noting that a handful of bank mergers have involved targets with heavy concentrations of deposits purchased from brokers or acquired through listing services such as QwickRate
Are the Millennials turning into the new serfs? With the massive amount of debt they have accumulated, not just in student loans (which are horrendous), but also in auto loans and other types of debt as well. With their income-generating potential down from that of previous generations, this generation may be in trouble ...
...“President Barack Obama has said that a college degree ‘has never been more valuable.’ But if you borrow to finance your degree, the immediate returns are the lowest they’ve been in at least a generation, new data show....
...We used to suffer from the Nimby syndrome – ‘not in my backyard’. Now we have graduated to Banana – ‘build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything’, says Cowen. Public life is stymied by Cave (‘citizens against virtually everything’) in which politicians fall back on Nimey (‘not in my election year’). Politics has reduced itself to a theatre of symbolic gestures in which pressing issues are left unaddressed. Behind all the electoral volatility lies stasis. Perhaps that is just as well. During the heyday of non-conformism in the 1960s, almost two-thirds of America’s federal budget was discretionary. Now almost 80 per cent of it is locked up. Donald Trump is unlikely to change that....
...The government lies about its true fiscal position and about the “true” rate of cost of living increases while the FED plays its part by communicating to the public that any economic problem can be overcome by money printing and more money printing.
... Chapwood Index ... It is published every quarter by monitoring 500 items which households most frequently use across 50 cities. According to the Chapwood Index the real cost of living rose by a startling 9.6% in 2016 – very close to John William’s rate and has averaged 10% a year over the last five years. At the same time, the academic economic charlatans do not exactly encourage “thrift” by advocating negative interest rates and even more negative rates still if the first set of negative rates fails to revive the economy...
....of the 7.5 billion square feet of retail real estate in the U.S., only 1.2 billion is currently occupied by stores that are considered high quality, ...
...Mathrani said today’s ideal mall includes one department store, a supermarket, an Apple store, a Tesla store, and businesses that started out online, such as Warby Parker. Clothing stores, which used to take up about 70 percent of the average shopping center, now represent closer to 50 percent, he said. Meanwhile, food is roughly 15 percent, up from around 6 percent.
“Food is the new fashion, and fitness is the new food,”
The weakness has been concentrated in middle-wage industries, such as durable goods manufacturing, construction, health care and education. During the past three months, hourly earnings in this wage group 1 have increased at an annualized pace of about 1.8 percent. That compares with 2 percent for low-wage occupations (such as retail, leisure and hospitality) and 4 percent for high-wage occupations (such as professional services, finance and information technology). The picture is similar during the past year, albeit a bit better for the low-wage group. Here's a chart:
Pay Gains by Wage Group
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, author's calculations
