Salient to Investors: Brian Jones at Societe Generale said growth is not fast enough to bring the unemployment rate down or generate an appreciable number of jobs, yet it’s not weak enough that we’re going back into recession. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-15/industrial-production-in-u-s-unexpectedly-dropped-in-may.html
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: Douglas Swanson at JPMorgan Chase sees nothing in the short term to cure Europe. Hedge-funds and large speculators increased net-short position in 10-year T-note futures in the week ending June 12. Speculative short positions outnumbered long positions by 95,385 contracts on the CBT. The Fed’s term premium shows U.S. government bonds at almost
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brazil holds the world’s biggest oil discoveries since Kazakhstan found the Kashagan field in 2000. Brazil has at least 50 billion barrels of recoverable reserves in an area the size of Florida in deep waters off the coast of Brazil. Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-15/petrobras-worst-big-oil-bet-on-deepwater-disappointments.html
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The plunge in global commodity supports further easing by the Fed. RBC Global Asset Management expects inflation will decelerate a little from here, but not massively. OECD reports inflation among its 34 member countries slowed to 2.5 percent in April from 3.3 percent in September. Predictions: Economists surveyed by Bloomberg
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mexican wages after inflation have risen at an annual pace of 0.4 percent since 2005, lower than Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay. A third of Mexicans work in the informal economy without steady income. Cheap labor has helped Mexico pass China as a low-cost supplier of manufacturing goods to the U.S.,
READ MORE... →The Census Bureau reports that 50 million people don’t have health coverage in the U.S., 16 percent of the population, versus 36.6 million, or 13 percent, in 2000. People covered at work declined to 55.3 percent from 65.1 percent in 2000. Intrade traders see a 68 percent chance the Supreme court will strike down
READ MORE... →IMF estimates Japanese public debt will balloon to 245.6 percent of GDP in 2014, up from 67.3 percent in 1984. Former adviser to George Soros, Takeshi Fujimaki recommends buying assets in U.S. dollars, Swiss francs, sterling, Australian and Canadian dollars, because Japan may default within five years, before Europe does. Fujimaki says the yen
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A prolonged slowdown in the BRICs threatens a world economy in its weakest spell since the end of the 2009 recession, which the BRICs helped shorten by contributing about half of the international expansion since 2007. Citigroup’s surprise index, which measures how much data miss predictions, is
READ MORE... →Predictions: Pimco’s Neel Kashkari said the Fed will start QE3 due to worsening unemployment, lower equity prices and risk of shocks from Europe. Europe take years to solve as Greece exits from the euro region, though not necessarily after the country’s elections. BlackRock’s Robert Doll said the Fed will need to see significantly
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