Things to worry about

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Descartes
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Re: Things to worry about

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Interesting to look back (without anger but perhaps with some smirky self-satisfaction) so soon afterwards..

Brexit bounce making history as stock gains close in on $2-trillion
The rebound in U.S. stocks from their post-Brexit sell-off is starting to take on historic dimensions.

The S&P 500 index edged higher Wednesday to climb in nine of the last 11 days, shaking off a 5.3-per-cent plunge following the U.K. vote to add almost $2-trillion (U.S.) to U.S. share prices since June 27. It’s an expansion that, while burnished by the market’s already-high level, also ranks among the biggest increases in equity value ever.
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AltaRed
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Re: Things to worry about

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Could have just as easily been in 'Bailing out of Stocks' thread.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/investi ... ket-crash/
So there you have it: three of the world’s greatest investment professionals believe bad days lie ahead. They have decades of experience making money in up and down markets and across all asset classes. They exhibit high levels of intellectual flexibility drawn largely from empirical research and past experience. They also own their firms and this provides the added benefit of not being held to a corporate line. Clearly, based on the views of these three men, there is something very negative approaching the financial markets. Not only that, it’s an event with potential for lasting impact, and policymakers have little – if anything – left in their toolkit to combat it.
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milo
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Re: Things to worry about

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Harry Dent is at it again. This interview was in Jan 2016.
Not sure if this was posted here.
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Re: Things to worry about

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milo wrote:Harry Dent is at it again. This interview was in Jan 2016.
Not sure if this was posted here.
With the risk of mod's wrath, what a pile of horsesh*t.
I don't intend to offend anyone, that part is just a bonus.

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Re: Things to worry about

Post by gobsmack »

kumquat wrote:
milo wrote:Harry Dent is at it again. This interview was in Jan 2016.
Not sure if this was posted here.
With the risk of mod's wrath, what a pile of horsesh*t.
My biggest surprise was to see Alex Jones in the vid. I didn't know he covered economics :shock:
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ghariton
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Re: Things to worry about

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I worry about European banks.
Eight years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse sparked the financial crisis, Europe’s banks still have 1.2 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) of non-performing loans and will probably be stuck with them for decades to come, according to KPMG LLP.
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ghariton
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Re: Things to worry about

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Multifactor productivity continues to decrease in Canada.
Multifactor productivity, measured as output per unit of combined labour and capital inputs, declined 1.0% in 2015. The decline reflected a 0.6% increase in output and a 1.6% gain in the combined inputs of capital and labour.

<snip>

Multifactor productivity measures the extent to which inputs are efficiently used in the production process. Growth in this area is often associated with technological change, organizational change, or economies of scale. Multifactor productivity is one of the three components of labour productivity growth, the other two being increases in capital intensity and skills upgrading of labour.
Labour productivity in the business sector fell 0.5% in 2015, entirely as a result of a decline in multifactor productivity. Increases in capital intensity (+0.3 percentage points) and skills upgrading (+0.3 percentage points) partially offset the decline in multifactor productivity.
That means that collectively we are getting poorer per capita. That's not just for workers or just for owners of capital, but for everybody together.
For the 1980-to-2000 period, multifactor productivity contributed 0.4 percentage points per year to the annual growth rate of labour productivity. However, for the 2000-to-2015 period, multifactor productivity declined and had a negative impact, subtracting 0.2 percentage points per year. Slower skills upgrading also contributed to the slowdown in labour productivity growth, but to a lesser extent.
Seems to me that should be the top issue on the government's agenda.

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AltaRed
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Re: Things to worry about

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Americans and Dual Citizens better remember to file their FBARs annually and on time.
The U.S. Justice Department is suing a Canadian resident for the equivalent of $1.1 million Cdn, saying he failed to file a form to the U.S. government listing his bank accounts outside the United States.

Jeffrey Pomerantz, a Vancouver-area resident with dual Canadian-U.S citizenship, filed his income tax returns to the IRS and the CRA during the three years in question but didn't file a second form called the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR).
There is no excuse for US persons not knowing to file this form. Every accountant would (should) know that. It's been around, I believe, for decades. I flied it well before the deadlines. For us Canucks, it is the T1135 of course.
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OnlyMyOpinion
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Re: Things to worry about

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AltaRed wrote:...There is no excuse for US persons not knowing to file this form. Every accountant would (should) know that. It's been around, I believe, for decades. I flied it well before the deadlines. For us Canucks, it is the T1135 of course.
And especially in this case, it seemed to me. I'm not sure why Jerry got a sympathetic(?) ear from the CBC. The balance of the article, if accurate, doesn't match the profile of a poor honest, but tax & math challenged dual:

"This has been a friggin' nightmare," said Pomerantz...
the Justice Department says Pomerantz formed a corporation in the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2003 named Chafford Ltd. to hold his personal investments and opened three bank accounts in Switzerland with Sal Oppenheim JR & Cie. In 2007, Pomerantz opened two more accounts in Switzerland with the same bank, the department says in its lawsuit.
During each of the three years, Pomerantz had balances in the CIBC bank accounts as well as in various Swiss accounts over $10,000, the Justice Department said.
While the Justice Department's complaint says Pomerantz lived in the United States during all three years, documents prepared by Pomerantz's side found in the court file say he and his wife, a Canadian-Norwegian dual citizen, only lived in California for part of 2008 and 2009 before moving back to Canada...
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Re: Things to worry about

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a second form called the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR).
An abbreviation awfully close to a well known military slang term. :rofl:
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Re: Things to worry about

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From Morningstar, Bogle: Vanguard's Size a Worry
Diminishing economies of scale and potential regulatory concerns limits how much bigger Vanguard should become, says founder Jack Bogle.

Christine Benz: We've talked about Vanguard being a big beneficiary of investors recognizing the importance of keeping their costs down. What would be too large for Vanguard, if anything?

Jack Bogle: I'm tempted to say 4.7 trillion. I worry about it. I guess anybody that wrote a book called Enough would worry about it. The economies of scale just can't keep going on much longer. We've only got 12 basis points to go, and let me say it: There's an irreducible minimum, no matter how big you are, just for the fun of it, 8 basis points, cost a lot of money to run this business. We're now talking about a 4 basis point improvement in cost. I just don't think it's worthwhile, hyping and trying to bring in more and more money.
To put the 4.7 trillion in context, back in April, Vanguard Is Growing Faster Than Everybody Else Combined - The New York Times
NY Times wrote:Vanguard’s assets under management have skyrocketed to $4.2 trillion from $1 trillion seven years ago, according to the company. About $3 trillion of this is invested in passive index-based strategies, with the rest in funds that rely on an active approach to picking stocks and bonds.
The last sentence might surprise some people who probably didn't know that about a quarter of Vanguard's assets under management are actively managed.
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AltaRed
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Re: Things to worry about

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Not directly financial, but it does have global trade implications. I watched Freightened: The Real Price of Shipping last night on BC's Knowledge Network. While I knew some of the quiet, mostly ugly, underworld of trans-ocean shipping, this investigative documentary puts the size of the impacts (good and bad) into perspective. They are huge. It is highly worth a watch if you can find it on Netflix or online.

The Good: Container shipping has made shipping so cheap that it was the real catalyst for global trade.

The Bad (and the Worry): Where to start. Flags of convenience, such as Liberia and Panama, make shipping companies above the law. Exploitation of workers. Pollution of sea and air. Havoc amongst marine animals. Some really bad stuff that makes air emissions by all of the world's autos and planes pale in comparison. Depressing.

Faint Hope: Snail's pace change to catch up. There is no motivation on shipping companies or flags of convenience to do anything.
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Re: Things to worry about

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Thanks Alta Red:

it's still up here and I'm watching it now, interested since I spent years at sea on freighters. Now they are seventeen to twenty times the size vs. ''then'', and they have now half the crew or less if they can get away with it (see flags of convenience): we were usually 40 crew in the 1960's on 12,00 BRT break-bulk vessels: Today for example the ''OOCL Hong Kong'' (210,890 GT) with 18 crew vs. such an old freighter who had 40+

This is a typical breakdown of crew members:
Master, C/O, 2/O, 3/O.
C/E, 2/E, 3/E, 4/E + reefer electrician (sometimes two of the latter if they regularly carry a high number of reefers).
Cook/steward, A/S, Messman.
Bosun, 2 AB's, 2 or 3 O/S's.
Some companies don't carry a Bosun, the deckies just get on with the job. Almost the same manning levels for just about any ocean-going box-boat these days.
Parts of the story also deal with ''bunker fuel''/particulate matter etc., and will put the current VW Diesel ''crisis'' into better perspective. :)

https://www.knowledge.ca/program/freigh ... e-shipping
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Re: Things to worry about

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From the Financial Post:

David Rosenberg: A reality check on the U.S. strategy of cutting taxes
“The 1969-70 recession was preceded by a period of unsustainable growth that led to accelerating inflation, which rose from 3.1 per cent in 1967 to 4.3 per cent in 1968, 4.9 per cent in 1969, and 5.3 per cent in 1970. Many contemporary observers attributed this boom and bust pattern to the fiscal policy stance at the time. As a percentage of GDP, the actual budget deficit rose from 2.6 per cent to 3.5 per cent. During a period of full employment, this increase in the deficit is likely to be highly inflationary …”

Look at the stark similarities to today’s environment.

There was fiscal stimulus at a time of full employment that triggered an overheated economy.

A near-zero real Fed funds rate at full employment also overstimulated the economy — again, this was only recognized by the time the inflation genie was out of the bottle.

We had a president who was protectionist, irritable, divisive, anti-media, ran what was considered at the time to be a risky brand of foreign policy, and still found time to badger the Fed. Sound familiar?

It was a very long cycle, too — now the third longest on record. At the time, as everyone was playing with Slinkies and hula hoops, the widespread belief was that a recession was a long ways away (Gary Shilling was fired from Merrill Lynch for daring to call for it just before the downturn occurred).

And how fitting that the Nifty 50 craze that drove the stock market to new dizzying heights is very much like the FAANG mania that has come to dominate the latest leg of this bull run.
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