Salient to Investors: Indian heart surgeon Devi Shetty has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to $1,583, half of what it was 20 years ago, and versus $106,385 at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Shetty said the current price of everything in health care is predominantly opportunistic pricing and the outcome of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: UniCredit Group and Deutsche Bank Securities say payrolls gains are typically linked with GDP growing close to 3 percent. Harm Bandholz at UniCredit said the employment numbers are closer to the true picture and ,” expects GDP growth to pick up in half2 and even more in 2014. Joseph
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: Abe’s economic plans draws heavily on Reaganomics: welfare-spending cuts, debt-swelling tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, a lowering of trade barriers, and reforms that make it easier to fire workers. As in the US, these reforms could hollow out the middle class and
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kyohei Morita and Yuichiro Nagai at Barclays said: Abe’s policies can succeed even if wages don’t immediately accompany price increases, because 2.21 million people born between 1947 and 1949 are starting to retire and will become buyers rather than workers and savers, even as the total population declines.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gail Whiteman at Erasmus University and other scientists say that the release of large amounts of methane from thawing permafrost in the Arctic could cost $60 trillion, or roughly the size of the global economy in 2012, with impacts most likely to be felt in developing countries, which are more
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: George Friedman writes: China has been in an economic crisis for a while, unrecognized outside China and particularly in the US. Paul Krugman last week wrote in The New York Times that the signs that China is in big trouble are unmistakable, its economic system has reached
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A. Gary Shilling at A. Gary Shilling & Co writes: The outlook for the labor market remains bleak. Older Americans are holding onto jobs longer, limiting openings for newcomers, and employers are extending working hours and paying overtime rather than hiring. In June 2013, almost 11 million people
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A strengthening economy that cause more Americans to seek work would paradoxically make it harder to lower the unemployment rate to the Fed’s target level. The BLS estimates there are 2.6 million interested in working who remained outside of the labor force because of discouragement, illness, or school. Joel Prakken at Macroeconomic
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A. Gary Shilling at A. Gary Shilling & Co writes: The total labor-force participation rates tend was 63.5 percent in June 2013 versus 67.4 percent in early 2000. The participation rates of 16-to 24-year-olds has declined sharply since 2000 as slow economic growth, limited jobs and rising unemployment rates have encouraged
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Philip Scranton at Rutgers University writes: As in earlier economic recoveries, in 1933 US production began increasing more quickly than workers could find jobs – manufacturers commonly extended employees’ weekly hours instead of rehiring. To generate employment and wages gains much faster in the initial stages of the
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