March 11th, 2008

The Mississippi primary and i've been sick for days. Misery but hopefully spring is around the corner.


Thai govt mulling its own SWF to invest part of $100bn in FX reserves in high-risk securities with initial investment around 5-10bn.
- argument is stronger the THB becomes, the easier it will be to find cheap and value assets
- Thai economy is made up with 73% exports
Fed decision to inject $200bn in longer term money in to global banking system
- Fed MO appears to be announcing big decisions in hour or two before stock opening; Aug 17th rate cut, 12Dec TAF (Term Auction Facility)
23Jan 75bp suprise cut, all an hour or so before
- Commodity prices higher as Fed action was very inflationary as increased liquidity is necessarily inflationary;


KRW: higher on March dividend repatriation, lower KOSPI and outflows from foreigners sale of their stakes in Korean companies
CNY: "most volatile day in history" NDF cutve collapsed and everyone came out to sell
PHP: well bid on risk aversion even with USD getting crushed; 41.45 close
SGD: all-time low of 1.3785 before MAS stood up

- a common bourse will be created b/w 6 ASEAN members (Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) in order to increase the visibility of ASEAN as an asset class

"it would be a metastatic cancer on the body economic"