After the worst two-week start to US stock trading in history, bulls need some cheering up. So here, courtesy of Citi's Brent Donnelly, is some levity: this is what China's Curriculum Vitae would look like if it was applying for a job. It is also a great summary for those who need a simple cheat sheet of where China was, where it is, and where it is going.
So would you hire it?
One of the recurring themes in Obama's final State of the Union address was describing the strength of the economic recovery as witnessed by the number of job gains over the past 6 (if not exactly 7) years, clearly a purely quantitative metric. There was no discussion of the qualitative component of these job gains for one simple reason: as we have explained for years, the bulk of new labor has gone to undereducated, minimum wage (and often part-time) workers.
Brazilian civil servants have discovered the world’s oldest living man still going on strong at the age of 131 and drawing a pension. The man lives with his wife who is 69 years his junior, eats three meals a day and has three children, including a daughter aged thirty. Mail Online reports: The Guinness Book of Records recognises 112-year-old Yasutaro Koide from Japan as the oldest person alive. And Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 in 1997, holds the record for the world’s longest living person.
According to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, employers have the right to monitor their workers’ online private messages. The Strasbourg court sided with the employer of a Romanian engineer who was dismissed from his job after using Yahoo Messenger to communicate with his fiancée and brother while at work. The Independent reports: Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu was asked to create the Yahoo account in order to answer clients’ queries.
Supposedly, the Fed’s decision to hike rates last month conveyed something about the strength of the US economy. “I think the economy is on the road to recovery,” diminutive Chairwoman Yellen told the the Economic Club of Washington two weeks before liftoff. “We’re doing well,” she added, for good measure.