Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Singapore mandates ethnic diversity in all neighborhoods – over 80% of Singaporeans live in public housing. US efforts in the 50s and 60s to desegregate schools and integrate neighborhoods were largely abandoned by the 80s and America is now strikingly segregated. A UCLA study in 2014 said
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: China last reported its gold reserves in 2009 at 1,054.1 tonnes, just 1% of the value of its foreign currency reserves, and less gold reserves than Germany, the IMF, Italy and France, and a fraction of those of the US. Bloomberg Intelligence believes China’s reserves exceed 3,510 tonnes,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Keynesian central banking has created a worldwide financial bubble. Soaring bond yields and the fear of losing debt market access are the one force that can cause governments to sober-up and acknowledge the facts. Reagan did not want Volcker to ease the intense upward pressure on interest rates and private
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: Energy-related emissions were flat in 2014 for the first time in 40 years. Technology and policy innovations in energy are not happening on the scale that they need to. In 2011, federal spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP in 2011 was half
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: Economists Piketty and Krugman are zero-sum anti-capitalists. Real capitalism cannot thrive unless inventive and entrepreneurial genius is rewarded with outsized fortunes. Massive central bank intervention is not necessary for capitalism to thrive. The free market does not perennially slump toward underperformance and depressionary collapse
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The Fed has generated a $50 trillion financial bubble and made money and capital markets to little more than gambling casinos. Speculative rent-seeking in the financial market has replaced entrepreneurial innovation and supply side investment and productivity, resulting in a severe drop in real growth and a
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The cold war between Russia and the West over Ukraine is worsening. Saudi Arabia will not build a nuclear weapon whatever happens with Iran’s nuclear program because it cannot – oil is 44 % and manufacturing less than 10% of GDP. Saudi Arabia could not
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The ratio of finance to GDP has risen to 540% vs. the historic norm of 200%. Central bank driven bubble finance since the late 1980s has resulted in the GDP deflator-adjusted value of corporate equities and credit market debt outstanding rising 8 times, while real median household
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The financial carrying capacity of the developed market economies has deteriorated since the 1980s; due to aging demographics, declining competitiveness v. emerging market economies, declining productivity growth, and the big increase in the leverage ratio against public and private incomes. The US’s ability to
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: This central bank fueled boom will ultimately bring a prolonged deflationary contraction and day of reckoning for financial assets. During the 27 years of Greenspan’s Fed Chair term from 1987-2014: The Fed balance sheet grew 23 times. Buffet’s net worth grew 35 times, or 19 times adjusted
READ MORE... →