BRIEFS

Once again investors need to learn a vital lesson from what's going on in Detroit.

Profligate governments that will not voluntarily right their fiscal houses should have their financial feet held to the free-market flame. One way to do it is never, ever, no matter how enticing the offer, lend them your money for unsecured securities. 

Avoid investing in any institutional firms that might do so also. Forget the rating agencies; they've proved irrelevant for the most part.  Shareholders can send a message to companies that buy this unsecured government garbage.  We will avoid your products and dump your equities.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324688404578545373282545626.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0

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                             Addictive Nipple

 If  you already don't know, Ben Bernanke's set to speak next Wednesday. By some estimates Bernanke might be the second most powerful bureaucrat on the globe. People hang on every utterance.

The important utterance this time, as it has been for awhile, will be about liquidity--to continue or not to continue it, the economic equivalent of Hamlet.

Liquidity is the oxygen of any free market, but to paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many depended on so few for so much. The few, besides Big Ben, include Japanese, Chinese and EU central bankers.

Fear begets people heading for exits. The nipple can become addictive.
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