Links to reports/ papers out last week that caught my eye are below. The subjects covered include U.S. trade, systemic risk, sovereign wealth funds, HFs vs inflation and HF seeding. 

Death of free trade? (Richard Baldwin voxeu.org): Since the GOP took the House in the mid-terms, the Obama Administration’s freezing of international [...]

Vanguard Survey of Defined Benefit Plan Sponsors: Vanguard surveyed medium sized DB plans ($100mil to $1bil) at the end of 2010. The results show a collective shift in plan sponsor mind-set in the wake of funding challenges driven by equity-biased return directed investment strategies. Data confirms a de-risking of equity portfolios, increase [...]

Five interesting client, survey and research reports are listed below. Four of these came out last week. The Goldman piece came out at year end but I only just came across it.

Bill Gross’ May Client Note (2 pages): Pimco’s Bill Gross is a masterful writer. Mr Gross manages to be personally [...]

I didn’t come across many interesting pieces from the financial news media for institutional investors last week so have extracted three client notes below plus a link to a summary of the FOMC Chair’s Q&A (I posted this straight after the televised Q&A) and a punchy WSJ editorial. . AQR on Eurozone inflation: AQR released [...]