Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, September 13, 2018
The Four Steel Men Behind Trump’s Trade War / Economics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
In few months, the Trump administration has undermined more than seven decades of U.S. free trade legacies. Who are the policymakers behind this reversal. Wat is their agenda? And why is steel their common denominator?Recently, the Trump administration hammered a revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by pressuring Mexico and then strong-arming Canada to the tentative deal. The White House’s objective is either to redefine the terms on the basis of U.S. economic leverage and unipolar geopolitics or - if that is not acceptable to other parties - to withdraw the U.S. from such FTAs. It is not “either you are with us or against us,” as in the Bush years, but “America First - or nothing.”
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Thursday, September 13, 2018
How Trump Tariffs Could Double America’s Trade Losses / Economics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
Trump tariffs are based on flawed doctrines, which could penalize the US as much as its trade deficits. Last Friday, President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese goods, on top of the additional $200 billion that he said will likely be hit with import taxes in a matter of days.
If the tariff stakes will increase up to $500 billion, it could penalize Chinese GDP by 1%, but the US GDP, which is relatively more vulnerable, would suffer a net impact of 2% of GDP. In dollar terms, the consequent tariff damage could prove even higher than the current U.S. trade deficit with China and thus double the damage.
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Monday, September 10, 2018
U-Turn or Perfect Storm? Globalization a Decade after the Financial Crisis / Economics / Global Economy
By: Dan_Steinbock
A decade ago, globalization peaked. Today, it remains in the doldrums. Consequently, the Trump trade wars take place at a historical moment, when globalization may further stagnate or even fall apart.On Friday September 7, President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese goods, on top of the additional $200 billion that he said will likely be hit with import taxes in a matter of days.
If the tariff stakes would increase close to $500 billion, it could penalize Chinese GDP by 1.0%, but the US GDP, which is relatively more vulnerable, would suffer a net impact of 2.0% of GDP.
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Wednesday, August 22, 2018
TRADING THE GLOBAL FUTURE - Bad Timing / Economics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
This is the first of a three-part series.
In less than two years, the Trump administration has undermined more than seven decades of U.S. free trade legacies. That is both a reflection of and a catalyst for the further erosion of globalization.
Yet, these trade wars did not come out of the blue. The path to the tariff wars is becoming increasingly difficult to reverse or slow down, and the timing of the trade war could not be worse. It is taking place at a historical moment when global economic integration could further stagnate or even fall apart.
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
How US Trade War Is Spreading from Goods to Services / Economics / Protectionism
By: Dan_Steinbock
Trump tariff wars are entering a new, far more dangerous phase. As the White House is expanding its tariff wars, collateral damage is about to spread from goods to services – much of it in the U.S.After months of trade threats, the Trump administration announced its 25% tariff on $34 billion of Chinese imports effective in early July, while threatening levies on another $16 billion of imports. To defend its sovereign interest, China responded with 25% tariffs on $34 billion of US imports and recently imposed an additional tariff of 25% on $16 billion of US imports effective on August 23.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2018
US Economy Beholden to Fed Interest Rate Policy; Here's One Way Gold Could Reach $14,000+ / Economics / Gold and Silver 2018
By: MoneyMetals
Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason. Coming up we’ll hear from Dr. Lucas Engelhardt, associate professor of economics at Kent State University and well-known Austrian economist and regular guest lecturer at the Mises Institute. Dr. Engelhardt enlightens us on some of the major flaws in our current monetary policy and the dangers and economic trouble it will eventually produce. He also discusses a couple of different ways we could reintroduce a gold standard to save us from what appears to be an inevitable economic catastrophe. Don’t miss a fascinating interview with Dr. Lucas Engelhardt, coming up after this week’s market update.
Well, there’s no way to soft-pedal it. Precious metals markets got smashed this week.
A currency crisis in Turkey sent a wave of fear through other emerging markets and hard assets at large. That emboldened short sellers who had already piled onto gold and silver futures with historically large positions.
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Friday, August 17, 2018
Economic Expansion - Nine Years. Is That Enough? / Economics / US Economy
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Nine years. Is it short or long? It depends on what we are talking about. In the geological time scale, it’s a blink of an eye. But in the business cycle time scale, nine years is a really long time. The current economic expansion has recently turned 9 years old, as the Great Recession ended in June 2009, according to the NBER. With 109 months of economic prosperity (as of July 2018), the current cycle is now the second longest in the U.S. history (and data traces back to the 1850s), overshadowed only by the expansion which occurred between March 1991 and March 2001.
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Thursday, August 16, 2018
How US Indo-Pacific Vision Forgot Asian Development / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Dan_Steinbock
The Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Vision is not an alternative to Chinese and other development initiatives in the Asia Pacific. It is a geopolitical play that is likely to benefit mainly advanced economies. What the Asia Pacific needs is a sustainable, long-term plan for accelerated economic development – not new geopolitical divisions. On July 30, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a highly-anticipated speech on “America’s Indo-Pacific Economic Vision”:
The Indo-Pacific, which stretches from the United States west coast to the west coast of India, is a subject of great importance to American foreign policy. This region is one of the greatest engines … of the future global economy, and it already is today. And the American people and the whole world have a stake in the Indo-Pacific’s peace and prosperity. It’s why the Indo-Pacific must be free and open.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Anatomy of Hyperinflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Michael_Pento
Two drones filled with explosives were recently deployed in a failed assassination attempt to take out Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Chaos filled the streets as the military ran for their lives. But this sort of pandemonium is commonplace in Venezuela today: Where citizens have run out of basic necessities such as toilet paper and have begun eating their pets in order to stay alive. The mainstream Keynesian-brainwashed media doesn’t talk much about Venezuela or hyperinflation; perhaps because they are viscerally aware that the seeds of intractable inflation on a worldwide basis have already been sown by the global elites--and they don’t want to frighten you.
Venezuela is currently in the throes of hyperinflation on a massive scale. The communist-led government has mismanaged its economy into a fiscal catastrophe. Among other things, skilled farmers were thrown off their land and replaced by government apparatchiks that are untrained and incapable of producing enough food to feed the people. Oil production also waned due to mismanagement and corruption. To smooth over the government’s mounting debt it printed massive amounts of money in response to rising budget deficits. The currency plummeted, and foreign denominated debts were defaulted on.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2018
It's Time for A New Economic Strategy in Turkey / Economics / Turkey
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Since President Tayyip Erdogan has been at the helm, the Turkish lira has tumbled. Today, it collapsed. At one point, it was down as much as 18.5% against the U.S. dollar. The chart below traces the ugly course the lira has taken against the greenback under Erdogan’s tutelage.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Talk Cold Turkey Economic Crisis / Economics / Turkey
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Recep Tayyip Erdogan became Prime Minister of Turkey in 2003. His AKP party had won a major election victory in 2002, but Erdogan was banned from political office until his predecessor Gül annulled the ban. Which he had gotten in 1997 for reciting an old poem to which he had added the lines “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers….”
The Turkish courts of the time saw this as “an incitement to violence and religious or racial hatred..” and sentenced him to ten months in prison (of which he served four in 1999). The courts saw Erdogan as a threat to the secular Turkish state as defined by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey in the 1920’s. Erdogan is trying to both turn the nation towards Islam and at the same time not appearing to insult Ataturk.
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Monday, August 06, 2018
Restructuring of Western Economic Power / Economics / Global Economy
By: Dan_Steinbock
According to BRIC projections, the economic power of the BRICs is on the rise. But the other side of the coin is equally interesting. Among the G6 countries, US economic power is increasing at the expense of Europe and Japan.Recently, the 10th BRICS Summit took place in Johannesburg, South Asia. As the international focus has been on the BRIC prospects in the future, it is often forgotten that when the first BRIC reports were published in the early 2000s, they also featured projections about the likely growth of major advanced economies.
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Sunday, August 05, 2018
IMF Produces Another Bogus Venezuela Inflation Forecast / Economics / Inflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has done it again. In an attempt to garner some press, the head of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department Alejandro Werner forecasted that Venezuela’s annual inflation rate will reach 1,000,000% by year’s end. By my calculations, this inflation forecast implies that the exchange rate will reach 923 million VEF/USD by December 2018. To put this into context, the exchange rate at the end of July was 3.3 million VEF/USD, and at the end of June it was 3.1 million VEF/USD.
Saturday, August 04, 2018
Cracking Down on Immigration Impact on US Economy / Economics / Immigration
By: Harry_Dent
There was a great article in Bloomberg Opinion by Noah Smith.It starts off reminding us that we’re doing similar things now as we were in the late 1920s, before the 1929 crash and Great Depression.
During a major bubble, the Fed started tightening in 1928.
In 1930, Smoot-Hawley was passed. It raised import duties, which set off a trade war.
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Thursday, August 02, 2018
Are You Ready For Inflation? / Economics / Inflation
By: Graham_Summers
The market is sensing a major turn.
As I’ve noted before, the currency markets are the largest, most liquid markets on the planet. As such they sense changes first.
With that in mind, consider that the “inflation” currencies are showing a major turn in the $USD.
First and foremost, the Australian Dollar: $USD pair looks to have bottomed. We have a clear bullish falling wedge formation being broken to the upside. We should expect a retest of former support (red line) at the very least.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Yield Curve Inversion a Remarkably Accurate Warning Indicator For Economic & Market Peril / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Dan_Amerman
Would you have appreciated a single number that could have given you a clear and unmistakable warning before the tech stock bubble collapsed? How about an unequivocal mathematical warning in 2006 that major financial trouble was on the way, well before the problems of 2007 and 2008?
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Sunday, June 17, 2018
The Corruption of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Harry_Dent
I call it “killing the golden goose.”David Stockman, a speaker at this year’s Irrational Economic Summit, calls it “the corruption of capitalism.”
Andrew O’Hehir, a contributor for Salon, recently interviewed Yanis Varoufakis about the story behind Greece’s financial crash. He was the prime minister during the height of the Greek crisis, elected in early 2015 in response to the Greece debt default crisis.
And in July of 2015, Varoufakis resigned after the ECB (European Central Bank) and IMF (International Monetary Fund) forced a bailout package that went against what he and his SYRIZA party had promised the Greek people.
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Sunday, June 17, 2018
What Are Corporate Tax Cuts Doing to Wages? / Economics / Wages
By: Harry_Dent
There’s no end to the insanity. Our central bankers and politicians are trying to keep this artificial bubble going at all costs.How shortsighted. How arrogant. How selfish!
These politicians will be roasted in history, not just for creating the greatest bubble ever, but for extending it far beyond any logic.
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Sunday, June 17, 2018
Comparing Wages Globally / Economics / Wages
By: Harry_Dent
Finally! I recently came across this great analysis that the OECD (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) did to show how well off workers in different countries are after adjusting for income and entitlement taxes, like social security and health care.Basically, it measures what people get paid for a fair day’s work.
And we’re not talking average household income here. Household numbers are affected by choices: whether both spouses work full-time, one part-time, or one not work at all… Female participation rates AND the number of kids one chooses all have an effect on per capita numbers.
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Thursday, June 14, 2018
How Online Gambling has Impacted the Economy / Economics / Gambling
By: Steve_Marks
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