Salient to Investors: Takeshi Fujimaki said: A delay in increasing the sales tax and reduction of Fed stimulus could cause Japan’s government bond bubble to burst. Japan will not be able to avoid default and hyper-inflation with the tax increase, but that is no excuse not to go ahead with it. Japan’s fiscal
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Michael Vogelzang at Boston Advisors said the tone from central banks is that the economy is a little better but not yet at escape velocity without monetary support, and as long as there is strong accommodative policy, the market can go up a lot, driven by Fed
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: Asia sits on almost $7 trillion in currency reserves, much of it in dollars as its central banks engaged in a kind of financial arms race after a 1997 crisis. Asia now has more weapons against market unrest than it knows what to do with
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Alan Patricof at Greycroft said: Real unemployment is worse than the data because it does not include the large number of part-time workers. Manufacturing usually employs far more than tech companies, but the tech business is so robust with thousands of start-ups. We are in a transformational economy
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Caroline Baum writes: Obama’s proposal to cut the corporate tax rate in exchange for new spending on education, training and infrastructure is a non-starter. 50 percent of economists say the Fed will taper in September but if economic conditions change, the Fed’s actions will change with them.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Clive Crook writes: The crash will recede, confidence will come back and stronger growth will resume. The zeal of Americans to work hard and prosper will prevail over the weary incompetence of the political class. Inequality is rising, but the theory that the US system is fundamentally
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: William Pesek writes: Najib kept his Malaysian coalition in power with a giant spending spree that included smartphone rebates for youths, household electricity subsidies and higher wages for civil servants. Fitch said Malaysia’s public finances are its key rating weakness. It will be difficult to achieve the 3
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Automotive News reports that 3.27 million unsold cars sit on lots across the US, the most in almost 5 years and versus 2.7 million a year ago and 1 million more than in the summer of 2011. Interest rates are still relatively low, car loans are easy
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The US home ownership rate is 65% versus the record high of 69.2 percent in 2004, and back where it was two decades ago. Anthony Sanders at George Mason University said low down-payment loans coupled with exotic adjustable rate mortgages helped fuel the housing bubble, so do we want to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Deanne Julius said the UK has reached the escape velocity that BoE Governor Mark Carney said economies need to achieve, and no additional monetary stimulus is warranted. John Gieve said the UK economy has turned a corner after growth accelerated to 0.6 percent in Q2, but is some way from
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