Morning Reading – Monday, March 14, 2011
Bloomberg: Japan Battles Nuclear Meltdown as Millions Without Power, Water
Bloomberg: Japan Adds $183 Billion to Economy, Doubles Asset Purchases
The Big Picture: Japan’s Emergency Warning System Gave 30 Seconds Quake Warning
Japans’ system detects P-waves, and then alerts you on your computer before the bigger S-waves arrive. They also do this on every TV station, and will send texts to your mobile phone. Better to have 30 seconds warning than no warning.
FT Alphaville: Super-catastrophe and super-banking risk
We ♥ John Hempton.
So we thought we’d present the Australian hedge fund manager’s latest thoughts on the financial fallout (no pun intended) from Japan’s devestating earthquake…
FT Alphaville: Greek debt: restructured
Given questions over Irish sovereign credit events (for which there’s full background here, via Lorcan)…
…Did anyone notice this weekend’s Greek debt restructuring?
Newsweek: How to Get Gaddafi
Mr. President, don’t send guns to the Libyans. Send them a piece of paper.
JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN: Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – In the Silver Pit No One Can Hear You Screaming
Someone might actually demand legitimate reform. Oh, they already did. Well, perhaps they might actually do something to force the issue, like pick a key vulnerability like the silver market, and take these jokers to the wall. Oh, they’re doing that as well. This is going to be quite the ride then.
Kid Dynamite’s World: PSLV – Sprott Registers to Sell – Sold To You Sucka
Whoops. Why would he do that? Well, as I noted at length, the shares are trading at a huge premium to their Net Asset Value. A few savvy commenters asked “Why doesn’t Sprott arb the premium himself through a secondary?” The thing is, if PSLV does a secondary offering of new shares to the public, that money goes to the Trust, and Sprott doesn’t really “arb” anything. Here, however, if Sprott sells his holdings into the market, he can receive whatever premium the market is willing to fork over, and then reinvest the proceeds into silver bullion himself. Sell at 120 cents on the dollar, buy back at 100 cents on the dollar. Rinse, repeat.
I told you Eric Sprott was a smart man.
Sold to you, Sucka.