Links of the day

Aging in Asia...Morgan Stanley analyst discusses how "Aging is a serious problem for many nations in Asia, not just Japan. Indeed, it is becoming common to ask whether Asia can get rich before it gets old"...

Retail Recall: Expecting Weakness in The Sector...nice summary of how food price inflation may be occurring...
"Fluctuations in food prices have historical been discounted because they mostly occured due to seasonal and weather influences. However, as we've been discussing here since early this year, the current trend is different. New uses for food, specifically corn in ethanol production, have driven up the price of foods across the horizontal field and vertical chain. As more acreage is used for corn planting, less is available for wheat and soybean production, driving up the prices of surrogate grains. Increasing costs for feed raise expenditures for protein producers, and we've seen those increases of input costs mostly transferred over to the consumer through higher beef, pork and poultry prices at the market"...

HUD Proposes Ban on Seller Down Payment (Again)...Calculated Risk on ""down payment assistance" programs (DAP) that involve seller (builder) funds laundered through pseudo-non-profit organizations"...apparently yet another way to steer people into mortgages they can't/won't be able to make payments on...here's a couple of related links from the comments:
-FHA program key in surge of foreclosures
-HUD has argued that it collects enough in FHA insurance premiums that DPA loans won't endanger the insurance fund...

Execution of Excellence Maximizes Metaphorical Distance From Wall Street..."Illinois Tool Works, an industrial conglomerate....has done rather well buying up small private firms. As every small business owner ruefully knows, tiny concerns do not sell at anywhere near the multiples that public companies do. In fact, until very recently, ITW has been able to purchase compatible small businesses for an inexpensive annual-revenue multiple of 1.1"..."If you want to earn high investment returns, you’re going to have to look far from the overgrazed investment commons. At a bare minimum, you have to tune out the noise from the media and analysts of all stripes, and actually think for yourself"...amen!