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  • Finance 0

    The Fraud Of The New “Family-Friendly” Work

    Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) announced it’s offering paid leave for new mothers and fathers for the first year after the birth of adoption of a child. Other high-tech firms are close behind. Some big law firms are also getting into the act. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is offering 22 paid weeks off for both male and female attorneys. Even Wall Street is taking baby steps in the direction of family-friendly work. Goldman Sachs just doubled paid parental leave to four weeks.  All this should be welcome news. Millennials now constitute the largest segment of the American work force. Many are just forming families, so the new family-frie...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Blowout In Some Corporate Bond Spreads; Bond Funds Post 3rd Week Of Outflows

    Bond Funds Post 3rd Week of Outflows  Reuters reports High-yield, Investment-Grade Funds Post Third Week of Outflows.   U.S-based high-yield bond funds reported $1.2 billion in outflows, while U.S.-based investment-grade corporate bond funds posted their biggest cash withdrawals since June 2013, at $1.8 billion, data from Thomson Reuters’ Lipper service showed on Thursday. The latest figures, for the week ended Aug. 12, mark the third straight week of outflows for the two fund categories, Lipper said. “The flows data indicated investors were running away from high yield in both mutual funds and ETFs,” said Pat Keon, rese...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    China, The Hollow Dragon

    In terms of profitability and trade-generated wealth, China is a hollow dragon. It is widely assumed that manufacturing (a.k.a. the world’s workshop) is the source of China’s wealth. But how can this be true, given that manufacturing profit margins are razor-thin in China, and have been since the early 2000s? Given that as little as $10 of the value of every iPhone or iPad actually ends up in the Chinese economy, how can anyone claim manufacturing has generated enormous profits? (Mis)leading Indicators: Analysts differ over how much of the final price of an iPhone or an iPad should be assigned to what country, but no one dispute...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Russian 2Q Growth: Beating Forecasts On The Wrong Side

    by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in With apologies for a slight delay (I am actually away from work these weeks), here is a quick update on Russian 2Q 2015 GDP figures. Those who read my musings on the Russian economy would recall that in recent months we have been seeing some signs of stabilisation in the economy performance, albeit I have been reluctant to call these signs a full turnaround as data required robustness confirmation and broadening of any improvements. Good thing I stayed more cautious on the matter of calling a recovery. In 1Q 2015, Russian economy shrunk 2.2% y/y, surprising on the positive side the consensus ...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Binary Options Trading Opportunities – August 17, 2015

    Very little on economic docket With only the Housing Market Index numbers coming out of America, and the Trade Balance numbers coming out of the European Union, we believe that more than likely it will be a fairly quiet session as far as reactions are concerned. However, there are setups out there in the marketplace that are starting to catch our attention. WTI Crude Oil forms reversal signal The WTI Crude Oil market fell to the $40 level during the session on Friday. However, we bounced hard enough to form a bit of a hammer and that of course is a major reversal signal at an area that has been very supportive in the past. Because of this, if...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Here’s What You Need To Know About Industrial Production That Big Media Didn’t Tell You

    U.S. Industrial Production Ratchets Up in July trumpeted the Wall Street Journal on Friday. It added that, “Industrial production, a measure of output in the manufacturing, utilities and mining sectors, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in July from June, the Federal Reserve said Friday. It was the largest gain since November and the second straight increase for the measure after starting the year with five monthly decreases… Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a 0.4% increase in industrial production last month.” So, in Wall Street parlance, it was a “beat,” because the headline abstraction was stronger than w...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Why Is Gold Becoming Scarcer

    For quite a while, we have been talking about scarcity in gold. The cobasis for both October and December is positive. These contracts are backwardated. The cobasis for the February 2016 contract is not far from backwardation. The gold market is tight. Why? Let’s explore. Part of the matter is that the price has fallen. The more the price drops, the more buyers tend to come out, and sellers go away. We do not refer necessarily to the mines. Once the capital is sunk, a mining company is a price-taker. Management has little choice but to extract what it can, and hope the quantity produced times the profit available at a given gold price is en...
    On August 17, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Chart Of The Day: Mr. Deng’s Drastic Yuan Devaluation And The Long Mercantilist Peg Which Followed

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    On August 16, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    Did You Know That The U.S. No Longer Has Any Strategic Grain Reserves At All?

    Once upon a time, it was popular to say that the U.S. government only had enough wheat stored up to provide everyone in America with half a loaf of bread. But that is not true anymore. Recently, I discovered that the U.S. does not have any strategic grain reserves left at all. Zero. Nada. Zilch. As you will see below, the USDA liquidated the remaining reserves back in 2008. So if a major food crisis hit this country, our government would have nothing to give us. Of course the federal government could always go out and try to buy or seize food to feed the population during a major emergency, but that wouldn’t actually increase the total amou...
    On August 16, 2015 / By
  • Finance 0

    BigTrends Weekly Market Outlook

    Stocks may have made a gain last week, but it was a hard-fought victory, and may have exposed just how vulnerable the market is right now. And, this week’s trading will start out where last week’s left off… within easy reach of some critical support levels, and in the shadow of still-waning momentum. We’ll discuss it all – and show you – below, right after a quick rundown of last week’s and this week’s major economic announcements. Economic Data Last week was a rather busy one in terms of economic data, though not a great deal of it was hard-hitting news. In fact, the only items of real interest...
    On August 16, 2015 / By