Daily Dispatches

From The Associated Press
Monday, January 8, 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070108/ap_on_bi_ge/thailand_capital_controls_1

Thailand has no immediate plans to lift remaining capital controls imposed last month to curb the baht's appreciation, the central bank governor said Monday amid growing calls from foreign brokers to ease the restrictions.

Bank Gov. Tarisa Watanagase told reporters that the bank was considering revisions of "minor" measures but that the baht's relative stability since controls were imposed Dec. 19 shows that the much-criticized move was effective and necessary for the time being.

By Mandi Zonneveldt
Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia
Monday, January 8, 2007

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21023721-664,00.html

Market master Warren Buffett famously said: "A group of lemmings looks like a pack of individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth." The same anecdote has been used to describe the Australian resource industry's approach to hedging -- a risk minimisation strategy.

By Benn Steil
Financial Times, London
Friday, January 5, 2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/518a0102-9c61-11db-9c9b-0000779e2340.html

It is remarkable how the world's short history of floating exchange rates has affected popular thinking about what is eternally normal and proper in the economic system. Recently, China-bashing U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham wrote matter-of-factly that "one of the fundamental tenets of free trade is that currencies should float."

By Adrian Ash
The Market Oracle
Saturday, January 6, 2007

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article204.html

Only in finance do the losers get to write history. The government then prints their memoirs in the statute books, while a new volume of folly and greed is begun.

Witness Barnard's Act of 1734. It sought "to prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobbing" that had peaked and exploded with the South Sea Bubble of 1720. Investors had long since fled Change Alley, however, and gone back to trading government bonds instead.