Monday, December 07, 2015

Charts are up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

  • (The Economist) November was another strong month for America’s labour market. The economy added 211,000 jobs, according to data published on Friday; figures for September and October were revised up. The unemployment rate stayed at 5%. The healthy report makes an interest-rate rise this month look all but certain. This week Janet Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve, hinted that an increase was on the way.

  • (The Economist) The European Central Bank headed in the other direction, though not as far as expected. On Thursday, the ECB pushed its deposit rate further into negative territory, from -0.2% to -0.3%, and promised to extend its bond-buying programme by six months, to March 2017. But markets had anticipated more. European share prices fell and the euro rebounded from recent lows.

  • Xi Jinping, China’s president, told other world leaders in Paris that their talks mark a “new starting-point” in tackling climate change, his own capital was stewing in a pea-souper of smog. Yesterday Beijing’s air-quality index topped 600: “Hazardous…everyone may experience…serious health effects”.

  • The Debt held by U.S. farmers in 2015, expressed in proportion to net income, is estimated at 6.3 to 1. One has to go back to the 1980s to find another 6 to 1.

  • (Zillow) With the majority of renters in the largest metros putting about 30 percent of their monthly income toward a rental payment, saving money for a 20 percent - or even 10 percent - down payment is extremely difficult. First-time homebuyers and millennials are left trying to find other ways to break into the housing market, turning to friends and family for financial help. In 2014 alone, 13 percent of home purchases were bought using a loan or gift from friends or family for the down payment

  • Euro Zone third-quarter GDP growth slowed to 0.3%.

  • (Economist) The taxation of multinationals is getting an overdue shake-up. At the G20 summit in Turkey this weekend, the leaders of the world’s biggest economies are expected to approve the biggest overhaul in decades. The OECD drew up the new standards (snappily entitled “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”) over two years. They are intended to make country-by-country corporate reporting more transparent, and to close loopholes that allow multinationals—particularly technology and drug companies with lots of easily movable assets, such as intellectual property—to shift profits to tax havens. The OECD thinks the reforms could help governments claw back more than $200 billion a year. Approval is all but guaranteed: the G20’s finance ministers have already given BEPS the thumbs-up. The next stage is to implement the reforms. But doing it uniformly won’t be easy: national parliaments will want to bend the rules.

  • (Economist) ExxonMobil was sent a subpoena by New York state’s attorney-general, requiring it to hand over documents regarding what the company knew about climate change, and when. The state is asking whether Exxon was forthcoming with its investors about the results of its own decades-long research into carbon emissions’ effects on the atmosphere—and the liabilities faced by the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.

  • China has decided to end its decades-long one-child policy, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports. Couples will now be allowed to have two children. Condom shares fell, however shares in companies that make diapers, strollers and baby food have been bolstered. However, the policy shift will make no difference to the workforce for almost 20 years when China will be in the full grip of a demographic crunch.

  • To boost more coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, 23 new intercity rail lines will be built by the end of 2030, according to the company that will make the investment.

  • China announced plans to build a nationwide charging-station network that will fulfill the power demands of 5 million electric vehicles by 2020.

  • The European Union predicted that 3m more migrants could arrive by the end of 2017.

  • Almost half of investors surveyed by E*TRADE expect a market downturn.

  • (Spiegel) Ahead of the planned lifting of Western sanctions against Iran, businessmen from around the world are visiting the country, and as one group from Germany discovered, there is no shortage of opportunities

  • The Bank of Japan’s main inflation gauge dropped for a second consecutive month as the effects of low oil prices continue to take a toll, keeping Governor Haruhiko Kuroda distant from his 2 percent inflation target. Consumer prices excluding fresh food declined 0.1 percent in September from a year earlier

  • Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes fell unexpectedly in September, a warning sign that the housing market recovery may be stumbling. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, dropped 2.3 percent to 106.8, the second lowest reading of 2015.

  • Condos are appreciating faster than single-family homes in markets across the U.S., especially where job markets are thriving or urban renewal is underway, according to Zillow® Condos in the U.S. are appreciating at a rate of 5.1 percent, compared to the 3.7 percent appreciation among single-family homes. YoY Iceland's fish catch decreased by 6.7 % in September