Re: Tema: PPCC - Pisitófilos Creditófagos - Primavera 2023

[Derby]

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3971448-ford-continues-to-rethink-strategy-in-china-with-job-cuts-leaner-operations

Ford continues to rethink strategy in China with job cuts, leaner operations

Ford Motor Company traded flat on Monday after the automaker it was working to find more ways to reduce costs in China.

"Our costs are not competitive, and we are working internally and with our partners to reduce costs in all areas," updated a Ford spokesperson in a statement.

Some reports peg the jobs cuts by Ford (F) in China as high as 1,300. As part of its overall cost-cutting initiative in China, Ford (F) is planning to restructure its operations in the region to turn one of its joint ventures into an export hub for low-cost commercial electric and combustion vehicles. Earlier in the year, Ford (F) had to cut prices on its Mustang Mach-E electric SUVs in China to make them more competitive. Execs also stated on the last conference call that a recent trip to China was a real epiphany for them.

Ford (F) said it now looks at China through the strategy lens that it is not a huge business for the Detroit company. However, since China is the biggest electric vehicle market in the world with customers digitally ahead, it is still considered a really important market. Ford (F) sees a presence there in battery tech, digital experience for the customer and advanced product, both software and hardware integrated. The strategy going forward in China is expected to change to a much lower investment, leaner, more focused business in China with higher returns.

[Derby]

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/ny-fed-finds-big-slowdown-new-mortgage-creation-first-quarter-2023-05-15/

NY Fed finds big slowdown in new mortgage creation in first quarter

NEW YORK, May 15 (Reuters) - Amid a modest gain in overall household borrowing levels during the first quarter, the level of those taking on new housing-related debt dropped sharply, the New York Fed said Monday in a report.

Overall household debt levels rose by 0.9% to $17.05 trillion during the first three months of the year, the bank said in its latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, noting that overall debt levels are just shy of $3 trillion higher than they were in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic struck. New York Fed researchers view overall debt levels as relatively healthy, with some pockets of nascent concern.

The bite of the higher interest rate environment the Fed has been putting in place over the last year snagged the housing market. The bank said new mortgage debt created during the first quarter fell to the lowest level since 2014 at $324 billion, while overall mortgage debt for the quarter stood at $12.04 trillion.

The New York Fed took special note of how housing-related debt has performed since 2020, when the pandemic struck and the Fed slashed rates to near-zero levels and bought bonds that helped ensure mortgage rates were super-low, which in turn sparked a huge surge in home prices and purchases.

The Fed’s effort to lower very high inflation through rate rises has ended that period, but the bank found that refinancing activity has set many households up strongly for the future.

[Derby]

https://twitter.com/financialjuice/status/1658173577349193749

@financialjuice
FED'S BOSTIC: I DO NOT THINK WE WILL CUT RATES.

[sudden and sharp]

Pitorreo... 

[Derby]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/15/vice-media-files-bankruptcy/

Vice files for bankruptcy, the latest digital-media pioneer to fall

(...) All of Vice’s individual brands, including Vice News, Refinery29 and i-D, will continue to produce content throughout the filing process, the company said, adding that its international entities were not part of the court filing.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Voy a pedir directamente a Cadavre que nos suba este articulito porque las imágenes se me resisten y está dando mucho de que hablar en los USA...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/business/economy/wealth-generations.html

The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, With Familiar (Rich) Winners

In an era of surging home and stock values, U.S. family wealth has soared. The trillions of dollars going to heirs will largely reinforce inequality.

An intergenerational transfer of wealth is in motion in America — and it will dwarf any of the past.

Of the 73 million baby boomers, the youngest are turning 60. The oldest boomers are nearing 80. Born in midcentury as U.S. birthrates surged in tandem with an enormous leap in prosperity after the Depression and World War II, boomers are now beginning to die in larger numbers, along with Americans over 80.

The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, With Familiar (Rich) Winners

In an era of surging home and stock values, U.S. family wealth has soared. The trillions of dollars going to heirs will largely reinforce inequality.

By Talmon Joseph Smith Graphics by Karl Russell | May 14, 2023

Source: Cerulli Associates

An intergenerational transfer of wealth is in motion in America — and it will dwarf any of the past.

Of the 73 million baby boomers, the youngest are turning 60. The oldest boomers are nearing 80. Born in midcentury as U.S. birthrates surged in tandem with an enormous leap in prosperity after the Depression and World War II, boomers are now beginning to die in larger numbers, along with Americans over 80.

Most will leave behind thousands of dollars, a home or not much at all. Others are leaving their heirs hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions of dollars in various assets.

In 1989, total family wealth in the United States was about $38 trillion, adjusted for inflation. By 2022, that wealth had more than tripled, reaching $140 trillion. Of the $84 trillion projected to be passed down from older Americans to millennial and Gen X heirs through 2045, $16 trillion will be transferred within the next decade.

Baby Boomers Hold Half of the Nation’s $140 Trillion in Wealth

Notes: As of the fourth quarter of 2022. The total amount accounts for liabilities, but the individual asset categories do not account for liabilities and do not add up to the $140 trillion total. The total assets when not accounting for liabilities is $158 trillion. Pensions include the present value of future benefits as well as the value of annuities sold by life insurance companies. · Source: Federal Reserve

Heirs increasingly don’t need to wait for the passing of elders to directly benefit from family money, a result of the bursting popularity of “giving while living” — including property purchases, repeated tax-free cash transfers of estate money, and more — providing millions a head start.

It’s no longer “an oncoming phenomenon,” said Douglas Boneparth, a 38-year-old financial adviser whose New York firm caters to affluent millennials. “It’s present-day.”

And it’s already impacting the broader economy, greasing the wheels of social mobility for some and leaving obstacles for those left out as the cost of living, housing and raising families surge.

The wealthiest 10 percent of households will be giving and receiving a majority of the riches. Within that range, the top 1 percent — which holds about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and is predominantly white — will dictate the broadest share of the money flow. The more diverse bottom 50 percent of households will account for only 8 percent of the transfers.

The Top 10 Percent of Households Hold a Majority of the Wealth

Notes: As of the fourth quarter of 2022. Wealth accounts for assets and liabilities. Adjusted for inflation. · Source: Federal Reserve

A key reason there are such large soon-to-be-inherited sums is the uneven way boomers superbly benefited from price growth in the financial and housing markets.

The average price of a U.S. house has risen about 500 percent since 1983, when most baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s, prime years for household formation. As U.S. corporations have grown into global behemoths, those deeply invested in the stock market have found even bigger returns: The stock market, as measured by the benchmark S&P 500 index, is up by more than 2,800 percent since the beginning of 1983, around the time index funds took off as a mainstream investment for corporate employees and many other middle-class professionals. (Those figures do not include dividends and are not adjusted for inflation, which they have far outstripped; consumer prices have risen about 200 percent over those 40 years.)

The boomers who benefited most from decades of price growth in real estate and financial assets were, in general, already rich, white or both — attributable, in part, to years of housing discrimination and a lack of access to financial tools and advice for people of color.

But the wealth transfer in its full scope, like any widespread financial phenomenon, will have many nuances: A patchwork of lower-wage earners may be able to move into a parent’s paid-off home in a hot housing market — or may receive a small windfall still meaningful enough to pay off debts.

And there will be millennials, Gen X-ers and young boomers in the upper middle class set to inherit lump sums — seemingly winners — who will wrestle with the substantial headaches of a “sandwich generation,” dealing with the expense of caring for aging parents and children at once.

There are few aspects of economic life that will go untouched by the knock-on effects of the handover: Housing, education, health care, financial markets, labor markets and politics will all inevitably be affected.

The Role of the Tax Code

Morris Pearl, a former Wall Street money manager, says he supports reforming the tax system to avoid jeopardizing social stability and economic growth.Credit.. · Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

In HBO’s hit series “Succession,” dynastic wealth is center stage: The children of the Roy family, the sneering protagonists, are pitted against one another by the clan’s patriarch to see which, if any, can prevail to run the multibillion-dollar family business. Yet amid the dark satire, the show has displayed the extent to which they are all lopsided winners.

High-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth individuals — those with at least $5 million and $20 million in cash or easily cashable assets — make up only 1.5 percent of all households. Together, they constitute 42 percent of the volume of expected transfers through 2045, according to the financial research firm Cerulli Associates. That’s about $36 trillion as of 2020 — numbers that have most likely increased since.

The scale of the transfer is made possible in part by the U.S. tax code. Individuals can transmit up to $12.9 million to heirs, during life or at death, without federal estate tax (and $26 million for married couples).

As a result, although high-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth individuals could inherit more than $30 trillion by 2045, their prospective taxes on estates and transfers is $4.2 trillion.

Rocky Fittizzi, a wealth strategies adviser for Bank of America Private Bank, noted in a conversation with his colleagues recorded for clients that “inheritances are income-tax-free to the children with very few exceptions.”

While tax evasion scandals tend to catch the public eye, legally approved forms of tax avoidance are the major tool of wealth preservation. Morris Pearl, 60, a former managing director at BlackRock, the largest asset management firm in the world, points to himself as an example.

“People are following the law just fine,” said Mr. Pearl, who started at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s. “I generally don’t pay much taxes.”

Mr. Pearl has two young adult sons with trust funds in the “seven figures.” He is also the chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a nonprofit group of well-heeled Americans pushing for the wealthy to pay much more in taxes.

One reason they do not, he joked, is that “the basic way to save on taxes is to not have any income.” His tongue-in-cheek message being that it’s far better to earn capital gains on investments that go untaxed unless or until those gains are “realized” when sold for cash.

“I have right now in my stock portfolio, some stock that my wife’s father, who died a long time ago, bought in the 1970s — that investment has gone from a few thousand dollars to many hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Mr. Pearl noted. “I’ve never paid a penny of taxes on all that, and I may not ever, because I might not sell and then my kids are going to have millions of dollars in income that’s never taxed in any way, shape or form.”

Mr. Pearl noted that people with only a couple of million can use “securities-based loans,” borrowing low-cost funds from banks using the value of a given investment portfolio as collateral. “You just loan yourself money,” he explained, and in many if not most cases, the portfolio’s rate of return exceeds the rate of interest on the loan.

Mr. Pearl doesn’t think the U.S. government “needs more money from rich people” to fund itself. Rather, his support for reforming the tax system arises from his belief that the rich have begun to monopolize resources and opportunity in a way that jeopardizes social stability and economic growth.

“I have investments in companies that depend on growth,” he said. “I’m not altruistic.”

Trying to Save More

Leland Presley has a prospective inheritance: the modest house he shares with his mother, which was paid off before his father died seven years ago.Credit.. · Charity Rachelle for The New York Times

Leland Presley, a 53-year-old baker at a Publix supermarket in Helena, Ala., also has a prospective inheritance: the modest house he shares with his mother, Glenda, born in 1946, which was paid off before his father died seven years ago.

Still, he constantly asks himself, “Am I going to have enough money?”

He has no children, but he feels stretched making $20 an hour, having started out at Publix at $13 an hour in 2013. He is holding tight to his estimated $190,000 in retirement savings and living modestly, hoping to increase it.

Fiona Greig, the global head of investor research and policy for Vanguard, has been working on a report detailing the “self-financing gap” — the insufficiency in “pre-retirement incomes” threatening to leave tens of millions of workers unable to afford retiring in their 70s.

In her research, she’s found “all but the most wealthy” are on a trajectory to be financially unprepared to retire to some degree. The bottom 50 percent of households had an average annual income of about $28,000 in 2022, according to the Realtime Inequality tracker

Mr. Presley hopes to stay healthy enough to work until he’s 67 — and then draw on Social Security, “if Social Security still exists.”

“I do think about that all the time, and worry about that,” he said, “because old age is really expensive — I’ve seen that with my parents.” Even with Medicare coverage, Glenda Presley’s out-of-pocket costs for blood thinners can cost hundreds of dollars a month.

“So I just try to sacrifice what I can now,” Mr. Presley said.

Caught Between Generations

Jennifer Doherty is feeling the squeeze of caring for a child and a parent. Her grandfather left an estate, but her father’s expenses have consumed more than anticipated.Credit.. · George Etheredge for The New York Times

Jennifer Doherty, 33, a journalist for a legal trade publication based in New York City, lives in Union City, N.J., with her husband and their toddler. While she has planned her life around self-sufficiency, she says it was nice to have the prospect of a cushion sometime in middle age from the estate of her late grandfather — a doctor and biomedical researcher.

But her father has had to use family coffers more than he anticipated for health expenses and to maintain his standard of living. So Ms. Doherty has put aside any expectation, or desire, of a big inheritance down the road.

In September, despite higher mortgage rates, she and her husband were able buy a condo apartment in Union City, where median home prices are hovering near $500,000, up about 50 percent since the summer of 2020. Her husband is consulting for a biotech start-up.

But they still feel a bit squeezed — emblematic of the “sandwich generation” of working-age upper-middle-class adults dealing with both costly or time-consuming child care and beginning to serve as caretakers for parents.

Ms. Doherty has begun traveling back and forth between New Jersey and New Orleans “once a month or so,” with the toddler, to help care for her mother, 74, who began treatment for pancreatic cancer in March. “Flights are crazy” — airfares were up 26.5 percent in February from a year earlier — and day care is $1,800 a month, she says: “Basically another mortgage.”

“I don’t know how anybody does it,” she said. “It feels like you have to be already rich or really lucky.”

‘The Changing Face of Wealth’

Melinda Hightower heads a “multicultural client segment” at UBS. The ranks of the wealthy have grown more diverse, up to a point.Credit.. · Jason Henry for The New York Times

At 43, Melinda Hightower, a managing director at UBS Wealth Management, is “borderline millennial.” As an industry insider, she’s helping prepare the financial sphere for what many call “the changing face of wealth,” while, as a Black woman, being part of that transition.

The Swiss bank’s decision to create a “multicultural client segment” in January 2022 with her at the helm is evidence of the trend.

Her grandfather, a World War II veteran, began working independently in real estate in Detroit shortly after the war, maneuvering around prejudices. By strategically buying, holding, selling and renting out various properties, he managed to build up a well-placed portfolio of assets.

And that wealth has endured, Ms. Hightower said. “My mom and siblings all own multiple properties and most work for themselves or have a business alongside their W-2 work.”

Over the lifetime of boomers, integration, immigration and entrepreneurial business efforts have made it so that more than one million U.S. high-net-worth investors are now Black, Asian, Hispanic or Latin in origin, according to UBS: at once, a major leap in a short amount of time and a relatively small increase compared with the entirety of overall white affluence.

But Ms. Hightower is also intimately aware of what she calls “two worlds.” Higher-than-average poverty rates and far-below-average household wealth still plague Black and Latin households as a group. In 2019, the typical Black family still had only about $23,000 of wealth.

“I’m all about celebrating progress,” she said. “But there’s still so much more work to do.”

White Households Hold a Disproportionate Share of the Wealth

Notes: As of the fourth quarter of 2022. Wealth accounts for assets and liabilities. Adjusted for inflation. · Source: Federal Reserve

The Future of Inequality

As the wealth transfer proceeds, scholars, theorists and market analysts think that in addition to shaping individual outcomes, it will draw inequality further into the focus of policy debates.

Joseph Brusuelas, the chief economist at RSM, a consulting firm, thinks changes will come — but only when high-income salaried workers, who still seem to be managing, can no longer comfortably afford families, housing, elder care and leisure.

Once white-collar workers left out of the wealth transfers feel the burn, “large companies will back” a bigger welfare state, Mr. Brusuelas concluded, “because they’ll want the government to subsidize it” rather than taking on the costs of providing more benefits themselves.

“It’ll have nothing to do with social justice, nothing to do with right or wrong, and everything to do with the bottom line,” he said.

The Biden administration hopes to speed the timeline of any public policy reckoning with wealth inequality, or at least lay out a liberal blueprint for executing one. The president’s latest budget proposes largely offsetting spending on social programs with revenue from a minimum 25 percent annual wealth tax on households with a net worth of $100 million or more.

Through property taxes, “the middle class already pays a wealth tax on their primary source of wealth,” said Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director for the National Economic Council. “The super rich — who have far more of their wealth not in real estate — largely do not.”

But David Kelly, the chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, warns that “it’s not a matter of just taxing the wealth of the richest and handing it out to everybody else,” especially since a wealth tax might well be struck down as unconstitutional by the courts.

He and others make the case that although the widening wealth gap may be inevitable, finding financially creative or cost-effective ways to raise baseline standards of living is still possible.

“The real question is not ‘why are the rich rich?’ or what to do about that,” Mr. Kelly argued. “It is ‘why are the poor poor?’ and what to do about that.”

Talmon Joseph Smith is an economics reporter based in New York. @talmonsmith

A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Baby Boomers Leaving Behind Riches, Still Mostly for the Rich.

Saludos.

P.D.

El artículo en su edición impresa:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/business/economy/wealth-generations.html

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional/20230515/page/2/textview

El sector hotelero acelera en el empleo

https://www.expansion.com/empresas/transporte/2023/05/15/6461537c468aebbe218b45ef.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/empresas/banca/2023/05/15/64614c1f468aeb76488b45f6.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-economista/20230516/page/3/textview

España duplicará su potencia renovable

https://www.eleconomista.es/energia/noticias/12275538/05/23/espana-autoriza-para-su-evaluacion-final-proyectos-verdes-por-57600-millones.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Bruselas eleva medio punto el crecimiento de la economía española en 2023 hasta el 1,9%
https://www.elconfidencial.com/economia/2023-05-15/bruselas-crecimiento-economia-espana_3629575/
La Comisión Europea prevé que España recupere en los próximos meses su nivel de PIB prepandemia y apunta a un crecimiento del 1,9% en 2023 y del 2% en 2024





Que no deja de ser, lo habitual.   

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12274439/05/23/bruselas-eleva-al-19-el-crecimiento-de-espana-en-2023-pero-preve-que-el-deficit-en-2024-supere-el-3.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Esta podría ir en el múltiples hilos como el de A brave new world (por lo de los perros y los gatos), o el de Invierno demográfico (por la noticia en sí), pero la pongo en el principal porque, como todos sabemos, el pisito tiene una parte importante  de la culpa de que hayamos llegado hasta aquí.

https://www.eleconomista.es/retail-consumo/noticias/12275254/05/23/la-paradoja-ante-la-caida-de-la-natalidad-la-alimentacion-infantil-se-hunde-y-la-comida-para-mascotas-crece-.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Y un pequeño off topic, aunque no tanto, porque demuestra que sigue habiendo demanda en el sector del transporte de mercancías a gran escala a pesar de los movimentos anti-globalización.

https://www.eleconomista.es/transportes-turismo/noticias/12275457/05/23/el-megabuque-mas-grande-del-mundo-tiene-nombre-espanol.html

Saludos.

[asustadísimos]

[Toda —y subrayo toda— la 'riqueza' occidental está basada en la sobrevaloración de las viviendas, que son bienes de primera necesidad de consumo obligatorio. ¡Gran tigre de papel!

Los muy ricos no obtienen rentas. Sus IRPF son mínimos—. Los consideramos ricos no por sus rentas manifiestas, sino por sus rentas latentes —las plusvalías que obtendrían si vendieran sus acciones o participaciones, que rara vez materializan—. Si necesitan dinero lo piden prestado garantizándolo con su patrimonio más o menos ilíquido.

Esto ya lo sabíamos. También sabíamos que la sociedad norteamericana, incluso con ingresos familiares de 6 dígitos, es pobre por causa de hipotecas, alquileres, sanidad privada, cuidado a los mayores y ausencia de pensiones. Lo hemos visto nosotros con nuestros propios ojos cuando hemos vivido allí. ¡Pero pobres de pedir!, que no pueden ni financiarse un extra.

Sin embargo, como al cerebro no le interesa 'la' verdad sino creer en 'su' verdad, la sociedad norteamericana, que es la hegemónica en Occidente, no quiere cambiar las cosas.

Y, ante la lacerante distribución de la Renta que sufre y hace sufrir al resto del imperio, solo se pregunta qué parches poner: «La cuestión no es por qué los ricos son ricos, sino por qué los pobres son pobres», dicen. Temita este muy del falsoliberalismo-neoliberalismo. ¡Paparruchadas!, porque, como decimos, hacemos la trampa de medir la riqueza con el patrimonio, pero la pobreza con las rentas. Y nos hacemos esta trampa porque, si lo hacemos al revés, nos sale que los ricos son pobres y los pobres, ricos. Así pasa, por ejemplo, en Mierdrid, con tanta pisitofilia creditófagica y, con ella, tanto patetismo de duquesitas anarcoides, marquesitas de Hala-a-Pagar y napoleonas ateas autoproclamadas emperatrices-mamá.

¿Qué de nuevo aporta el artículo del New York Times, que leemos en
https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2589.msg214973#msg214973
'The Greatest Wealth Transfer in History Is Here, With Familiar (Rich) Winners'?

LO NUEVO DEL ARTÍCULO DEL NYT ES QUE RECONOCE —algo que nosotros hemos dicho siempre— QUE EL TALÓN DE AQUILES DEL MODELITO SON LOS TRABAJADORES-DIRECTIVOS SUPERASALARIADOS: Changes will come only when high-income salaried workers can no longer comfortably afford families, housing, elder care and leisure.

Es asombroso que esto pueda leerse en el New York Times, señoras, señores. Denota que algo muy profundo está cambiando. Probablemente, se debe a la penuria que sufre la profesión periodística.

¡A por ellos! Estamos trabajando en un comentario largo sobre esta cuestión de los obreros mea-colonia con tres ejemplos reales.]

[Benzino Napaloni]

LO NUEVO DEL ARTÍCULO DEL NYT ES QUE RECONOCE —algo que nosotros hemos dicho siempre— QUE EL TALÓN DE AQUILES DEL MODELITO SON LOS TRABAJADORES-DIRECTIVOS SUPERASALARIADOS: Changes will come only when high-income salaried workers can no longer comfortably afford families, housing, elder care and leisure.

Es asombroso que esto pueda leerse en el New York Times, señoras, señores. Denota que algo muy profundo está cambiando. Probablemente, se debe a la penuria que sufre la profesión periodística.

¿Entienden ahora, por si no estaba suficientemente claro, por qué hay terror y pánico absoluto hacia el teletrabajo?

Porque los trabajadores a los que más pasta se les saca, y los que justifican los precios altos -de oficinas, servicios, vivienda, y la madre que lo parió- son precisamente los que más posibilidades tienen de hacer la peineta y largarse.

Que ahí fuera no hay tantos servicios... El problema de este juego -problema para el secuestrador, no para el secuestrado- es que es la clase de juego en el que perder una batalla es perder la guerra. El trabajador descontento con su trabajo sabe que la mayoría de las ofertas de la competencia son malas. Pero de vez en cuando sale alguna buena, y eso es todo lo que se necesita.

Con los sitios para vivir pasa exactamente lo mismo. Con que aparezca uno solo que case con los gustos, las posibilidades, las necesidades, y todo lo que sea relevante para el currito, llamada al camión de la mudanza al canto.


Y si el teletrabajo no es suficiente, el otro frente es la Gran Jubilación.

[Benzino Napaloni]

De todos modos no es cierto que el crack del Peak Currantes deba venir necesariamente por los trabajadores con mejores salarios.

Su impacto es cualitativo, sin duda. Del mismo estilo que una fuga de cerebros. Pero la falta de trabajadores básicos también es otro frente.

La transferencia de rentas es una depredación. Más bien un parasitismo. Como toda forma de depredación o parasitismo, cae cuando no hay suficientes presas. Una vez que la cuerda se rompa, poco importa por dónde.