Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Bill Gross: Bond Yields! UP they Go!


From Bill Gross writing at janus.com. See link to the left, Bill Gross Insights:

...yields must inevitably move higher during Trump's first year in office.

When the fundamentals are confusing, however, technical indicators may come to the rescue...

Shown in the chart below, it's obvious to most observers that 10-year yields have been moving downward since their secular peak in the early 1980s, and at a rather linear rate.

30 basis point declines on average for the past 30 years have lowered the 10-year from 10% in 1987 to the current 2.40%.



Chart: 10-year Treasuries returns for the past 30 years

Now, however this super strong, frequently tested downward trend line is at risk of being broken.

2.55% to 2.60% is the current "top" of this trend line, and over the past few weeks it has held and reversed lower by 15 basis points or so.

BUT----------. And this is my only forecast for the 10-year in 2017.

If 2.60% is broken on the upside – if yields move higher than 2.60%a secular bear bond market has begun.

  • Watch the 2.6% level.
  • Much more important than Dow 20,000.
  • Much more important than $60-a-barrel oil.
  • Much more important that the Dollar/Euro parity at 1.00.
  • It is the key to interest rate levels and perhaps stock price levels in 2017.
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Link: https://www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Drudge: CNN WANTS MEGYN KELLY -- Advice: Why wait, May May Kay Kay? Go Now!

From the Drudge Report:

CNN President Jeff Zucker is actively persuing FOX star Megyn Kelly to anchor 8 or 9 PM on his network, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. And Kelly might just say, YES!

"He is moving the Himalayan mountains to get her," a top insider explains. "But they are tripped up on money. He simply can't pay her the $20 million a year FOX has on the table."

Kelly's contract is up in July 2017....

Link: http://drudgereport.com/
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Why wait, Megyn?

Go now.  And take James and Lachlan with you. 

Now that would be special!   PB

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Working Class White Males Falling Behind ... honestly, is anyone surprised?

Sentier Research, an economics research firm, recently published a study called "Working Class White Males Falling Behind."

The study uses the period from 1996, four years into Bill Clinton's presidency, to 2014, six years into Barack Obama's presidency.

To observe how far "Working Class White Males" have fallen behind in their income, the study looked at men who were between 25 to 44 years old in 1996.

Then the study, jumping ahead 18 years, looked at how much they were earning in 2014. 

So, the 25 year old (from 1996) turned age 43 (in 2014.) 
The 44 year old (from 1996) turned age 62 (in 2014.)

The study states that the men with just high school degrees did not do well over that time period.  Men with college degrees did much, much better.  18 years is a long chunk of time during a man's earning capacity.  Take a look:

In 1996, the working class group, ages 25 to 43, averaged $40,362.

In 2014, they had lost 9 percent of their income to $38,787

What about the college degree guys?

"White male college graduates 25 to 44 in 1996 had a comparable income per cohort member amount of $77,209 in 1996.

That figure rose to $94,601 in 2014 (23 percent higher)..."


These are averages, of course.  Beyond the income averages, what does this study really tell us?

Consider that of all the working men I know without college degrees, who are 'white' as the study identifies them, I don't know any who would describe himself as a Working Class White Male

What is he really?

He's a guy who works for a living.  He's got a job.  Or he lost his good job and took the next best thing.  Or he's looking while working part time or just waiting because no one will hire him.

He wants things to get better.  Yet, it's easy - and legitimate - to worry.

It's one thing to study and discuss a trend, but it is completely different to live the trend

How many of these guys do you know?

They can be found all over the place.  Go ahead, talk to them.  Ask them how they are doing. 

Ask them about their work; about jobs; about their families; about how far their paychecks go; whether someone else in the house works; about how their kids' kids are doing; about their neighborhoods; whether they go to church; about their cars.

Finally, if you do take time to talk to someone in that 'class' of people, decide whether what you see in the media accurately matches how they - Working Class White Males - describe and actually live their lives. 

None of them think of themselves as a statistical category.  Most think of themselves as American.

In this link - http://sentierresearch.com/index.html - you can read the press release about the study, or purchase the study.  

Then think about this 2016 election.  Which party for decades told us they care about the working man?    PB
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Thursday, September 22, 2016

How's that High School Diploma Treating You?

Well.  The world does separate people based on talent, skills, focus and motivation.

Yes, it separates people in many other ways: looks, attitude, friendliness, anger issues, etc.

But talent, drive, achievement and persistence are always a good mix - and it doesn't really matter what you look like, or if you're shy or shallow, or kind of weird.

Other people's opinions mean little when you got the right mix.   

Or, maybe smart, successful, and powerful people (like CEOs) can get it wrong.

Is that right?   PB
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From Recode.com:

Ex-Googler Sebastian Thrun says the going rate for self-driving talent is $10 million per person

Now he wants to train more engineers for the fast-growing industry, since there are simply not enough.

When Sebastian Thrun started working on self-driving cars at Google in 2007, few people outside of the company took him seriously.

“I can tell you very senior CEOs of major American car companies would shake my hand and turn away because I wasn’t worth talking to,” said Thrun, now the co-founder and CEO of online higher education startup Udacity, in an interview with Recode earlier this week.

A little less than a decade later, dozens of self-driving startups have cropped up while automakers around the world clamor, wallet in hand, to secure their place in the fast-moving world of fully automated transportation.

And these companies are hungry for talent and skill sets many don't have.

“Uber has just bought a half-a-year-old company [Otto] with 70 employees for almost $700 million,” Thrun said. “If you look at GM, they spent $1 billion on its acquisition of Cruise. These are mostly talent acquisitions. The going rate for talent these days is $10 million.”

Thrun means per person, a lofty number which is likely to be getting even larger with time and even more demand...
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Link: http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving-talent-pool

Thursday, September 15, 2016

NYT: Economy Remains Fragile for Many

Good for many, but not for most Americans.   Why kind of economy is that?

If we can't take care of our working class, our struggling lower middle class, and at the same time we flood our nation with low skill immigrants brought in past our open borders for political purposes - what then?

Who gets it?  There are many attempts to cover it in the media.  Below is one from the New York Times. 

But most of the reporting isolates the economic struggles as if Washington's policies and politics have no blame.  The solutions typically point to more spending by government. 

This viewpoint from the media and the partisan hacks that control most of the media is tiresome. 

Most voters, I think, understand the truth of the phony economy with its limited prosperity.   Obviously, we'll find out in November what the voters decide to do about it.   PB
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From the New York Times online:

The eye-popping improvement in economic fortunes last year raises the question: If incomes are up and poverty is down, why is Donald J. Trump’s message of economic decay resonating so broadly?
 
The answer is in plain sight.
 
While the economy finally is moving in the right direction, the real incomes of most American households still are smaller than in the late 1990s.
 
And large swaths of the country — rural America, industrial centers in the Rust Belt and Appalachia — are lagging behind.
 
“We ain’t feeling too much of all that economic growth that I heard was going on, patting themselves on the back,” said Ralph Kingan, the mayor of Wright, Wyo. “It ain’t out in the West.”
 
That bleak reality helps to explain why the good news the Census Bureau issued Tuesday about a rise in household income was greeted gleefully by economists but is unlikely to change the complexion of the presidential race...
 
Yet the repeated assertions by Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, that the middle class is being decimated and the economy is in decline ring true to his supporters.
 
Many Americans, even those who are prospering, remain pessimistic about the fragile recovery.
 
Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, has been careful to acknowledge the economy’s problems alongside its progress.
 
The economic dislocations of recent decades may be contributing to the polarization of the electorate, according to research by David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 
By emphasizing the nation’s economic troubles, the candidates are going where the voters are...
 
Last week, 26 percent of people surveyed in Gallup’s poll of Americans’ confidence in the economy rated current economic conditions as excellent or good, while 30 percent labeled them poor.
 
Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed said their economic outlook was “getting better” compared with 57 percent who said it was “getting worse...”
 
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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/business/economy/census-poverty-income-donald-trump.html

Monday, September 12, 2016

Older & jobless - U.S. recovery's forgotten story

A writer at Reuters says millions of older workers - 45+, 55+, 65+ - are suffering from lack of work, lower wages, and age discrimination.

That kind of 'age' discrimination is tough to prove. 

Yes, employers want workers with skills. 

What is likely happening is that the older job seeker's resume reveals a great deal, especially the age of that candidate. 

A resume that shows what skills a worker possesses must also reveal when those skills were acquired. 

Desirable skills and mature work habits often develop over time.  Unfortunately, it is relatively easy to filter out older workers simply from examining their resumes. 

Why would employers avoid hiring older workers? 

Costs. 

So, apart from valuable skills, 50 somethings and those older bring more experience, but with that they often bring along costly health related issues that grow larger over time. 

The complaints about not finding workers with skills is a false complaint

It is about paying for those skills plus the attached fear that the health costs of that worker might cost too much.   PB

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From columnist Mark Miller at Reuters.com:

Six years after the Great Recession ended, jobless older workers are the forgotten story of the economic recovery.

U.S. employers are creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs every month, but millions of older workers who want a job cannot find work.

The economic data documenting the problem is clear.

So is one of the most important causes: age discrimination.  Consider the government jobs report released late last week...

If you add in workers holding part-time jobs who would rather be working full time, and unemployed workers who have recently given up on seeking work, the jobless rate for older workers last month was 8.7 percent...

Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12 percent.

Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.

Age discrimination is illegal under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.

But most of the complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission focus on age-bias terminations rather than hiring - simply because hiring discrimination is so difficult to prove.

Yet two-thirds of older workers believe age discrimination occurs in the workplace, according to a 2013 survey by AARP...

[In another] recent study ... researchers sent out 40,000 dummy job applications that included signals on the job-seekers’ ages, and then monitored the response rates.

They measured callback rates for various occupations:
  1. workers age 49-51 applying for administrative positions had a callback rate 29 percent lower than younger workers
  2. it was 47 percent lower for workers over age 64.

...when older displaced workers do find new jobs, they typically go back to work with about 75 percent of their former pay.

These income disruptions play havoc with retirement plans...

Lost income in the decade leading to retirement can cut into future Social Security earnings by reducing the credits used to calculate a worker’s benefits.

It also can force workers to file for benefits early, sharply reducing lifetime benefits...
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Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-miller-unemployment-idUSKCN11E297

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

More Jobs are Open, but Less Workers are Hired

Hey, a conundrum! 

That could be referring to a pretty good blended white wine from California labeled Conundrum.  But no.

Instead, the conundrum is why hiring has not matched job openings. 

Could it be lack of skills? 

Could that result from poor public education?  Just asking.  PB
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From the Wall Street Journal online:

A New Record for Job Openings Deepens Mystery Over Lack of Hiring

Openings climbed to 5.9 million in July while the pace of hiring was unchanged at 5.2 million

One of the labor market’s biggest mysteries just got deeper: The number of job openings available at the end of July climbed to a new record of 5.9 million.

Yet the number of people actually being hired into one of those jobs was 5.2 million for the second month in a row.

The number of unemployed workers per job opening has fallen to 1.3, the lowest since 2001.

What would normally sound like good news—abundant jobs—is tempered by the fact that people simply aren’t being hired into the positions at rates like in the past.

About 300,000 fewer people are being hired each month compared with the pace reached in February.

And during the entire economic recovery, the U.S. has yet to notch a month of hiring that matches the pace seen at the heights of the middle of last decade or the early 2000s...

Many theories have been offered to explain the gap between job openings and actual hiring.

It could be workers lack the skills for available jobs or that employers have become too picky, or that available workers and available jobs are in different geographies...
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Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/09/07/a-new-record-for-job-openings-deepens-mystery-over-lack-of-hiring/

NPR: An Economic Mystery: Why Are Men Leaving The Workforce?

This is not new, but it should remain in the news. 

There is a deep social and economic problem in America. 

There has a been a massive deterioration in employment, especially among men, and worst of all among black men.

The line that sums it all up: "these men aren't even counted among the jobless, because they aren't seeking work..."

The failed politics and policies of progressive ideology is mostly to blame, but there has been no leadership from either party that has been effective in connecting the dots. 

Jeb Bush finessing Common Core? 

Senate Democrats and Democrat members of Congress blaming others but themselves? 

At least the clowns have enjoyed steady work!  PB
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From NPR comes this report:


Millions of men in their prime working years have dropped out of the workforce — meaning they aren't working or even looking for a job.

It's a trend that's held true for decades and has economists puzzled.

In the 1960s, nearly 100 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. That's fallen over the decades.

In a recent report, President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers said 83 percent of men in the prime working ages of 25-54 who were not in the labor force had not worked in the previous year.

So, essentially, 10 million men are missing from the workforce.

"One in six prime-age guys has no job; it's kind of worse than it was in the depression in 1940," says Nicholas Eberstadt, an economic and demographic researcher at American Enterprise Institute who wrote the book Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis.

He says these men aren't even counted among the jobless, because they aren't seeking work...
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Link: http://www.npr.org/2016/09/06/492849471/an-economic-mystery-why-are-men-leaving-the-workforce?

Monday, September 5, 2016

"What are politicians get wrong" - who wrote this headline?

An opinion piece on FoxNews.com had the above headline.

Our politicians get wrong many things.

Our headline writers need to do a better job!   PB

 

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Warren Buffett: Mr. Clean Market Manipulator

Pure as snow.  Or pure as Ivory soap.  (Wait, that soap belongs to a different company.)

Or is he simply Mr. Clean?  (Well, that is how most of the Slurpy Media likes to portray him.)

Or maybe just about as pure and innocent as any Crony Billionaire manipulating the markets for personal gain can be called clean. 

Yep, that's him: Warren Buffett.  A real billionaire bigshot.

Warren Buffett, rich and powerful and phony as can be, does move the markets in his favor to protect advantages that other investors will never have.  (It's great work if you can work it and, boy o billionaire boy, Buffett works it real bad!)

Maybe we should put it this way to drive home the point: Warren Buffett aka Mr. Clean aka Mr. Pay More Taxes for Everyone But Me rigs the markets so he can get overwhelming advantages not available to anyone else.

But, as it sometimes happens, Master Market Manipulator Warren Buffett got caught.

(Hey!  Btw, guess who Warren Buffett supports for President? 

Ms. Turn $1,000 into $100,000 Market Manipulator Who Did It All By Herself.  Or, just asking, was she simply a Bond Girl named Favors Galore?)

So, yes, Billionaire Buffett got caught. 

Last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article that explained and showed charts how Warren Buffett's Special Magic rigged Dow Chemical shares in the stock market for his personal advantage à la Favors Galore

(There's got to be a Hollywood script ready to go!  The Big Long?)

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal followed up with a story about a Yale professor saying, Yepper, Warren Buffett's Special Market Manipulation and Price Rigging Magic was indeed happening.

You will have to read the story to understand how the share prices of Dow Chemical were being manipulated in the open market.  See the link below.

Once the spotlight is on, though, the manipulation is painfully obvious.

Yes, Warren Buffett is a Billionaire who Manipulates Markets and always gets Special One of a Kind Deals.  That is well known.

In this case, he's got a Large $3 Billion stake that enjoys special favor. 

(You know how politicians like to say we need to take care of all of our stakeholders.  Billionaire Buffett is a BIG STAKEHOLDER.  Or, as his favorite candidate might say: is that a big stake you're holding and why are you so happy to see me?)

Mr. Clean?  No.  Not by a long shot.  Maybe he should be called Mr. Dirty Warren Buffett.  Guess that depends on what your definition of dirt is.  Ahh, speaking of which, how about Mr. Depends?

Nonetheless, Warren Buffett seems to have a lot in common with shady characters of shady ethics who seemingly possess skills that magically turn so little into so much.  

See the WSJ story here:
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/08/31/dow-chemicals-1-in-1000-stock-action-works-in-warren-buffetts-favor/

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Bloomberg.com: Pentagon Takes Aim at Bomb-Carrying Consumer Drones

More awareness about one of the deadliest "reality" shows that could hit American life: ISIS coming to America.  

A Marine general, talking about battlefield conditions, says someone can get a drone by going "down to Sam's Club and buy [it] for $400."

No kidding.   Think about all the people who hate America coming openly and anonymously into our country. 

15 years ago very bad people, who had visas, stayed in the U.S. and did what they intended to do: they hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings and killed thousands of Americans.   By the way, our media never show those images anymore. 

So, yes, the general is rightly concerned about drones affecting our soldiers in war.

This same awareness about the deadly capability of drones operating in the U.S. by enemies who hate America is something else for all of us to take very seriously.  That is, we need to worry about it today.

Imagine a drone in your neighborhood dropping a bomb at a school event, a mall, a football game in the fall at an outdoor stadium, a festival at a church, or anywhere where we live, work and pray.   

How do we really know ISIS hasn't already inserted hundreds of future killers into our country? 

Just an oblique reference to our November elections: Is occasional bad language in a political campaign worse than the real potential of deadly drones dropping bombs or toxic material throughout all the places we live, shop, gather, play or pray?     What is more important to pay attention to?  PB
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From Bloomberg.com:

They’re cheap, they’re light, and they can carry a small bomb: The commercial drone is essentially a new terror gadget for organizations such as Hezbollah, Islamic State, or anyone else looking to wreak havoc on a budget.

“That’s the same quad copter you can get on Groupon or go down to Sam’s Club and buy for $400,” U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller said last week at a Washington forum on future warfare.

The elusive nature of small drones is one reason the federal government has designated the District of Columbia a “national defense airspace” and prohibited drone flights there. A recent spate of drone-related incidents, including one last year in which a drone crashed on the White House lawn, probably didn’t help, either.

But the problem is no longer about enthusiasts with a bad sense of direction.

Weaponized to various degrees of sophistication, such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now being used in the Syrian civil war and along parts of Lebanese and Syrian borders with Israel, where Hezbollah holds sway.

“There has been an increasing concern in the military and a wider acceptance of how pernicious this problem is going to be, moving forward,” says Andrew Metrick, an intelligence security analyst at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “From a U.S. and allies perspective, we haven’t had to think about how to fight where we don’t have total aerial supremacy....”

...A Marine or soldier who spots a drone overhead would typically shoot it down, but smaller drones can operate surreptitiously and elude radar since they are barely larger than a bird.

Their small motors make acoustic detection enormously hard, and while wide-area camera sensors deployed on the ground might detect a drone, they usually require large computational resources in the field.

One solution is an electronic signal jammer to prevent a drone’s operator from flying within a certain vicinity, an approach that U.S. forces have studied....

“When was the last time an American military force worried about being bombed by enemy air? World War II?” Neller said. “So what capabilities do we have to defend ourselves from enemy air or enemy unmanned air?”

Such drones also represent only one facet of a future battlefield on which the U.S. military will no longer enjoy complete dominance, the general said. Technology has given potential adversaries new advantages, especially as the U.S. has “developed a system of war fighting that is very dependent upon the internet, the network, and space.”

All three are vulnerable because they establish an electronic signature as they operate. Mobile phones, for example, put soldiers in harm's way in the new digital conflict zone, because a drone might home in on them and explode...
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/the-pentagon-takes-aim-at-bomb-carrying-consumer-drones