Salient to Investors: Athanasios Vamvakidis at Bank of America said that despite many risks to the global economy, the G-20 has weakened substantially, which makes all countries worse off. Daniel Price at Rock Creek Global Advisors said the G-20 absences say more about the exigencies of domestic economic issues than it does about the future of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: An estimated 12 percent of US residents moved in the year ended March 2012, up from a 63-year low of 11.6 percent the prior year. About 1.7 percent moved from one state to another, the most in five years. A lack of migration the past few years
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Professor Frederic Mishkin at Columbia Business School said the Fed has helped save the world. William Dudley at FRB of New York said: The force with which Bernanke has attacked joblessness has distinguished him, and his legacy is in being very creative and aggressive in an adverse economic environment. It’s OK
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Legatum Prosperity Index attempts to broaden economic health beyond indicators such as GDP. The latest index shows: The US slid from the top 10 for the first time – to 12th position Norway, Denmark and Sweden were declared the most prosperous The standing of the US economy has
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: IMF growth projections have been revised downward almost everywhere, especially in Europe and the big emerging markets like China. The IMF projects the US to the strongest of the rich economies over the next four years – 3 percent versus 1.2 percent in Germany and France and 2.3 percent in Canada. The
READ MORE... →David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal reported: Last year 63% of the federal budget was spent without a vote of Congress – auto pilot spending for promises made in the past. The federal government spent 9.5% of the federal budget on heathcare in 1960, 25% in 2012, and the CBO predicts 33% in a decade.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mercenary Trader writes: The routine intervention of the Central Banks, the Greenspan Put transitioning to the Bernanke Put, have underscored the “bad news is good news” phenomenon. Good news is good news because things are getting better. Mediocre news is good news because it means CBs keep rates near
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Barry Knapp at Barclays says no election has mattered more. Jeff Kleintop at LPL Financial says many industries are heavily influenced by legislation and regulation, so a change in policymakers can have a big impact. S&P Capital IQ says that since 1900, the stock market, economic growth and corporate earnings in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nassim Taleb says there’s a simple mathematical basis for why governments continually miss their deficit targets. The problem is that the economic data forecasts the government uses are taken as a given and not looked at as mere probable likelihoods. The government tends to underestimate the damage when things get worse
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: New York City’s economic inequality rivals that of a third-world country – in 2011, the median annual income for the bottom 20% was less than $9,000, the top one percent was $2.2 million. Income inequality is the highest since the Great Depression – the top 1% took 93 percent of the income earned
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