Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
Today is the day. Both Draghi and Yellen speak later at Jackson Hole. Although expectations for market moving news have been damped down, the market might be getting a little too complacent.
Global markets are stuck in a holding pattern with S&P futures up modestly after fluctuating overnight, as European and Asian shares rise with oil while the dollar has dipped lower ahead of the biggest central bank event of the year: the Fed's Jackson Hole symposium where Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi will speak at 10am and 3pm ET, respectively. Meanwhile, world stocks drifted toward their best week in six on Friday, as a near three-year high in emerging markets shares and a roaring rally in industrial metals bolstered the year’s global bull run.
The billionaire Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and heir, Lee Jae-yong, was sentenced to five years in prison for paying bribes worth 8.9 billion won ($7.9 million) to a friend of then-president Park Geun-hye to win her support for the merger of two Samsung affiliates. The sentence marks a "watershed moment" for the country’s decades-long economic order dominated by powerful, family-run conglomerates.
Lee Jae-yong, Samsung Group heir arrives at Seoul Central District Court to hear the bribery scandal verdict on August 25, 2017
Authored by Bryce McBride,
Imagine a situation where the owner of a long-established building supply company sees his profits turning into losses with no way to turn things around.
The owner has two options.
The honest option is to acknowledge the situation and shut down and sell his inventory of goods, his buildings and his equipment. With some luck the sale will earn enough to fund a modest retirement.
As wages for Chinese workers’ skyrocket, the country’s manufacturers are scrambling to replace humans with machines, in many cases to preserve thin profit margins that have been choked by debt service.
But according to a report from Bloomberg Intelligence, China’s embrace of automation – its companies are installing machines faster than in any other country – could have unintended consequences for the global economy, as the robots force wages to sink, inequality to balloon, and consumption to collapse.