Salient to Investors: Mary Daly and Bart Hobijn at FRB San Francisco said during and after the 2007 recession employers left wages higher than they normally would be after a severe downturn so may not now have to offer increases to attract workers as the job market improves. They said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Thomas Simons at Jefferies said new-home sales have no traction whatsoever but overall housing data is encouraging, with everything moving in the right direction, though a little more slowly. New-home sales are tabulated when contracts are signed, and so are a more timely barometer than transactions on existing homes.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: ISIS is the most significant terrorist organization we have ever faced, becoming what al Qaeda always wanted to be – ISIS is developing a very large, deep and sophisticated base with the ability to sell oil and wheat at a bargain. Mao Tse Tung
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The majority of top-ranked women in S&P 500 companies are not in the operational jobs that lead to CEO – 55% are finance, legal or HR chiefs. 94% of S&P 500 CEOs held top operations positions immediately before appointment. Women lack role models and tend to start
READ MORE... →Martin van Vliet at ING said geopolitical tensions will become increasingly critical in the coming months, the big drop in China is consistent with a slowdown in growth, and the recovery in the euro area is too slow to turnaround the global market. Christian Schulz at Berenberg Bank said geopolitical uncertainties, especially Ukraine, threaten to undermine the export-led
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: There are 4.7 million job openings in the US, the most in more than a decade versus 9.7 million people looking for work. Annual wage increases, around 2%, would be rising much faster if there were a shortage of qualified workers. Peter Cappelli at Wharton School says: The
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mark Lynch at George Washington University said history shows that in a chaotic, violent civil war such as in Syria, US intervention would have had little effect other than to extend and exacerbate the conflict. David Kilcullen at Caerus Associates said American air power will successfully blunt any
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: TransUnion said as much as 20% of home equity lines of credit are at increased risk of default as they switch from interest-only to include principal, causing monthly payments to rise more than 50%. Ezra Becker at TransUnion said more than half of the outstanding HELOCs have
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Matthew Ledvina at Anaford said Fatca and the Swiss bank disclosure program has intensified the search for US nationals beyond all measure. The US is the only OECD country that taxes its citizens abroad. Almost 9,000 Americans living overseas have surrendered their passports over the past 5
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Philip Vermeulen at ECB and Gabriel Zucman at London School of Economics said the wealth of the super-affluent is undercounted because of tax shelters and non-responses to questionnaires. Zucman said the top 0.1% of Americans with at least $20 million in net wealth owned 23.5% of all US
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