Volcker: Fed shouldn’t wait too long to unwind stimulus
- Paul Volcker, came after Janet Yellen saying that she doesn’t see any reason to right now curtail bond-buying programs;
- Volcker said, low inflation supports current Fed policy; but central bankers must decide how and when to retreat;
Keeping up with the Dow Joneses
- historically, Dow has not been a bad measure of stock-market performance;
- some vitally important aspects of the market that Dow and other measures miss: impact of inflation (if adjusted, only be around 12,900 instead of the new high 14,253); but offset by not considering the dividends reinvested (if considered, 16,600);
- “when equity markets do well, people love to ignore the risks.” “people need to be more vigilant about the risks.”
- since Oct 2007, high-grade bonds have delivered 48% total return, annualized gain of 7.6%; “junk” bonds have delivered 63%, annualized gain 9.5%; while Dow’s return, with dividends, has return more than 16%, annualized gain 2.8%;
- the average coupon on a new corporate bond was about 3%, down from 6% in 2007; the average life is increasing as companies take advantage of low rates by issuing bonds with longer terms — that make corporate bonds sensitive to increase in interest rates;
Facebook adds to Google battle
- tough for advertisers to determine the value of a “like” — for online media, how to demonstrate that banner ads can be valuable even if Web surfers don’y click on them;
- that is a big reason Google does so well — Google is often the last place people go just before they make a decision to buy a product online;
- Facebook last week’s deal to buy Atlas from Microsoft, a online ad technology company; give Facebook a more expansive view of online ads that users see and sales that occur across the Web;
- Google owns Doubleclick, which serve more ads than anyone;
- Facebook partnership with ad-measurement firm Datalogix — view of offline sales impact of its online ads;
- Facebook other advantage: more specific data, name, age, gender, information on other interests;
- government spending will shoulder more burden of growth; a turnaround from the easy monetary policy;
- only timid step to line up public finances behind the objective of raising household income and consumption: spending on healthcare, education and social welfare targeted 9.6% increase in 2012, below the growth rate of the economy, if considering inflation;