Washington Post (May 11)
“Older people today seem as healthy as people who were several years younger a few decades ago. So why shouldn’t they work the same way, too?” In the U.S., the eligibility age for full social security benefits is scheduled to increase to 67 over the next decade, but a recent study suggests eligibility could reasonably be moved even higher “to somewhere between 68 and 70.”
Tags: Age, Benefits, Eligibility, Healthy, Old, Retirement, Social security, U.S., Work, Young
Bloomberg (May 10)
Tsuyoshi Maruki, the founder of Tokyo-based Strategic Capital Inc., “stands out like a lone wolf in Japan, where societal intolerance for aggressive shareholder campaigns has spurred a breed of friendly activists.” When persuasion fails, Maruki “turns to techniques that include banding with other investors to oust management and filing lawsuits to overhaul corporate practices in order to boost returns for his 9.7 billion yen ($90 million) fund.” Committed to improving corporate governance in Japan, Maruki is convinced his aggressive stance works.
Tags: Aggressive, Friendly activists, Governance, Investors, Japan, Lawsuits, Management, Maruki, Persuasion, Shareholder, Strategic Capital, Tokyo
Financial Times (May 10)
The auditing sector is undergoing a “pitch battle” with new EU regulations that require companies at least tender their audits every 10 years and change auditors every 20 years. “So far the result has been a merry-go-round of audits swapping between the Big Four—PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG—which handle 98 per cent of FTSE 350 audits and 95 per cent of those for Fortune 500 companies.”
Tags: Auditors, Audits, Big Four, Deloitte, EU, EY, Fortune 500, FTSE 350, KPMG, PwC, Regulations, Tenders
Wall Street Journal (May 8)
For Donald Trump, with the nomination virtually in his grasp, this week “should have been a time of reaching out to adversaries and trying to repair his party’s breach. Instead the New Yorker has launched what appears to be an attempt to purge anyone who won’t immediately sign onto what he calls ‘the Trump train.’” If Trump “doesn’t act more like a genuine leader soon, he may find that his candidacy has imploded before he is even nominated.”
The Economist (May 7)
“It is now clear that Republicans will be led into the presidential election by a candidate who said he would kill the families of terrorists, has encouraged violence by his supporters, has a weakness for wild conspiracy theories and subscribes to a set of protectionist and economically illiterate policies that are by turns fantastical and self-harming.” Somehow, Donald Trump now has a chance to win the presidency. “The result could be disastrous for the Republican Party and, more important, for America.”
Tags: Conspiracy, Disastrous, Donald Trump, Economically illiterate, Election, President, Protectionist, Republicans, Terrorists, U.S., Violence, Weakness
New York Times (May 6)
Brazil has failed to clean up “the highly polluted waters of Guanabara Bay and off nearby Copacabana Beach” where athletes will be asked to compete in water with “virus levels 1.7 million times what would be considered hazardous at a California beach.” Brazil had pledged to build eight water treatment plants to halt the daily flood of raw sewage into the bay, but only one has been built. With less than 100 days to the Rio Olympics, no more will be built. “Brazil’s chief of security for the Games and the sports minister have recently resigned, and the president, Dilma Rousseff, is facing impeachment.” The only remaining solution is to move the aquatic events “to safe, clean waters” even if that means transferring them to another country.
Tags: Athletes, Brazil, Copacabana, Guanabara Bay, Hazardous, Impeachment, Polluted, Raw sewage, Rio Olympics, Rousseff, Treatment plants, Virus levels, Water
Institutional Investor (May 6)
Unconventional monetary policy, demographic change, economic challenge and technological disruption are impacting debt markets. “Remarkably, the pool of positively yielding debt in the global fixed-income universe has shrunk by more than $5 trillion in less than two years, which clearly presents a tremendous challenge for investors seeking income and attempting to match assets to liabilities.”
Tags: ALM, Challenge, Debt markets, Demographic change, Economic challenge, Fixed income, Monetary policy, Technological disruption, Unconventional, Yields
Financial Times (May 2)
More needs to be done on fiscal and monetary co-operation. “The past few weeks have highlighted the limits of monetary policy expansion. The current framework combining quantitative easing and negative interest rates is offering rapidly diminishing returns because it is not producing the large, permanent increase in the money in circulation that would be required to turn inflation expectations around and lift the world economy out of deflationary deadlock.”
Tags: Cooperation, Deflationary deadlock, Diminishing returns, Economy, Expansion, Expectations, Fiscal, Inflation, Limits, Monetary, Negative interest rates, Quantitative easing
Bloomberg (May 2)
“Money managers turned the most bullish since May as West Texas Intermediate crude climbed to a five-month high on optimism that falling U.S. production and rising fuel demand will trim the global glut.” Their optimism may be both short-sighted and short-lived as OPEC just “boosted production by 484,000 barrels a day to 33.217 million in April, the most in monthly data going back to 1989.”
Tags: Bullish, Crude, Demand, Money managers, OPEC, Optimism, Production, U.S., West Texas Intermediate
Washington Post (May 1)
“Countries usually don’t knowingly commit economic suicide, but in Britain, millions seem ready to give it a try.” If, on June 23, the United Kingdom votes to leave European Union, a “28-nation economic bloc with a population of 508 million and a gross domestic product of almost $17 trillion,” it would be nothing less than “an act of national insanity.”
Tags: Britain, Economic suicide, EU, GDP, June 23, National insanity, UK
