Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Economic Outlook 2013: Unique, Changing, Unpredictable / Economics / Global Economy
By: Andrew_McKillop
Evolutionary biologists, botanists, zoologists, ecologists and other scientists - for example astrophysicists and cosmologists - will tell you that the universal history of change has several unchanging rules. One of these, specially when it concerns living things, is that the history of life is fractal. A very simple example is any tree-type or dendritic evolutionary diagram: take away the time or scale labelling from any part of the diagram and you cannot tell which direction we are moving because evolutionary change is a process of continual splitting of the branches of the tree. We only assume (often wrongly) that living things in a species tend to get bigger or that species get more numerous or more specialized or less specialized - or any other criteria we might apply, almost randomly.
Monday, December 31, 2012
How Is America Really Doing? 75 Facts Revealed / Economics / US Economy
By: GoldSilverWorlds
An amazing list of real facts was published by The Economic Collapse Blog, entitled 75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe. An excellent article that presents 75 facts & figures, based on research or surveys, indicating the real state of the US. Reviewing those facts and comparing them with the messages in the mainstream media and the government, we see such a huge disconnect.
We selected what we consider “fundamental facts” based on the following themes:
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Why Inflation is the Economy's Hidden Iceberg in 2013 / Economics / Inflation
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes:
Even though Ben Bernanke's Fed has kept interest rates close to zero, inflation hasn't been a big problem since the 2008 financial crisis.
Despite what many observers have expected inflation has remained quite tame.
However in 2013, that may be about to change. One factor that might cause a surge in inflation is the fiscal cliff.
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Saturday, December 29, 2012
Surmounting Government Confiscatory Policies & Bogus Official Economic Data / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: DeepCaster_LLC
January, 2013
“As the miscreants in Washington negotiate solutions to the [various –Ed.] crises, trial balloons have been floated that agreement has been reached to use a new CPI measure—the C-CPI-U, which tends to understate inflation even more than the CPI-U—as way of deceptively reducing cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc. Not too surprisingly, public reaction appears to be turning increasingly negative, as the concept gets broader exposure in the popular press.
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Thursday, December 27, 2012
Economic Transition And The Supercycle / Economics / US Economy
By: Andrew_McKillop
WHEN IS A CYCLE A SUPERCYCLE?
The very first modern stockmarket crash of 1719-1721, of the French bourse was entirely driven by the Apple and Facebook-of-the-day. These were shares in the Mississippi Company, a company modeled on England's South Sea Company which peaked and crashed in almost exactly the same timeframe. Mississippi Co.'s first share offering IPO was in January 1719 at a unit price of 500 livres (the French currency of the time). The shares "went viral" driving prices to 10 000 livres per share by December 1719, an 11-month gain of 1,900 percent. All kinds of people became "investors" and many became millionaires just from their holdings of Company shares. The French word “millionaire” was coined to describe speculators who got lucky and got wealthy as a result of the Mississippi Bubble.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Why Japan's "Lost Decades" Economic Depression Are Headed For America in 2016 / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
It's only been a little more than a week since Shinzo Abe won election as Japan's latest Prime Minister in a landslide-election victory and the pundits are already lining up telling investors to "buy Japan" because it's "dirt cheap."
The hope is that Abe's promises of fresh stimulus, unlimited spending and placing a priority on domestic infrastructure will be the elixir that restores Japan's global muscle.
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Monday, December 24, 2012
Present Crisis Pattern, End of the Third Industrial Revolution / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Submissions
Wim Grommen writes: This paper advances a hypothesis of the end of the third industrial revolution and the beginning of a new transition. Every production phase or civilization or human invention goes through a so- called transformation process. Transitions are social transformation processes that cover at least one generation. In this paper I will use one such transition to demonstrate the position of our present civilization. When we consider the characteristics of the phases of a social transformation we may find ourselves at the end of what might be called the third industrial revolution. The paper describes the four most radical transitions for mankind and the effects for mankind of these transitions: the Neolithic transition, the first industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution and the third industrial revolution.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Why Bernanke’s Terrified of 2013 / Economics / US Economy
By: Graham_Summers
On December 12, the US Federal Reserve surprised yet again by announcing QE 4: a program through which it would purchase $45 billion of US Treasuries every month.
Between this program and the Fed’s QE 3 Program announced in September, the Fed will be monetizing $85 billion worth of assets every month ($40 billion worth of Treasuries and $45 billion worth of Mortgage Backed Securities) ad infinitum.
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Government Spending is Not Economic Growth: Real GDPP 2000–2011 / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Robert_Higgs
In the 1930s and 1940s, when the modern system of national income and product accounts (NIPA) was being developed, the scope of national product was a hotly debated issue. No issue stirred more debate than the question, Should government product be included in gross product? Simon Kuznets (Nobel laureate in economic sciences, 1971), the most important American contributor to the development of the accounts, had major reservations about including all government purchases in national product. Over the years, others have elaborated on these reasons and adduced others.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Bernanke Loosens Up, Fundementally Misunderstands How Weath is Created / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Frank_Shostak
On Wednesday December 12, 2012 Fed policy makers announced that they will boost their main stimulus tool by adding $45 billion of monthly Treasury purchases to an existing program to buy $40 billion of mortgage debt a month.
This decision is likely to boost the Fed’s balance sheet from the present $2.86 trillion to $4 trillion by the end of next year. Policy makers also announced that an almost zero interest rate policy will stay intact as long as the unemployment rate is above 6.5% and the rate of inflation doesn’t exceed the 2.5% figure.
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
U.S. Miles Driven Economic Indicator Hits Another Post-Crisis Low / Economics / US Economy
By: PhilStockWorld
Courtesy of Doug Short.The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Commission has released the latest report on Traffic Volume Trends, data through October. Travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.3% (0.9 billion vehicle miles) for October 2012 as compared with October 2011. The 12-month moving average of miles driven increased only 0.51% from October a year ago (PDF report). And the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) has set another post-financial crisis low.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
US Birth Rate Hits New Record Low, A Nation of Singles, Implications for the Future / Economics / Demographics
By: John_Mauldin
Today’s OTB is not directly about the economy or investment, but rather about a key demographic shift that will certainly have a major effect on both. I have a somewhat different take on the shift than our author, my very-long-time friend Gary D. Halbert (founder of ProFutures and former business partner from the ’90s); and I will be writing about this next year. There is a significant transformation going on in my thinking about how the political world in the US (and, I suspect, much of Europe as well) impacts the economy.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Investor Inflation Protection, and Profit, from Political Numbers / Economics / Inflation
By: DeepCaster_LLC
As the miscreants in Washington negotiate solutions to the “fiscal-cliff” and debt-ceiling crises, trial balloons have been floated that agreement has been reached to use a new CPI measure—the C-CPI-U, which tends to understate inflation even more than the CPI-U—as way of deceptively reducing cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security, etc. Not too surprisingly, public reaction appears to be turning increasingly negative, as the concept gets broader exposure in the popular press.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Republican Sellout Invites Stagflation / Economics / Stagflation
By: John_Browne
While it may not be a surprise that the Republicans are preparing to yield on their vow to oppose tax hikes, it should raise investor concerns the world over that an upcoming budget agreement will likely involve a Congressional surrender of its authority to set the federal debt ceiling. In exchange for this, it appears that the Republicans have simply done nothing to halt, or even curb, the dangerous federal spending trajectories or the current drift towards greater state control of the economy. President Obama has politically outmaneuvered the Republicans, even going as far as evoking the Newtown massacre as a reason for quickly concluding a deal. As a result, it is likely that the GOP will bear the blame for any breakdown in fiscal cliff negotiations. They could wear such an outcome as a badge of honor, but nothing indicates that they have the political courage to do so.
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Friday, December 21, 2012
How Will the Housing Market Affect the U.S. Economy in 2013? / Economics / US Economy
By: InvestmentContrarian
Sasha Cekerevac writes: One of the most important sectors of the economy is the housing market. The housing market is crucial for several reasons. First, the housing market employs a lot of people, both directly and indirectly. This includes the direct employment of people in the housing industry, such as tradesmen and homebuilders, and the indirect employment of people in related industries, such as the automakers that build pickup trucks to be used by tradesmen and homebuilders.
Friday, December 21, 2012
BEA Raises U.S. 3rd Quarter 2012 GDP Growth Estimate to 3.09% / Economics / US Economy
By: CMI
In their third (and "final") estimate of the US GDP for the third quarter of 2012 the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) found that the economy was growing at a 3.09% annualized rate, an upward revision of +0.42% from the previously published estimate for that quarter and 1.83% better than the second quarter of 2012.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Japan Big Bank QE, Weakening Yen to Inflate Economy and Stocks / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Gary_Dorsch
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. And not one man in a million will detect the theft,” John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1920.
On Dec 12th, a shadowy group of political lackeys, voted 11-1 to launch what’s popularly dubbed as “Infinity QE-4,” – the Federal Reserve’s most radical scheme ever, that’s designed to enable the US-government to continue borrowing as much as $1-trillion per year, for the next several years, if necessary, in order to finance the burgeoning US-welfare state. US-lawmakers are negotiating over the details of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” but are simply nibbling at the edges of $1-trillion budget deficits. Yet US-politicians from both sides of the isle, believe they can stave off significant tax hikes and spending cuts, without having to pay a penalty of sharply higher interest rates, which normally follows such fiscal recklessness.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
End of the Debt Supercycle and a Coming Massive Devaluation of the Yen ... / Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2012
By: Mike_Shedlock
... Most Difficult Time to Invest; The Belief Bubble
Late last month, Kyle Bass, managing partner of Hayman Capital, shared his thoughts in a video at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Investing Conference with Professor Ken Eades.
It is a fantastic interview that echoes many of the things I have been saying about Japan for quite some time.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
The Coming China Economic Crisis / Economics / China Economy
By: Clif_Droke
When Bert Dohmen talks, smart investors listen.
In 2007 when most investment analysts and economists were downplaying the developing credit market troubles, Bert warned investors that the probability was very high that the troubles would escalate into full-blown crisis and would produce a crash of historic proportions. He chronicled the developing credit crisis in the pages of his newsletter and also published a book in early 2012 entitled, The Coming China Crisis, which provided his insightful views on the emerging crisis in depth.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
Economic Signs That Deflation is Far From Over / Economics / Deflation
By: EWI
The federal government defines the Producer Price Index (PPI) as "the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output."
With help from the Federal Reserve's massive inflationary policies, the PPI has climbed even as the economy began to fall in 2008-09.
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