Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Destroying ISIS will take collaboration with Iran (which has far more influence than the US with the Iraqi government) which would have beneficial effects from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan. While air strikes are usually successful, what usually follows is messy. The US cannot both destroy ISIS
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Richard Segal at Jefferies Intl said Russia’s reserves are too large relative to emerging-market dollar bonds so it will be difficult for it to stop buying US, European and Japanese bonds. Luis Costa at Citigroup said Russia’s bond-diversification plan sounds like posturing as the size of its sovereign-wealth
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The resumption of growth in the US and UK is in stark contrast to the 25-yr yield curve for government bonds of the developed economies, which indicate government borrowing real costs of negative or zero for up to 25 years. The contradiction implies investors do not expect
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Andrew Swan at BlackRock said: Blackrock has an overweight position in Korea stocks as a lot of negativity is already priced in and the market is so cheap. The South Korean equity market could be in the early stages of bottoming. A recovery in domestic demand may help
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Moody’s Investors Service said: The 25 largest US public pensions – 40% of the $5.3 trillion in US public pensions – face $2 trillion in unfunded liabilities, showing that investment returns cannot keep up with ballooning obligations and inadequate pension contributions – from 2004 to 2013 an average
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Analysts say the easing of tensions in Ukraine offers little respite to Russia as low oil prices threaten a recession. 58% of 19 economists say Russia needs its main export crude blend to trade at $100 per barrel or more to avoid a recession, while 19% say
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The International Crisis Group said: The Ebola outbreak threatens to become a political crisis that could unravel years of effort to stabilize West Africa – the worst-hit countries face widespread chaos and, potentially, collapse. Adding social breakdown to the epidemic would create a disaster perhaps impossible to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs said: Home construction will grow 10% to 15% by 2015-2016, while capital spending will fall to 5%, a reminder of how very different this recovery is. It is unusual for a housing recovery to lag a capital-spending recovery. Gains in business investment
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Owen Murfin at BlackRock said: Bond investors have been too hasty to bet the ECB will buy sovereign debt The ECB’s target of increasing its balance sheet by $1.29 trillion is ambitious and the poor take-up of new cheap loans offered to banks is no guarantee of QE –
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The slump in commodity prices to a 5-year low signals investors are cautious about the strength of the global economy. Brent crude touched a 2-year low last week and iron ore at Qingdao is the lowest since 2009. Economists expect China to grow 7.4% in 2014, the weakest
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