6 April 2019
Question: According to MSN: Money, what percentage of Americans are investing?
Trump takes aim at Fed policies – Pg. 1
– The president told reporters that Fed should embark on “quantitative easing” instead of continuing to pare holdings of bonds bought during its crisis-era stimulus programme, saying that it would turn the economy into “a rocket ship”
– The Fed has come under pressure from previous administrations over monetary policy, but the relentless public campaign being waged by the White House for the past year is unprecedented
– About 196,000 jobs were added last month and unemployment hovered at just 3.8%, while pay increased at a robust 3.2% over a year earlier
Fed tested by US jobs market rebound – Pg. 2
– The US jobs market leapt back to life last month following a weak February as hiring accelerated but wage growth slowed in the latest batch of mixed economic data
– Stocks rallied on the report, while US government bonds reversed their earlier declines, pushing yields lower
– Fed fund futures, derivative contracts that investors use to wager on interest rates, are pointing to a 53.5% chance of a rate cut before the end of the year, down from the 69.5% a week ago
Top lawyer admits criminal charge over colleges scandal – Pg. 3
– Gordon Caplan, co-chair of law firm Willkie Farr, said yesterday he would plead guilty to a criminal charge in connection to the college admissions bribery scandal
– The lawyer made a $75,000 payment to a charity run by William “Rick” Singer, the college consultant at the heat of the scheme, to have his daughter’s ACT standardized test score fixed after she had completed it…
– Willkie Farr, which put Mr Caplan on leave after he was charged last month, announced that it had cut ties with him (Prof Note: NOT ENOUGH! Disbar Caplan!)
– …second parent to agree to plead guilty…
Banks among UK’s worst gender pay gap offenders – Pg. 8
– British banks made up three of the top 10 large companies with the biggest gender pay gaps in 2018, underlining the extent of the challenge facing one of the UK’s most important sectors
– Barclays, Lloyds and Clydesdale Bank reported a median hourly pay gap of at least 38%, putting them in the top 10 employers with 5,000 or more workers, ranked by the size of the differential
– While women by law have to be paid the same wage as men for the same work, companies tend to report gaps in median hourly pay when men are in more senior roles
– The average company in the financial sector paid women 81.9p for every pound men earned in 2018
Norway fund cuts exposure to emerging economies – Pg. 11
– Norway’s $1tn-in-assets sovereign wealth fund is to remove emerging market bonds from the benchmark it tracks, under a new plan announced yesterday which should provide some insulation from the effects of wildly swinging currencies
– Norway’s decision comes after parliament two years ago backed a plan to reduce the fixed-income share to 30% of target weighting, expanding the share of equities to 70%
– Norway’s fund is the largest of its kind, pumped up by 29 years of receipts from North Sea Oil sales, and its investment decisions often have wide-ranging implications for global markets. The fund’s largest fixed-income holdings are in developed market sovereign bonds issued by the US, Japan and Germany
Answer: 56%