另一例子是，高盛將於9月推出一種名為Fixed Income Global Structured Covered Obligations的結構性產品。老實說，這種葫蘆裏不知賣什麼藥的東西，譯為中文只會令人更加摸不着頭腦。據《華日》介紹，產品背後的資產，某段時間可以絕大部分為住宅按揭抵押證券，某段時間可以是主權債，其他時間可以是企業債券，名副其實一時一樣。投資者究竟買了什麼，像風一般難以捉摸。
老畢引述「股神」愛股表現，非為比而比。正如前述，任何投資者皆不可能年年贏季季勝。摘錄Bespoke的統計，只因美國資產管理公司Direxion 8月1日推出一隻名為iBillionaire Index ETF的交易所買賣基金（上市代號IBLN）。顧名思義，這隻基金的賣點是仿效超富投資者選股，以30隻為限，組成一個指數，ETF組合正是立足於此。
LONDON — While the 70th anniversary of D-Day last month received a lot of attention, another event, in July 1944 — the Bretton Woods conference, named for the mountain resort in New Hampshire where it was held — was perhaps even more significant in shaping the modern world. It not only led to the creation of what are now the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but it also confirmed the central position of the United States dollar in the international monetary system.
Why does this matter for us now? Just as America displaced Britain as the world’s pre-eminent economic power in the interwar period, so, too, the large debts and fiscal pressures confronting the West, and the rise of China and other economic powers, challenge us to think about the future of finance.
For most of the 19th century the British pound had been the world’s “reserve currency,” the currency in which trade and finance were denominated. “As sound as a pound” became a widely used expression. The pound was pegged to gold at a fixed rate of just under £4 per ounce.
At the outbreak of World War I, Britain abandoned the gold standard. You could no longer exchange pounds for gold. The gold standard was reintroduced in 1925, but this, as John Maynard Keynes observed, proved to be an economic mistake.
British prices and, more crucially, wages, would have to be forced down by 10 percent to maintain the competitiveness of British exports. As American agricultural and industrial exports soared in the 1920s and 1930s, the dollar effectively replaced the pound. It was American bankers who helped out the financially strapped Weimar Republic in the 1920s. The British, as exporters of capital, were a diminished force.
By the time of Bretton Woods, the United States held roughly 60 percent of the world’s gold supply. “Think of the gold in Fort Knox,” America’s chief negotiator at Bretton Woods, Harry Dexter White, said. “That is why we are in a powerful position.” He added, “We have the wherewithal to buy any currency we want.”
Bretton Woods fixed the dollar price of gold at $35 per ounce, and all the other major currencies — the pound, the franc, the mark, the yen — were subsequently pegged to the dollar, even though they could not be exchanged directly for gold. This system lasted until 1971. By then, America was under the financial strain of the Vietnam War and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. With mounting deficits and an adverse balance of trade, America struggled to maintain gold convertibility at the old rate of $35 an ounce. So President Richard M. Nixon abandoned the fixed dollar price of gold established at Bretton Woods (over the objections of the Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur F. Burns).
International critics said that the United States, by ending the dollar link to gold, was turning its back on its responsibilities as the guarantor of the international monetary system. Over the decades, the situation has gotten worse. The United States is $17.6 trillion in debt owed to the public, and large trade deficits are the norm. Yet there is no scope for revisiting the international monetary system, despite great dissatisfaction by countries like China and the Persian Gulf states, which hold large foreign currency reserves. Americans themselves question the security of the dollar when their country faces such large trade and budget deficits.
China’s nearly $4 trillion in reserves — accumulated through its mercantilist trade policies — give it plenty of ammunition to claim leadership in the creation of a new monetary order. The Chinese, however, are most unlikely to bid for monetary hegemony in the near future. For the past 25 years they have pursued a policy of aggressive export growth to drive their economy. China successively devalued its currency, from 1.50 renminbi to the dollar in 1980, to 8.72 in 1994. (Today the renminbi trades at 6.20 to the dollar, which the United States still considers artificially low.)
Could China someday peg its currency to gold, as Britain did in 1821? China has the reserves to do this, and it could have the political will, if the dollar proved to be unreliable as a store of value in the future.
Of course, Britain’s earlier adoption of the gold standard, in 1821, worsened a sharp deflationary period, during which, according to one calculation, consumer prices fell nearly 50 percent, between 1818 and 1822.
Nevertheless, to its supporters the gold standard ensured British fiscal and monetary dominance during the rest of the 19th century. As the British historian A.J.P. Taylor observed, 19th-century Britons believed that “a country could not flourish without a balanced budget and a gold currency.” Since Keynes, the West has tried to deny this proposition, with our reliance on deficit spending and “fiat” money, backed mainly by the expectation that a government will not default on its debts.
China is not as indebted as the West, but it is looking to “rebalance” its economy by raising demand by consumers, who want to enjoy the standard of living enjoyed across the Western world. Since 2010, the renminbi has appreciated 14 percent without drastically hurting Chinese exports.
Having expanded its manufacturing base and captured international markets, China may well find a world hooked on its products. It could eventually — in, say, 20 years — peg the renminbi to gold, considering it preferable to the dollar as a store of value, because of its permanence and longevity. With a balanced budget and a gold-backed currency, China’s economy could be even more formidable than it is today. Such a move would truly mark its return as the “Middle Kingdom.” Hard as it may be to contemplate today, this scenario would, in many ways, be a more secure basis for an international monetary regime system than the system of floating exchange rates that Nixon inadvertently created in 1971, one that forever overturned the Bretton Woods order.
Kwasi Kwarteng, a Conservative member of Parliament, is the author of “War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures and Debt.”
道指由2009年3月的低位6470點上升至2014年7月的17088點，升幅可觀，人人都知道「buy low and sell high, you can make a ton
of money!」美股經過64個月上升，後市又如何？是否仍然看好？I have no idea，相信亦沒有一位專家真正睇得通。
蛇年已去，馬年來臨；貝南奇已去，耶倫掌管儲局。耶倫於1977年加入成為經濟學家，1994年成為委員，其後出任三藩市聯邦儲備銀行行長，最後成為聯儲局副主席及今年2月１日出任主席。她的老師就是著名的James Tobin，在五六十年代以改良凱恩斯經濟理論出名；她的丈夫是George Arthur Akerlof，2001年獲諾貝爾經濟學獎，曾與Robert J. Shiller合作出書指出中國房地產泡沫非理性化。1996年起她一直支持格林斯平的寬鬆貨幣政策，認為如能提高就業率，利率降至負數又如何？2007年曾指出美國次按債券有極大風險，可惜當年不獲其他官員支持。相信在她任內，美國將繼續實施低利率政策。
How to find "Trade Idea"？新興市場社會經濟結構正逐步走向OECD國家，目前情況，即20%富有家庭、50%中產階級、30%窮人。以中國為例，至2025年估計中產階級人口約6.5億，他們的購買力正處於爆炸期。最先受惠行業是家電、電子產品，然後是汽車、房屋，旅遊等，過去10年來港買名牌產品、珠寶、手表、名牌奶粉甚至豪宅的內地人不計其數，香港不少行業因此受惠。
1997年起，香港進入知識帶來財富的時代，不是指一般知識，而是市場所需的知識，例如，去年第4季起「手遊股」升幅十分大，至於資源股、房地產股、金融股等is in the decline；甚至大部分人認為是賺錢之神李嘉誠先生，旗下和黃（013）股價由2000年139.35元至今14年亦只是上上落落，無力創新高。
Might the world’s major trading economies ever return
to a Gold Standard?
Notwithstanding the philosophical arguments in favour of a
return to the classical Gold Standard, there would be many hurdles, underpinned
by concerns over inflation and central banks’ expansive monetary policies.
At what gold price would countries return to the Gold
Standard, for example? Returning at today’s gold price does not seem feasible.
Concern over the value of fiat currencies would no doubt result in households
redeeming fiat currencies en masse for gold, which would quickly deplete
central banks’ gold reserves. They would soon be off the Gold Standard. But
returning at a higher price would have important wealth distribution
consequences for countries that hold or produce gold and those that don’t.
A return to the Gold Standard would also necessitate
agreement and participation among the world’s major trading economies. Attempts
to reach international agreement on changes to the global economic and
financial architecture usually have ended in failure, Bretton Woods being the
major exception8. This lack of international cooperation was the root cause of
the failure of the classical Gold Standard, and is probably the most
significant impediment to a new one ever being created.
Even if the problems of establishing a Gold Standard were
overcome, policy makers would still need to address the fundamental problem
that the annual growth in the gold stock – currently around one per cent per
year - would not necessarily match growth in the monetary base.
Gold does have a critical new role to play in the
international monetary system. The analysis of this new role is currently the
subject of much debate internationally, a debate in which the World Gold
Council is actively involved.
