Salient to Investors: Goldman Sachs study says: Bond investors do not perceive the 6 biggest US banks as too big to fail, including itself. The 6 banks have had an average funding-cost advantage over smaller competitors of 0.31 percent since 1999 – widest in the financial crisis and now an average 0.10
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Cash and marketable securities are at a record $1.73 trillion, while capital spending in the most recent quarter rose by the least since March 2010. Nick Raich at Earnings Scout said public outcry will erupt if companies do not spend and create jobs. Economists and money managers
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Cass R. Sunstein at Harvard writes: The sheer number of executive-branch decisions increases substantially over time, increasing the likelihood that at least one of those decisions will turn out to be incorrect, inappropriate or worse. As time passes, the incumbent President becomes more likely than his predecessor to be held responsible
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: More than half of the 20 municipalities with the fastest-growing populations between 2010 and 2012 were suburbs, meaning growing suburban communities will continue to get their share of the $400 billion in funds the federal government annually spends based on population data provided by the Census Bureau. Author James
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: 11 percent of student loans were seriously delinquent – a record – in Q3 2012 versus 6 percent in Q1 2003. Almost 30 percent of 20 to 24-year-olds are not employed or in school. Jack Buckley at the National Center for Education Statistics said a college diploma
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Dean Maki at Barclays said the housing recovery is intact and on a solid foundation. Lawrence Yun at NAR said the double-digit median price increase is unhealthy because incomes are rising at less than 2 percent – the only way to moderate price increases is more supply, which is 14
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Margie Patel at Wells Capital Mgmt says the market will rise over the balance of the year because the fundamentals are so good – any correction will be mild and either now or in the summer. Charles Evans at FRB of Chicago sees self-sustaining growth at escape
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The fundamental rule of international relations is that as a country becomes powerful, others gang up to bring it down – viz the Habsburg Empire to Napoleonic France to Germany to the Soviet Union. The one great exception in modern history is the US,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Ben Bernanke says: Between 1700 and 1970 worker productivity jumped 30 times, and in the last 50 years, life expectancy increased 8 years from 70 to 78, versus 53 years in 1913 when 60-hour work weeks at manufacturing jobs were the norm. In the long-run we will
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Pope Francis said: Free market economics had created a tyranny – a cult of money – in which people were valued only by their ability to consume. Life had become worse for people in both rich and poor countries. Poverty was becoming more and more evident. Read
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