The Breakdown of the BRICs – Bloomberg Businessweek 07-12-13
Salient Points: In Q1 2013, BRIC bonds, currencies, and stocks fell together for the first time since 2006. Since 2003, the MSCI BRIC Index has returned 227 percent, but is down 17 percent in 2013 and...
View ArticleBRIC Bust Seen in Emerging Market Discontent With Growth – Bloomberg 07-22-13
Salient Points: Stretched budgets and sluggish growth are putting emerging-market governments on a collision course with rising pressures from recently empowered middle classes for more spending and...
View ArticleA BRICS Bank Needs a Sense of Purpose to Succeed – Bloomberg 08-05-13
Salient Points: Jim O’Neil writes: In April, the BRICS said they would build their own development bank. Their difficulty in cooperating is simply because they are not very alike. Brazil, Russia, India...
View ArticleIMF Cuts Global Outlook, Warns of U.S. Default Threat – Bloomberg 10-08-13
Salient Points: The IMF said: Advanced economies are gradually strengthening while growth in emerging-market economies has slowed. The effects of any failure to repay US debt would be felt right away,...
View ArticleAge of Austerity Nearing End May Boost Global Economy – Bloomberg 12-04-13
Salient Points: The IMF predicts G-7 nations will tighten policy in 2014 by the least since they began in 2011 – at half this year’s pace as the average budget shortfall drops to about a quarter of...
View ArticleInvestments: Short Junk & Government Bonds, Long Airlines & Russia – Jim...
Salient Points: Jim Rogers writes: Am short junk bonds as eventually the 30-yr bull market in bonds will end, if not ended already. Buying airlines. Investing in Russia. Read the full article at...
View ArticleSochi or bust – The Economist 02-01-14
Salient Points: The $50 billion Sochi Olympics is the largest construction project in Russia’s post-Soviet history and a microcosm of Russian corruption, inefficiencies, excesses of wealth and...
View ArticleGoldman to Fidelity Call for Calm After Global Stock Wipeout – Bloomberg...
Salient Points: Catherine Yeung at Fidelity Investment Mgmt is advising calm, adding that profits are rising and shares just got a lot less expensive as being a contrarian and buying when things seem...
View ArticleDimensional Winning in Emerging Markets: Riskless Return – Bloomberg 07-08-14
Salient Points: Karen Umland at the DFA Emerging Markets Small Cap Portfolio Fund is slightly overweight India, and had 15 percent of holdings in Taiwan, over 14 percent in South Korea, over 14 percent...
View ArticleBlackRock Sees Russia Buying Opportunity After Calling Rally – Bloomberg...
Salient Points: Sam Vecht at BlackRock says Russian stocks are very cheap, carry a high dividend yield, and earnings downgrades are absent. BlackRock’s Emerging Europe Trust was 50 percent invested in...
View ArticleFareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 08-31-14
Salient Points: Fareed Zakaria said: Defeating ISIS would require a large and sustained strategic effort from the US but without significant numbers of US ground troops. ISIS videos of executions are...
View ArticleFareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 09-07-14
Salient Points: Fareed Zakaria said: Islamic terror is not the isolated behavior of a handful of nihilists but a broader culture that has been complicit in it or at least unwilling to combat it....
View ArticleFareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 09-14-14
Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The purpose of ISIS’ execution videos was to provoke the US and it worked. Al Qaeda tries to appeal to all Muslims while ISIS is distinctly sectarian and...
View ArticleUkraine Crisis Seen Lasting for Years in Threat to Russia – Bloomberg 09-16-14
Salient to Investors: Alexei Kudrin at Sberbank said: The conflict in Ukraine will take 2 to 3 years at a minimum to resolve Russia’s current level of investment is insufficient for development and...
View ArticleRussia Risks Recession as Oil Drop Seen Squeezing Budget – Bloomberg 09-25-14
Salient to Investors: Analysts say the easing of tensions in Ukraine offers little respite to Russia as low oil prices threaten a recession. 58% of 19 economists say Russia needs its main export crude...
View ArticlePutin’s Sell-Treasuries-for-BRICS Bonds Plan Has Limits – Bloomberg 09-26-14
Salient to Investors: Richard Segal at Jefferies Intl said Russia’s reserves are too large relative to emerging-market dollar bonds so it will be difficult for it to stop buying US, European and...
View ArticleWhat Putin Wrought Has World Asking What Russia Might Have Been – Bloomberg...
Salient to Investors: Michael McFaul at Stanford University sees long-term damage to Russia from Putin’s new direction. Anders Aslund at the Peterson Institute for Intl Economics sees a similar...
View ArticleU.S. Stocks Tumble as Russell 2000 Enters Correction – Bloomberg 10-01-14
Salient to Investors: Randy Bateman at Huntington Asset Advisors said investors have always relied on the Fed priming the pump, which ends this month so investors are moving focus to the many...
View ArticleA Pump War? – New York Times 10-14-14
Salient to Investors: Thomas Friedman writes: Is the US and Saudi Arabia engaged in another global war with Russia and Iran like when they pumped the former Soviet Union to death? Oil export revenues...
View ArticleFareed Zakaria GPS – CNN 12-07-14
Salient to Investors: Fareed Zakaria said: The Department of Defense cost overruns on one weapons system are more than the total defense budget of Britain and France put together. The US spends more on...
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