Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The financial carrying capacity of the developed market economies has deteriorated since the 1980s; due to aging demographics, declining competitiveness v. emerging market economies, declining productivity growth, and the big increase in the leverage ratio against public and private incomes. The US’s ability to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: This central bank fueled boom will ultimately bring a prolonged deflationary contraction and day of reckoning for financial assets. During the 27 years of Greenspan’s Fed Chair term from 1987-2014: The Fed balance sheet grew 23 times. Buffet’s net worth grew 35 times, or 19 times adjusted
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Martin Sandbu writes: The view that banks first accept deposits from savers before lending them to investors is wrong. The reverse is true – banks create deposits and credit them to their borrowers. Because of this, Cullen Roche argues that the quantity of central bank reserves does not
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Iraq no longer exists. Many of the Arab states around Iraq are more anti-Shiite than they are anti-ISIS. ISIS gets support from the discontent of Sunnis who feel persecuted by the Shiite and Alawite governments of Iraq and Syria. Britain that has lost its special
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Britain, which created the world we live in, has become parochial and has essentially resigned as a global power: a tragedy for us all. The Royal United Services Institute predicts that the British army could shrink to 50,000, smaller than at any point since the 1770s
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nassim Taleb said: Over the last 2000 years, there is no no statistical evidence that violence has dropped, or that the frequency or magnitude of wars is declining. People are lulled into a false sense of security because of the nature of fat tail events, which can
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Globalization and the information revolution is unstoppable. China cannot be stopped from growing and trading, and Africa from deepening its integration into the global system. The average tariff in the developed world is 3%. China’s average tariff is under 10% versus 40% in 1985. It’s
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The US justice system is a rubber stamp for the prosecution due to America overreacting to the crime wave of the 1970s and enacting bad legislation. The vast prison industrial complex lobbies aggressively, which means more arrests, lockups, and prisons. Conrad Black says: The US has
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: America needs reform and restructuring. The tax code is a corrupt mess. The US ranks third in global competitiveness, 12th in overall infrastructure, 24th in the quality of its electricity supply, and 101st in mobile telephone subscriptions.The average age of the US’s 84,000 dams is 52
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Lee Kuan Yew said America will remain the world’s dominant power in the 21st century only if it is the dominant Pacific power. Global stability will be shaped by how the US handles China. Graham Allison at Harvard said that since 1500, war resulted
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