Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: According to one prevailing theory, China is creating an international storm to change the subject domestically away from income inequality, official corruption and China’s blackening skies. Japanese Premier Abe is seizing the opportunity to rush a chilling official-secrets bill into law: which if enacted
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: China’s declaration of a vast air defense identification zone belies all the talk of its peaceful, magnanimous rise as a world power. A tiny accident or miscalculation in the skies above the disputed islands could easily spiral out of control, dragging Washington into a
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Hedge funds et al pushed wagers that bet the yen will fall versus the dollar to the highest since July 2007, versus the median of over 50 analysts who see the yen as flat through Q1, 2014. Brad Bechtel at Faros Trading said everybody likes dollar-yen higher.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers writes: Japan says it will print unlimited amounts of money, the Fed says it can print a trillion dollars a year, and the ECB says it will do “whatever it takes.” The people getting the gigantic ocean of liquidity are having a wonderful time but it
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Christine Lagarde at the IMF said failure to raise the US debt ceiling is a far worse threat to the global economy than the shutdown. Lagarde said the global economic outlook is subdued, but the US and eurozone are picking up steam, and Japan is improving, though
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Mizuho Securities say the bubble forming in the Japanese government bond market risks further expansion as central bank purchases shield the notes from a global rout. Benchmark 10-year JGB yields were the lowest in the world at 0.67 percent versus 2.65
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Nippon Individual Savings Account program opens for applications tomorrow and will allow individuals to buy $10,143 a year of risk assets – stocks, ETFs and investment trusts – that are exempt from taxes on dividends and capital gains for 5 years. Nomura Research Institute estimates the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Takeshi Fujimaki, who has been predicting an eventual default in Japan since at least 2009, said: A fiscal crisis in Japan is inevitable and neither a higher sales tax nor the 2020 Olympics will be able to stop it. Total debt will continue to increase and Japan
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A Bloomberg poll of investors, analysts and traders showed: 40% see the euro-area economy as improving, more than 4 times the number in May 40% see the world economy as strengthening, the most since January 2011. 52% expect stocks to produce the best return over the next
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jim Rogers writes: Plato said that societies develop from dictatorship to oligarchy to democracy to chaos and then back to dictatorship. Chaos seems to be what is happening in some Asian countries. Japan, Korea, Singapore, China were all one-party states but as they became more prosperous, their
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