Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham said: The stock market is expensive and headed for a bubble at S&P 500 above 2250, and offers paltry returns for years to come. Expect an explosion of M&As to record numbers due to cheaper debt in this cycle, profit margins that will remain high, a still young
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling writes: Persistently slow growth will NOT be the norm for years to come. When private-sector deleveraging is completed, real GDP growth will return to its long-run trend of 3.5 percent or more. Productivity will return to 2.5 percent annual growth or more after deleveraging is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Over 33% of a Bloomberg poll of international investors say the euro economy is in its worst shape in more than a year and in danger of dropping into deflation, and the ECB is not doing enough to help. Cyril Blaise at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: RealtyTrac said properties with a default, auction or repossession notice are at the lowest since July 2006, a month before prices peaked and then collapsed. Daren Blomquist at RealtyTrac said foreclosures are more like a troublesome gnat than a mortal threat to the housing market. Lawrence Yun
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jay Morelock at FTN Financial said the ‘big recovery’ has turned out not to be, and expects a stabilization but not a crash or acceleration. Brad Hunter at Metrostudy said starts in the South may have been hurt by a shortage of buildable lots as development was
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling writes: The pessimistic economic theories are wrong. Weak growth will NOT last forever despite the Reinhart-Rogoff findings that the economy contracts at a 0.1 percent annual rate when government debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP. In the late 1970s and early 1980s many economists presumed
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The CBO predicted: Current federal tax and spending policies are unsustainable. US debt held by the public will rise 74 percent of GDP in 2014 to 78 percent in 2024, and to 106 percent in 2039. Social Security and federal health-care programs would account for 14 percent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Economist Thomas Piketty excludes human capital – an individual’s labor power, skills, training and abilities – from his analysis of wealth inequality because it cannot be owned or traded on a market, but recognizes it is key to understanding inequality. Sean Reardon at Stanford said low-income kids
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Philip Vermeulen at the ECB said: The top 1 percent of US households owns 35-37 percent of all wealth, higher than the 34 percent finding of the 2010 US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our knowledge of the wealth distribution is imperfect, and very likely underestimates wealth at
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The median economist predicts GDP will grow 3.1 percent in half2 2014 and 2015 will be the strongest year in a decade. Ethan Harris at Bank of America sees no major headwinds and forecasts 3 percent growth in half2 2014 on fewer government cutbacks, rising auto demand
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