The sudden changes, or call for changes, in Northern Africa and the lasting European worries seem to me concrete uncertainties…

And today a tech issue is preventing the update of the NASDAQ index, although you can trade individual securities.

So, early weekend for investors, I guess.

(1) IMF (International Monetary Fund) recommendations for the Asian Economies.

These recommendations include “fiscal stimulus plans”, which translates to lower taxes and easier credit, so that individuals and businesses can have more money available.
Available for what? For spending/investing: on IMF’s view, Asia should “boost domestic consumption”.

These are classic prescriptions, on the assumption that spending is good.

I am in no condition to argue about the pros and cons of spending, but because I am reading “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” [CEHM], I now know there can be a sinister interpretation to these recommendations…
CEHM can be a disturbing book, where the reader learns about existing professionals named “EHM” – Economic Hit Men [and Women]… – whose careers are about creating the argument for spending, usually in “less developed” geographies. If the EHM’s arguments work, the targeted countries will spend huge amounts of money in infrastructures, hardware, software, services, etc, that will be bought to the companies that pay the EHM salaries, more or less directly.
The dark side is that the money that will pay the investments will be borrowed and the projects are designed in such a fashion, that it will be nearly impossible for the borrower to pay them back, on time, so interest will be collected.
Things get more sinister yet: EHMs never intend the borrowers to pay the money. It  is all designed to push to tangible concessions, like allowing oil explorations on foreign ground, United Nations votes and other long term means.
It is frightening that the CEHM book was written by an assumed ex-EHM, John Perkins, that documents his acts…
We do live in a very complex world where virtually nothing is what is seems. Ah, and if the EHM fails, the reader is told that then come the “Jackals” (professionals that get physical…), and if those fail, “then it is time for the military”.

(2) BAIDU is going down.

BAIDU, the gigantic chinese search engine, partly owned by Google, is said to be suffering, not only in terms of its stock price, that collapsed 45% in 12 months, but mainly in number of users and their loyalty, because of some unexpected practices, like putting payed links as search results.

So, BAIDU’s lead over Google, in China, is shrinking.

(3) Singapore is one of the world’s leading knowledge based economies. I imported my CASIO from Singapore … and the local circuit, that hosted the first ever F1 night race, was voted 2008’s Formula 1 race of the year. But Bloomberg’s main Singapore topic this week was the problems with Temasek, [as I understood] the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, whose CEO was Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Ho Ching stepped down this week.

I only mention this one because of the Temasek Polytechnic edu website, which I enjoy visiting, just for the difference that it is going to oriental scholar websites, like Temasek’s Business School.

(4) More money from Qatar to Citigroup? There was a piece on it, with an interview with Basher Barakat from Dresdner Bank.
Banks are on the [bad] news for over 1 year now. Will the Obama administration dare the “bad bank” solution? Just incredible what has been happening. Once there was Bear Stearns and Merryl Linch… today Goldman Sachs is the single big investment bank on the USA.

(5) Paul Tufano, CFO at Alcatel-Lucent was also interviewed. Is it good for Alcatel-Lucent that its main rival, Nortel, just filled for bankruptcy?

I will be paying 19.74 EUR for the two batteries, delivered from Hong Kong to Portugal.

The price is computed this way:
2x 1200 Mah batteries = 12.82 USD
delivery = 11.50 USD
optional insurance = 1.50 USD
total = 25.82 USD
eBay/Paypal EUR/USD exchange rate = 1.30820

So, in euros, I’ll be paying 25.82/1.30820 = 19.737 euros = 19.74 euros.

The interesting part is the EUR/USD that eBay and Paypal used: 1.30820.

This value has no relation with the real EUR/USD in the past 5 days

Check http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EURUSD=X for tracking these currencies.
Check http://www.xe.com for the realtime EUR/USD relation.

The pictures below are snaps from http://finance.yahoo.com/.

DOW’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):

NASDAQ’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):

SP500’s 2008 (bottom on 2008–11):