With the push of a button – plus a lot of design work and hours of waiting – the emerging technology of 3-D printing can produce food, plastic phone accessories, even human tissue. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien explores how businesses and schools are creating everything from speakers to ballet shoes, as well as serious challenges and risks presented by ever-widening printing possibilities. Here is a direct video link.
As I pointed out here, the odds for equity “investors” buying or holding stocks and high yield bonds at today’s sky-high valuations are poor to grim. But the prognosis is made even worse by the fact that many public corporations have used the reality of weak global sales to borrow and buy back their own over-valued shares in order to hit short-term earnings targets even while cannibalizing their longer term business model through non-productive capital allocations. Reuter’s Kevin Allison offers a rare, lucid assessment of these “idiotic” investing decisions so popular in present times:
“Corporate America is rediscovering the art of idiotic investing. U.S. companies bought back more of their own stock last year, despite toppy-looking share prices. It’s a familiar waste of cash driven by bosses who are running out of ideas, and dumb incentives that favour financial engineering. This time around, activist shareholders are adding to the pressure…” See the whole op-ed here: A senseless buyback spree
Investor demand, large and small, put a floor on home prices after the housing crash and ignited a recovery. While institutional investors made up a small percentage of those home buyers, they have garnered the most attention because of the bulk purchases they made and because they are a new entrant to the housing market. The concern now is what will happen if and when they decide to pull out? Here is a direct video link.
What about all those regular folks looking for a place to call home that traditionally have provided organic demand for housing?… Well as we mentioned earlier here, stagnant incomes, crippling debt and rising rates have prompted mortgage applications to flat-line over the past 4 years to 1995 levels before the credit bubble began. So thanks to the Hedge Fund speculators and “QE liquidity” for driving prices up double digit in many housing markets over the past couple of years. But then again higher prices only mean even fewer people can afford the rents today never mind the mortgage payments needed to take those houses off the Hedgies…holding unrewarding “investments” is unlikely to be a popular strategy for long.
Chart source: Bloomberg via zerohedge
