Business

While Amazon is testing drone delivery, ocean freight, (and teleportation devices, ok we made that up), WalMart has decided to take a different approach to fulfilling its online orders... employees will deliver packages on their way home from work!

As AP reports, in its latest effort to compete with online giant Amazon, Walmart is testing a delivery service using its own store employees, who will deliver packages ordered online while driving home from their regular work shifts.

Authored by Axel Merk via Axel Merk Investments,

The other day, I was asked what my investment advice for a 65-year old would be? My reply: “Go to the gym and watch your expenses.” To create wealth and/or preserve it for a future generation, all too often do we lose sight of the big picture. Let me explain.

Canada's Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr just announced C$867 million (around $650 million) in financial supports for softwood lumber producers and the communities where they are based...“Canada is standing up to the U.S., Canada is standing up for Canadians.”

On Wednesday, the Conference Board of Canada released a report saying Canadian softwood producers would pay $1.7 billion in duties a year and cut 2,200 jobs and $700 million in U.S. exports over the next two years before the dispute is settled.

Over the past year, as OPEC developed the unpleasant habit of jawboning the price of oil higher on nothing but flashing red headlines, targeting headline scanning algos, many compared the oil-producing cartel to another familiar institution whose core mandate is higher asset prices: the Federal Reserve. However, the similarities are not enough, and according to Goldman's chief energy analyst Jeffrey Currie, OPEC should learn from the U.S. Federal Reserve and do more to explain its long-term oil-output policies instead of just focusing on short-term goals.

A recurring theme on this website has been to periodically highlight the tremendous build up in US corporate debt, most recently in April when we showed that "Corporate Debt To EBITDA Hits All Time High." The relentless debt build up is something which even the IMF recently noted, when in April it released a special report on financial stability, according to which 20% of US corporations were at risk of default should rates rise.