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In other words, you’ll probably want investment exposure to themes which may still thrive in a world of shrinking credit. There won’t be many of them but Asia Confidential has a few ideas.
6 Key Investment Themes For The Next Decade | Zero Hedge
If the government runs out of money to pay its bills, which Lew told Boehner could happen as soon as Oct. 17, the effects on the American economy and the global financial markets are inconceivable. It’s never happened, and the belief that U.S. bonds are risk-free is a fundamental assumption that helps set the price of other assets around the world. Adding to the stakes, in a separate congressional impasse, the government halted nonessential operations on Oct. 1, furloughing 800,000 federal workers and shutting down services such as national parks, further hampering a struggling economy.
Wall Street Shows Calamity Fatigue as Potential U.S. Debt Default Looms – Businessweek
Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson’s Paulson & Co and a number of other U.S. hedge funds are investing aggressively into Greece’s struggling banking sector expecting it to turn a corner, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
U.S. hedge funds investing heavily in Greek banks: FT | Reuters
“The G7, which Great Britain is one of, is generating more revenue from tax on our oil than our member countries,” said Mr Badri in an interview in London with The Daily Telegraph. “They are making more money from taxation, this is the easy target. They can increase taxes and blame Opec and everyone will believe them.”
OPEC Chief Hits Out On Oil Taxes – Business Insider
In 2011, The White House caved to governance by hostage-taking. Going down that road again in 2013 would surely establish this as the norm, rather than a freak exception.
The only problem is, John Boehner may not be able to pass a clean debt ceiling hike without some kind of “victory” over The White House, something that would be impossible to achieve without negotiation. But there is one kind of condition under which Obama should be willing to deal…
Obama Should Deal On The Debt Ceiling If He Can Make It Permanently Go Away – Business Insider
In a household, husbands and wives disagree passionately about high-stakes issues like how to raise children. But normal people do not announce that if their spouse does not give in, they will break all the windows in the house.
Governing by Blackmail – NYTimes.com
People never seem to question science when it underlies something easily valued — like iPhones and other handheld devices. We either take it for granted or celebrate science-based products like G.P.S., Global Positioning Systems, which guide drivers and pilots and allow heavy machinery or a farmer’s tractor to be operated with a precision that approaches ballet. And people are always eager to take advantage of the latest advances in medicine.
Let Science Set the Facts – NYTimes.com
Financial markets around the world were selling off Monday morning as investors came to the realization that the government shut down won’t end without a debt ceiling agreement. The question investors are asking themselves is whether or not this is buying opportunity or a last chance to get out of stocks alive.
Default Talk Is Just a “Scare Tactic” Says Wesbury | Breakout – Yahoo Finance
An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.
Five years after crisis, families are hoarding cash
Adding 3-D sensors to existing and future mobile devices will enable augmented-reality games, handheld 3-D scanning, and better photography.
Samsung has just revealed a new mobile phone camera that will drastically reduce image blurriness and improve low-light performance.
Samsung develops advanced anti-shake mobile camera – News – Trusted Reviews
Whether you are bullish or bearish on the price of gold, gold-mining stocks often present more tempting trades than the metal itself. Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX), with a five-year beta of 0.73, is considerably more volatile than SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) with its five-year beta of 0.22. That is not to say that indexing is necessarily your best option; if you’ve looked into gold deeply enough to have a strongly held opinion, you may wish to go a bit further and learn which gold-mining companies seem most likely to thrive, or to fail, in the coming months and years.
Gold mining stocks ranked from Buy to Sell
No. I don’t know whether Niall Ferguson does or doesn’t understand the CBO’s reports. I really do not know what he thinks he is doing. What he is doing with thing alike this–pretending that there has been an extraordinary deterioration over the past year in the CBO’s long-term budget outlook when everyone who understands the budget and CBO knows that there has been an improvement is further misleading the readers of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and further shredding his credibility with his peers.
Brad DeLong : This Will Not Do at All…
There is a sensible endgame: adopt a continuing resolution on the budget and extend the debt ceiling for several years (ultimately, it should be terminated). Congress then could replace the mindless across-the-board discretionary spending cuts under sequestration with a combination of cutbacks in entitlements, including some means-testing and changes to cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and other programs as well as increased revenue from modest reductions in deductions for the wealthy, without raising rates.
This would narrow the already declining budget deficits slightly in the short run, more substantially down the road, and leave some money for smart investments in areas such as infrastructure and health research. It’s a good bet that markets and business confidence would soar after such a deal.
Republican Insurgents Forget Their Political ABCs – Bloomberg
This is the context of the fight against Obamacare. The basic idea — similarly articulated by some Republican officeholders, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz — is that Obama has extended a new entitlement to create a class of lazy, poor voters whose well-being is dependent upon the Democratic Party. Shorthand: more 47 percenters.
Why Republicans Shut Down the Government – Bloomberg
Investors should note that The Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT) is up a whopping 73.82% for the year, while the other solar ETF, Guggenheim Solar ETF (TAN) performed even better recording a massive gain of 108.6% (Key Differences in Solar ETFs: KWT vs. TAN).
Inside the Incredible Surge in Solar ETFs – October 7, 2013 – Zacks.com
one recent study projects that Obamacare could enable 1.5 million people to become self-employed.
James Surowiecki: Why Obamacare is Good for Small Businesses : The New Yorker
The eurozone status quo is neither tolerable nor stable. Mainstream economists would call it an inferior equilibrium; I call it a nightmare – one that is inflicting tremendous pain and suffering that could be easily avoided if the misconceptions and taboos that sustain it were dispelled. The problem is that the debtor countries feel all the pain, while the creditors impose the misconceptions and taboos.
Angela Merkel’s Pyrrhic Victory by George Soros – Project Syndicate
Technology that allows diesel engines to instead run primarily on natural gas could provide a economical way for railroads and shipping companies to shift their vast transportation systems over to natural gas.
Natural Gas Could Partly Power Long-Haul Trucks and Trains | MIT Technology Review
“This technology is going to revolutionize the way we live, learn, work, and play.”
Oculus Rift Brings Virtual Reality to Verge of the Mainstream | MIT Technology Review
Greece might be confident that it will exit six years of recession in 2014, but the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce warned the country’s economic outlook remained worrying.
Don’t bet on Greece’s exit from recession
If the United States defaults on its debt in the middle of October, just how far will the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall and would this provide a buying opportunity for October?
The Dow and the shutdown – key triggers
Emerging market central banks could become as a new force that underpins the euro rally, according to Goldman Sachs.
Emerging markets may become new force in euro rally: Goldman Sachs
It’s to do with the fact that there is no cross-default clause in US Treasuries. That means a missed payment on one bond would leave the other bonds unfazed, and equally usefully, if needed bonds can be split up into a ‘delayed component’ and a ‘normal component’ .
US default stripshow | FT Alphaville
In other words, the document that Mr. Ferguson references says precisely the opposite about spending from what he is trying to claim in his Wall Street Journal oped. Did he really read the entire thing? If so – he could not have missed this central point.
EconoSpeak: CBO’s Projections of Spending Did Not Rise as Suggested by Niall Ferguson
