links for 2010-03-01

While experts debate the fate of Europe's crisis-racked currency, it appears the British pound may be heading for its own little nightmare.

Corporate insiders are sending fairly positive signals about the market. When stocks began to fall in mid-January, insiders cut back on sales of their companies’ shares and increased their purchases…While these insiders have a long history of correctly anticipating the market’s direction, they haven’t done all that well in the last few years. As a group, insiders failed to recognize the top of the bull market in October 2007, and didn’t anticipate the depth of the decline that followed. After these missteps, have insiders’ trades outlived their usefulness as a basis for market timing?

With the American economy struggling and the political system in gridlock, there is one thing everyone in Washington seems to agree on: The Chinese do it better.