In the global race for 5G, U.S. telecom firms have a unique disadvantage: limited access to the “goldilocks” band of radio frequencies. That's pushing U.S. firms toward a less practical version of 5G. WSJ explains the science and its implications. Illustration by Carlos Waters / The Wall Street Journal More from the Wall Street Journal: Visit WSJ.com: http://www.wsj.com Visit the WSJ Video Center: https://wsj.com/video On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/wsj/videos/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/WSJ On Snapchat: https://on.wsj.com/2ratjSM #WSJ#5G
Private equity is an alternative investment class and consists of capital that is not listed on a public exchange. Private equity is composed of funds and investors that directly invest in private companies, or that engage in buyouts of public companies, resulting in the delisting of public equity. The Returns Are Spectacular. But There Are Catches
• Returns can be gamed
• The value of private investments is hard to measure
Spurred by cheap loans and investors desperate to boost returns, buyout firms roam every corner of the corporate world
October 3, 2019 1:00 AM Corrected
The business has made billionaires out of many of its founders. Funds have snapped up businesses from pet stores to doctors’ practices to newspapers.
PE firms may also be deep into real estate, loans to businesses, and startup investments—but the heart of their craft is using debt to acquire companies and sell them later. . .
> In the best cases, PE managers can nurture failing or underperforming companies and set them up for faster growth, creating outsize returns for investors that include pension funds and universities.
> One of PE’s superpowers is that it’s hard for outsiders to see and understand the industry, so we set out to shed light on some of the ways it’s changing finance and the economy itself. —Jason Kelly
The Magic Formula Is Leverage ... and Fees
PE invests in a range of different assets, but the core of the business is the leveraged buyout
The Returns Are Spectacular. But There Are Catches
For investors the draw of private equity is simple: Over the 25 years ended in March, PE funds returned more than 13% annualized, compared with about 9% for an equivalent investment in the S&P 500, according to an index created by investment firm Cambridge Associates LLC
• Returns can be gamed
• The value of private investments is hard to measure
• The best returns might be in the rearview mirror
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRIVATE EQUITY TITANS QUIETLY DISCOVER HOW TO GET RICHER
Published on Oct 29, 2019
Views: 2,180+
Oct.29 -- Vista Equity Partners' Robert Smith is one of the world’s richest people with a $6 billion fortune. He sold about 30% of the company he founded. His first deal with Dyal Capital Partners in 2015 helped popularize sales of minority stakes, upending the conventional wisdom that only weaker businesses would sell a piece of themselves. Bloomberg's Tom Metcalf and Lisa Abramowicz discuss this trend.
______________________________________________________________________________ The following extracted information is taken from Forbes 30 Oct 2019
Private Equity Firms Have Caused Painful Job Losses And More Are Coming
Mayra Rodriguez Valladares Senior Contributor
"The American Investment Council (AIC), a private equity lobby, recently partnered with Ernst and Young to write a report that describes private equity’s contributions to the U.S. economy. One main finding of the report is that “The US private equity sector provides employment and earnings for millions of workers. Overall, in 2018, the US private equity sector directly employed 8.8 million workers earning $600 billion in wages and benefits. The average US private equity sector worker earned approximately $71,000 in wages and benefits in 2018. For a full-time worker this is approximately $36 per hour.” Just in that one finding, there are quantitative and qualitative shortcomings. Private-equity backed companies buy out companies with existing employees. Private equity companies are not job creators. In fact, private equity firms cause significant unemployment . . . economists at Harvard University and the University of Chicago found that when private equity take over companies, employment in the private-equity backed companies decreases by over 4% in the first two years following the buyout. The research piece “The Economic Effects of Private Equity” also described that when private equity firms buy out large publicly traded companies with numerous employees, job losses are far worse, about a 13% decrease in jobs in the first two years. Eileen Applebaum, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Researchrightly points out that “If you are a worker at a company that has been acquired by a private equity firm, these are the numbers that matter to you – the probability that you or some of your colleagues will lose their jobs.” . .
The table lists select ratings actions on the debt of an LBO-backed company by either Moody's Investors Service or Standard & Poor's since January 1, 2019
Private-Equity Backed Distressed Rated Companies
Source: Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Buyouts; ratings are current as of Oct. 7, 2019
Power to The Shoppers! When in doubt in volatile uncertain times, what do ya do? Consume more . . . GO SHOPPING! The Fed’s preferred underlying inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy, rose at a 2.2% annual pace in the quarter, about in line with policy makers’ 2% objective. On a year-over-year basis, GDP increased 2% during the quarter, the weakest pace of Trump’s presidency and putting his goal of 3% annual growth further out of reach for the full year, following 2.5% in 2018.
Still Spending
U.S. consumers saved the day again, offsetting business weakness
Source: U.S. Commerce Department
Note: Figures show contributions to percent change in real GDP
The gain mainly reflected strength in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, which increased at a 2.9% rate and exceeded projections for a 2.6% rise. For businesses, nonresidential fixed investment fell the most since late 2015.
“The most important question lingering over the growth outlook for the next few quarters is whether consumers will be able to adequately shoulder the burden, as business investment and exports languish in response to economic uncertainty, trade tensions and dollar strength. As of the third quarter, consumers were holding up adequately; this is not surprising to Bloomberg Economics, given the resilience of consumer attitudes and relative health of the labor market.”
"As the longest U.S. expansion on record shows more signs of cooling, in part because of the fading effects of the 2018 fiscal stimulus, different parts of the world’s largest economy are giving mixed signals. The unemployment rate has fallen to a half-century low, underpinning consumers and keeping sentiment readings near historical highs. Today’s report showed disposable incomes after inflation increased an annualized 2.9% after a 2.4% pace in the prior quarter.
On the flip side, manufacturing, which makes up 11% of the economy, has weakened further as a widely watched private gauge hit a 10-year low. Companies, including oil and gas exploration firms, have reined in capital outlays to preserve shareholder value.
The weakness in business investment was led by structures and equipment, which both dropped the most in more than three years. Structures contracted at a 15.3% rate, shaving nearly a half a percentage point from growth, driven by a decrease in oil and gas exploration. Computers and aircraft led the decrease for equipment. _________________________________________________________________________ Read more:
economics
U.S. Economy Holds Up With 1.9% Growth on Consumer Strength
Whew! We are so blessed! to get one moreof these short-feature segments from a city-owned and taxpayer-funded media outlet - it's almost as good as the City of Mesa Newsroom for producing content we really have a NEED-TO-KNOW for issues that impact everyone who lives here. Nothing ever about the crisis in affordable housing. Nothing ever about the lack of public engagement in the government that somehow manages to get elected to serve "special interests" . . . QUESTION: Is this the kind of programming you want ??
Take a look - looks like NOTHING THERE. Right? But there are 'all the dignitaries' and it looks like all the dirt is shovel-ready for Mesa's inland e-commerce customs port. They all could be hitting pay-dirt with just the start of the first two buildings on a 360-acre tract of open barren land that they really need-to-sell. Just one big problem: that modernized NAFTA trade agreement USMCA has yet to get approved by passing through Congress and signed-off on President Trump. Reaching through Canada and Mexico [Giles says 200 airports in Mexico] __________________________________________________________________________ SkyBridge, construction, airport and city representatives breaking ground on SkyBridge's new development at the Gateway Airport. From left to right are:
"The nation's first inland air cargo hub to house a joint U.S.-Mexican customs facility broke ground Monday at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
The customs facility is planned as part of a larger, 23-building development in and around the airport near Ellsworth and Ray roads in Mesa.
The development, called SkyBridge, is projected to bring 17,000 long-term jobs to the area, directly and indirectly, according to development officials.
Skybridge plans call for four million square feet of building space sprawled across 360 acres at the airport and 88 acres just outside the gates. The construction now getting underway is on the first two buildings.
"I think we're all pinching ourselves — we've been really looking forward to this day," Mesa Mayor John Giles said at the ceremonial groundbreaking . . "
"The era of American dominance is "definitively over," war with China is growing more likely, and world leaders are risking long-term security by refusing to face challenges like climate change, according to a new Atlantic Council report titled "Global Risks 2035."
[ Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios ]
The big picture: Author Mathew Burrows, a CIA veteran who previously steered long-term risk forecasts for the U.S. intelligence community, writes that the world is slipping into a "new bipolarity" defined by competition between the U.S. and China. . .
The U.S. has so far been unwilling to adapt to the changing global reality, Burrows tells Axios. No other country would imagine it could "only ensure national security through primacy," he says. . .
The big picture: Most of the worst-case scenarios Burrows envisions are based not on an unexpected event, but on failure to act on entirely foreseeable challenges like struggling middle classes in the West, growing mountains of debt and climate change.
"These things are fixable," he says, but they require leadership and a sense of purpose that eclipses the partisan divide. Burrows doesn't sound particularly optimistic.
The bottom line: "Is there any way to stop the descent?" Burrows writes in the report. "No leader believes he or she has the means to stop it. At home in all the major powers, growing populism, nativism, and jingoism come to the fore, militating against saving the world."
That's right! ...looks like there's definitely a rising tide here in Mesa that could sweep-out the generations-old GOP entrenched establishment that's ruled for far too long. Hard-to-believe for sure. What's next when this news strikes a incongruent chord in the usual perception of Mesa as a majority-red city - one of the fastest growing in the country? And a big change decades in coming that's changing the demographics in voter registrations creates both a rising tide in other-than-Republican circles with asurprise surge inside the most conservative city in Arizona!!
Arizona Could Decide the 2020 Election
The Democrats’ most comfortable path to victory runs through Mesa, not Milwaukee.
"Assume, as I do, that President Trump survives a Senate trial and is renominated as the Republican candidate for president. With one year to go until the election, here are a few things we can say about the emerging contest.
First, Mr. Trump is unlikely to win any state he did not carry in 2016. As of Tuesday, according to Civiqs polling, 43% of Americans approve of his performance as president and 54% disapprove—a net rating of minus-11. But in each of the seven states where Mr. Trump fell short by 10 points or less in 2016,... "
