My big takeaway from Money (McGraw Hill, 2014) is that Steve Forbes is no James Dean. Forbes is a rebel with a cause. Free-markets and sound money, please. In what follows, I will briefly mention 11 other takeaways from my reading of Money by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames.
Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, July 14, 2014
Global Economy Is Deteriorating Fast / Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2014
The insanity doesn’t just continue, it intensifies. The overriding idea is still that the more companies and individuals borrow, the better the economy goes. But that is nowhere near true. It may have been at some point in the past, but not now, not with debt levels at historic highs. Today’s problem is not that there is not enough credit or money available, as central banks try to make you believe, but that people are not spending what they have. Individuals are either maxed out or scared to be left with nothing, and companies see no opportunities for investing in productive projects (besides, they may well be maxed out too).
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 14, 2014
Why Is Zero Economic Growth 'Unexpected' ? / Economics / Global Economy
Always Unexpected
Each monthly decline in leading economic indicators, when it happens in the Eurozone, as in the US or Japan, China, Brazil, India or elsewhere, is always “unexpected”. Why is this?
For example the March, April, May and June declines for the Eurozone were each time titled “unexpected” by newswires and mainstream media the month following each “surprise”. Taking the case of Reuters, it reported April 14 that Eurozone industrial output had fallen in March “for the first time since August” so this was able to be called unexpected. Then the decline continued in April.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Marc Faber: Africa is Not Going to Be Another Southeast Asia / Economics / Africa
Georgi Ivanov writes: In the last Squawkonomics interview with Marc Faber, we addressed an entire range of questions impacting regions of the global economy, including one of the most tantalizing topics: will Africa become another Southeast Asia and become the new hotspot growth region of the global economy? After decades and centuries of predictions of an African rise, will it finally be Africa's turn for robust economic development?
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
This Is Disgusting — And the Food Sounds Gross Too / Economics / Inflation
It is by now generally understood, at least in the sound money community, that inflation is much higher than the government admits and that the true extent of the problem is being hidden in various ways. But the specifics keep getting more and more disturbing. Here’s a recent Phoenix Capital note (via Zero Hedge) on the adulteration of our “food.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Why Seattle’s Minimum Wage Hike Matters to Seniors / Economics / Wages
The US is gearing up for mid-term elections this November 4—so much so that Rolling Stone announced the relaunch of the “Rock the Vote” campaign last month (according to one of the younger members of my team). And just like clockwork, minimum wage is making headlines again too. It’s déjà vu all over again.
At a breakfast some 20 years ago, I sat next to a prominent, high-ranking US senator now long retired. He showed us data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicating that every time the minimum wage went up, more unemployment followed. Businesses were forced to ship jobs offshore—whether they wanted to or not—and started looking for ways to automate low- or unskilled jobs.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Real Earnings of Private Employees Declined Again in May / Economics / Wages
Courtesy of Doug Short. Here is a look at two key numbers in last week’s monthly employment report for June:
- Average Hourly Earnings
- Average Weekly Hours
The government has been tracking the data for Production and Nonsupervisory Employees for decades. But coverage of Total Private Employees only dates from March 2006.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Inflation: Higher And Higher We Go / Economics / Inflation
In the end game, truth is found only at the margins
In Time of the Vulture: How to Survive the Crisis and Prosper in the Process(2007, 2012 3rd edition), I wrote about inflation and its root cause:
In a credit-money system, over time the constant infusion of increasing amounts of credit will inevitably lead to higher and higher rates of inflation. Because common knowledge of this fact is not in the best interests of those benefiting from the system, it is hidden away. And in the US, hiding the real rate of inflation is done the old-fashioned way, by lying about it.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 07, 2014
What Is the Rate of Return on the Louisiana Purchase? / Economics / US Economy
David Howden and Daniel Fernández-Renau Atienza write: Everyone loves making a buck, including governments. Unfortunately, the reality of many “great deals,” especially in the history books, has today been inflated to mythical proportions.
While most countries throughout history expanded their frontiers through peaceful trade or the spoils of war, the United States purchased much of its land, mostly from foreign governments. Today several of these land purchases are immortalized as great financial coups for the country.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 04, 2014
Investors and Austrian Economics / Economics / Global Economy
Robert Blumen, a software engineer with a background in financial applications, recently spoke with the Mises Institute about the Austrian School’s growing influence among investors.
Mises Institute: In recent years, we’ve seen more and more Austrian-tinged economic analysis coming from investors like Mark Spitznagel and Jim Rogers, to just name two. As someone personally involved in the investment world, have you yourself seen growth in Austrian ideas among investors and similar professionals?
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 04, 2014
Why Abenomics Flopped - Class Warfare Saps the Economy / Economics / Japan Economy
By every objective standard, Abenomics has been a complete flop. Household spending has plunged, wages have dropped for 23 months in a row, inflation is on the rise, the number of workers who can only find part-time jobs has ballooned to 38 percent, and most economists now expect 2nd quarter GDP to shrink to minus 4 percent or worse. So where’s the silver lining?
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 04, 2014
Christine Lagarde's Birkin Bag Of IMF Tricks / Economics / Global Economy
While Nobody's Watching
Christine Lagarde and the IMF chose the midst of the world football cup and the Iraq and Ukrainian crises as just the right moment to announce new “draconian plans” to solve the debt crisis of the developed countries. Dressed in her Hermes scarf and clutching her uber-expensive Jane Birkin-bag, she laid out the IMF Bagmen's plan, this week.
Friday, July 04, 2014
John Williams Warns of Massive Inflation and Then Hyperiflation / Economics / Inflation
Jeff Weatherford of Sprott Money News, Interviews John Williams. (39.37)
He says; “The government has to address its long-term solvency issues if it’s going to survive, if it’s going to have any credibility in the rest of the world…We have ahead of us here probably the worst fundamentals ever facing the dollar…I don’t think things have ever been more negative.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Jobs Report Not as Positive for the Economy as Some Think / Economics / Employment
The jobs report for June was super good news. There were 288,000 new jobs created, and the unemployment rate dropped from 6.3% to 6.1%. The consensus forecast was for only 215,000 new jobs.
On the negative side, analysts are warning that with the economy accelerating so strongly, the Federal Reserve will have to begin raising interest rates sooner than expected to prevent the economy from over-heating and creating excessive inflation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Remarks on Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
— and What We Can Do about It by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Why the Mainstream Fails to Understand Recessions / Economics / Economic Theory
Hal W. Snarr writes: In a 2010 Bloomberg Television interview, Alan Greenspan said, “The general notion the Fed was propagator of the bubble by monetary policy does not hold up to the evidence. ... Everybody missed it — academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
U.S. Jobs Optimism Bias Squared / Economics / Employment
Oh yeah, sure, optimism is oozing from every single one of America’s pores. Or so they’ll have you believe. 281,000 new jobs says the ADP report, most since December 2012. Of which small business added 117,000 and medium sized business 115,000. And the media are just besides themselves with joy. Shame that the markets react lukewarm at best. Then again, they do better the worse the news gets, all they reflect anymore these days is the level of distortion and convolution that they obey (or is that the other way around?).
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
How Government Forces the Poor Into Black Markets / Economics / Government Intervention
Peter St. Onge writes: From the left we often see tension between those who want to help the poor, and those who want to help the government. One recent example of this is the proposal to ban cash forwarded by Harvard’s Ken Rogoff.
The gist of Rogoff’s beef with cash is that cash fuels the black market, and it makes it harder for the government to push negative nominal interest rates. In both cases, Rogoff doesn’t even get that he’s describing benefits of cash, not problems to be solved.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 30, 2014
Japan Says Konnichiwa to Economic Stagflation / Economics / Stagflation
More than twenty years after its infamous real estate and equity bubble burst, Japan has been plagued by economic malaise, an ailment most main stream economists have attributed to something they call a deflationary death spiral. As one lost decade turned into two, and now well into number three, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has vowed to remedy this deflationary flu with an enormous dose of inflation.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 30, 2014
U.S. Debt - If We Get Even The Simplest Things Wrong .. / Economics / US Debt
If we get even the simplest things wrong, and we do it on a consistent basis, because we lack the tools to look beyond our noses, then what chance do we have of getting the bigger and harder things right? A point I’ve often belabored, and will again a thousand times because it’s the very essence of what we get wrong, is growth, or rather our myopic relationship with it.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Shinzo Abe and the Japanese Economy Three Magic Arrows / Economics / Japan Economy
Andy Sirkis writes: Despite claims to the contrary in the mass media, Japan’s economy is continuing to suffer mightily under the leadership of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe is from a famous family and he’s a convincing talker, so he was able to bamboozle people into believing that he could make Japan prosper with his three arrows. These metaphorical arrows stand for “monetary stimulus,” “fiscal stimulus,” and “structural reform.”
Read full article... Read full article...