“Whenever experts set out to find “great places to retire,” they tend to dwell on cost of living and health care. Both important considerations, sure, but talk to retirees, even in this age of rampaging austerity, and you’ll find most are looking forward to a retirement filled with friends, travel, volunteer opportunities, a wide variety of activities – both physical and intellectual. In other words, a rich life, richly lived.

So our list is an attempt to find the best places for the good life. ”

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“Because of the European debt crisis and the slowdown in China’s economy, foreign stocks are trading at a discount to U.S. stocks, according to Money Magazine, and now might be a good time to invest overseas.

Foreign stocks have traded at a slight premium to U.S. stocks historically, as measured by a conservative gauge of price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, but they are now trading at a 34 percent discount.

This discount is far cheaper than the discounts were during the Asian currency crisis of 1997 and the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s. Interestingly, in the decades after those crises, stocks in those regions hammered U.S. stocks.”

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“FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank cast more gloom over the euro zone’s outlook Thursday, announcing another fall in lending to the private sector in June, as well as signs of increased deposit withdrawals from troubled banks in southern Europe.

The ECB’s monthly summary of monetary developments in the euro area offered some crumbs of comfort, as both the narrow M1 and broad M3 money aggregates expanded faster than expected, bolstering hopes that the bank’s liquidity injections around the turn of the year were finally gaining traction.”

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“European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said policy makers will do whatever is needed to preserve the euro, suggesting they may intervene in bond markets as surging yields in Spain and Italy threaten the existence of the 17-nation currency bloc.

“To the extent that the size of these sovereign premia hamper the functioning of the monetary policy transmission channel, they come within our mandate,” Draghi said in a speech at the Global Investment Conference in London today. “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro,” he said, adding: “believe me, it will be enough.”

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“PIMCO’s CEO Mohamed El-Erian is calling it the GGIRC: the great global interest rate convergence.

In a new piece for CNBC.com, El-Erian describes GGIRC as a world “whereby interest rates steadily converge to zero in many countries around the world.”

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The gloom rests upon ‘if’ the countries do not take a larger share of debt burden. In the end it is more than likely that this will happen.

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“Europe’s quest to sever the link between Spain’s fiscal fate and its failing banks hinges on an obstacle-strewn race to hand greater powers to the European Central Bank.

Until euro-area leaders overcome German doubts, ECB concerns, and turf battles everywhere, Spain will remain on the hook for a bailout of its banks of as much as 100 billion euros ($121 billion). Policy makers want to protect taxpayers from losses so potentially big they risk bankrupting governments, as happened in Ireland and Iceland.”

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Here is some commentary and charts to help you rethink whether one should buy the dips.

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Really ?

Full comments via Z.H.

“Investors looking to preserve their purchasing power will have to avoid Treasurys and put their money in “real assets” such as stocks and real estate, Bill Gross, Pimco co-founder, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Monday.”

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The clam has to consider how much is too much when buying treasuries. Some do not expect any action until September or later. As the clam stated last week he would like to see congress get its act together and stop playing politics in a election year.

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“(CBS News) With about 55,000 inhabitants, the Cayman Islands should not be a well-known name in the rest of the world, but the tiny Caribbean territory has become famous as a tax haven for the world’s super rich. According to a new report, the Caymans – along with the other dozen or so international havens for wealth like Switzerland and Bermuda – are the holders of so much of the world’s capital, entire regional economies could be moved on it.”

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“Fears that Spain will need a bailout have punished the country’s debt to the point that Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, says the time to invest may be now, while everyone else flees.

The yield on the Spanish 10-year note has repeatedly spiked above 7 percent in recent weeks, a threshold largely deemed by markets as unsustainable and suggests the country needs a bailout.

Stomach the risk and put some money in Spain, as returns on U.S. debt are so poor they do not even keep pace with inflation, Scaramucci said.”

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A German newspaper reported yesterday that the IMF will not support Greece anymore. In an effort to contain damage to equities the IMF made a statement saying that they will continue to support Greece.

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“Since the financial crisis, European bank assets in the United States have fallen an incredible $540 billion dollars from $1.51 trillion to $973 billion.

The FT reports that a combination of write downs, sales of loans and businesses, bank failures, and higher capital ratio requirements have pushed U.S. assets held by Eurozone banks to their lowest levels since 2005.

The drop is most pronounced in countries that have suffered severe banking crises. Ireland’s banks, for example, have seen their U.S. assets decline from 130 billion in 2008 to just $3.6 billion as of March.”

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Concerns over the Greek government splintering have been renewed as Spain’s borrowing costs.

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“The prospect of more Spanish regional governments following Valencia in asking for aid sent the cost of insuring the nation’s debt to a record.

Credit-default swaps on Spain jumped as much as 31 basis points to 636, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and were at 632 at 1:30 p.m. in London. A basis point on a swap protecting 10 million euros ($12.1 million) of debt from default for five years is equivalent to 1,000 euros a year.”

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“Submitted by Keith Weiner of ‘Gold and Silver and Money and Credit’ blog,

I have written other pieces on the topic of fractional reserve banking (http://keithweiner.posterous.com/61391483 andhttp://keithweiner.posterous.com/fractional-reserve-is-not-the-problem) duration mismatch, which is when someone borrows short-term money to lend long-term and how falling interest rates actually encourages duration mismatch (http://keithweiner.posterous.com/falling-interest-rates-and-duration-mis…).

Falling interest rates are a feature of our current monetary regime, so central that any look at a graph of 10-year Treasury yields shows that it is a ratchet (and a racket, but that is a topic for another day!).  There are corrections, but over 31 years the rate of interest has been falling too steadily and for too long to be the product of random chance.  It is a salient, if not the central fact, of life in the irredeemable US dollar system, as I have written (http://keithweiner.posterous.com/irredeemable-paper-money-feature-451).”

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“James K. Galbraith is a chip off the old block. This University of Texas economist, the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, is continuing the family tradition of sticking the damn truth in front of the world by means of writing this just published volume–Inequality and Instability, A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (Oxford University Press).

Better consult it’s theme that finance has come to dominate the U.S. economy, not manufacturing, not agriculture and that the super wealthy have used finance to make themselves richer and faster than anyone else. Writes Galbraith pointedly: “the difference between the financial sector and other sources of income is– wherever we can isolate it– a large (and even prime) source of changing inequalities.”

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Be careful of which sovereign debt you call a safe haven.

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