CalPers, Wheat, Aon, Fleck on the Fed

CalPers Reshuffles Deck... The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension...

agreed to shift 11% of its $260 billion portfolio into private equity and other investments from stocks and bonds.

The money will be shifted into private equity, real estate and a new asset class of inflation linked investments.

Worsening food price stagflation... Wheat prices surged above $10 a bushel for the first time ever on Monday...

amid concerns that strong demand globally could result in a grain shortage in the United States next year.

Aon or Aoff? ... To boost dwindling reserve capital, Aon Corp., the world's 2nd largest insurance broker...

will sell two of its insurance companies, buyback stock with the $2.6 billion in proceeds, and cut 2,700 jobs, or 6 % of the company's workforce.

Combined Insurance Co. of America, an accident, health, and life insurer, will be sold to Ace Ltd. for $2.4 billion...

and health-care insurer Sterling Life Insurance Co. to Munich Re, the world's 2nd biggest reinsurer, for $352 million.

From Flecks latest Another Fed Gift to Wall Street... Fleck muses on the Mess Greenspan Created...

and how the Fed "tends to its flock" or as we say "does its masters bidding."

That the Fed and the government are catering to Wall Street is obvious.

I don't see how anyone could look at what happened Wednesday as anything other than...

the stock market pulling the Fed's chain and Chairman Bennie Bernanke responding by gassing up the helicopters.

(The multiple bailout attempts) won't change the problems of financial asset insolvency. It will only delay the price-discovery process that is inevitable.

And I believe folks will ultimately see the sum of these bailouts for the panic-inspired fear that it is.

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