Reserve Bank of Australia Commodity Index - Long Way Down

The RBA - The Reserve Bank of Australia -  released Index of Commodity Prices for December 2010.

From it's statement "Preliminary estimates for December indicate that the index rose by 3.2 per cent (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, after rising by 1.2 per cent in November"

SDR's are "Special Drawing Rights" essentially a basket of major currencies - see SDR Valuation from the IMF

Facebook and the Road to a $50 Billion Dollar Valuation Helped by Russians and Now Goldmans.

"Facebook is now solidly a $50 billion company, as measured by valuation from investors, thanks to its latest round of funding -- $500 million from Goldman Sachs and DST. "

So Facebook has now the valuation that Mark Zuckerberg has been saying it should have thanks to Goldman Sachs and DST.

Right, DST who? Digital Sky Technologies a Russian company that has this really interesting web site. Check it out: DST. A lot more information on this global investor into mainly US based tech companies can be found in The New York Times Deal Book article:

Russians’ Large Stake in Facebook Grows Larger

Chart from SAI Silicon Valley Investor Chart of the day

Facebook's Bumpy Road To $50 Billion 

Lex and 3 Economic Scenarios for 2011

Named as The Crab, Disaster and Lift-Off the Lex Column in the Financial Times essentially gives fancy names to 3 probable economic outcomes for 2011.

The interesting bit is the percentage of probability or likelihood of each scenario playing out:

1. The Crab or more of the same as 2010 - 70%
2. Disaster or up the creek without a paddle - 20%
3. Lift-off or yeh! we're back to normal - 10%

See

Three scenarios for 2011