Salient to Investors: Bill Gross at Pimco said: He raised Treasury holdings to 33 percent of assets in March, the highest level since July 2012, and lowered mortgage holdings to 33 percent, the lowest level since August 2011. cash advance businessespayday loans in la Japan’s unprecedented purchase program may force investors into
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Kyle Bass at Hayman Advisors, who has been betting on a collapse in the Japanese bond market for at least 3 years, said Japanese government bondholders’ reaction to the BOJ’s stimulus may foreshadow a broader selloff. Bass said this is the first deviation of the sanctity of that
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The vast majority of older Americans face steep and rising health-care costs that threaten to bankrupt them and are doing little to protect themselves. Only 1 in 5 companies with at least 10 employees offers long-term care insurance. Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care. Millions face spending themselves into
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The Asian Development Bank said: China’s surging wage costs are undermining competitiveness and threatening growth. Average inflation-adjusted wages have more than tripled in a decade and non-wage costs have risen since a 2008 labor law – restrictions on workers’ mobility through the household registration system known as hukou. Changes in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Economists expect China to report an 11.7 percent growth in exports and a 6 percent rise in imports. In each of the previous three months, exports have come in at least 7.5 percentage points above what economists had predicted. While China has reported stellar numbers, neighbors South
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Russian investment banks controlled by Russia are squeezing out foreign competitors, helped by a bailout of the country’s richest men five years ago. Freeman & Co says Russian banks won 38 percent of fees in 2012 versus 7 percent in 2005, European banks dropped to 32 percent from
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: George Soros said: China has a couple of years to control risks as t he rapid growth of shadow banking is disturbingly similar to the subprime-mortgage market in the US that caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008. China can keep its current economic growth model for another year
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jan Hatzius said the US economy is losing steam and the current $85 billion pace of purchases is very likely to continue for the time being. Michael Cloherty at RBC Capital Markets said the significant move in Treasuries may be too much, and does believe the widely expected dramatic change in capital flows from the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Drew Matus at UBS Securities said the Fed will not repeat its error of the past 3 years and continue with QE through the summer, and having been fooled multiple times by slumps in the economy they will be gun-shy on the exit strategy. William C. Dudley at the New York
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics said: US overall net worth was 550 percent of GDP in 2011 versus official GDP of near $15 trillion and national debt of $16.8 trillion – not particularly egregious. Including US holdings of foreign bonds and cross-country holdings of other types of assets,
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