Americas

MODERN JUGGERNAUTS LIKE APPLE DON’T EVEN COME CLOSE

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Before speculative bubbles could form around Dotcom companies (late-1990s) or housing prices (mid-2000s), Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes that some of the first financial bubbles formed from the prospect of trading with faraway lands.

Looking back, it’s pretty easy to see why.

Authored by Steven Vannelli via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,

In a US Dollar bull market with interest rates at zero, cash is rightfully dismissed as a non-asset class. But, when the US Dollar is in a bear cycle, things change, irrespective of what US interest rates are.

There are a handful of indicators we use to identify US Dollar bull and bear cycles.

Last week, Seth Wessler wrote a story for the New York Times, in which he described “terror on the high seas”: an expansion of the maritime war on drugs, the U.S. Coast Guard is operating a fleet of secret floating prisions in the Pacific Ocean. Coined “floating Guantanamos”, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed as far as 3,000 miles miles away from the nearest U.S. port, to international waters from Central America to South America in a bid to bust drug smugglers.

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

From issues such as declining fertility rates to the ongoing complications resulting from China’s famous “One Child Policy”, there are many demographic challenges that the world must grapple with in the coming years.

However, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes one problem of particular importance – at least in places like Europe and the Americas – is a rapidly aging population. As the population shifts grayer, potential consequences include higher dependency ratios, rising healthcare costs, and shifting economies and cities.