Salient to Investors: Outstanding credit in China rose to 206.3 percent of GDP in Q2 2014 versus 166.6 percent at the end of 2011. Expansion in economy-wide credit has exceeded nominal GDP growth in every quarter since 2008. Louis Kuijs at Royal Bank of Scotland wonders how this is going
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Tim Bajarin at Creative Strategies said one of Apple’s biggest moves is in Southeast Asia, given Android has passed Apple in smartphones and has made huge strides in tablets in 2014. Gartner said Android smartphones comprised 78 percent of the global market in 2013 versus 66 percent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Economists say a rise in interest rates or falling prices could repeat the record high repossessions of private-landlord homes after the 2008 financial crisis. 1 in 3 economists predict an increase this year in the BOE rate. The BOE’s loan-to-income cap does not apply to buy-to-let, the
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Analysts still expect the slowest full-year expansion in 2014 since 1990. Zhu Haibin at JPMorgan Chase says the economic data are positive and the government will continue to support key sectors but not expand to other sectors. Liu Li-Gang at Australia & New Zealand Banking raised their
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Gary Shilling writes: The pessimistic economic theories are wrong. Weak growth will NOT last forever despite the Reinhart-Rogoff findings that the economy contracts at a 0.1 percent annual rate when government debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP. In the late 1970s and early 1980s many economists presumed
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Paul Zemsky at Voya Investment Mgmt sees a new era of macro policy where the Fed uses new tools to prevent bubbles and raises concerns when markets are away from fundamentals. Alan Gayle at RidgeWorth Investments said the Fed recognizes it needs to broaden its scope of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The CBO predicted: Current federal tax and spending policies are unsustainable. US debt held by the public will rise 74 percent of GDP in 2014 to 78 percent in 2024, and to 106 percent in 2039. Social Security and federal health-care programs would account for 14 percent
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Economist Thomas Piketty excludes human capital – an individual’s labor power, skills, training and abilities – from his analysis of wealth inequality because it cannot be owned or traded on a market, but recognizes it is key to understanding inequality. Sean Reardon at Stanford said low-income kids
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Philip Vermeulen at the ECB said: The top 1 percent of US households owns 35-37 percent of all wealth, higher than the 34 percent finding of the 2010 US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our knowledge of the wealth distribution is imperfect, and very likely underestimates wealth at
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Jeffrey Currie at Goldman Sachs predicts gold to fall to $1,050 by year-end as the economy improves and there is more confidence in the recovery, without significant inflationary concerns. Goldman predicts higher interest rates in Q3, 2015. Last week, net-long positions in gold rose to their highest
READ MORE... →