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: The OECD said: The global economy’s predicted growth is lowered to 3.1% in 2015 and 3.8% in 2016 due to an unexpectedly weak Q1 and investment yet to take off. The global economy rates a B-minus. Large businesses have been unwilling to invest as vigorously as in previous cyclical
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: 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
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Kenneth Pollock says Iran’s foreign policy has been rational and prudent over the years. China has less than 5% of the vote in the World Bank and less than 4% of the vote at the IMF. Larry Summers said: The US has lost its role
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Chris Rupkey at MUFG Union Bank says consumers have emerged from the winter blues and if they spend anywhere as great as they feel, the economy will roar over the next few months. Rupkey and others have been expecting a roaring economy for several years but are
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The pattern of Yemen’s descent into chaos is likely to repeat, possibly in more significant countries like Egypt. That pattern is repressive, secular regimes backed by the West become illegitimate, become more repressive to survive, and whose opposition becomes more extreme, religious and violent. Learning
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