Chile, UAE, Singapore, Azerbaijan, Ireland and Norway claim top rankings on the latest transparency index, published by SWF Institute. At the bottom of the ranking is Venezuela, Oman, Nigeria, Mauritania, Kiribati, Iran, Brunei and Algeria.

The Linaburg-Maduell index is calculated with 10 principles -- such as whether the fund provides up-to-date, independently audited annual reports, or whether it provides clear strategies and objectives. It also gives points on whether the fund gives ownership percentage of company hodlings, total market value, returns and management compensation.

Enhancing transparency is a key task for sovereign wealth funds, whose often opaque operations have come under heavy criticism by some Western politicians who suspect them of investing with political, rather than commercial, motives.

In fact in the recent meeting of the world's leading sovereign wealth funds, only Norway, Chile, New Zealand agreed in advance to speak to Reuters on the sidelines; when contacted on the ground China also spoke. Others either declined to comment at all or did not return email.

(Source: SWF Institute; www.swfinstitute.org)

Interesting dilemmas facing G20 countries as their finance ministers and central bankers get together on the golf ball strewn Scottish coast ( a meeting in St Andrews we will be Live Blogging on MacroScope, by the way).

First, you have the Brazilians who are worried about hot money and have already slapped a tax on foreign investments in domestic bonds and stocks in order to cool down capital inflows.  They want the G20 to take action against what their central bank chief calls "imbalance- and bubble-building".

Next you have the Americans and other big economies who know that the huge amounts of stimulus they have put into the world economy have to be removed eventually. They are not ready to do it yet, but expect the G20 countries to discuss how they are going to "sequence" the great unwinding.

And then there is Argentina, which is not alone in noticing that talk of unwinding tends to put investors on edge.  Its central bank governor wants the big countries to be careful, fearing a rapid reversal of stimulus policies could mean big outflows in emerging market countries such as, er, Argentina.

So a tricky balance, a super-sensitive investor audience, and plenty of domestic politics. Fore!

Australia's Future Fund reveals that the fund's mixed asset portfolio (excluding Telstra holding) returned 5.6 percent in the third quarter.

The fund has just over 10 percent in Australian equities, 22.8 percent in global equities. Safer instruments dominate, with debt holdings at 24 percent and cash at 31 percent.

The mixed-asset fund significantly underperforms an equity-only portfolio. For example, the MSCI world equity index has risen more than 17 percent in the Q3 alone.

The Future Fund is a rare SWF which reports results quarterly, like a public-listed firm. The underperformance might outrage the public though -- so is this worth it?

Recall remarks last month by David Murray, the fund's chairman of the board of guardians , which highlighted some downsides in reporting quarter after quarter.

"We are happy to report but it does create some significant difficulties. If forces the community to take very short term views in returns in the fund and causes management of the fund to be concerned about media and community responses," he said at a SWF meeting in Azerbaijan earlier this month.

Jin Liqun, chairman of the board of supervisors at China Investment Corp, was more direct.

 "SWFs are not publicly traded companies. We do not have obligations to publish quarterly information to the public. Indeed, this kind of quarterly disclose has done more harm than good. It has encouraged managers to do reckless things," Jin told Reuters in Baku.

The world's leading sovereign wealth funds are gathering in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, for a two-day inaugural meeting which ends on Friday.

A year after adopting the Santiago Principles of best practice guidelines, they are meeting next to the Caspian sea to review investment activities and assess how regulation and efforts to open up are helping them gain wider acceptance in a still-sceptical world.

The participants include SWFs from China, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Australia, Libya, Ireland, Singapore and New Zealand. The meeting is hosted by the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan - which made a record (and rare for SWFs) profit last year thanks to a conservative investment strategy.  The $11-billion fund, which made a record profit of around $300 million, or 3.7-3.8 percent in 2008, has said it wants to add riskier assets back onto the portfolio gradually.

The meeting comes as a report to be published this week shows a sharp fall in investment activity in Q2. According to global consultancy Monitor Group, SWfs made 11 investments totalling $3.5 billion in Q2, the lowest spending since the final three months of 2004.

Nineteen deals have been either announced or pending completion during the three months ending June, suggesting that activity might improve later this year. Monitor says the funds returned to investing in real estate after they had steered well clear over the previous two quarters.

"SWFs are cautiously returning to the market with a long-term approach to their investments, putting their losses behind them and resuming the business of investing abroad," it says.

(Photo by Natsuko Waki)

MacroScope is pleased to post the following from guest blogger Julian Chillingworth. Chillingworth is chief investment officer of UK investor Rathbones. He questions here whether Britain will face a second downturn shortly after struggling out of recession.

Are we likely to witness a two-tier recession in the UK?  Perhaps not a recession but certainly a secondary downturn. A vast number of people have enjoyed lower mortgage payments and a level of job security, but will this last?

The UK is in somewhat of a unique position in so far as it faces a regime change, with some obvious ramifications for policy.  However, whoever takes the seat (most likely the Tories) must still cut back public expenditure and raise taxation, both within the context of high unemployment.

It will require the wisdom of Solomon as a further rise in unemployment hits tax-take and results in rising social security payments. Who would want to be George Osborne?!

Key will also be the state of the financial services industry, the banks – other G7 nations do not have the ‘core component’ element to deal with in this respect – and the consumer won’t be moved in any meaningful fashion until there is real evidence of stability there.

Economic news is improving, but in the near term sentiment will be led by the direction of earnings.

The bottom line is the US might be troughing out, but this time round, we in the UK could be on our own for a little while longer.

Five things to think about this week

TUSSLE FOR DIRECTION
- The tussle between bullish and bearish inclinations — with bears gaining a bit of ground so far this month — is being played out over both earnings and economic data. Alcoa got the U.S. earnings season off to a good start but a heavier results week lies ahead and could toss some banana skins into the market’s path. Key financials, technology bellwethers (IBM, Google, Intel), as well as big names like GE, Nokia, Johnson and Johnson will offer more food for thought for those looking past the simple defensive versus cyclical split to choices between early cylicals, such as consumer discretionaries, and late cyclicals, such as industrials, based on the short-term earnings momentum. Macroeconomic data will need to confirm the picture painted by last week’s unexpectedly German strong orders and production figures to give bulls the upper hand.

FINANCIAL FOCUS
- The heavy financial results slate (Goldman, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi) will show the extent to which balance sheets are being cleansed of toxic assets and the health of, and outlook for margins, trading revenues, etc. The relative performance of the firms reporting could put the spotlight on the split between investment banking and retail exposure. In Europe, Swedbank’s results will be watched for Baltic exposure while clarity is still being sought on what banks plan to do with the large chunk of ECB one-year money which they continue to park back at the ECB in the form of overnight deposits.

JAPANESE DILEMMA
- The BOJ’s policy meeting poses thorny questions on quantitative easing (QE), with the policy debate complicated by sharp gains in the yen. The yen has risen as much as 10.5 percent in three months against the dollar and is nearing the 90 threshold which is viewed by the foreign exchanges as the point at which the Japanese authorities start ratcheting up the rhetoric. Further sustained yen gains will fuel market debate about the fallout for carry trades and for exporters — and by extension economic activity.

HOOKED ON QE
- The sharp jump in yields in gilts, euro zone debt, and Treasuries seen after the Bank of England deferred any decision on expanding its QE programme gave a good indication of how bond markets could react when central banks flag that the QE taps will finally be turned off for good. Implementation of exit strategies may be some way off and producer and consumer price data from both sides of the Atlantic this week are likely to be subdued. However, base effects from the oil price peaks of 2008 are expected to fade in the coming months, leaving a less supportive inflation backdrop.

CHINA
- The FX reserve debate was aired by the highest-ranking Chinese politician to date at L’Aquila summit and U.S. TICs data this week should keep the reserve holdings issue on the boil. Attention is also on Chinese domestic/trade policy following violence in Xinjiang and strains in relations with Australia over Rio Tinto staff detention. Any escalation in either could prompt investors to review the potential for regional outperformance.

Has German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck finally said what many world leaders think but are afraid to say? That the British government won't sign up to meaningful reform of financial markets because it is too worried about what it would mean for the country’s most famous cash cow, the City of London.

The City, which accounts for around 35 percent of global foreign exchange turnover, has been a popular target for critics of capitalism for years. But it has rarely been singled out so bluntly as a problem by one of Britain’s close allies.

Even for a man not known for holding his tongue, Steinbrueck’s remark on Wednesday that Downing Street was impeding reform because it had “practically aligned” its interests with the City, was unusually undiplomatic. Just days before global leaders meet at a Group of Eight summit in Italy, Steinbrueck suggested the British government was plotting a “restoration” of the pre-crisis order to protect its own interests. The United States, by contrast, was now open to reform, he said.

Rather than attempting to smooth ruffled feathers when she addressed parliament on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel picked up the thread, saying she would not tolerate efforts to stall reform at the G8 summit, though she did not name Britain.

Steinbrueck’s comments generated a strong response on German websites. Though he belongs to the centre-left Social Democrats, many readers of conservative daily Die Welt wrote in to praise him. “Finally the truth”, “genius” and “backbone” were some of the remarks his stance provoked. Across the channel, the most popular reader’s comment posted online in an article by Eurosceptic British newspaper the Daily Mail also backed the 62-year-old. “I’m with the German finance minister,” it begins.

Whether one agrees with his approach or not, Steinbrueck knows he is not talking into a vacuum. Large swathes of the commentariat believe not enough has been done to stabilise financial markets over the long term. Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, wrote on Wednesday that without radical changes, another banking crisis is inevitable.

PHOTO: German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck addresses a news conference in Berlin, May 13, 2009. Steinbrueck said on Wednesday Germany's interbank lending sector was still suffering from weak confidence. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Readers of MacroScope who live in the northern hemisphere will be gearing up for some summer reading.

James Montier, the market psychologist who is also an equity analyst at Societe Generale, has come up with his annual recomendations of what to read. The full list is here, but for the current economic and market crisis he has this to offer:

My favourite book in this category is Bill Fleckenstein’s ‘Greenspan’s Bubbles’ -- an excellent exposé of incompetence during Alan Greenspan's tenure as Fed Chairman. The next choice in this group is Whitney Tilson and Glen Tongue’s ‘More Mortgage Meltdown’. This book explains clearly how we ended up in this mess (and is based on the authors -- real time experience), and an added bonus is the insight into Tilson's investment process provided by the case studies. My final choice in this section is Jim Grant’s ‘Mr. Market Miscalculates’. I've mentioned this excellent book before, and I believe it deserves a place on all investors' bookshelves.

Montier got MacroScope thinking. There must be many more crisis books, or related ones, that are worthy of a read as the summer rolls in. How about John Kenneth Galbraith's 'The Great Crash, 1929' or Tom Wolfe's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', which still has one of the best descriptions ever of how bond traders make money.

So let's have your suggestions. What should you read to mark the crisis?

MacroScope is pleased to post the following from guest blogger Peter Attard Montalto. Peter is emerging market economist at Nomura International and here outlines why he is cautiously constructive on the issue of sovereign risk in South Africa.

Recent events in South Africa have sent some conflicting signals to investors about sovereign risks. On the one hand there was some regulatory flip-flopping over the Vodacom listing given objections from the union organisation COSATU, which raised questions about the influence of unions in Jacob Zuma’s administration. On the other hand the sovereign issuing some $1.5 billion was highly successful and oversubscribed.

With Zuma recently elected on a platform of change for his domestic audience and continuation of old policies when speaking to investors, there is a raft of new ministers and new ministries and quite a bit of policy uncertainty. No foreign investor will deny South Africa’s need to address serious social problems of inequality, housing, jobs and education through a more developmental state agenda. However investors I speak to simply want to see that this is not at the expense of the productive sectors of the economy.

This agenda will naturally involve the ANC’s allies: COSATU and SACP (communist party).  As such, the process of governing will be a noisy affair for investors. I put the Vodacom incident down to such noise.

However I believe the new Zuma administration will find itself heavily constrained by the need to raise funds for its agenda and so keep investors onside as the government’s borrowing requirement balloons. Add state owned enterprises engaging in very necessary investment, and a current account deficit and you arrive at a funding requirement north of  500 billion rand for the next two years.

This will act as a strong rationalising influence though a backup overdraft in the form of an IMF flexible credit lending facility would be a benefit.  It also should not be forgotten that there is still a strong business influence in the cabinet and the ANC from the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale.  Most investors buy the case of policy not shifting sharply to the left, though a lot of questions have been planted in the minds of investors.

Keeping the different factions in his cabinet in line will be key for Zuma’s success, especially with two new hurdles looming: the Bharti/MTN and the Xstrata/Anglo American mergers. Both are sensitive and likely to be jumped on by unions.  The inflation-targeting debate is also being reopened locally -- a topic foreign investors love to discuss.

It is now up to Zuma and his team to deliver on prudent macro-policy as well as his developmental state priorities in order to sustain the current goodwill from investors.  It is still early days for his administration. We hope not to be disappointed -- for South Africa’s sake as much as anyone elses.

Automatic teller machines (ATMs) -- 500 of them -- dispensing pieces of gold will be available around Germany, Switzerland and Austria by the end of this year.

That at least is the plan of German precious metals online trading company TG-Gold-Super-Markt.de. The ATMs, to be located at airports, railway stations and shopping malls, are intended to accustom ordinary people to the idea of investing in a physical asset such as gold, the thinking goes.
 
Thomas Geissler, the company's chief executive, said the gold ATMs might even improve relations between the sexes.
 
"I have yet to meet a woman who does not like a gift of gold. It's better than flowers. Flowers are more expensive. They wilt and you (as a man) don't get as many points at home as if you bring gold," he said.
 
A prototype ATM on display for a one-day marketing test at the main railway station in Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital, did indeed reward your correspondent with a 1-gramme (0.0353 ounce) piece of gold.
 
It cost the equivalent of $42.25 -- a 30 percent premium over the spot market price.