Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Deflation or Inflation? / Economics / Deflation
By: Gary_Tanashian
At the prodding of an NFTRH subscriber who was combing through old issues, I went back and read NFTRH 7, from November of 2008 and was struck by how things have really not changed in the last 6 years of non-stop inflationary policy; they have intensified and gone global, but the mechanics have not changed.
The current inflation operation is failing world-wide, with the US holding out for now. As pertains to the gold and gold mining case mentioned in the article below (as we got hyper bullish in Q4 2008), things are moving much more slowly now. The current backdrop is a different animal than the 2008 deflationary impulse, but its potential is to much more wide-ranging and ultimately destructive.
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Thursday, December 11, 2014
Deflation Is Winning, and Central Banks are Running Scared / Economics / Deflation
By: Adam_Taggart
Remember in the early part of the last decade, long before he was appointed the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke penned an article that caught widespread public attention entitled, "Deflation: It Can't Happen Here" ?
Bernanke was referring to the deflationary pressures Japan had been dealing with for more than a decade. In the article, Bernanke laid out a game plan for how the Fed would respond if the US ever faced deflationary pressures. His miracle antidote for battling deflation? Printing money. Lots of it.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Can The Euro Zone Match China’s Growth Rate in 2015? / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Submissions
Brett Chatz writes: The ECB is preparing to tackle stubbornly low inflation as the Euro Zone faces mounting challenges moving into 2015.When the European Central Bank met recently, Mario Draghi emphasised precisely how important it is for the ECB to keep inflation under control. However, the last time the ECB achieved its inflation target was over two years ago. Since then, inflation has been dropping at a steady pace and now stands at close to 0. To combat historically low inflation across the Eurozone, Draghi wants to take aggressive steps by way of a quantitative easing policy. The measures likely to be taken by the European Central Bank will not be dissimilar to the QE policies adopted by the Fed in the US. These will include wide-ranging bond purchases to increase the money supply to accelerate economic growth.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2014
U.S. Economy Data Driven or Driven Data / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Peter_Schiff
There can be little doubt that data releases rather than experience or intuition are driving the economic conversation. This is perhaps a function of the disconnection that many people feel about an economy that they no longer understand. Rather than trusting their own eyes or their own gut to form an opinion, it's much easier to grab a set of convenient numbers. The big question then becomes what numbers you choose to look at and which you choose to ignore.
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
How to Profit from Europe's Secret Economic "Plan B" / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Money_Morning
Peter Krauth writes: As the European Union debates yet a third bailout for Greece, revelations about secret plans by some Eurozone members tell an even more intriguing story.
During the depths of the European sovereign crisis, when Greece was inches from exiting the zone, others chose to not sit idly by.
Instead, two member nations were surreptitiously preparing for a possible Eurozone breakup.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2014
U.S. Economy Post-‘Jobs’ Report; Real or Memorex? / Economics / US Economy
By: Gary_Tanashian
Now it gets interesting because early in the bailout process the Fed talked about achieving certain employment milestones before hiking interest rates. Here we are at the 10th consecutive month with 200,000+ job gains (321,000 in November) and the jobless rate down to 5.8% and still there is a question on when or whether ZIRP will be withdrawn?
Saturday, December 06, 2014
Does Europe Have Demand Deficiency Syndrome? / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Frank_Shostak
In his Financial Times article “The curse of weak global demand,” Martin Wolf writes that today’s most important economic illness is chronic demand deficiency syndrome. Wolf argues that despite massive monetary pumping by the central banks of the US and the EMU, and the policy of lowering interest rates to around zero, both the US and the EMU, economies have continued to struggle.
Saturday, December 06, 2014
Why the US Economy Is Temporarily Outperforming, In Two Charts / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Rubino
Today’s US employment report was the best in years. 300,000+ new jobs, rising wages, fewer people dropping out of the workforce, the whole package. Very hopeful. And also curious, since the rest of the world seems to be moving in the other direction. Consider:
Friday, December 05, 2014
Central Banks Battling Deflation at Any Cost / Economics / Deflation
By: John_Mauldin
Jared Dillian writes: When I was in junior high, my friend Scott had this Billy Crystal tape that we passed back and forth to each other. I still like Billy Crystal, but let’s just say he was truly hilarious when I was 13 back in 1987.
He had this routine about old codgers who used to tell you how hard life was in the old days.
“We had no air…” he’d say, in an old man voice. “No food. We ate wool coats and we were happy.”
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Saturday, November 29, 2014
US Unemployment At Lowest Rate Since 2009 / Economics / Unemployment
By: Boris_Dzhingarov
After painstaking growth, complaints of padded figures, and fears of underemployment among those lucky enough to have jobs, America finally sees its national unemployment rates in the 5.2-5.5% range. At this level, the Federal Reserve considers the market to represent full employment, with very nearly all of those actively desiring employment working or reasonably able to find work. An added bonus for government forecasters is that this rate of improvement is in keeping with their predictions, but comes a full quarter early.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 27, 2014
The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy / Economics / US Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
We should be glad the price of oil has fallen the way it has (losing another 6% today as I write this). Not because it makes the gas in our cars a bit cheaper, that’s nothing compared to the other service the price slump provides. That is, it allows us to see how the economy is really doing, without the multilayered veil of propaganda, spin, fixed data and bailouts and handouts for the banking system.
It shows us the huge extent to which consumer spending is falling, how much poorer people have become as stock markets set records. It also shows us how desperate producing nations have become, who have seen a third of their often principal source of revenue fall away in a few months’ time. Nigeria was first in line to devalue its currency, others will follow suit.
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Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Clash of Generations - Why Millennials Still Live at Home; Not Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing / Economics / Demographics
By: Mike_Shedlock
A New York Fed research paper wonders What's Keeping Millennials at Home? Is it Debt, Jobs, or Housing?
The paper says "it's a mystery" why the housing recovery did not have a bigger impact on millennials living at home.
The research paper, written by Zachary Bleemer, Meta Brown, Donghoon Lee, and Wilbert van der Klaauw notes correlations to debt, jobs and housing.
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Monday, November 24, 2014
Where Is China Economy On The Map Exactly? / Economics / China Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
A lot of people these days vent their opinions on what’s happening with the Chinese economy, and the opinions are so all over the place they could hardly be more different. Which is interesting, to say the least. Apparently it’s still very hard to understand what does happen ‘over there’.
And I don’t at all mean to suggest that I would know better than Morgan Stanley’s former Asia go-to-man Stephen Roach, or hedge funder Hugh Hendry, or Bob Davis, who just spent 4 years in the country for the Wall Street Journal, or Gwynn Guilford at Quartz, or local Reuters correspondents. It’s just that between them, they disagree so vastly you’d think they’re playing a game with your mind.
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Monday, November 24, 2014
Most of The World Economies Panic - Is The US Next? / Economics / Global Economy
By: John_Rubino
It's been quite a month.
In late October Japan, despite a year of fairly aggressive quantitative easing, dropped back into recession and concluded that even easier money was the cure for its ills. It announced a debt monetization plan of almost science-fictional proportions in which the amount of new yen to be created, as a percentage of GDP, will be equivalent to $3 trillion a year in the US. See Reactions to BoJ's Kuroda's Stunning, Doubled-Down QE 'Experiment'
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Saturday, November 22, 2014
Malaysia's Subsidy and Budget Deficit Conundrum / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Sam_Chee_Kong
In reality, running a Government is similar to running a company in many respects. Both have revenues and spending to adhere to. When a Government runs a deficit then it needs to sell Treasury bills, notes and bonds to raise funds. Similarly when a company is short of cash, it can raise funds by selling securities. In a way it can be said that the total debt incurred by the Government is the total outstanding government securities. Thus the total or national debt at any point of time is the sum of all prior deficits. Hence, when a Government runs a deficit, the national debt will be increased by the amount of the deficit.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Euro-Zone Tooth Fairy Economics, Spain Needs to leave the Euro / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
Michael Pettis has a very interesting article on the Spanish news site ABC regarding a possible default of Spain and the eventual breakup of the eurozone.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
European Economies in Perpetual State of Shock, What's Scarier Than Deflation? / Economics / Deflation
By: EWI
As early as 2011, our analysis warned that Europe's deflation was coming -- here's why
For the economies of Europe, the past few months have felt like one long ice-bucket challenge that never ends: A perpetual state of shock induced by the bone-chilling fact that deflation
"...has become a reality in many European countries." (Oct. 24, New York Times)
At last count, eight European nations are now in outright deflation, including:
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Wednesday, November 19, 2014
The Abenomics Japan Economic Death Spiral / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
As Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe has turned his country into a petri dish of Keynesian ideas, the trajectory of Japan's economy has much to teach us about the wisdom of those policies. And although the warning sirens are blasting at the highest volumes imaginable, few economists can hear the alarm. (A longer version of this article can be found in Euro Pacific Capital's Global Investor Newsletter.)
Data out this week shows the Japanese economy returning to recession by contracting for the second straight quarter (and three out of the last four quarters). The conclusion reached by the Keynesian apologists is that the benefits of inflation caused by the monetary stimulus have been counteracted, temporarily, by the negative effects of inflation caused by taxes. This tortured logic should be a clear indication that the policies were flawed from the start.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2014
The U.S. Economy’s Ebb and Flow / Economics / US Economy
By: Harry_Dent
Paul Krugman recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about the exit of Bill Gross from Pimco and why that happened because he didn’t understand that we’re in a deflationary or depression-like economy. He kept betting on interest rates rising on a lag from money printing or quantitative easing (QE) but that never happened and his massive bond fund suffered.
I don’t agree with Paul Krugman about too many things, but I do agree with one of his major points in that article.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Japan Is Dying And We Still Don’t Get It?! / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
What is it with us? Don’t we WANT to understand? Japan announced on Monday that its economy is in hopeless trouble and back in recession (as if it was ever out). And what do we see? ‘Experts’ and reporters clamoring for more stimulus. But if Japan has shown us anything over the past years, and you’re free to pick any number between 2 and 20 years, it’s that the QE-based kind of stimulus doesn’t work. Not for the real economy, that is.