Panskeptic

Ukraine: Overlooked, Yet a Promising Emerging Market

Without a firm grip on Ukraine, Russia largely loses its access to the Black Sea and associated naval bases. Considering Russia's resurgent nationalism and superpower ambitions, this is unimaginable. You must consider political risk in exactly how far Russia will allow Ukraine to wander. NATO or the EU, for example, appear way beyond Russia's tolerance level. None of this bodes well for the future of transparent capitalism in Ukraine. There is much sound political analysis at Stratfor.com.

How Economic Freedom Puts Money in Your Pocket

The Heritage Foundation is reknowned for shoddy work. They generally start from a conclusion and work backwards, assembling evidence to bolster what they already believe. Fortunately this article cites holes in their ideological fabric.

For those who do not believe that the world begins and ends with money, political freedom is far more important than economic freedom. Ask former employees of Enron, where Lay and Skilling's "individual liberty to pursue their own economic interests" did nothing to enhance prosperity for the larger society.

10-Year Compounded Return of Key Asset Classes

I have trouble seeing the last 10 years as a permanent condition of the market, to be used as a club to beat recent behavior. 3-, 5- and 10-year results can all be seen as anomalous.

If you want to talk about long term returns, it might be more useful to take a much longer period of time. But even then, those conditions are not going to recur. During the 100-year period from 1901 to 2000, the Swedish stock market is reported to have outperformed the U.S. Does that mean we should pile into Swedish stocks now?

If China goes through some kind of collapse and the US Congress attempts to pass protectionist legislation and hedge funds disappear overnight and, and, and, the toothpaste is still out of the tube - we're not going to reverse some major shifts that have already taken place and go back to economic structures of a decade or more ago.