The Nation Newspaper

Tag: AMERICANS

  • Americans miss $200b on stocks

    Americans have missed out on almost $200 billion of stock gains as they drained money from the market in the past four years, haunted by the financial crisis.

    Assets in equity mutual, exchange-traded and closed-end funds increased about 85 per cent to $5.6 trillion since the bull market began in March 2009, trailing the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 94 per cent advance, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Morningstar Inc.

    The proportion of retirement funds in stocks fell about 0.5 percentage point, compared with an average rise of 8.2 percentage points in rallies since 1990.

    Assets in equity mutual, exchange-traded and closed-end funds increased about 85 per cent to $5.6 trillion since the bull market began in March 2009, trailing the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 94 per cent advance.

    The retreat showed that even the biggest gain since 1998 failed to heal investor confidence after the financial collapse that wiped out $11 trillion in U.S. equity value was followed by record price swings in equities, a market breakdown that briefly erased $862 billion in share value and the slowest recovery from a recession since World War II.

    Individuals are withdrawing money as political leaders struggle to avert budget cuts that threaten to throw the economy into a new slump.

    “Our biggest liability in the stock market has been the total destruction to confidence,” James Paulsen, the Chief Investment Strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management, which oversees about $325 billion, said in a telephone interview. “There’s just so much evidence of this recovery broadening.”

  • ‘Americans top list of visitors to Badagry Museum’

    ‘Americans top list of visitors to Badagry Museum’

    The Curator of Badagry Heritage Museum, Mr. Peter Olaide-Mesewaku, said the museum receives patronage mostly from American celebrities and students on excursion.

    He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Badagry on Wednesday that even though tourists from different countries patronised the museum, a greater number of tourists from the United States visited the museum.

    “15 per cent of foreigners that patronise the museum are Americans.

    “Evander Holyfield, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Marlon Jackson are among the celebrities who visited the museum recently,’’ he said.

    Olaide-Mesewaku noted that patronage at the museum was usually high during the first and second quarter of every year.

    “The patronage at the museum is seasonal; the big season starts during the months of February to July.

    “ Students of secondary and tertiary institutions visit the museum in this period when on excursion,’’ he said.

    Olaide-Mesewaku said the museum attracted foreigners because it was a repertoire of history on slave trade.

    “I believe that the foreigners who visit the museum do so because of the slave trade history and the monument it houses,’’ he said.

    He advised Nigerians to endeavour to visit museums to learn about their antecedents.

     

  • Two men, two Americans

    The race for the White House is so tight because voters cannot decide what sort of country they want to live in
    One of President Obama’s best stunts in nearly two years of campaigning for re-election has been to stage a speech under a decrepit Cincinnati bridge that he promised to rebuild, creating hundreds of jobs, if only Republicans in Congress would approve the funding. The speech was so widely broadcast that he gave one just like it under another bridge a few weeks later.
    The man hoping to remove him from the White House is less given to theatrics, but just as fond of reliable applause lines. One of his favourites is a promise to start the process of repealing “Obamacare” on his first day in the Oval Office.
    Last night Mr Obama accepted his party’s nomination, and both campaigns entered the final straight of the most grueling selection process democracy has ever devised. It will end not with a referendum on Mr Obama’s record, as some Republicans hoped, but with a choice between two radically different visions of America.
    It will not be an easy choice, because the country is not just in the economic doldrums and a political funk; it is in a full-blown identity crisis. The identities on offer are not the social clichés of the late 20th century’s culture wars but the jarring economic mantras that Americans have acquired after four years of polarizing recession and recrimination. In historical terms this is a choice between the great national investment programmes of the New Deal and the stern self-reliance of Barry Goldwater – or even the pioneers. In bumper-sticker language it is “I love my postal carrier” versus “Work harder – millions on welfare depend on you”. It is a choice between restoring an America that seems to have worked better in the past, and forcing it to adapt to mighty changes in global economics and demography.
    Both campaigns lay claim to American exceptionalism, because they must. It is still true that no one can win the White House without assuring voters they are unusually resourceful and somehow blessed. Julian Castro, the charismatic Mayor of San Antonio, specifically invoked his Texan “bootstraps” as well as his good fortune in having been brought to America by his parents, in a keynote speech this week that was quickly likened to the one Barack Obama gave eight years ago.
    But in important respects the two camps’ versions of America will be pitched as polar opposites. For one, taxes are little more than brakes on the economy. For the other, they are essential to create jobs and pay down debt. for one, government is a necessary evil. For the other it is the citizen’s essential partner.
    The first task for whoever wins will be to forge a plausible deficit reduction plan. If it is Mitt Romney, he must accept that the country’s finances cannot be fixed with spending cuts alone. If it is Mr Obama, he must acknowledge that raising taxes for only the richest 5 per cent will not suffice. A good template would be a detailed set of proposals drafted by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and wrongly shelved by Mr Obama.
    The next President must have the courage, as Bill Clinton did, to begin to reform welfare programmes that America can no longer afford, and to invest in the research and education without which it cannot hope to lead a global recovery.
    The race is on a knife-edge. Polls of the roughly 6 per cent of voters who remain undecided will give clues as to how it will end, but on November 6 a few thousand ballots in swing states may decide the national race. Part-time workers in Ohio and lowa, dismayed by high unemployment but suspicious of Mr Romney’s background and business record, are one key group. Latino voters in Florida and Colorado, among who Mr Obama enjoys a 35-point lead, are another.
    The result will not resolve America’s identity crisis, but in typical America fashion, the race will address it head on.