Farmer Diaries

Google analytics is cool, a bit of "porn" if you will, and I've notice that of late (I've not written anything in two months) Russia has been the biggest source of readers for my blog!  Now I should not get a big head about this, we are talking at most 50/60 readers a day, hardly a large population, still its funny to think what makes me attractive to them -- maybe my "non-American" voice (really Canadians think they are not Americans... we are a little delusional some times). Anyway, an amusing situation -- BTW the second largest reader base are Americans followed by Australia -- Canada is 6th. Back to work now!

Over the past few days new records have been set; Spain saw rates on its new 5y debt at 2.5%, the lowest ever -- and that's a country that has had a debt market for 500 years!  Italy saw its debt rate fall to a new low, the same day that the Italian government admitted that it owed more than $100 billion in late payments to its creditors (local suppliers).  What's going on, for a start there are no risks in Europe, the ECB has decided that it will buy all paper not absorbed by the market, making peripheral (higher yield) Europe a sure thing for institutional investors, this is particularly true for the short dated instrument (interests could still go up -- and destroy bond values).  But deflation is a greater risk (especially since European countries are locked-in with a single currency) its almost an objective of current policies. The above graph is very positive for Europe (not good, but positive) insofar as the total debt volume is down, mainly because core Europe ...