Myanmar’s economy: Reality check; Optimism about business prospects on the final frontier may be overblown

Myanmar’s economy: Reality check; Optimism about business prospects on the final frontier may be overblown

Jan 4th 2014 | YANGON | From the print edition

THE most recent edition of the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business” report is a sobering read for Myanmar. It has been almost three years since President Thein Sein came to power and launched his much-trumpeted reform programme. As part of the effort to reconnect Myanmar to the global economy, the country was included in the report for the first time in 2013. Yet the results show that it is still among the very worst countries in the world to do business. Read more of this post

Young’s Passes Fuller’s as Hip Pubs Lure London Beer Fans; The Young and Fuller families, London’s oldest brewing clans, have competed for almost two centuries to quench the thirst of the capital’s ale drinkers

Young’s Passes Fuller’s as Hip Pubs Lure London Beer Fans

The Young and Fuller families, London’s oldest brewing clans, have competed for almost two centuries to quench the thirst of the capital’s ale drinkers. The shares of each company have outpaced the FTSE All-Share Index almost equally over 20 years. Now it’s Young & Co.’s Brewery Plc (YNGA) that’s breaking away, with the stock gain in 2013 almost double that of Fuller Smith & Turner Plc. (FSTA) The reason: Young’s stopped making beer and is managing more pubs. Read more of this post

Turkish politics: No longer a shining example; Turkey’s government disappoints because of allegations of sleaze and its increasingly authoritarian rule

Turkish politics: No longer a shining example; Turkey’s government disappoints because of allegations of sleaze and its increasingly authoritarian rule

Jan 4th 2014 | ISTANBUL | From the print edition

GOVERNMENTS fall in Turkey either because they are massively corrupt or because generals boot them out (or both). In 2002, fed up with the greed and ineptitude of the country’s secular parties, voters chose Recep Tayyip Erdogan as prime minister as they propelled his mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) Party into government. A decade on, AK, which means “white” or “pure” in Turkish, has proven not to be so exceptional after all and finds itself mired in one of the biggest graft scandals in recent history. Read more of this post

Turkey’s Silver Imports Surge to Most Since 1999 as Prices Slide

Turkey’s Silver Imports Surge to Most Since 1999 as Prices Slide

Turkey’s silver imports climbed in December to the highest since at least 1999 and inbound shipments of gold rose to the most since July as the metals capped their biggest annual decline in more than three decades. Read more of this post

The law of small(er) numbers: Pay at investment banks is starting to fall, but not because politicians have capped it

The law of small(er) numbers: Pay at investment banks is starting to fall, but not because politicians have capped it

Jan 4th 2014 | From the print edition

“NAUGHTY or nice” is not a discussion investment bankers have with Santa before Christmas but one they have with their bosses early in the new year. The haggling usually opens with the boss saying what a tough year it has been and the bankers, often experienced traders and dealmakers, talking about how valuable they are. This year’s negotiations will be unusually tense. At stake will not simply be pay, an issue complicated by the introduction on January 1st of a bonus cap in Europe, but also jobs. Read more of this post

Ghana could consolidate its position as a regional star, if the government takes some courageous decisions soon

Ghana could consolidate its position as a regional star, if the government takes some courageous decisions soon

Dec 21st 2013 | ACCRA | From the print edition

CHRISTMAS hampers must not be dished out this year by government departments at taxpayers’ expense. That was the nub of a suitably puritanical edict issued recently by the office of President John Mahama. Belt-tightening is—or at least should be—the order of the day. Read more of this post

Terrorism in Russia: Will there be more? Russians feel vulnerable after two bombings in Volgograd

Terrorism in Russia: Will there be more? Russians feel vulnerable after two bombings in Volgograd

Jan 4th 2014 | From the print edition

IT WAS always a question of when rather than if. Russia has been bracing itself for an attack since July, when Doku Umarov, the self-proclaimed emir of the northern Caucasus and a Chechen terrorist leader, pledged to disrupt the Sochi winter Olympics and lifted a moratorium on civilian targets in Russia that he had imposed in the wake of anti-government protests in December 2011. Yet, the audacity and the deadly choreography of the twin suicide bombings in the southern city of Volgograd on December 29th and 30th stunned the country. Read more of this post

Stockmarket investors are more optimistic than the fundamentals warrant

Stockmarket investors are more optimistic than the fundamentals warrant

Jan 4th 2014 | From the print edition

EQUITY markets finished 2013 with a bang, with the S&P 500 index delivering a return to investors of more than 30%, once dividends are included. And investors’ optimism appeared to be borne out by trends in the American economy, the world’s largest, as third-quarter growth figures were revised higher on December 20th to show an annualised gain of 4.1%. Read more of this post

Soros: The World Economy’s Shifting Challenges

GEORGE SOROS

George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations. A pioneer of the hedge-fund industry, he is the author of many books, including The Alchemy of Finance and The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means.

JAN 2, 2014

The World Economy’s Shifting Challenges

NEW YORK – As 2013 comes to a close, efforts to revive growth in the world’s most influential economies – with the exception of the eurozone – are having a beneficial effect worldwide. All of the looming problems for the global economy are political in character. Read more of this post

Secret of Higher Interest Rates Revealed

Secret of Higher Interest Rates Revealed

I can only imagine what the average person must think when he reads what passes for economic analysis in the daily press. Let me give you an example.

Last week, on the heels of strong economic data, the 10-year Treasury yield closed above 3 percent for the first time since July 2011. That was enough to send up flares and elicit warnings about the effect on economic growth. Read more of this post

Rousseff Buoyed by Rising Poor Even as Brazil Rating Drop Looms

Rousseff Buoyed by Rising Poor Even as Brazil Rating Drop Looms

Brazil’s once-richest man, Eike Batista, is watching his empire crumble. The 16 percent plunge in the Sao Paulo stock exchange in 2013 was second-worst in the world. Meanwhile, Luzia Souza is faring better than ever in the country’s poorest state. Read more of this post

Pop Mogul Turns Holocaust Refuge Into Swedish Asylum for Profits

Pop Mogul Turns Holocaust Refuge Into Swedish Asylum for Profits

Bert Karlsson, a pop impresario who once led Sweden’s main anti-immigration party, is using the biggest influx of asylum seekers in more than 20 years as a business opportunity. Read more of this post

Pimco Sees Dim Sum Refinancing Boom on Cash Crunch

Pimco Sees Dim Sum Refinancing Boom on Cash Crunch

Pacific Investment Management Co. sees a 2014 boom in issuance outside the mainland by Chinese companies, driven by a record amount of Dim Sum bonds set to expire and a cash crunch in domestic markets. Read more of this post

Long time gone: Can American labour policies face the challenge of long-term joblessness?

Long time gone: Can American labour policies face the challenge of long-term joblessness?

Jan 4th 2014 | ATLANTA | From the print edition

THE budget deal that Republicans and Democrats cobbled together in December left several pieces of business unfinished. Among them was the fate of extended unemployment-insurance (UI) benefits. First passed in 2008 and extended several times since, these provide workers with up to 47 weeks of federally funded benefits after they have drawn the maximum their states allow (usually 26 weeks). America’s government has enacted such measures in every recession since 1957. The most recent extension expired on December 28th, leaving roughly 1.3m Americans suddenly cut off and setting the stage for a huge political battle early in 2014. Read more of this post

Latin America’s largest economy enters an unpredictable election year

Latin America’s largest economy enters an unpredictable election year

Jan 4th 2014 | SÃO PAULO | From the print edition

“IT’S not about the 50 cents” reads a scrawl on a shop shutter on Avenida Faria Lima, one of São Paulo’s main thoroughfares. Next door, the message is blunter: “Screw the police”. Six months after a small demonstration against a 50-cent rise in bus fares blew up into the biggest street protests Brazil had seen in a generation, few visible signs remain of the wider anger they revealed—about corruption, poor public services and rising living costs. Recent attempts to organise a reprise have attracted only a few hundred marchers. Support for the president, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, which plummeted after June’s protests, has rebounded. A poll in November of voting intentions in next October’s elections gave her 47%, against 30% for her two likeliest adversaries combined. Read more of this post

How the United States is reinventing itself yet again

How the United States is reinventing itself yet again

By Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever, Updated: January 2 at 8:12 am

We have moved from the Great Recession to the Great Malaise. Despite massive government stimulus, the world’s largest and most advanced economy continues to limp sideways. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Growth remains slow and prospects for employment growth remain bleak. Wages continue to stagnate. Recent college graduates and young professionals may well be the first generation to live a life inferior to those of their parents, conventional wisdom holds. The United States has entered a period of slow decline, much like the sun finally setting on the British Empire in the 20th century. Read more of this post

Gross’s Mistake on Fed Taper Echoes Across Pimco Funds

Gross’s Mistake on Fed Taper Echoes Across Pimco Funds

Bill Gross, the money manager known as “The Bond King,” misjudged the timing and impact of the Federal Reserve’s plan to scale back its asset purchases in 2013, spurring the Pimco Total Return Fund’s (PTTRX) biggest decline in almost two decades. Read more of this post

Global house prices: Castles made of sand; Monetary policy may call an end to the house-price party

Global house prices: Castles made of sand; Monetary policy may call an end to the house-price party

Jan 4th 2014 | From the print edition

HOUSE prices are now rising in 18 of the 23 countries we track across the globe, compared with just 12 a year ago. America tops our table: the Case-Shiller index released on New Year’s Eve reported price increases of 13.6% in the year to October 2013. Homes have risen in value by 24% since their March 2012 trough, but they remain 20% below their peak in April 2006. Read more of this post

Flipping the Coin on the Value of Stocks ‘Experts’

Flipping the Coin on the Value of Stocks ‘Experts’

SPENCER JAKAB

Updated Jan. 2, 2014 3:04 p.m. ET

Look out above! Financial markets are full of surprises. But before 2014 even started, an annual ritual followed a set script: Wall Street strategists predicted further gains for stocks. Perhaps the only head-scratcher is that their targets imply a mere 7% rise in 2014 following what was the best year for the S&P 500-stock index since 1997.

Read more of this post

Berkshire Converts Crisis-Era Gypsum Wallboard Maker USG Investment to Stock

Berkshire Converts Crisis-Era USG Investment to Stock

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) is benefiting from another financial-crisis wager by converting debt it held in gypsum wallboard maker USG Corp. (USG) into more than $600 million in common stock. Read more of this post

Erdogan Crisis Adds Fuel to 2013 Bond Rout: Turkey Credit

Erdogan Crisis Adds Fuel to 2013 Bond Rout: Turkey Credit

The selloff that sent Turkish local-currency debt plunging five times more than emerging-market peers last year is showing few signs of easing, amid a standoff between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the judiciary. Read more of this post

Bitcoin-Equipment Boom Benefits TSMC, AMD Sales, Report Says

Bitcoin-Equipment Boom Benefits TSMC, AMD Sales, Report Says

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (2330), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and other companies have seen more than $200 million in sales in 2013 for computing components used to create Bitcoins, Wedbush Securities Inc. said. Read more of this post

Bill Gross’s Flagship Fund Suffers Biggest Loss Since 1994

Jan 2, 2014

Bill Gross’s Flagship Fund Suffers Biggest Loss Since 1994

MIN ZENG

It was a bruising year for the world’s biggest bond fund run by high-profile fund manager Bill Gross, as the fund suffered the biggest annual loss since 1994. Read more of this post

Bank of Finland Warns Debt Level Poised to Double: Nordic Credit

Bank of Finland Warns Debt Level Poised to Double: Nordic Credit

The Bank of Finland is warning that the euro area’s best-rated economy risks sliding down a path that could see its debt burden rival Italy’s. Finland has little room to deviate from a proposal to fill a 9 billion-euro ($12.3 billion) gap in Europe’s fastest-aging economy if it’s to avoid debt levels doubling in the next decade and a half, according to the central bank. Read more of this post

Are U.S. Stocks Cheap? P/E ratios can make equities look cheap or pricey based on how they are calculated. How to make sense of this key question

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

Are U.S. Stocks Cheap?

By JACK HOUGH | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

P/E ratios can make equities look cheap or pricey based on how they are calculated. How to make sense of this key question.

Based on the ratio of share prices to earnings, are U.S. stocks more expensive or cheaper than usual? That’s a simple but important question with a complicated answer. Last year, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of large U.S. companies gained 30%, not counting dividends, its strongest result since 1997. Earnings for index members hit record highs, too. The index stands at 15.2 times forecasted operating earnings for 2014, according to S&P. (More on “operating” in a moment.) The average since 1988, when S&P began tallying operating earnings, is 18.7 times trailing earnings. That suggests that stocks could gain more than 20% in 2014 and still be reasonably priced. But there are three problems with that thinking. Read more of this post

A new hope or false dawn for Mexico’s oil refiners?

A new hope or false dawn for Mexico’s oil refiners?

2:45am EST

By David Alire Garcia

TULA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s oil refining industry, saddled for years with bloated costs, chronic underinvestment and generous government fuel subsidies, ought to be on the verge of a bright new dawn. Read more of this post

Berkshire Seen Failing Buffett 5-Year Test for First Time

Berkshire Seen Failing Buffett 5-Year Test for First Time

Warren Buffett probably missed his target for the first time in 44 years.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), his $292 billion company, is poised to report that it failed to increase net worth more rapidly than the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index during the past five years, according to analyst estimates. It would be the first time the billionaire investor fell short of the goal since he took over the Omaha, Nebraska-based company in 1965. Read more of this post