The New Cold War won’t be fought with missiles and submarines; it will be fought with oil companies, natural resources…and pigs.
Pssst…Want to buy a watch? I don’t have one for sale, but I know some folks that are willing to sell you… well, it’s not a watch, but it’s something much, much better. They’ll sell you time. You want to buy some time?
Bill Gross’ Pimco, which manages the world’s largest bond fund, predicted earlier this week there’s a more than 60% chance of a recession in three to five years.”Given that the last global recession was four years ago, and also given that the global economy is significantly more indebted today than it was four years ago, we believe there is now a greater than 60 percent probability that we will experience another global recession in the next three to five years,” Saumil H. Parikh, a managing director and generalist portfolio manager at Pimco, said in a note Tuesday.
Call it the “Wal-Mart Syndrome”.
Entire industries — such as low-end retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and fast food chains like McDonald’s Inc. (NYSE: MCD) – pump up their profits by paying employees extremely low wages.
But thousands of Americans who need to support a household on such low wages – either the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 or just a bit above it – can only do so with public assistance.
Thanks to the life support of $12 trillion and 515 rate cuts by the world’s central banks since March 2009, the global economy’s heart is beginning to beat again.
If you’re not familiar with the term “putting lipstick on a pig,” well I think there is an apt example at play again from the people who seem to be experts at applying the lipstick.
The Bank of Japan is sticking to its policy of fiscal stimulus to try to stoke inflation, and that’s rattled markets worldwide.
Legendary bond guru Bill Gross doesn’t think too highly of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke’s monetary policies.
“There comes a point when no matter how much blood is being pumped through the system as it is now, with zero-based policy rates and global quantitative easing programs, that the blood itself may become anemic, oxygen-starved, or even leukemic, with white blood cells destroying more productive red cell counterparts,” Gross writes in his June investment outlook titled Wounded Heart.
Ordinary Americans have been thrust into a nightmarish Orwellian daze.
I see tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists waiving their hands about in joyful affirmation, and it feels plain unnatural.
One of the really beneficial things about science is its power to transcend borders and ideologies.
Scientists in countries that may be totally hostile to one another have the chance of collaborating on difficult problems in a spirit of openness.