Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Monday, August 27, 2012
America: The Land of Debt / Economics / US Debt
Traders and the media are focused on the debt distress in Spain, as the country is hindered by a national debt of around 712 billion euros, or about US$892 billion, which breaks down to US$19,391 per citizen. This is why Spain is seriously concerned about the 10-year bond yield at close to seven percent. Paying these high financing costs, trying to cut its national debt and manage its budget will not be easy. The reality is that the eurozone and Europe are in a serious financial crisis.
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
The Day of Economic Reckoning Is Near / Economics / Great Depression II
It is a deal with the devil: Governments churn out more and more cash for the promise of continued prosperity. But the day of reckoning is near, according to Doug Casey, chairman of Casey Research and an expert on crisis investing. As the epic battle between inflation and deflation continues on, Casey discusses his predictions for the new world market in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report.
The Gold Report: There will be a Casey Research Summit on "Navigating the Politicized Economy" in Carlsbad, Calif., in September. The thesis behind the summit is that governments have made a Faustian bargain, a pact with the devil, that saves the empire with overspending, but drives it to the brink of collapse by creating fiat currencies. Doug, where in that story is the economy currently?
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Friday, August 24, 2012
Professor Bernanke’s Terrifying Blindness on the Great Depression / Economics / Economic Depression
With all his scholarly study of the Great Depression, Prof. Bernanke is blind to several truly major factors that caused the Great Depression. His is a blindness that he shares with very many other economists of this day and age. Their condition can be described as "a certain state of mind" that they share that prevents them from seeking out, seeing and saying what is before their eyes. And what is this state of mind? It is to defend the status quo and to stay within the comfortable bounds of conventional beliefs that support the system as it is. This spares them from confronting other institutions and their own.
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Is Germany Entering a Recession? / Economics / Germany
Even in August, while nearly all of Europe is on vacation, we find that economies don't get to take vacation. Europe will come back from its holiday and find that nothing has improved and some things have gotten worse. Specifically, Germany looks to be rolling over into recession. In this week's Outside the Box, Charles Gave of GaveKal looks at Deutschland and notes that while it might be able to handle a mild recession, problems will be that much worse in the rest of Europe, which needs a robust German consumer. This letter will print long due to a number of charts.
"While Europe's biggest economy should be able to endure this loss of altitude, the reverberation across Europe will be significant. The absence of exchange rate volatility over the last 15 years has allowed economies such as Italy and France to escape depression-type conditions, which might otherwise have occurred given their economic underpinnings.
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Friday, August 17, 2012
Economic Collapse, We Still Don’t Get It / Economics / Great Depression II
As the world collectively muddles through 2012, it is has become increasingly apparent that we still don’t get it. Even after the collapse of 2008 and the completely fabricated and bogus ‘recovery’ that the lapdog presscorps still insists is ongoing, plus the various financial and economic ‘accidents’ that have happened along the way since, such as MFGlobal and PFGBest, plus the annexing of entire countries by the banking syndicate (Greece and Italy for starters), we still don’t get it. We are Rome. Obsessed with bread and circuses such as government handout programs and the Olympics and NASCAR, we’ve taken all that is abhorred by productive societies and made a center stage spectacle of it.
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Friday, August 17, 2012
U.S. Jobless Claims Analysis / Economics / US Housing
Initial jobless claims rose slightly (+2,000) to 366,000 during the week ended August 11. Distortions from summer auto plant shutdowns are in the past now, with the level of initial jobless claims now standing close to the levels posted in the early part of the year.
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Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Mind the Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
The saying that things may work nicely in theory, but do not necessarily work in practice is well known.[1] It is typically meant to disparage the importance of theory, suggesting it would be too far removed from practical matters to help in solving the issue at hand.
The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in his 1793 essay "On the Popular Judgment: 'This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice,'" responded to such criticism; in fact, he responded with his essay to criticism leveled against his ethical theory by the philosopher Christian Garve (1742–1798).
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012
UK CPI Inflation Rise Surprises Mainstream Press, Illustrates Olympics Lasting Debt Legacy / Economics / Inflation
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England recently forecast that UK inflation would continue falling for the rest of this year which the mainstream press and academic economists / vested interests had been busy regurgitating at length. That is until today's release of the latest Inflation data for July that showed CPI Inflation rise to 2.6% (2.4%) and RPI to 3.2% (2.8%), which led to confusion across the air-waves as illustrated by the BBC's Stephanie Flanders floundering all over the place in an attempt to explain why Inflation had risen when the script everyone had been following was for Inflation to fall towards 2%.
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Monday, August 13, 2012
Post Olympic Recession Depression / Economics / UK Economy
Yesterday the London 2012 Olympics ended with a spectacular finish, leaving the UK proud to have pulled off such a historical event. Across the globe the world’s media have sung our praises on the success of such a great 16 days.
The London Olympics was just one of a handful of events which the UK, particularly London, has been preparing for, for a good while now. Its completion signifies what I suspect will be a speedy fall back to earth for British citizens who have had party after party to look forward to for many years.
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Monday, August 13, 2012
U.S. Economic Facts and Consequences of Growth in Government Jobs vs. Private Jobs vs. Population Growth / Economics / US Economy
Keynesian clowns are concerned about the decline in government jobs in the past few years. They want the government to step up spending and hire more workers to make up for the loss of jobs in the private sector.
Here is a chart from reader Tim Wallace that will help put the recent loss of government jobs in a better perspective.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
U.S. Economy Huge Reality Check Ahead? / Economics / US Economy
Shah Gilani writes: Let's try and be insightful today, shall we?Equities have been rallying; we'll call it the summer rally.
Major benchmarks are only a few percentage points off their highs. It's all good, right?
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Euro-zone Disaster Zone, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Who do You Trust? / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
They say that breaking up is hard to do. Now I know, I know that it's true Don't say that this is the end. Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again. – Neil Sedaka, 1962
I have contended for some time that Europe is faced with two choices: Disaster A, which is the break-up of the eurozone, or Disaster B, which is the creation of a fiscal union, which keeps the euro more or less intact. Over the last few months I have come to realize that there is indeed a third option, which now looks increasingly possible. This is rather sad, as the third option is just an even worse Disaster C. Each choice carries with it its own unique set of problems, but the outcome of any of the choices will be that the people of Europe face a serious recession, if not a depression. This will impact global growth for more than a short time and, depending on the choice, could plunge the world into a crisis as bad as or worse than the recent credit crisis. In today’s letter we look at all three choices, meanwhile musing on how we arrived at the bottom of such a deep hole, shovels flailing.
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Thursday, August 09, 2012
Why U.S. Econcomy the Bears Are Wrong…Again / Economics / US Economy
Since the beginning of the year, being bearish and trashing the global economy has been the favorite pastime for the majority of market observers. Recurring negative themes have been the sluggish US economy, the supposedly imminent demise of the euro and the slowdown in growth of China’s gross domestic product (GDP).
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Thursday, August 09, 2012
Why Keynesians Hate the Gold Standard / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently, the leftist London Guardian posted an article against the nineteenth-century gold coin standard. The author, who seems recently to have begun shaving, has provided a highly useful summary of the Keynesian case against the gold coin standard. His article is a fine mixture of familiar old canards and creative new errors. His name is Duncan Weldon.
Mr. Weldon has not written a book, so it is difficult for me to know exactly what his monetary theory is. He was the unknown Keynesian in the 2011 BBC debate between two teams of economists at the London School of Economics: The Keynes vs. Hayek debate. I assume that Robert Skidelsky, his partner, thought he was an up-and-coming economist. Skidelsky is the author of a multi-volume biography of Keynes.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Why More Money Printing Will Increase Unemployment / Economics / Unemployment
Money Printing Doesn’t Create Jobs
The developed world’s central banks are now foolishly preparing for a full assault on their respective currencies in an attempt to lower unemployment rates. Spurring these central bankers into action is persistently anemic markets and employment data, which they believe can be rectified by creating inflation.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
U.S. Economic Recovery Orders and Production: No Time for Complacency / Economics / US Economy
We have been assaulted with economic news of all sorts, from every corner of the globe, while trying to watch the Olympics and while we would rather be enjoying summer and decompressing (at least in the Northern hemisphere).
But the data keeps coming. My friend John Silvia, the Chief Economist of Wells Fargo, has been with me in Maine this past weekend. And as we caught fish and shared our thoughts, we also both managed to get out our respective writing done. His note this morning is a particularly interesting analysis of US data, which has him wondering about his call for tepid growth but no recession
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Monday, August 06, 2012
The Future of the Austrian Economic's School / Economics / Economic Theory
On Saturday, July 28, I spoke to a group of almost 150 mostly undergraduates at the Mises Institute. They had flown in from across the USA and from 20 foreign countries. It was a week-long seminar. I was the final speaker.
It is an amazing experience for an anti-Communist of my generation to speak with a Chinese student studying economics in the USA.
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Sunday, August 05, 2012
Alternate Perspectives On U.S. Employment and Unemployment / Economics / Employment
Employment Population Ratio: Age 16-64 With No Disability
A higher portion of men in this demographic have jobs than since mid-2009. Women have about the same ratio of employment as they have had for the last couple of years.
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Saturday, August 04, 2012
U.S. July Employment Situation – Labor Market is Improving at Snail’s Pace / Economics / Employment
Civilian Unemployment Rate: 8.254% in July vs. 8.217% in June. The cycle high jobless rate for the recent recession is 10.0%, registered in October 2009.
Payroll Employment: +163,000 jobs in July vs. +64,000 in June.
Private sector jobs increased 172,000 after a gain of 73,000 in June. A net loss of 6,000 jobs due to revisions of payroll estimates of May and June.
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Friday, August 03, 2012
Mr. Bernanke's Postponement Strategy? / Economics / US Economy
On Wednesday, August 1 Chairman Bernanke provided an update on the Federal Reserve's position on the U.S. economy. He commented briefly in a negative tone on U.S. GDP growth, unemployment, consumer spending and the housing sector. He said the Fed's U.S. inflation expectations remained stable. He reconfirmed the Fed's policy of reinvesting in U.S. treasuries until December 2012.
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