Salient to Investors: Ken Rogoff at Harvard says: The global economy is growing more slowly than everybody wants – The improving US is one of the bright spots with only 2% growth. China is slowing, India slowing dramatically. US trend growth rate is 2.5%. Need 4%-5% growth for a sustained period to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Census Bureau’s new projections show: The US population of just 399.8 million in 2050 versus 439.0 million projected in 2008. 90 percent of the US population in 1950 was white, versus 64 percent in 2010. (Beginning in 1980, whites are non-Hispanic white) Non-Hispanic whites will peak
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Borger, Texas registered the largest increase in divorced people in the US since 2007, to 15.2 percent. 2/3 of US cities have registered an increase in the percentage of divorced adults since 2007, the largest gains in small towns during the last two years. 10.9 percent of US adults are
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nassim Nicholas Taleb says: Black Swan effects are necessarily increasing as a result of complexity, interdependence between parts, globalization, and the efficiency that makes people sail too close to the wind. We must make our public and private lives less vulnerable to randomness and chaos, but also “antifragile” — positioned to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Investors said the S&P lowered outlook for the UK’s credit-rating will have little impact. Stuart Thomson at Ignis Asset Mgmt doesn’t see the downgrade as significant for gilts – a move from AAA to AA+ has lost its impact, if it ever had any, and the impact on default is virtually
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: S&P lowered its outlook on Britain’s top credit rating to negative, citing weak economic growth and a worsening debt profile – there is a 1-in-3 chance the rating could be cut in the next 2 years. S&P however expects economic growth to accelerate slowly. Investors often ignore such
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The US is almost free of imported energy dependence and positioned to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s No. 1 producer of oil, whether oil is $60 or $120. The IEA said America’s 6.8 million barrels a day in November was 30 percent less than Saudi Arabia’s 9.7 million,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Yale and University of Chicago research shows bank customers in South Africa accepted a higher rate of interest on loans when a photo of an attractive woman was included in the offer letter. Not linking the loan to a specific use also affected demand, as did the number of example
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Stephen King at HSBC said inflation is not the central banks’ highest priority, and as long as people believe they are committed over the longer term to price stability, there is leeway to play for other objectives. HSBC said the MSCI All Country World Index will return 9 percent in 2013 on aggressive
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Krogman writes: The American economy is by most measures deeply depressed. Corporate profits are at a record high because capital is grabbing an ever-larger slice at labor’s expense. The wage gap between those with a college education and those without grew a lot in the 1980s and early 1990s but hasn’t
READ MORE... →