Mr Helliwell's research showed that the Free Trade Act, which came into effect in 1989, did have an impact: the ratio for traded goods had fallen from about 20:1 to 12:1 by 1993.

ECONOMIST: Good fences

Sunil Garg, a banking analyst at JPMorgan in Hong Kong, said in a note that HSBC would probably be able to fund the acquisition internally, with the purchase representing 3.5% of its asset base, or an 80-basis-point impact on its Tier 1 capital ratio.

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The impact of a slow or no growth economy has to be a decline in the price earnings ratio of U.S. stocks.

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Any ratio above 1 means that a fund does a good job of capturing gains while lessening the impact of bear markets.

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