The Morning Read

Here are some interesting reads from this morning

• Australia plans to sell $117B USD in government owned assets (WSJ - article here)
• SocGen repays ECB bailout funds (WSJ - here)
• Democracy "You can't always get what you want" (Economist - Buttonwood's notebook)
• Emerging Market Shakeout - Enough currency reserves?  (Bloomberg - article here)
• Chinese Export Explosion! Any takers? (WSJ - article here)

Kind of light newsflow this morning (and week) for U.S. markets. Here's where things stand as of 7:30am

U.S. Futures
S&P -1.00 (0.06%)
Dow -9.00 (0.06%)
Nasdaq +1.00 (0.03%)

Spot Gold +2.00 @ 1291 
Crude +0.61 @ 100.56
10 year -0'055 @ 125'130

I would expect major U.S. indexes to take a breather today, after the S&P 500 has clawed back nearly 80 handles since Feb. 3 closing lows for the year. You can probably start dipping your toes in GLD here, but not with size and I would not expect a lot of momentum. Still watching weak EM currencies, however I have not initiated any positions as of yet.