Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas As far as the eye can see and maybe beyond your and my lifetime responded Sandler ONeill Partners Marc Flaster when asked how long investors can expect to earn 0 return on their savings.
But fortunately for Texas and Texans what you have here is the nirvana of all the events -- we have technology industries growing here in the state and you have (oil & gas) production here Flaster tells Insiders Jim Cardle.
The saving grace for America the whole country now is the fact that the technology for finding oil & natural gas in this sector of the United States has changed the whole complection of dependence for the nation on energy.
Texas Banking Industry Advisor & Wall Street Investment Analyst Marc Flaster discusses whats driving the Texas economy and how planning for retirement faces new challenges in the Obama economy.
First of all you have a driving force here that is producing an energy resource that is cheaper than all others -- it is safe it is easy to use and its available everywhere. Its available in Ohio Illinois western New York state and eastern Pennsylvania in Louisiana and even now in California. So if you look at our position you can say that it wont be long before the Middle East will be a sidelight that will no longer be important to American and the United States will be energy independent and we will even be an exporter said Flaster. Then in the meantime we have an Administration that is completely on another page. So were going to have to wait for these things to rise to the top to come to the surface or to continue to develop and that could mean until the next election. But no matter who gets elected energy will be the most important development in the United States going forward from the Obama years. Flaster said. In Texas you also have fruits & vegetables and an agriculture industry that is well-regarded and established. But the big thing driving our economy right now is we are becoming much more efficient with all the new technology companies ... we have no inflation in our country right now we havent had any inflation for years and were not about to have any inflation. But we do have a real problem in terms of figuring out how we are going to employ people who have become either redundant or poorly skilled in relation to what is in the future Flaster told Texas Insider publisher Jim Cardle. So first of all from an investment standpoint I would say that when you reduce interest rates to zero like the Fed has done then investors are forced to find other things to do with their money and the stock market is the beneficiary of that. You have a stock market that has more
than doubled since starting around 6500 after the big sell-down and it is not likely to stop.
Then more recently the individual investor did not get back into the stock market until somewhere between December 2012 and the 4th Quarter of 2013 and the individual investor is the last person to ever get on board anything so the ride is still yet to come said the Texas banking industry expert.
One other thing to point out is that in the past even if you had a modest interest rate of 3-to-4 ... and 3 interest means your money doubles every 10 years or so ... but now you a have a 0 interest rate. That means there is no return or close to no return on peoples savings and the only thing people have to live on is their small bit of retirement benefits and their savings.
They are now having to draw down on those savings especially when your cost of living becomes more dramatic because it has to do with health Flaster said.
