Since the S&P 500 is a pretty good proxy for risk it can be said that the Australian Dollar is a manifestation of investor risk appetite. When risk aversion was high, the S&P and the Aussie were low. When risk tolerance picked up, they rose. It’s funny how this came to be. It is probably best seen as a vestige from the credit crisis, whereby investors evenly divided assets into two classes: risky and safe. When you look at the performance of the Australian Dollar, it is pretty clear as to which side of the dividing line it was placed.

This is probably fair, since the Australian Dollar is a growth currency. According to the just-released Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity, the Australian Dollar is now the world’s fifth most traded currency (behind only the G4: Dollar, Euro, Yen, & Pound), having usurped that position from the Swiss Franc. In 2010, it accounted for 7.6% (out of a total of 200%) of all trading volume, primarily as a result of trading in the USD/AUD currency pair, which was the fourth most popular in forex.

Investors have come to see the Australian Dollar in somewhat contradictory terms. It is both stable and liquid, but its economy is unpredictable and inflation is usually above average. The current economic situation was strong, with GDP growth projected to exceed 3% in 2010. Its benchmark interest rate (4.5%) is the highest in the industrialized world, and may touch 5% before the year is over. On the other hand, its political situation is currently uncertain, thanks to an election that produced a hung Parliament and the recent resignation of its Prime Minster. In addition, while its trade balance is currently in surplus, it fell in July thanks to decreased demand from China. Analysts wonder whether it isn’t entirely dependent on China (directly via exports and indirectly via high commodity prices) to generate positive GDP growth.

Ultimately, investors don’t care about any of this. They care only whether the global economy is stable and whether another financial/credit/economic crisis is likely to occur. Even though any such crisis will probably spare Australia, the Aussie is punished by even the whiff of crisis because Australia is perceived as being riskier to invest than the US, for example. “The Australian dollar is going to stay heavy. Markets don’t like uncertainty,” summarized JP Morgan.

Sadly, it’s currently not worth parsing the nuances of trade statistics and monetary policy, because it has no bearing on the Aussie, though at least this makes my job easier. For the time being, the Australian Dollar will tick up if it looks like the global economy (principally the US) will avoid a double-dip recession. Otherwise, it is in for the same rough stretch as the S&P.

But for the Silicon Valley military mom, who lost her son in the Iraq war, the decision this week by U.S. military base exchanges not to carry the controversial “Medal of Honor” video game was still great news.

“I’m thrilled,” said Meredith, whose son, Lt. Ken Ballard, perished in 2004. She has set off a storm of protest against Redwood City-based Electronic Arts and its “first-person shooter” game, which allows players to pretend they’re Taliban fighters killing American soldiers in Afghanistan. She applauded Maj. Gen. Bruce Casella, commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, for the decision to keep the game out of its stores worldwide.

“I’ve heard from people all over the world, many of them upset about this game, so at least this has started a conversation,” she said. “And this country needs to have a conversation about the place of violent video games in our society, especially a game based on an ongoing war.”

Due out Oct. 12, “Medal of Honor” has drawn accolades from gamers and has been defended even by some U.S. soldiers. But it has unleashed howls of protest from families who have lost loved ones and even from Great Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox, who urged retailers to “ban this tasteless product.”

Electronic Arts spokesman Jeff Brown on Friday issued a statement that said in part: “The criticism

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of ‘Medal of Honor’ is disappointing because I can’t think of another interactive game that has gone to such lengths to convey respect for soldiers. From the very first day of development, the ‘Medal of Honor’ development team has been dedicated to creating an homage to the soldiers who fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Saying EA feels “a deep sympathy and respect for the soldiers and people with family members killed or wounded in Afghanistan,” Brown wrote that “we don’t see a distinction between a film like ‘Hurt Locker’ and a game like ‘Medal of Honor.’ We don’t agree that it’s OK to depict the war in films and books, but not in games. We don’t see a moral difference.”

Meredith and her fellow military moms don’t buy it, saying that by allowing participants to assume the role of Taliban and kill American soldiers like her son, EA has crossed the line. And while she’s heartened by the AAFES decision, she’s still not satisfied.

“The fact that the Army has responded this way tells me that I’m not the only one upset about this,” she said Friday. “Now I want EA to pull the game on their own because t’s the right thing to do.”

This week’s decision by AAFES, which many bloggers, gamers and even American soldiers criticized as censorship, impacts all Army and Air Force Exchange operations worldwide, including AAFES’ website and GameStop locations on military bases. An AAFES spokesman said all pre-orders and reservations placed online would be canceled and any pre-orders placed through GameStop locations on Army and Air Force installations would be transferred to off-base ones.

“We regret any inconvenience this may cause authorized shoppers, but are optimistic that they will understand the sensitivity to the life-and-death scenarios this product presents as entertainment,” Casella said in a statement. “As a military command with a retail mission, we serve a very unique customer base that has, or possibly will, witness combat in real life.”

But Army Pvt. Mitchell Blackburn in Bamberg, Germany, complained to Stars and Stripes newspaper that those who banished the game “are not giving people the credit to distinguish fiction from reality. People know it is a video game. “… Just because you are playing as [the Taliban] does not mean you really want to kill Americans or coalition forces.”

It was not immediately clear how the move might affect EA’s bottom line. AAFES said its base/post exchanges did $176 million in video-games sales in 2009.

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689.

Daily Pivots: (S1) 84.13; (P) 85.01; (R1) 85.52; More.

As noted before, USD/JPY’s recovery from 83.61 should have completed at 85.89. Intraday bias remains cautiously on the downside for 83.61 low. Break there will confirm down trend resumption for 80 psychological level next. On the upside, above 84.83 minor resistance will turn intraday bias neutral and indicates that consolidations from 83.61 is still in progress. But after all, even in case of another rise, upside is expected to be limited well below 88.25 support turned resistance and bring another fall.

In the bigger picture, whole down trend from 2007 high of 124.13 is still in progress and there is no sign of reversal yet. Such down trend could still extend further towards 79.75 (1995 low). Though, we’ll be cautiously looking for some sign of loss of momentum in case of further decline. On the upside, however, note that break of 94.97 resistance is needed to be the first sign of medium term reversal. Otherwise, outlook will remain bearish.

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As a result, IT and telecom managers over the next 12 to 18 months will have to revise their client computing strategies to incorporate smartphones from multiple vendors.

“IT managers are shifting away from a one size-fits-all, corporate-liable smartphone model to one that: 1) includes support for at least BlackBerry, iOS, and Android, and 2) is much more open to individually liable devices connecting to corporate resources,” write Forrester analysts Benjamin Gray and Christian Kane.

BlackBerry Still on Top

Forrester interviewed 200 companies for its “Market Overview: Smartphone Management” report, and found that half of the firms have already adopted a multi-platform mobile philosophy. The challenge for IT managers is how to best embrace multiple phones, some of which have lackluster security and management tools.

Not surprisingly, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices and BlackBerry Enterprise Server remain the “gold standard” when it comes to management and security. RIM tops its smartphone competitors by providing more than 500 wireless configuration and enforcement policies.

A recent Forrester survey shows that 70 percent of North American and European companies support BlackBerry today. Here’s the breakdown for the rest of the mobile OS pack:

Windows Mobile: 41 percent

iOS (iPhone and iPad): 29 percent

Android: 13 percent

Windows Embedded CE: 13 percent

Palm OS: 12 percent

webOS: 8 percent

Symbian: 7 percent

Despite RIM’s charms, however, enterprises are under pressure to loosen their mobile policies and embrace phones from other vendors.

In fact, nearly 60 percent of firms surveyed by Forrester provide some support of personally-owned smartphones. Why? One reason is that the multi-platform strategy helps businesses attract and retain top talent. In other words, if a top recruit want to use her iPhone for work, well, IT had better make it so.

The challenge for businesses is how to maintain a high level of security while incorporating non-BlackBerry devices. One option is to find “device agnostic” third-party management tools that work with–or ultimately replace–BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Of course, another challenge is finding talented IT staffers who keep up with the latest security threats on multiple mobile OS platforms, including Android and iOS.

Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter http://twitter.com/jbertoluccior at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

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Windows Phone 7 is one step closer to launch, as Microsoft released its revamped mobile operating system for manufacturing on Wednesday.

With most of the internal engineering done, Windows Phone 7 OS RTM is now available to its OEM (original equipment manufacturers) and service provider partners, so they can complete their work on customizations and hardware in preparation for a holiday release.

Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Phone Engineering, wrote on the Windows Phone 7 Team Blog that Windows Phone 7 is the company’s most thoroughly tested mobile platform, noting that it has run daily automated tests on nearly 10,000 devices with more than 3.5 million hours of stress test passes and 8.5 million hours of fully automated test passes.

Though Microsoft is just releasing the RTM now, OEMs and carriers have had builds in testing for some time and a technical preview was released to developers back in mid-July. Since then, Microsoft has received much response from the testers and has made some additional tweaks to Windows Phone 7 based on the feedback, with most of the enhancements centered on the People Hub.

For example, there is now a Contact Filtering option, so you can exclude Facebook contacts that don’t exist in your other synced accounts (e.g., Outlook, Windows Live, Gmail). You also now get the ability to comment and post directly to someone’s Facebook wall or like someone’s status. To improve the user experience and discovery process, the company added a software/onscreen search button in the People Hub so you can more easily search for contacts.

With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is taking more responsibility for the end-to-end experience, and thus you won’t see the kind of skinning or deep customization as we’ve seen on past Windows Mobile devices from OEMs. However, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Microsoft, told CNET that people will still have the opportunity to personalize the phones in a number of ways, such as prepopulating the Start screen with their own hubs, preconfiguring default themes, and having their own branded store in the Windows Marketplace.

Announced back at Mobile World Congress 2010, Microsoft’s OEM and carrier partners include Dell, HTC, Garmin-Asus, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Sprint, Verizon, Deutsch Telecom, Orange, Telecom Italia, SFR, Telefonica, Telstra, and Vodafone. It’s not clear when or if these companies will launch Windows Phone 7 devices; however, LG, Samsung, and HTC have all received FCC approval on Windows handsets. Also, HP was originally on the list of partners, but has since said that it will solely focus on WebOS phones.

At CNET, we’ve been spending a lot of time looking at Microsoft’s huge bet to get back in the phone game. CNET’s Ina Fried has been traveling to Redmond to monitor its development. Part 1 of that series is available now, with more to come. She’s also been living with the device full time for the last month and posted her likes and dislikes, and you’ll find our technical preview of Windows Phone 7 here.