Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham at GMO says: The global economy is reckless in its use of all resources and natural systems and is showing many of the indicators of potential failure that brought down so many civilizations. Civilizations have an average lifespan of around 250 years. Failing civilizations suffered
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The World Bank says that in 1981 nearly half the world’s citizens were poor, while today, less than a fifth lives in poverty – from 2 billion to 1.2 billion people. Chinese poor declined by nearly 680 million people in the last three decades,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard acknowledged on April 17 that they had inadvertently left some data out of their calculations in “Growth in a Time of Debt”, but the error did not change their basic findings that countries with public debt in excess of 90 percent of GDP suffered measurably
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ben Inker writes: Capitalism should cause the return on capital to be in line with the cost of capital, and assets with similar risks should offer similar long-term returns. Equities should trade at replacement cost, and the long-term return to equities should be approximately the same as
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham writes: The world, in its reckless use of resources and natural systems, shows many of the indicators of potential failure that brought down many prior civilizations. However, we have two saving graces that may save us – declining fertility rates and progress in alternative energy.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brett Arends writes: It is not clear if high debt levels lead to slower growth, or result from slower growth, or that the two have only a loose connection, but we cannot borrow and print money indefinitely with no consequences whatsoever. Rogoff and Reinhart got their math
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: Japan has taught us that slashing interest rates to zero and beyond is much easier than returning them to normalcy. In Japan, credit spreads mean little, the underlying assets on which they are based are drugged up on monetary stimulants, bank balance sheets get muddied, it
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Krugman writes: Keynesian economics is close to a TKO over austerian economics, whose predictions about the real world failed completely and supporting academic research has turned out to be riddled with flaws. The two main studies supporting austerity – Alesina/Ardagna and Reinhart/Rogoff – were criticised almost as
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Heidi Moore writes: In July, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will add Hollywood royalties from TV, movies and songs and revenues from scientific R&D to GDP measurements, boosting GDP by as much as 3% from 0.4% currently. Adding in Hollywood royalties may boost US economic growth by as
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Luck, not hard work, is overwhelmingly why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. Our peer average income is set by forces beyond our control and far more than by our own choices. The CBO says the top 20 percent get 50 percent of the national
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