Guild’s Basic Needs Index
September 25, 2014
Home Depot Data Breach Makes Another Bullish Case for Cybersecurity Earlier this month, Home Depot revealed a massive data breach, in which the credit cards of some 56 million customers may have been compromised. Company insiders have since alleged lax cybersecurity practices, but it’s also clear that the attack was performed by
September 19, 2014
Is an Education Gap Fueling Income Inequality? 2014 has been the year of “income inequality.” French economist Thomas Piketty’s massive book Capital in the 21st Century was published in English, and strangely rose to the top of the bestseller lists (something that doesn’t usually happen to thick economics texts). The issue of
September 12, 2014
New Tech Innovations Keep Coming As part of our ongoing emphasis on tech innovations, we’ll mention a few stories that have caught our eye recently. Some are obviously tech-related, others less so. We continue to believe that such innovations — and the entrepreneurs who bring them from concept to reality — will
September 04, 2014
The S&P Hits 2000 Why is the market moving slowly ahead when so many naysayers are calling for a crash, and when so many trouble spots are festering in the world? We all see the fighting — problems in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine, Libya — and we note that things are
August 28, 2014
China Deepens Reform and Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises We wrote a few weeks ago that events in China show Xi Jinping decisively consolidating his power — specifically, the downfall of Zhu Yongkang, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the most powerful politician to be investigated for corruption in the
August 22, 2014
What Is the Bond Market Telling Us? Interest rate levels have been confounding many professional investors around the globe. U.S. government benchmark 10-year interest rates began 2014 near 3.00 percent, but they have been sliding back to about 2.40 percent recently. The rally in bond markets and corresponding declines in yields are
August 15, 2014
New BRICS Institutions Highlight the Changing Global Financial Order Leaders of the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have taken a decisive step to increase their clout in global finance and reduce their dependence on financial institutions dominated by Europe and the United States. For now, this
August 07, 2014
Market Summary World Stock Markets The U.S., Europe, and Asia remain in bull markets, but the markets in the U.S. and Europe are in the middle of a mild stock market correction. Causes include the military actions by Russia in Ukraine, and fighting in Iraq, Syria and Libya, which are all exacerbated
July 31, 2014
Google Gets Ready to Take Preventive Medicine to the Next Level Google products have worked their way more and more deeply into our daily lives, and the great utility they provide depends on massive trawls of data. A Guild staffer who recently relocated to Los Angeles from the east coast depends on
July 24, 2014
Industrial Internet:Efficiency Gains Will Drive Adoption of the “Internet of Things” With a mind-set still shaped by the austerity of the Great Recession and its aftermath, companies are looking for the most cost-effective ways to deploy their cash. We believe that the development of the industrial internet, or the internet of things,
July 17, 2014
India — Modi’s Budget Is Growth-Oriented and As Expected The release last week of the first budget from India’s new administration was about what investors expected. The Indian stock market had already run up substantially this year in anticipation of a likely victory by business-friendly Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya
July 10, 2014
Market Summary Economics, U.S. and Global U.S. employment numbers are positive for the last few months, and U.S. industrial production is increasing as we have predicted in these pages. The unemployment rate has fallen to 6.1 percent, and the U6 — often called the underemployment rate — has fallen to 12.1 percent.
July 03, 2014
Regulators are Forcing Banks to Get More Conservative Last Wednesday, Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo addressed the Fed’s symposium on stress test modelling. This is a now-annual gathering of Fed officials and financial industry participants, where the discussion focuses on the Fed’s efforts to evaluate the strength of banks in the face
June 26, 2014
Cash Influx Into Peripheral Europe Grows Again Foreign direct investment into the peripheral countries of the Eurozone was in retreat from 2007 on. Inflows are still low compared to pre-crisis levels, but there are signs that there is renewed appetite for opportunity in the economies hit worst by the global financial crisis
June 19, 2014
Asian Firms Preparing to Take the World Stage The development of Asian capitalism over the past several decades has been robust. According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the proportion of world GDP generated by the advanced G7 economies peaked in 1988 at 69 percent. In that year, developing Asian
June 12, 2014
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Gets Support For Corporate Tax Cuts Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has struggled to maintain the momentum of the ambitious reforms he set in motion when his party came to power in December, 2012. Broadly, those reforms aimed to jolt Japan out of a decades-long period of
