BBC – In much of continental Europe, there’s a widespread belief that hedge funds and private equity firms caused the global economic crisis.

Which is presumably one reason why the European Commission wants much tighter regulation of both the hedgies and the buyout boys.

I’ve had personal experience of this, in a recent interview for French telly on how to prevent a repetition of the disaster: more-or-less all my interlocutor wanted to discuss was the alleged imperative of constraining the activities of hedge funds; there wasn’t even a nod at the reality that far more of the real culprits were in the banks, including French banks.

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Wall Street & Technology – Global investors boosted their equity holdings for the second month running in December and cut bonds, thanks to signs of stabilising stock markets and tumbling government bond yields, Reuters polls showed on Monday.

Surveys of 44 leading investment houses in the United States, Japan, continental Europe and Britain showed an average mixed-asset portfolio holding 56.0 percent in stocks, up from 54.8 percent in November. However, it still remained below the long-term average holding of almost 60 percent.

Bond holdings fell to 33.0 percent in December from 34.3 percent the previous month, above the long-term average of around 32 percent.

Cash rose to 5.4 percent from 5.3 percent.

A rise in the respondents’ equity holdings comes as world stocks, measured by MSCI, rose nearly 20 percent after hitting a 5-1/2 year low on November 21.

A round of central bank interest rate cuts worldwide and the introduction of fiscal stimulus packages in major developed and emerging economies have helped convince many investors that stock markets might bottom before long.

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