short-end. In aggregate, the official sector sold $1.9 billion of long-term Treasuries while adding $29 billion to its short-term bills.


Interessant ist diese (nicht unerwartete) Feststellung:
Zitat:Indeed, the real legacy of the crisis has been an enormous contraction in long-term flows, with a corresponding increase in the United States reliance on short-term financing. And also a shift away from risk assets.

wir erinnern uns: So mancher Bank wurde zum Verhängnis, daß sie sich nicht mehr kurzfristig refinanzieren konnte... nun sind Staaten etwas anderes als Banken, aber ein richtiger Vertrauensbeweis ist das nicht.

http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2009/03/18/a-bit-more-to-worry-about-foreign-demand-for-long-term-treasuries-has-faded/#more-4981
Über den Kauf von US-Staatsanleihen durch Ausländer sagt diese Graphik genug...
Kauf von US-Staatsanleihen durch Ausländer

Zitat:The trade and current account deficit has fallen substantially as a result of the fall in oil prices, so the US needs less external financing now than in the past. But it still needs some.

The “quality” of the financial flows into the US consequently bears watching. A modest revival in foreign demand for longer-dated US assets would be a positive sign. To date, the sale of US assets abroad and a scramble for liquid dollar assets has provided the US with more than enough financing to sustain its deficit. Those flows though may not continue.

And if — as seems likely — foreign demand for Treasuries fades long before the US fiscal deficit, the US Treasury will need to sell an awful lot of Treasuries to American investors. For the past several years I have argued that it was almost impossible to overstate the impact of central bank demand on the Treasury market.

That may no longer be the case going forward.

The world is changing. Global reserves aren’t growing. The echo from their past peak that we observe in the current Treasury data will fade.


http://www.en.rian.ru/world/20090316/120572428.html
Zitat:Ukraine's national energy company Naftogaz has over $4 billion in debts, with two-thirds of this sum due to be repaid by the end of 2009, a Ukrainian business paper reported on Monday.

The Russian-language newspaper Delo, which is published in Ukraine, said that Ukraine's largest state company has to repay loans of over 25 billion hryvna ($3 billion) in 2009, with another 4 billion hryvna (about $500 million) due in interest payments.


Irgendwie beschleicht mich das Gefühl, daß die Ukraine derzeit eine sehr, sehr schwierige Zeit durchläuft.
Gruß, Uwe

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