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Agence-France Presse wire story.Shares of Kodak plunged Monday after a US agency suspended a loan intended to support the former photo giant's launch of a new pharmaceutical venture.
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The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Kodak's disclosures about the loans and is expected to probe the company's awarding of stock option grants to executives on July 27.
“We now expect that at least one vaccine will be approved by the end of 2020 and will be widely distributed by the end of 2021Q2,” Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs wrote on Sunday.
...the availability of a vaccine is key to giving consumers the confidence to go back out there and spend.
Goldman’s increased optimism about the vaccine led the firm to increase its 2021 GDP growth forecast to +6.2% (from +5.6%) and lower its 2021 year-end unemployment rate forecast to 6.5% (from 7.0%).
....even if Goldman is correct about the timing of the vaccine, the firm’s forecasts also assume consumers continue to get aid until public health conditions are more normalized.
If I happen to view Bloomberg in the evening, their ticker with the bond prices and yields generally reset after 7pm, EST........otherwise the previous business day info is shown. Tonight (Sunday) this info reset once from previous close and is stuck at unchanged.....system burp?Bloomberg has been posting “futures” all day long (Sunday). But it’s my understanding they open sometime after 7 PM - at least where the U.S. is concerned.
There's more at the link. Check it out. Buy a subscription if you can afford it.Since 2008, banks have kept more capital on hand to protect against a downturn, and their balance sheets are less leveraged now than they were in 2007. And not every bank has loaded up on CLOs. But in December, the Financial Stability Board estimated that, for the 30 “global systemically important banks,” the average exposure to leveraged loans and CLOs was roughly 60 percent of capital on hand. Citigroup reported $20 billion worth of CLOs as of March 31; JPMorgan Chase reported $35 billion (along with an unrealized loss on CLOs of $2 billion). A couple of midsize banks—Banc of California, Stifel Financial—have CLOs totaling more than 100 percent of their capital. If the leveraged-loan market imploded, their liabilities could quickly become greater than their assets.
>> The way it's currently done
Posted inflation data are chronically 4y out of date? That seems the conclusion, but I wonder; you'd think that would be bruited everywhere all the time.I think what it's saying is that while the 2016 CPI is computed using 2016 prices, the weights in the 2016 basket are based on consumer surveys asking what people spent money on in 2013. (And 2017 CPI is based on 2014 weights.)
How the pandemic will change financial markets foreverQuestion: You’re not predicting outstanding returns from equities either.
Answer: No, but you will have some returns. The traditional 60/40 equity/bond split, which earned 10% a year over the past 40 to 50 years, is now down to 3½%. Even if you’re tilted to equities, you’re still not going to get 10% again. You’re going to get something below 5%, but investors really have to contemplate what their overall asset-allocation parameters will be. In a world of zero yields, Is 80/20 the way to go? Asset classes that are a hybrid between “safe” bonds and equities—such as high-yield bonds and loans, collateralized loan obligations, commercial mortgage-backed securities, convertibles, and equity and mortgage REITs—offer equity-like returns. There’s a case for emerging market debt, because I think yields will have to come down further in emerging markets as well. China is going into [J.P. Morgan’s global bond] index this year, and our longer-term view is that China is going toward zero yield.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R41648.htmlThe temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax for employees and the self-employed has drawn mixed reactions from policymakers. Some observers express concern about the potential impact of the payroll tax reduction on Social Security’s long-term finances, despite the general revenue transfers to protect the trust funds from a loss of payroll tax revenues. These observers point out that, although the payroll tax reduction is temporary, the possibility remains that Congress could continue to extend the payroll tax reduction or make the payroll tax reduction permanent in response to political or other pressures. In addition, they maintain that the general revenue transfers to the Social Security trust funds introduce an element of general revenue financing to the Social Security program, signaling a departure from the self-financing mechanism that has been in place since the program’s enactment in the 1930s that could jeopardize the future of the program.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/Gulick.htmlWe put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.
Kochin, Michael S., and Levis A. Kochin. "When Is Buying Votes Wrong?" Public Choice 97, no. 4 (1998): 645-62. Accessed August 9, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30024452.To quote Justice Brennan of the United States Supreme Court, in his 1982 majority opinion in Brown v. Hartlage (456 US 56):To follow the terminology of Pamela Karlan (1994), the Constitution permits candidates to buy votes wholesale, from many voters with a single promise of political action, but not retail, from a single voter with a promise of a private side-payment.We have never insisted that the franchise be exercised without taint of individual benefit; indeed, our tradition of political pluralism is partly predicated on the expectation that voters will pursue their individual good through the political process, and that the summation of these individual pursuits will further the collective welfare. So long as the hoped for benefit is to be achieved through the normal processes of government, and not through some private arrangement, it has always been, and remains, a reputable basis upon which to cast one's ballot.
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