Good morning. The Wall Street Journal certainly makes it sound horrible: “Get Ready for the Next Round of Bond Pain“

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323309404578612232070828010.html

The sell-off in the US (and international) bond markets is getting more attention again…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-05/treasury-sells-offs-context-and-why-there-much-more-room-fall

The latest Senior Loans Officer’s survey is out, showing the health of US banks

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/snloansurvey/201308/fullreport.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-usa-fed-credit-idUSBRE9740UE20130805
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/08/fed-survey-banks-eased-lending.html

Two interesting country studies by the IMF: France…

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2013/cr13251.pdf

…and Japan…

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2013/cr13253.pdf

Interesting to see which asset classes made the best returns over the past ten years (last column)

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/08/asset-class-returns-2/

Zerohedge finds this picture worrisome. I miss the point: think it is rather comforting…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-05/another-looming-credit-crunch

Very nice chart showing controversial wikipedia entries by language group. The French are into UFO’s!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/08/daily-chart-1

I admit that there is a bit of a disconnect in this chart. No, GDP growth is not a good proxy for stock returns, but a decline of growth…?

http://www.businessinsider.com/gdp-growth-expectations-vs-the-sp-500-2013-8

Old data, but still worth to take a look at: how much laughing take place during the FOMC meetings…

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/the-fed-laughter-index.html

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