Fareed Zakaria said: The great American housing market is back as the Case-Shiller housing index showed its largest annual increase in prices in seven years, showing its core character: flexibility and resilience. The US is the only rich country whose population is growing, increasing by 3 million people every year,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Stephen L. Carter at Yale writes: The law of unintended consequences rests on a deceptively simple insight: We cannot predict the future. There are always externalities, and it’s impossible to identify all of them in advance. Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794 which led to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The boost to household wealth from rising home values and stock prices is allowing Americans to weather higher payroll taxes and sustain purchases, the biggest part of the economy. Millan Mulraine at TD Securities USA said the economic outlook is still favorable with fairly robust growth driven
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman said: The baby boom generation has unfairly benefited from bubble-finance, a 30-year explosion of debt which created temporary but unsustainable economic prosperity, and a financialization of the system through lower and lower interest rates that has massively rewarded speculation but not real investments. $60 trillion
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: within minutes either online William D. Cohan writes: With the expected appointment of Jason Furman as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Robert Rubin has completed the remarkable feat of placing 5 of his acolytes in key positions of power in the Obama administration. The
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Matthew Kaufler at Federated Investors said the takeaway from today’s statistics is continued bias to keep QE – positive for financial assets as long as that perception exists. Patrick Spencer at Robert W. Baird said the jury is still out on sustainable growth, and Bernanke said he will only start
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Volcker said: The Fed will fall short by being asked to meet price stability and full employment – a mandate both operationally confusing and ultimately illusory. Asking too much is accommodating misguided fiscal policies, dealing with structural imbalances, to square continuously the hypothetical circles of stability, growth
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Leemore Dafny’s examination of health-insurance markets is said to have helped mold the state and federal exchanges that are central to Obamacare’s 2010 health-care law. Her 2010 paper in the American Economic Review found that a lack of competition in insurance markets drives up premiums, that insurers charge more
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: FRB of Boston President Eric Rosengren said: Significant accommodation remains appropriate and warned that inflation could impair growth should it decline further. It may be undesirable to abruptly stop purchases: better a modest reduction in the pace of asset purchases when we see a gradual improvement in labor markets and the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Pier Carlo Padoan at OECD said: Global economic growth will accelerate at multiple speeds in 2014 with both the US and Japan continuing to outpace the euro area. Rising unemployment is the most pressing challenge and euro countries with trade surpluses such as Germany need to allow wages to rise Reform fatigue is mounting
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