London BBD

04/30/2020

Excerpt form Merrill's (BoA) Chief Investment Office Capital Market Outlook, issued on 04/20/20.
"Stagnant or falling living standards for vast parts of the population combined with a declining quality of life, failing education standards, and crumbling infrastructure more
than explain the political turmoil of recent years. Insufficient labor income and demand growth along with accumulating debt over the past twenty years of hyper-globalization have also forced the Fed into increasingly massive interventions to keep the system afloat and spurred calls for universal basic income and debt forgiveness for politically favored groups, amplifying political tumult.
Exhibit 1: Collapsing Growth in Domestic Income Per Capita Has Kept Downward Pressure on the Fed Funds Rate."

02/15/2020

The high costs of prescription drugs in the United States are being driven by excessive drug prices set by pharmaceutical corporations, which continue to increase prices of hundreds of drugs every year. In 2018, pharmaceutical companies reaped 63% of all profits in the US healthcare system, despite collecting only 23% of the industry revenue.

Millions of Americans can’t afford the prescription drugs they require to survive, forcing them into bankruptcy, trips to Mexico or cutting off utilities

10/23/2019

Sputnik moment?

When it comes to technology, Shenzhen may well be the most fascinating city in the world. It makes the majority of our electronics. It clones the best techno...

09/11/2018

News #1
The current president claimed GDP growth outpaced unemployment for the first time in more than 100 years. It turns out the assertion isn't true, a fact one of Donald Trump's aides later conceded. There was an extra zero, he said.
News #2
The market forecast according to Goldman Sachs is cloudy with a chance of bears. The bank's index, based on equity valuations, growth momentum, unemployment, inflation and the yield curve, hasn't looked this bad in 50 years.

05/25/2018

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
George Bernard Shaw

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

03/23/2018

Leaders of S&P 500 companies made about 347 times more than their average employees in 2016, up from 41-to-1 in 1983.
Does that make sense?

For the first time, U.S. publicly traded companies must disclose how much they pay their chiefs compared with the median worker.

03/20/2018

03/19/2018

Nassim Taleb wrote a remarkable book on the Great Recession, The Black Swan.
His current observation bares importance on the fundamentals of business and political leadership.
"Our message is to focus on those who are professionally slanted, causing harm without being accountable for it, by the very structure of their own occupation."

The link gets right to it at 4:56.

Mar.05 -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, discusses his new book "Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmet...

03/19/2018

The way geopolitical tension played into Putin’s hand brings a critically important fact to light: Even in democratic elections running on hostility might support political advancement better than advocating peace. Beware of dogs!

Mar.19 -- Dmitry Polevoy, chief economist at ING Bank Eurasia, discusses the outcome of Russia's election and impact from geopolitical tensions. He speaks wi...

03/05/2018

Why The Human Brain Loves To Be Lied To

03/03/2018

It bet that China would head towards democracy and the market economy. The gamble has failed

03/03/2018

How Apple betrayed the core values of its origin

The company moves some iCloud data to China, ruled by mega-snoops.