Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Why Government Reports Aren’t the Only Indicators of Economic Health / Economics / Economic Statistics
When I am not traveling to New York City, Philly or Chicago, I work mostly from my home office. I tend to look out the window while I write and trade. I get a nice view of the Dallas skyline and trees, but I also have a fairly clear view of the neighborhood dry cleaner, whom I have been going to for many years. Over the past year, I have noticed the parking lot fairly empty and the drive-through window not as busy as it used to be.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Hooray, the U.S. Recession Is Over! / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Some days, it's embarrassing to be a professional economist. On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially declared that our recession had ended — 15 months ago. Yes, that's right, just as more and more analysts are worried about the economy imploding again, the NBER announces that the recession ended back in June 2009. The whole episode underscores the crudity of mainstream economics.
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Dollar Devaluation, Debt Default, Austerity, Depression and Growing Inflation / Economics / Great Depression II
As quantitative easing again gets underway the failure of QE1 becomes more obvious. The crisis worsens and the illusion of any recovery is light years away. Over the past three years almost $13 trillion that we know about has been thrown down a rat hole to bail out banking, Wall Street, insurance and selected elitist entities. The dollar figure is probably much higher. We will never know, because the privately owned Federal Reserve makes its own rules. Everything they do is a state secret. The five successful quarters were only a mirage. The funds have been vaporized among lending and financial institutions worldwide.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Is a Reduction in Unemployment the Key to US Economic Recovery? / Economics / Economic Recovery
Most experts are almost unanimous that the key to economic recovery is a reduction in the unemployment rate, which stood at 9.6% in August. The number of unemployed stood in August at almost 15 million. Also, the underemployment rate climbed to 16.7% in August from 16.5% in the month before.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Inflationary Understatement / Economics / Inflation
The Market Oracle newsletter jumps into the inflation-deflation debate, and says, "Debt deleveraging deflation completely ignores the fact that we are NOT living in the 1930's, but in a globalised world economy that is seeing the convergence of real GDPs where the developing world is eating up the [world's] resources at a faster pace then the west is cutting back on consumption."
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The End of the Great Recession is Official / Economics / Economic Recovery
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated today that the recession which commenced in December 2007 ended in June 2009. The 18-month recession is the longest on record in the post-war period. The 1973-75 and 1981-82 recessions lasted 16 months. The announcement is an official ritual; for all practical purposes, it has been widely known the recession ended in the middle of 2009. The important difference to note is that the pace of economic growth in the current recovery is significantly slower compared with the recoveries following the 1973-75 and 1981-82 recessions.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Economics of Immigration and Employment, Do Immigrants Steal Jobs? / Economics / Immigration
Facts or no facts, many people simply do not want to believe that undocumented immigrants coming to this country don’t steal jobs and undermine the American economy. When economic studies come along that challenge their preconceptions, they don’t take kindly to the troublesome conclusions.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
How Governments Will Default on their Sovereign Debt / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
As I am traveling in Europe for a few more days, it seems appropriate to review the very fascinating work of Arnuad Mares of Morgan Stanley in London. He poses the very provocative question: "Ask Not Whether Governments Will Default, but How?" and comes up with some very interesting statistics. He suggests that simply looking at debt to GDP misses the point and offers four other ways we should also evaluate sovereign debt risk. This is a very worthy contribution to Outside the Box.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Debt Deleveraging Deflation Deception / Economics / US Debt
There is wide agreement among economists and the financial media that our lackluster economic performance stems from continued "deleveraging" among consumers and businesses. Although it is certainly true that after decades of overly speculative borrowing, individuals and corporations are paying down debt, rebuilding their savings, and generally repairing their respective balance sheets. But these activities cannot be faulted for our economic malaise.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
The Empirical Case against Government Stimulus / Economics / Economic Theory
Economists in the Misesian tradition stress the primacy of theory in the social sciences. When trying to figure out the Great Depression, for example, we can't approach the topic with a blank slate and let the facts "speak for themselves." Mises argued that in order for us to even know which facts to consider as relevant, we need to have an antecedent body of deductive insights.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Urgent Steps to Save U.S. Economy From Debt Collapse / Economics / US Debt
In a few moments, I am going to release to you — and the general public — the broad brushstrokes of my …
10-Step Proposal To Save America From The Fatal Blows Of A Debt Collapse … And Give Control Of The U.S. Economy Back To The American People.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
Urgent Lessons from Japan on Economy, Debt and Stocks Bear Market / Economics / US Debt
Imagine a world where the economy never emerges from recession.
Imagine a time and place in which economists talk first of a double-dip recession, then about a triple-dip recession … and ultimately admit the dire reality of a long, multi-decade depression.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
The Myth of Debt Deleveraging Deflation / Economics / US Debt
Background: The reason the ‘net worth’ data is an important consideration today is self evident: unable to explain why the outlook for consumer spending is positive given that debt service costs are hitting record highs, savings are near record lows, and wages are failing to keep pace with inflation, optimistic economists point to the consumer’s balance sheet and calmly conclude that everything will be all right. And although these analysts have indeed been right for a long time (16-years and counting), there is ample evidence brewing to suggest that the US consumer is about to fall down.. - August 21, 2007 - Forget Peak Oil, Peak Net Worth is the Real Danger
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Monday, September 20, 2010
U.S. Consumers and Business are Not Debt Deleveraging, They are Going for Broke / Economics / US Debt
Everyone knows that the American consumer is deleveraging ... living more frugally, and paying down debt.
Right?
Well, actually, as CNBC's Diana Olick pointed out in April, many consumers are stopping their mortgage payments, and then blowing the money they would usually pay towards their mortgage on luxuries:
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
United States Economy Caught in the Jaws of Death, Housing Market Mantra / Economics / Double Dip Recession
The United States is facing both a structural and demand problem - it is not the cyclical recessionary business cycle or the fallout of a credit supply crisis which the Washington spin would have you believe.
It is my opinion that the Washington political machine is being forced to take this position, because it simply does not know what to do about the real dilemma associated with the implications of the massive structural debt and deficits facing the US. This is a politically dangerous predicament because the reality is we are on the cusp of an imminent and significant collapse in the standard of living for most Americans.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
World Economic and Financial System Trending Towards a Serious Breakdown by Spring 2011 / Economics / Financial Crash
GEAB writes: As anticipated by LEAP/E2020 last February in the GEAB No. 42, the second half of 2010 is really characterized by a sudden worsening of the crisis marked by the end of the illusion of recovery maintained by Western leaders (1) and the thousands of billions swallowed up by the banks and the economic « stimulation » plans of no lasting effect. The coming months will reveal a simple, yet especially painful reality: the Western economy, and in particular that of the United States (2), never really came out of recession (3). The startling statistics recorded since summer 2009 have only been the short-lived consequences of a massive injection of liquidity into a system which had essentially become insolvent just like the US consumer (4).
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Asia and the Financial Crisis, Asset Price Bubbles and Capital Controls / Economics / Credit Crisis 2010
Kavaljit Singh writes: Capital controls are back in fashion. In June 2010, South Korea and Indonesia announced several policy measures to regulate potentially destabilising capital flows, which could pose a threat to their economies and financial systems.
South Korea it announced a series of currency controls in June to protect its economy from external shocks. Indonesia quickly followed suit when its central bank deployed measures to control short-term capital inflows. In October 2009, Brazil announced a 2 per cent tax on foreign purchases of fixed income securities and stocks. Taiwan also restricted overseas investors from buying time deposits.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Trapped in the Basel III Credit Contracting Death Spiral / Economics / Credit Crisis 2010
The stock market shot up on September 13, after new banking regulations were announced called Basel III. Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief. The megabanks, propped up by generous taxpayer bailouts, would have no trouble meeting the new capital requirements, which were lower than expected and would not be fully implemented until 2019. Only the local commercial banks, the ones already struggling to meet capital requirements, would be seriously challenged by the new rules.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
Greenspan's Dark Economic Cloud / Economics / US Debt
In an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations (Sept. 15), Greenspan called for higher taxes. This got headlines. But he said a lot more than this.
When a high-level national figure speaks on the record at the CFR, he usually says nothing radical. He is brought there to speak to the members, but he is also speaking to the media. There are rarely any big surprises at one of these meetings.
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Sunday, September 19, 2010
UK Government Stealth Debt Default Continues at Minimum Rate of 3% per Year / Economics / UK Debt
This article is part of a series towards an updated UK interest rate trend forecast. The UK government continues to stealth default on its government debt at the minimum rate of 3% per annum, a price that is being paid for by all workers and savers. The population of Britain has been successfully conditioned by successive governments deploying the pseudo science of economics that appears to exist purely to enable governments to psychologically manage the expectations of their populations such as coming to believe that the stealth sovereign debt default trend is good for them.
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