Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Debunking The Velocity Myth Once And For All / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Jeff_Berwick
Ed Bugos writes: - “Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise”
At TDV we demonstrate this truth almost every day – in our blog, our tweets, and in our newsletters.
Just last week Jeff discussed the fallacy of GDP, comparing our lot to that of Jim Carey’s as Truman Burbank, the unaware mark in the Truman Show. In that blog, Jeff discussed one of the main problems with relying on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic growth.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Economy - The Better It Looks, The Worse It Gets / Economics / Global Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
It’s common knowledge at this point, even if there’s never a shortage of voices who will insist on denying it, that many of the numbers we see allegedly describing our economic realities, are not real at all. Unemployment, GDP, the issue is familiar. And if the US government, or any government for that matter, thinks it’s such a great idea to “massage” their numbers, then to quite an extent those of us who pay attention can shrug them off as largely irrelevant, even if they greatly distort many people’s views of where we find ourselves. The nonsense comes in so fast and furious we need to realize we can’t win ‘em all. But we should never be tempted into thinking much of what we read are anything else than fake, virtual zombie numbers. Still, it’s when fake numbers get real life consequences that we need to raise our voices, even if that’s for the umpteenth time. A report issued yesterday by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) makes for such a moment. Here’s what the BBC had to say:
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
U.S. Employment Exceeds Pre-Recession Peak, but Hold the Cheers… / Economics / Employment
By: Money_Morning
Diane Alter writes: The May jobs report had the potential to pass for decent, but then we looked at the labor force participation rate...
Employers added 217,000 jobs in May, leading the labor market to the milestone of recovering all the jobs lost at the depths of the Great Recession. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained flat at 6.3%, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday. Both figures were in line with consensus forecasts of a 220,000 gain and an unchanged rate.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Orbital Teapot Syndrome And Success-Bias Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Andrew_McKillop
Doctor Les Woodcock Says
The former NASA consultant scientist, Dr Les Woodcock of Manchester University UK says he has had enough of Global Warming hysterics. His argument that an unsubstantiated hypothesis cannot rule supreme in climate science also applies to the flagrant and mindless meddling with the economy, for example by 'Super' Mario Draghi of the ECB using his Keynesian spin doctors for the chorus line.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Can China's Central Planners Revive China’s Economic Miracle? / Economics / China Economy
By: John_Mauldin
For years, when asked whether I thought China would experience a hard landing, I would simply answer, “I don't understand China. Making a prediction would be pretending that I did, so I can’t.” The problem is that today China is the most significant macroeconomic wildcard in the global economy. To understand both the risks and the potentials for the future you have to reach some understanding of what is happening in China today. Last week we started a two-part series on what my young associate Worth Wray and I feel is the significant systemic risk that China poses to global growth.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Conscious Uncouplings - Global Bad Economies / Economics / Global Economy
By: John_Mauldin
By Grant Williams
It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.
We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
China Economy Leads the World in Green Energy, Gaming and Gambling Markets / Economics / China Economy
By: Frank_Holmes
Last month, Xian Liang, co-portfolio manager of our China Region Fund (USCOX), attended the 19th CLSA China Forum in Beijing. There he and hundreds of other global attendees were given the opportunity to meet with representatives from Chinese corporations, some of which U.S. Global owns. Xian also managed to get a sense of how the nation's recent changes in consumer behavior and governmental policy reforms might affect its investment outlook. Although China remains an emerging market, it has lately taken a number of considerable strides to position itself as one of the world's most attractive places to invest.
Monday, June 09, 2014
Geopolitics in Asia with Marc Faber & Understanding GDP Like Never Before / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: Keith_Hilden
In our latest Squawkonomics interview with Marc Faber, we were told a story of a petulant and wincing state carrying a heavy burden and unwilling to release its full spectrum dominance view on its administration of the world in light of a recent economic fallback, a declining economic share of the global economy, and the very stewardship of the global reserve currency being in flux. The story did not have a clear ending, nor did the reign of the world come effortlessly into the hands of newly important states. Nor did it portend the future of frontier markets and developing countries that could very well benefit from a US with a declining share of global GDP. Perhaps overlooking a wide expanse of undeveloped frontier markets, a quote from Dune author Frank Herbert would be best. “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” Indeed, that however the reserve currency question is answered, and however US economic hegemony looks in 10 or 20 years, there is one inevitable variable that stays constant throughout the geopolitical and economic King of the Hill tug of war between global powers. As two or more tigers duel on a mountain for global financial supremacy, the continued development of the rest of the developing world goes on unabated. That is a guarantee.
Monday, June 09, 2014
Economic Doom & Gloom Sells / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: EconMatters
Improving Economic Data
We have noticed that despite an improvement in the economic fundamentals of the United States as per the robust manufacturing numbers, automobile sales data, and upbeat employment numbers in 2014 many go out of their way to find negatives in every economic report instead of focusing on the relativeness of the data. In other words, are we doing better in these areas than two years ago on an “apples to apples comparison” basis?
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Sunday, June 08, 2014
More Phantom U.S. Jobs Created–All In The Wrong Places / Economics / Employment
By: Paul_Craig_Roberts
Education is not the answer
Last April I saw a report that 83% of May’s college graduates did not have a job. I remarked that in my day most of us had 2 or 3 job or graduate school offers before we graduated. The latest payroll jobs report issued on June 6 proves that the April report was true.
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Saturday, June 07, 2014
U.S. Civilian Labor Force, Unemployment Claims and Recession Risk / Economics / Employment
By: PhilStockWorld
Courtesy of Doug Short: Every week I post an update on new unemployment claims shortly after the BLS report is made available. My focus is the four-week moving average of this rather volatile indicator. The financial press generally takes a fairly simplistic view of the latest number, and the market often reacts, for a few minutes or a few hours, to the initial estimate, which is always revised the following week.
Saturday, June 07, 2014
U.S. Economic Statistics Snow Job / Economics / US Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
Economists, investment analysts, and politicians have spent much of 2014 bemoaning the terrible economic effects of the winter of 2014. The cold and snow have been continuously blamed for the lackluster job market, disappointing retail sales, tepid business investment and, most notably, much slower than expected GDP growth. Given how optimistic many of these forecasters had been in the waning months of 2013, when the stock market was surging into record territory and the Fed had finally declared that the economy had outgrown the need for continued Quantitative Easing, the weather was an absolutely vital alibi. If not for the excuse of the bad weather, the entire narrative of a sustainable recovery would have been proven false.
Friday, June 06, 2014
Europe Resorting to Voodoo Economics to Avoid Becoming Japan / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: It’s a mixed-up crazy world, especially when it comes to figuring out economics.
Just look at European stock markets. Many of them are making new highs today.
Why is that crazy?
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Friday, June 06, 2014
Why the Economic Bust Is Inevitable According To the Austrian Business Cycle Theory / Economics / Austrian Economics
By: GoldSilverWorlds
The key of the ABCT is that economies operate in cycles, they go through ‘booms’ and ‘busts’, ‘expansions’ and ‘recessions.’ A ‘crisis’ should not come as a surprise. Austrian School economists argue that central banks don’t help in smoothing the amplitude of the cycles, but are actually the root cause of the business cycle. While some may view that the expansionary monetary policy can mitigate the adverse effects of a crisis, the Austrian School begs to differ.
Friday, June 06, 2014
The Slope Of Hope Economy And The Persistence Of History / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Andrew_McKillop
The Faith Based Slope of Hope
Writing on the website The Slope of Hope, June 4, Tim Wright in 'The Persistence of Memory' said that: “....honestly, I don’t have visions of a group of thirty rich men sitting around a gigantic table at the top of a skyscraper, smoking cigars, chortling villainously and plotting humanity’s path. I do, however, firmly believe that the central bankers and political leaders of the largest countries were shocked at what happened late in 2008 and vowed Never Again”.
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Why Asian Economies are Faltering? Case Study : Malaysia / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Sam_Chee_Kong
Malaysia’s debt fuelled economy on steroids was the result of Bank Negara’s policy of low interest rates causing abundant availability of credit. To avert the economy from free falling credit expansion measures are taken to stabilize the economy. Economic growth as measured by the GDP is now a function of Government and private consumer spending financed by the credit expansion or put it simply ‘debts’. In the short run this might help mitigate the pain associated with a slowing economy such as a recession. Preventing a recession also means preventing the economy from performing its natural task on rebalancing such as getting rid of excesses accumulated along the way. One of the side effects of excesses is the inflating of assets prices to bubble levels. As a result we have various bubbles blown in the stock market, real estate, bonds and futures market in Malaysia.
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Why Central Bank Stimulus Cannot Bring Economic Recovery / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: MISES
Patrick Barron writes: Today every central bank on the planet is printing money by the bucket loads in an attempt to stimulate their economies to escape velocity and a sustainable recovery. They are following Keynesian dogma that increasing aggregate demand will spur an increase in employment and production. So far all that these central banks have managed to do is inflate their own balance sheets and saddle their governments with debt. But make no mistake, central banks are not about to cease their confidence in the concept of insufficient aggregate demand. In fact, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi is considering imposing negative interest rates to force money out of savings accounts and into the spending stream. Such an action is fully consistent with Keynesian dogma, so other central bankers will be impelled by the failure of their previous actions to follow suit.
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
The Federal Reserve versus Hyman Minsky / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The Fed itself has stated many times over the past years that it intends to keep interest rates low. And now it starts complaining about low volatility. It looks like Yellen et al want to have their cake and eat it too. Perhaps they should have paid a little more attention to Hyman Minsky. Who long ago wrote – paraphrased – that if and when markets are perceived as being stable, it’s that very perception will make them unstable, because stability, i.e. low volatility, will drive investors into riskier asset purchases. The Fed’s manipulation-induced ultra-low rates have achieved just that, and now they’re surprised?
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Wednesday, June 04, 2014
The Primitive Theory Of National Debt / Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2014
By: Andrew_McKillop
Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost
Marx thundered that “...with the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes the place of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be forgiven”. Not being able to speak for the Holy Ghost, we can state that dark and primitive magic was certainly in play when national debts were invented – literally ex nihilo. But that was small beer compared to what was coming.
Sunday, June 01, 2014
The Illusionary Economy Revives The Home ATM / Economics / US Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal uncovers a big problem in the US housing market, albeit, curiously, without necessarily identifying it as a problem. It would be nice if Americans could trust their once most trusted media to give them the best possible covering of a topic, but the Wall Street Journal apparently prefers to pick the side of, well, Wall Street. The problem not presented as one is the resurgence of American homes as ATMs, of borrowing against a property’s perceived value through home equity loans or home equity lines of credit (Helocs).