The US Economy Is Not Awesome And It’s Not Decoupled – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 09-01-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Reliable signs of an economic recovery are few. Housing has not moved at all. Private construction spending is 7% below December 2007 levels, 43% below its early 2006 peak, at January 2002 levels nominally, and 1992 levels when adjusted for inflation. Spending is 2.1% of

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Cheap Labor – ECRI 09-01-15

Salient to Investors: The official jobless rate is a misleading indicator of employment. The ‘jobs recovery’ has been led by cheap labor, with job gains going disproportionately to the least educated and lowest-paid workers. The stagnation in nominal wage growth is consistent with the weakness in the employment/population (E/P) ratio.

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Fareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 08-30-15

Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The US economy has recovered nicely. A 2014 UCLA study found that many black and Latino students face almost total isolation from white and Asian students and middle-class peers. Much more Saudi oil wealth has gone into pernicious causes over the last 30 years

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Contra Corner Gets Some Company – The NYT Highlights Four Who Saw it Coming – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 08-26-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Expect a central banker to soon herald that more monetary heroin is coming, triggering a market rally and pronouncements that its “correction” is over. It will take time for the market to lose its unwarranted faith in central bank omnipotence. However, money will now be made by selling

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What next for the global economy after China market woes? – BBC News 08-25-15

Salient to Investors: Global growth is changing but we are not on the verge of a global recession. UK and US growth is solid, and the Eurozone is staging a weak recovery. China’s stock market drop says little about the health of the Chinese economy and matters little to investors outside China,

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Signs, Long Unheeded, Now Point to Risks in U.S. Economy – New York Times 08-25-15

Salient to Investors: More and more analysts are pointing to problems in China and other markets as posing a real threat to the American economy. Raoul Pal at the Global Macro Investor said the global GDP pie is shrinking and cites the dollar’s upward move against nearly all emerging-market currencies. In

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Forget The Dips, Sell The Rips – David Stockman’s Contra Corner 08-24-15

Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The S&P 500 has sliced through both the 50-day and 200-day moving averages. 2130 on the S&P 500 will prove to be a generational high.  CAT, China, European luxury brands, the NASDAQ Biotech Index are shorts. Expect the Fed to announce they are well short of

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Sentiment Building to Deport Nation’s Billionaires – The New Yorker 08-24-15

Salient to Investors: Andy Borowitz reports that the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute found that Americans hold US billionaires in the lowest ever esteem, and the majority would like to see them deported. Read the full article at http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/sentiment-building-to-deport-nations-billionaires Click here to receive free and immediate email alerts of the latest forecasts.

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Fareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 08-23-15

Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The last time oil fell more than 50% in less than a year, in the 1980s, the Soviet Union collapsed. Saudi Arabia wants to put American shale and tight oil producers out of business, but they have survived using technology and smart business practices.

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