Bloomberg.com – Calpers Rings Pension Warning Bell It’s increasingly clear that pensions can’t rely on investment returns to pad their coffers the way they used to. The biggest U.S. pension fund appears to recognize this. The chief investment officer of the $303 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System just recommended that it lower its annual assumed… Continue reading Pensions Grapple With Reality
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is Building an Algorithmic Model From its Employees’ Brains Bridgewater wants day-to-day management—hiring, firing, decision-making—to be guided by software that doles out instructions Deep inside Bridgewater Associates LP, the world’s largest hedge-fund firm, software engineers are at work on a… Continue reading Will Robots Run Everything At Bridgewater?
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Comment Today at 9 AM CT (10 AM ET, 7 AM PT and 15:00 GMT) Bianco Research, in conjunction with Arbor Research & Trading, will be hosting a webcast/teleconference moderated by Jim Bianco. Since Election Day the stock market, interest rates, the dollar and industrial commodities are all significantly higher. Many have coined this the “Trump… Continue reading The Reflation Trade: Real Growth Or Inflation?
BBC – Italy approves a €20bn bailout plan for its banks The Italian parliament has approved a government plan for a possible €20bn (£16.8bn) bailout of the country’s banks. The Italian Treasury will probably have to rescue Italy’s third largest lender, Monte dei Paschi, by the end of next week. The rescue fund will be… Continue reading Italian Bank Bailout
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Wall Street Journal – Donald Trump’s Win Sends Economic Optimism to Highest Level Since 2012 Donald Trump’s election pushed confidence in the economy’s direction to its most favorable level since 2012, according to the latest WSJ/NBC News poll. Some 42% of respondents say they believe the economy will… Continue reading Inflation vs. Growth
MoneyBeat (WSJ Blog) – Why This Treasury Market Rout Is So Painful The current rout in the bond market is causing much more pain than it would have three decades ago. The reason: Yields started rising from such a low level that the resulting drop in prices has been all the more severe…The best way to see… Continue reading Measuring The Bond Market’s Losses
Comment Jim Bianco was on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday discussing the markets and the Fed. To view the interview, click on the image above. To view any of our recent interviews, click here. The New York Times – US Fed’s rate strategy is up for a rewrite Higher interest rates are on the way. That,… Continue reading How Many Fed Hikes In 2017?
<Click on graphic for larger image> MarketWatch – Americans are now in more debt than they were before the financial crisis Americans may soon exceed the amount of credit-card debt they racked up during the Great Recession. The average household with credit card debt owes $16,061, up 10% from $14,546 10 years ago and $15,762… Continue reading Household Debt
Mainly Macro (Blog) – When is an economic recovery not a recovery? What do we mean when we say the economy is recovering from a recession? Do we mean it has started growing again, or do we mean it is returning to its pre-recession trend? Brief research suggests there is no standard definition, but Wikipedia… Continue reading Defining An Economic “Recovery”
<Click on graphic for larger image> The Cleveland Federal Reserve – New Normal or Real-Time Noise? Revisiting the Recent Data on Labor Productivity Some economic observers have argued that the weakness of recent productivity data indicates we have entered a new era of low economic growth. To investigate that claim, we study labor productivity between… Continue reading Labor Productivity
<Click on graphic for larger image> Zero Hedge (Blog) – ECB Assets Hit 35% Of Eurozone GDP; Draghi Owns 9.2% Of European Corporate Bond Market As global markets bask in the glow of the Trumpflation recovery, the ECB continues to be busy providing the actual levitating power behind what DB recently dubbed global “helicopter money”,… Continue reading Breaking Down The ECB’s Balance Sheet