Asset allocation has been a vexing issue for investors recently. Because of our expansionary monetary policy (low interest rates, printing money) and stimulative fiscal policy (unprecedented budget deficits), inflation is inevitable. Fixed income is not the place to be during inflationary cycles because bonds are pulverized under the pressures of inflation, as does the purchasing power of their coupon payments

NEW YORK — In another sign that CIT Group Inc. is struggling to restructure its debt, billionaire investor Carl Icahn offered the lender a $6 billion lifeline.

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newsweek.com : The great surprise of 2009 has been the resilience of the big emerging markets — India, China, Indonesia — whose economies have stayed vibrant. But one country has not just survived but thrived: China. The Chinese economy will grow at 8.5 percent this year, exports have rebounded to where they were in early 2008, foreign-exchange reserves have hit an all-time high of $2.3 trillion, and Beijing’s stimulus package has launched the next great phase of infrastructure building in the country


 
 So much for having some skin in the game. While investors typically like to see that mutual fund managers are eating a bit of their own cooking and investing in the funds they run, it turns out that the majority of fund managers actually do not have a single dollar of their personal assets in their funds. According to data from Morningstar, managers in 2,257 funds, or 51%, of the roughly 4,400mutual funds it has tracked for ownership levels over the last five years, have not personally invested in their own portfolios


 
 Just days after its acquisition by Guggenheim Partners LLC was finalized, Claymore Securities Inc. has rolled out a new China exchange-traded fund – a launch that will likely be just the first of many, now that the Claymore/Guggenheim marriage is official.

Mark Thoma over at The Economist’s View last week wrote a short essay that was long on good sense. He commented on a Simon Johnson post that in turn thrashed a Chamber of Commerce attack on the proposed consumer protection agency as bad for small business. Knowing that tangled thread isn’t really necessary to appreciate Thoma’s little piece.