Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2 - The UK Emergency Budget

Fisher Capital Management Report  Part 2- The UK has had an emergency budget and it could have been much worse. The heavy lifting is being done by a rise in VAT bringing in £13 billion. On the spending side the cuts are achieved by freezing public sector pay, indexing state benefits to the CPI rather than the faster-rising RPI and freezing child benefits. State pensions will be indexed to the higher of wages or the CPI but the pension age will

be raised to 66 fairly soon.

Interest rates are projected to remain low, with inflation absent; and it is possible that Quantitative Easing will need to be resumed but on present prospects this seems unlikely to be necessary. Another concern is with the regulative proposals. There is an antibank mentality developing in this coalition government, which is

most unfortunate; much of it seems to emanate from Vince Cable and the Lib Dems.

Yet a moment’s thought should be enough to convince one that we need bank credit expansion and a return to competition on the bank high street in order to foster recovery and enterprise. Ever tougher bank regulation is what was needed before, at the peak of   expansion, not now in the slough of recession giving way to recovery.

Talk of breaking up banks fails to recognise the natural economics of banks, which favours scale and risk-spreading. Talk of capping mortgage lending at modest percentages of income is also unfortunate when the UK want to see a revival of it’s housing market, now once again back in the doldrums.

A last area of concern is the state of the labour market. The UK do have near ‘full employment’ if one discounts the modest temporary effect of recession. But this only applies to those normally looking for work.

Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2 - The UK Emergency Budget: There is now a large group of people who  are claiming benefits of various sorts in order to stay out of the labour market. Disability benefit is one route;  nother is the having of children in order to get child benefits and related parenting allowances, with tragic consequences for some children.

Tightening up of this has been signalled in the budget but this has happened before, with no proper follow-through.

Another UK labour market problem is the resurgence of union power as Labour loosened the union laws passed before 1997. One key loosening was the 12-week rule, which allows workers to breach  their contracts with impunity when on strike until 12 weeks of strike have occurred. When strikes are designed for short periods for maximum disruption, this 12 week period can take a long time to trigger. During it the employing firm is unable to defend itself by recruiting a different labour force.

Under the pre-1997 legislation firms were able to dismiss workers in breach of contract, provided they did so in a non-discriminatory way. This led to a huge reduction in strikes and a large rise in UK productivity, to the great general benefit.

As we have seen in recent years, certain unions are exploiting this 12-week rule to damage the economy — the classic case has been the BA dispute where UNITE has persisted in attempting to defend well-above market wages for cabin crew.

In sum the budget was a decent start in restoring fiscal sanity. But only a start.

The UK now needs urgent attention to the creation of a proper tax system with low marginal rates but generating a reliable revenue source — the two are perfectly compatible. It needs sense and restraint in regulation. Finally they need to reform their labour market yet again.

Fisher Capital Management - Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1

Fisher Capital Management Eight and a half months after riding the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) historic lower house victory into office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced his resignation, having haphazardly frittered away a chest brimming with political capital.

Major newspapers said that Hatoyama was resigning mainly for two reasons: his failure to keep his promise to relocate the functions of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, out of Okinawa Prefecture, and a political funding scandal that included his mother’s provision of some ¥1.26 billion to him over years.

Following Hatoyama’s resignation, Minister of Finance Naoto Kan was elected as the new Prime Minister, the fifth in four years. At his inaugural press conference Kan proposed a comprehensive reconstruction of the economy, public finance, and social security as his priority, in addition to reforming public administration, and conducting responsible diplomatic and defence policy.

Fisher Capital Management Report- Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1: The biggest question surrounding the once-popular new government is whether Kan can really turn over a new leaf for the DPJ. In his first policy speech to the Diet as prime minister, Kan sought to set his administration apart from the previous one by vowing to build “a strong economy, strong finances and strong social welfare”.

Kan stressed the need to jolt Japan out of its currently weak state, which he attributed to “anaemic economic growth, ballooning public debt and dwindling public trust in the viability of Japan's social security system”.

Observers and practitioners believe that the government is unlikely to announce any significant new policy initiatives, as Kan was already one of the main architects behind the previous administration’s economic policy, although some changes have just been announced in the DPJ election manifesto for the Upper House

election. For instance it drops the promise of doubling monthly child allowances to ¥26000 next year.

“I hope to carry over the torch of rebuilding Japan passed on to me by Hatoyama”, he observed at a press conference after his election. Alan Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in Japan, says that “although Kan’s initial speech did include some new elements, the main message was continuity with Hatoyama’s economic policies. Investors are likely to welcome the innovations, but to remain sceptical of the overall philosophy”.

However, economists believe Kan will face a mountain of challenges both at home and abroad in the near future. First, he needs to rebuild that political capital ahead of the upper house elections. Public support for the DPJ has recovered sharply after his appointment suggesting that voters have, for now, forgiven the ruling Democrats for the previous leaders’ policy mistakes. But it remains to be seen whether the initial popularity of the Kan administration will translate into a strong performance, and whether Kan will ultimately be given a strong enough mandate to push through difficult policy decisions.

Major newspaper polls give Prime Minister approval ratings of between 60 and 70 percent; but such ratings can be very fickle. The election will be an uphill battle for the DPJ. The DPJ is without one of its coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party who left the ruling camp over Hatoyama’s failure to remove the US base from Okinawa, as demanded by its leader, Mizuho Fukushima. The two parties that remain, the DPJ and the People’s New Party, hold 122 of the upper house’s 242 seats, the slimmest majority possible. Should the coalition lose that majority in the coming election, it would mean a split Diet — its majority would only remain in the lower house. And that would make passing bills extremely difficult.

Fisher Capital Management Report- Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1: Kan will have plenty on the economic front too. In terms of fiscal policy, as a former Finance minister he has turned into a fiscal conservative, having been a champion of funnelling revenue from higher taxes toward government spending in order to achieve economic growth. “Economic growth, fiscal reconstruction and social welfare reform will be achieved together”, he told reporters. 

Fisher Capital Equipment Update - Machine Components Industry in China Problems

Fisher Capital Equipment Management Update- Machine Components Industry in China Problems and their causes - the machinery, basic parts - construction machinery industry. Avoid online internet scams; get latest updates on Fisher Capital Equipment Management website. As our country on the basis of pieces of machinery in Machinery Industry Awareness of the importance of late, long-term lack of investment, leading the entire industry based on poor, weak economic foundation and strength of the weak. In particular, as the host country rises the level of basic pieces of machinery behind the main bottleneck is becoming more apparent. In recent years, although the introduction of technology, technological innovation, scientific research and development, our country has given some support, but with the current level of market demand and overseas, there remains no small gap, in particular in: less product variety, low level quality of instability, early failure rate, and poor reliability.

 China Machine Components product variety, small size, especially a big gap between high-end products can not meet the growing needs of the host. At present, various types of host based piece of performance indicators is roughly equivalent to the level of foreign 20th century 80s. Quality of instability, early failure rate, reliability is poor, the Achilles heel of basic items. Therefore, many OEMs to enhance the market competitiveness of its host, often choose to import the basis of supporting documents, resulting in domestic basic parts, especially the low-tech products, the domestic market share declined. Although China's exports of basic items has obvious advantages, but mainly labor-intensive products, the number of large, low-value, technology added value.

Present, China Machine Components Industry of the following main issues: First, redundant construction seriously, the low degree of specialization, not form scale, low economic efficiency, Machine Components, compared with the host enterprises to establish an initial financial and technical inputs required relatively few times in the national economic development period, have increased the number of basic parts manufacturer, also appeared along a large number of low-level duplicated construction, multi-point, volume is small, not form economies of scale. Basic pieces of business, while gradually independent of the OE, but most of the enterprise itself is large and, small but complete, low degree of specialization, the level of equipment is not high, the quality of instability, low economic efficiency. If China Bearing Annual output of three large enterprise sector bearing less than the sum of a well-known foreign companies 50%. The past two years, China built nearly one hundred Hydraulic Parts Plant, but the annual output of 300,000 or more only a few, the main product is Agricultural Machinery Matching. The company's annual output of Germany Rexroth hydraulic items 1.3 million, the Japanese oil research (strain) is also an annual output of 600,000 or more. Industrialized countries die of about 150 000 companies per capita output to 20 million, China's only 4 million to 50 thousand yuan. In recent years, with a variety of common development policies, the ownership, basic parts industry is experiencing increasingly focus from scattered to the intensive development process.

Fisher Capital Equipment Management Update- Machine Components Industry in China Problems and their causes - the machinery, basic parts - construction machinery industry Avoid online internet scams, get latest updates on Fisher Capital Equipment Management website.

Second, weak research and development, insufficient capital investment, technological progress is slow. Basic pieces of 70 different industries in the late 20th century, early 80s to early introduction of a number of foreign advanced technologies, but the lack of adequate absorption of the hardware and software investment. According to foreign experience, required for digestion and absorption of imported technology and capital ratio of approximately 1:7, and our understanding of this late, slow digestion and absorption steps. Technical strength of competition in the market is actually a contest. Have attached great importance to overseas, have increased investment, occupy high ground. Various well-known companies for research and development funds account for its Sell Amount of 4% to 5%, 10% in key areas. Although many institutions of higher learning in China at present engaged in research work, a lot of theoretical research, scientific research, patents, and papers have a very high level, but actual production is not tightly integrated, especially into commodities slow.

Third and related raw materials, backward technology, low level of technology and technological equipment the foundation of the development constraints.

Fasteners, chains, springs, bearings, molds and other steel products used by the poor quality specifications less direct impact on the quality of basic items, while the hydraulic pressure and hydraulic pressure castings and quality of products related to electronic control technology backward, but also directly affect the quality and reliability of hydraulic components. Mechanical parts are generally based on batch, mass production, but also more variety, high precision machining products, and therefore require high technology and equipment production, large investment. Foreign multi-use high efficiency and precision of the plane, line or soft line for efficient automated production. However, some basic pieces of our business by financial constraints input small businesses transform themselves poor, less advanced equipment not matching, affect product quality and quality.

New Commercial Boilers Presented - Triad Boiler Room Systems by Fisher Capital

Fisher Capital on Boiler Room Equipment, Inc: Triad Boiler Systems creates distinctively tough small-footprint hot water boilers, steam boilers, and radiant heating systems.

All of our boilers use 12 gauge firetubes in compact vessels that suit through very small doorways! Inputs range up to 2,000,000 BTU's. Create a highly efficient system with millions of BTU's by sequencing a string of these modular vessels.

TRIAD's commercial boilers and industrial grade Hot Water Heating, Domestic Hot Water, and Steam boilers are used in a wide variety of applications. Our commercial boilers are used at schools, universities, apartments, hospitals, office buildings, retirement communities, and churches. Industrial uses have included bakeries, smelting operations, food processing, quenching systems, and various heating applications for manufacturing. Triads’ modular boilers and radiant heating systems can be natural gas fired, oil fired, or dual fuel fired. For simplicity of operation and maintenance, all controls on our boilers are well known, off-the-shelf products. There area no proprietary parts on these boilers! This simplicity of operation is part of our philosophy, and an important reason why our customers return to us again and again.

TRIAD has been manufacturing high-quality boilers since 1926, and developed the modular boiler concept with primary/secondary piping, receiving a patent for it in 1967. We put this experience, knowledge, and expertise into every boiler.

We believe in quality - it is the overriding characteristic driving our company. This is why we manufacture extremely rugged, well-designed hot water and steam boilers that can provide decades of dependable service. We welcome your inquiries.

Benefits of Modularity

TRIAD's elegantly simple design maintains consistent water volume where heat is required.

•           Boilers are activated sequentially, drawing water from the main loop into the next hot water boiler until the heating need is meet.

•           firing boilers remaining isolated, so no heated water circulates through cold boilers.

•           During most of the year the unfired boilers provide additional backup.

•           Outdoor temperatures and loop water temperatures are constantly monitored.

Fisher Capital on Boiler Room Equipment, Inc: The efficiency of this design is most apparent during warmer months, when a conventional hydronic heating or steam boiler could still be operating at full capacity.

Primary-Secondary Piping - TRIAD integrates modularity with a single pipe primary-secondary system. TRIAD was the first company to employ a Primary-Secondary concept. It operates with two loops, (i) the primary loop, or building main loop, and (ii) smaller secondary loops off of each hot water boiler, which supply heated water to the primary loop.

Upon a call for heat, the boiler pump begins pushing the return water into the boiler and out through the secondary loop, supplying this hot water up into the primary loop (the main header), where it mixes with the cooler return water from the main loop of the building.

•           Supply and return water are blended, avoiding the need for expensive and unreliable mixing valves commonly used in two pipe systems.

•           The secondary loop isolates each hot water boiler, resulting in a very efficient system that minimizes thermal shock.

Control Panel

TRIAD Boilers can be sequenced by the use of our control panel that provides many attractive features:

•           Temperature set-back when less heat is required, such as nights and weekends.

•           Adjustments for latent heat, to take advantage of hot boiler water that retains heat after the burner shuts down.

•           Outdoor reset based on atmospheric temperatures.

•           Monitoring of return water temperatures to maintain accurate heating output.

It is also very easy to sequence our boilers using the panel of any other major manufacturer.

Packaged Product - Fisher Capital on Boiler Room Equipment, Inc: All TRIAD hot water boilers and steam boilers are fully assembled, packaged products, which offer several advantages over boilers that must be assembled at the jobsite

•           Onsite labor costs are minimized.

•           Quality control is higher at the factory than at the jobsite

•           The ease of installation of a packaged boiler allows for quicker start up.

Benefits of Steel Boilers

Easy to Clean - To maintain boiler efficiency, heating surfaces must be kept clean and free of combustion by-products. All TRIAD heating surfaces, especially the firetubes, are easy to access. It is impossible to clean all the heating surfaces of a cast iron boiler, and what can be reached is difficult to clean.

TRIAD also makes it easy to maintain clean water surfaces. The cleaning of the interior of a cast iron boiler is a major undertaking, and even then only the vertical surfaces can be cleaned. The inability to clean the horizontal surfaces can have a significant impact on operating efficiency.

Easy to Repair - Because of their steel construction, TRIAD hot water and steam boilers can be repaired in the field with minimal disruption. A leak can be permanently welded or the tubes re-rolled with little difficulty. It is impossible to permanently weld a cracked cast iron boiler section or a leaking copper fin-tube boiler. The firetubes are easily accessed through the top and through the firedoor.

Fast Water Circulation - Poor circulation of water within the typical cast iron boiler is very common due to their design limits, while TRIAD's steel hot water boilers provide for faster circulation.

Boiler Room Equipment: HeatSponge SIDEKICK Eventually Exposed

Boiler Room Equipment, Inc, is very pleased to eventually introduce the SIDEKICK type of condensing boiler economizers for industrial and conventional warm water boilers. Fisher Capital on Boiler Room Equipment, Inc, - The Sidekick continues to be in advancement for almost a couple of years and shows an transformative growth of high-proficiency installations in the boiler market. The SIDEKICK is a warning game changer the likes of which have not been knowledgeable since the launch of the very first condensing boilers. The SIDEKICK provides the capability to combine condensing boiler efficiencies to conventional boilers on a new or retrofit basis. The SIDEKICK enables a person with a conventional boiler system the power to recognize condensing efficiency gains that normally would demand the existing boiler to be destroyed and changed with a brand new condensing boiler. Conventional, non-condensing boilers can now realize the efficiency benefits of outdoor air temperature reset controls and lower circulating hot water loop temperatures. Sidekicks also allow for duel fuel condensing applications utilizing conventional boilers. The SIDEKICK features all stainless internal construction, stainless tubes and fins, and an insulated outer casing. Inspection and clean out ports make periodic maintenance and cleaning easy.

The effectiveness of the SIDEKICK moves far beyond simply energy retrieval to the ultra-productive procedure by which it really is chosen and created. Temperature recovery for condensing purposes presents a substantial quantity of variables that creates a catalog-approach to products collection nearly impossible. Boilerroom Equipment has developed a new method of quantifying heat recovery, the Recovery Rate, and integrated this into the design. The development of the Recovery Rate variable permits a customer to customize the level of heat recovery and cost straight to the specifications of each particular application. We establish this fresh idea in heat recovery design as 3D Modularity, for modular construction in three dimensions. Based on a "Mass-Customization" approach to product development, Bruce will consider all of the application design constraints and will design a SIDEKICK enhanced to satisfy the exact overall performance needs at the most reasonably competitive selling price. Bruce has been given the ability to consider all aspects of the heat exchanger design relative to the price of the equipment and generate a fully priced proposal all in real-time; a software and engineering accomplishment that added over one thousand hours of coding and heat transfer modification to Bruce's core program. This means Bruce can handle all inquiries and generate proposals in real time by himself. The near elimination of sales and support overhead and significantly reduced project execution overhead requirements the Bruce software provides allows us to offer a product superior to any before it at pricing and responsiveness levels no conventional competitor could hope to match.

The UK Emergency Budget - Fisher Capital Management Report Part 1

Fisher Capital Management Report - The UK has had an emergency budget and it could have been much worse. The heavy lifting is being done by a rise in VAT bringing in £13 billion. On the spending side the cuts are achieved by freezing public sector pay, indexing state benefits to the CPI rather than the faster-rising RPI and freezing child benefits. State pensions will be indexed to the higher of wages or the CPI but the pension age will be raised to 66 fairly soon.

The disappointment for the UK is on the tax side where compromises with the worst aspects of the Lib Dems are apparent. CGT goes up to 28% for top earners … a mistake.

The UK Emergency Budget - Fisher Capital Management Report: The 50% top tax rate and associated rise in the top marginal rate on pensions have been left alone. There is a Bank Levy bringing in £2 billion … defensible, just, at this level but it needs remembering that taxpayers generally make money out of bailouts because they get assets at knock-down prices and are able to hold them until times are better. Then there are cuts in corporation taxes on both large and big firms, which is to be welcomed.

But there is no clear logic here; no sense that the tax system is to be remoulded, to give incentives for entrepreneurs, inward investors to the UK and indeed home investors.

The main question that most people will be asking is whether the fiscal arithmetic will come off and the deficit come down as planned to 1.1% of GDP by 2015/16. The answer depends entirely now on growth. Contrary to most people’s comments, cutting spending as planned is not really that difficult.

The UK Emergency Budget - Fisher Capital Management Report: Much of it will involve simply freezing rogrammes in real terms and also cutting pay in real terms, which the announced freeze on pay will do. Probably some programmes can actually be cut without much trouble given the considerable decline in public sector productivity in the last decade … in other words value for money in the public sector has never been worse.

The main issue is whether UK GDP will grow as forecast, at 2–3% in the next few years. If it does, then revenues will recover substantially.

Already the PSBR figures have come in some £10 billion below the original projections and that seems to be because the original growth figures for 2010 were too low.

There are good reasons for thinking growth of this order will occur. The world economy is recovering rapidly, led by the East — China, India and East Asia. These countries are achieving extremely rapid rates of productivity growth by moving people out of low productivity agriculture mainly into high-productivity manufacturing. Hence their fast growth.

The problem for the West is that these countries also pre-empt available supplies of raw materials such as oil. So if the West grows any faster than its present moderate recovery, it would trigger renewed surges in raw material prices, which in turn would reduce Western productivity growth (factories are less profitable as those prices rise).

So there is a built-in drag on western growth. But nevertheless growth of the 2–3% order is in line with productivity growth at current raw material prices.

One concern for the UK is whether the spending cuts and tax rises themselves will derail the recovery. This is something that Labour is emphasizing.

However, the programme is spread out over five years and this should be gradual enough to be absorbed with monetary policy remaining supportive.

China - World's First Internal Combustion Engine Manufacturing Power by Fisher Capital Equipment Update

Fisher Capital Equipment Management Update- China has become the world's first internal combustion engine manufacturing power - engine oil - construction machinery industry. Avoid online internet scams; get latest updates on Fisher Capital Equipment Management website.  At Tianjin University in a few days ago " Energy Power "Academic Forum, Tianjin University, State Key Laboratory of Combustion Yao Ming-Fa fellow director, said China's current annual production has more than 60 million internal combustion units, is the world's first internal combustion engine manufacturing country. With internal combustion engine as the power source of the power system in the next 30-50 years is still the main driving force for most, it will be the internal combustion engine energy saving energy saving in China the main battlefield of the future

 "Energy and Power," Academic Forum, Tianjin University to celebrate the State Key Laboratory of Combustion opened in 20 years held. Forums, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences Gob, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Hui Guo, Tianjin University, State Key Laboratory of Combustion chief scientist Wan-Hua Su, China FAW Car Research chief engineer Li Kang and other experts, including prior agreement will concern the focus of great concern in the current domestic and international economic  and energy savings on carbon.

China - world's first internal combustion engine manufacturing power – Fisher Capital Equipment Update. Avoid online internet scams; get latest updates on Fisher Capital Equipment Management website. Researcher, according to Yao Ming-Fa, the internal combustion engine Oil Oil consumption is about 66% of total consumption, China's dependence on oil imports more than 50%. Engine emissions and noise are also major sources of air and the environment, the city more than 50% of the harmful gases from motor vehicle emissions from combustion engines. "But the burning Engine Still the main power source in the future, fuel efficient and clean burning combustion technology is still theoretical and academic frontier. Conventional internal combustion engine is still 50% of the energy potential of renewable fuels, new synthetic fuel efficient and clean combustion is an important aspect of new energy to pursue low-carbon power has become an important international political issues, combustion engine fuel diversification energy diversification is a trend. “

 Laboratory Academic Committee, Chinese Academy of Sciences said Xu Jianzhong, although in recent decades, fossil energy is still the main source of energy, but from now on to create carbon-free, low-carbon energy system, the occupation of energy technology and industrial high ground, China's Industrial development.

1989 Tianjin University completed an open State Key Laboratory of Engine Combustion engine of China's only State Key Laboratory of the field. Combination of the laboratory "energy", "environment" and "power" major national needs and international academic front, the main research interests include internal combustion engine combustion process and optimum control of the internal combustion engine generates harmful emissions, and atmospheric environmental impact post-processing technology research, alternative fuels and new engine Power Plant Study, dynamic mechanical structural strength, vibration, noise and lubrication technology research.

Experts at the forum agreed that the green energy and low-carbon economy is becoming the leading technology and industrial revolution in the next major direction of our country is facing domestic pressure to reduce carbon emissions, carbon emissions will be the internal combustion engine technology to drive future the development of one of the main sources of power. The face of this international situation, Yao Ming-fa introducing the laboratory researcher, said the future direction of development, energy-efficient internal combustion engine and reduce harmful emissions and reducing carbon emissions are the characteristics of the laboratory, while the aircraft engines, space propulsion in the field expansion side laboratory has also made encouraging progress. "We will continue to innovate and operational mechanisms to accelerate the pace of development, take on the achievement of national goals of scientific research and high-level personnel training duty. Efforts to build a world-class laboratory research center of the engine, to meet China in the 'energy,' 'Environment' and 'advanced power' to make a significant contribution to the demand. "

Fisher Capital Management- Financial Market August 2010

Fisher Capital Management- Financial Markets: Sentiment in the financial markets has improved over the past month. The global economic recovery is continuing, so far there have been no sovereign debt defaults, and there has been a modest recovery in the euro. Investors and traders therefore appear to have concluded that the gloom was overdone.

But there has been evidence of a worsening situation in Spain, and the decision by the Chinese authorities to adopt a “more flexible” towards renminbi has also raised some concerns about the growth prospects for the Chinese economy.

Fisher Capital Management- Equity Markets: All the major equity markets, and the emerging markets, have improved over the past month. Wall Street has outperformed markets elsewhere because of some welcome economic data; there have been strong gains in most of the mainland European markets as the sovereign debt crisis has appeared to ease; the UK market has welcomed the measures by the new coalition government to address the problems of the huge UK fiscal deficit; and the Japanese market has also moved slightly higher. Corporate results have been satisfactory; and this has helped to improve sentiment

amongst investors.

Government Bond Markets have had another unusual month. The sovereign debt crisis might have been expected to lead to a general weakness in bond markets; but the main effect has been to produce aggressive switching for the “weaker” markets to the “stronger” ones, and a further widening of the yield curve.

As a result the major markets are unchanged or only slightly lower at a time when the “weaker” markets, especially in Southern Europe, have continued their sharp declines. Slow economic growth and

Low short-term interest rates are continuing to provide support. Currencies: The improvement in sentiment in the markets has led to a movement of funds out of the “safe havens” of the dollar and the yen into commodity-related currencies and “riskier” assets. Both the dollar and the yen are therefore slightly weaker over the

Month; and this movement has also eased some of the pressure on the euro, and allowed it to recover.

Sterling has also improved as the markets have welcomed the measures introduced by the new UK government to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Fisher Capital Management- Short-Term Interest Rates: There have been no changes in short term interest rates over the past month in the major financial markets.

Fisher Capital Management- Commodity markets: have produced a mixed performance over the past month, with some weakness in base metal prices, but strong gains in the prices of cocoa, coffee, oil and precious metals.

Fisher Capital Management: Government Bond Markets Global Outlook Part2

Fisher Capital Management: Government Bond Markets Global Outlook Part 2 - Our position remains unchanged; any existing exposure to bonds should be further reduced in favor of US & Euro equities.

The European Central Bank appears to share this view, although it has warned that the recovery “is likely to remain uneven”, and has kept short-term rates at very low levels. The bond markets have therefore continued to receive considerable support from the economic background and the actions of the central bank.

Fisher Capital Management Seoul, South Korea: However, these factors have been much less important than the fears about the debt problems in Greece and in other weaker members of the euro-zone. After considerable prevarication, due primarily to strong German opposition to a bail-out; an agreement has been reached amongst the member countries that, in conjunction with the IMF, they will provide support for Greece if this becomes necessary to prevent a defaulton its sovereign debts.

But the details of the agreement are very vague, and there is certainly no guarantee that the country can carry out its promises to introduce significant reductions in spending levels to reduce the size of its debts. The agreement has helped the country to issue a further ¤5 billion bond; but it was forced to offer an interest rate of 5.9% on a seven-year bond, 325 basis points above the equivalent German bund, and that issue has subsequently moved to a substantial discount. Conditions have also been made worse by the downgrade in Portugal’s credit rating, and so the pressures on the bond markets are continuing.

Fisher Capital Management Seoul, South Korea: The gilt edged market has coped fairly well so far with the latest weakness in the bond market, an inadequate response in the latest Budget to the debt problems in the UK, and a warning from the Fitch rating agency that the government’s timetable for reducing the fiscal deficit was “frankly too slow”, and that the country’s credit rating was at risk. The economic recovery remains very slow, and the Bank of England is holding short-term interest rates close to zero, so the market is receiving some support; but in all the circumstances it is perhaps surprising that it has managed to perform so well.

Fisher Capital Management Seoul, South Korea: The economic background in the UK remains depressed, but is slowly improving. Retail sales bounced back strongly; the public sector continued its recruitment programmed; and there has been a pickup in activity in both the manufacturing and service sectors of the economy.

It was not surprising therefore that the Bank of England kept short-term interest rates unchanged at the latest meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee and even suggested that it would be prepared to reactivate its quantitative easing programmed if this proved to be necessary. But this may not be enough to sustain gilt edged prices at current levels.

Fisher Capital Management Seoul, South Korea: The latest Budget statement is forecasting a slightly lower fiscal deficit of £167 billion in the 2009/10 fiscal year, and a halving of the deficit by 2013/14; but there is considerable skepticism in the markets about the growth assumptions underlying the figures, and about the willingness of the politicians to address the real problems

involved in reducing the deficit. If there is no credible plan to achieve this reduction, the country may well lose its AAA credit rating. Prospects have therefore become even more uncertain, and a move to higher yield levels seems unavoidable.

Fisher Capital Management Seoul, South Korea: The Japanese bond market is slightly weaker over the past month. It is likely that this year, for the first time, bond issuance may provide greater support for the fiscal deficit than tax revenues. This has already led to a downgrade on Japanese public debt by Standard and Poor’s, and with new bond issuance this year estimated to reach ¥44,300 billion, and to reach ¥55,300 billion by 2013, further downgrades seem likely. Japanese institutional investors are used to financing massive deficits, but it seems unlikely that deficits of this size can be adequately financed at present yield levels. Prospects for the Japanese market therefore remain unattractive.