Salient to Investors: Paul Krugman writes: Paul Ryan’s proposal of slashing the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, yet somehow raising 19.1 percent of G.D.P. in revenues are even more fraudulent than his proposals in 2010 and fortunately this time getting the derision it deserves. Draconian austerity is simply not needed
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Mohamed El-Erian at Pimco said: Europe may contract 1 percent to 1.5 percent in the next 12 months with the private sector starved for credit and austerity policies limiting growth. Ireland’s first sale of 10-yr government bonds since its 2010 bailout is a sign of the gradual healing in Europe’s financial
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: A Pew Research Center study found: Modern parenthood is a recipe for stress American fathers spend more than twice as much time doing housework as their fathers did in 1965, almost 3 times more hours on child care, and works 5 fewer hours every week. Mothers spend
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Michael Montgomery at IHS Global Insight said current work weeks are very, very, very long on a historical basis, and a cause of job growth in manufacturing, which with housing and other industries starting to join autos in supporting manufacturing, makes the job gains more sustainable. Transportation
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Peter Temin at MIT and David Vines at Oxford write: The global economy succeeded in the second half of the 20th century because US power could recruit countries to cooperate to maintain prosperity, and again at the end of the 19th century led by Britain. The US
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Research by Bradford DeLong at Berkeley and Lawrence Summers shows that with short-term interest rates near zero, the multiplier is at its most powerful, so increased spending could be unusually potent in reviving growth and pay for itself and bring lower deficits in the long run. DeLong said the budget cuts
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Charles Clowdis at IHS Global Insight said hauling oil in tank cars is creating jobs and wealth and investment opportunities – there is much crude that can’t be piped. The US expanded oil production in 2012 by the biggest amount since Titusville in 1859. The S&P Supercomposite Railroads Index has
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeremy Grantham at Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo says: The US is muddling through reasonably well in the short-term, but long-term we are in a slowdown unappreciated by most economists – because they are not interested in the long-term. US growth won’t ever return to previous levels because
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Brian Jones at Societe Generale said many things are going the right way – more people working means more people spending, which to some extent neutralizes higher taxes. Dean Maki at Barclays expects GDP will rise at a 2 percent annual average pace in half2 from a 1.5 percent rate in half1
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Steven Hansen at Econintersect writes: The US economy could be in the zone of the no win scenario as the debt load itself works against the economy outgrowing the debt. No scenario being discussed will the US be reducing the debt: it will just continue to grow.
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