Salient to Investors: The €9 billion Athens Games in 2004 highlighted Greece’s inability to manage its budget. Read the full article at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-02/how-the-2004-olympics-triggered-greeces-decline
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Outsourcing jobs to ensure a company’s survival is acceptable and is how you run a business. America needs and already has a tax and regulatory structure that creates strong incentives for private businesses to flourish. The great shift in the U.S. economy over the past
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kishore Mahbubani of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said the era of the West changing governments is over, Western power has peaked and will decline. The more the West isolates Iran , the more Iran becomes a geopolitical gift to China, which will accept it. China can get
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: George Soros said: A failure to produce drastic measures could spell the demise of the Euro. Europe should create a European Fiscal Authority to purchase sovereign debt in return for Italy and Spain implementing achievable budget cuts – funding to come from the sale of European Treasuries, which would
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: George Elliott at Naftilia Asset Management said: Investing in Russia after its 1998 currency crisis, in Argentina in 1992 after it defaulted on its debt, or in the S&P 500 Index in March 2009 at its lowest point in 13 years were the best investment opportunities over the past 20 years.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Pimco’s Bill Gross said Spanish Bonds are unattractive. The global economy is delevering. Best to look at the entire core of the euro zone and not the falling dominos. Rates at the core are still too high – Italy and France yield is too high versus their nominal GDP growth. There
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Greek election bought Europe time without fixing the cleavages between the northern and southern Greek economies. Professor Niels Thygesen identifies eight clashes in economic philosophy between Germany and France. Predictions: Professor Paul de Grauwe expects Merkel to remain an incrementalist, temporarily pacifying markets until it is clear it is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds and distressed debt funds are buying Greek mortgage bonds as mutual funds and banks have to sell because of credit downgrades, in a bet the bonds will rebound if Greece stays in the euro. JPMorgan said initially assigned top credits pay 22 percentage points more than benchmark rates, more
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Greece accounts for just 2.3 percent of EU GDP, and 4.3 percent of EU debt. Without Greece , the EU would have had a trade surplus in 2011. Germany has posted a trade surplus every month since May 1991 and has avoided recession since 2009. OECD says the euro is undervalued
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Martin Feldstein said Greece cannot be fixed. A Greek departure would be chaotic short-term, but longer-term would return Greece to growth and more robust employment. Italy is in good shape. Spanish regional budget deficits pose a bigger problem than the banking crisis. European leaders lack a longer-term strategy on how to
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