Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
What's Wrong With U.S. Consumer Confidence? / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
By: Guy_Lerner
This is an interesting video taken from CNBC's "Squawk On The Street" - The show's host, Mark Haines, is incredulous that last Tuesday's consumer confidence number came in lower than expected. Haines mutters: "What the heck is that all about?" As Haines goes onto explain, housing is higher in most major markets and corporate profits are better. The only thing missing was the next statement out of his mouth, and I will fill in the blanks: "What do people want?"
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Securitization Bankrupted America, So Who Owns It Now? / Economics / US Debt
By: Andrew_Butter
Everyone is familiar with the chart of US debt that goes up to about 350% of GDP in 2008, this is the same slide except looked at another way [1]:
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
What is Money and How Does One Measure It? / Economics / Fiat Currency
By: Mike_Shedlock
Money is a difficult subject. There is much confusion as to what it is. There is even more confusion as to the best way to measure it. Yet, before we can measure it, we have to define it.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Better Manufacturing Economic Data Boosts Equity Markets / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
By: Lloyds_TSB
Better-than-expected manufacturing data helped to restore the upward momentum in global equity markets yesterday, while at the same time putting the US dollar under renewed downward pressure against the higher yielders. The US ISM manufacturing PMI jumped from 52.6 in September to 55.7 in October – its highest since April 2006. The improvement was led by a sharp rise in the survey’s employment index, from 46.2 to 53.1, raising an upside risk for Friday’s October nonfarm payroll report (see chart).
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
State Budgets, How Bad Will it Get? / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
By: Rick_Wolff
Crises expose the system's irrationalities and wasteful resource allocations. For example, Madoff and his many, smaller imitators reveal the tips of corruption icebergs. More important, the crisis-induced fiscal emergencies looming in most of the 50 states demonstrate several absurdities in our economic system.
Monday, November 02, 2009
U.S. Third Quarter GDP Too Good to Be True? / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Michael_Pollaro
This past Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported 3rd Quarter GDP at up 3.5%, surprising the already ebullient consensus. The report I’m sure put a smile on Obama and Bernanke’s faces, not to mention legions of Keynesian economists longing to say I told you so. Hey, even the stock market seemed to like the report, as the Dow Jones Industrials exploded 200 points on the day.
Monday, November 02, 2009
The Political Economy Postponing Providence / Economics / Economic Stimulus
By: Captain_Hook
That’s the game – postponing providence – putting off the inevitable until the next guy’s shift. This is the cache of our political economy, as with all other comparables before it, now maturing into rot. All dominant cultures recede this way of course, dying from within as it were. And the American Empire is no different, with its hollowed out economy, markets, and values. Despite the obvious signs of this decay, most people continue to deny and ignore the inevitable, however acceleration of collapse will continue to challenge such fancy, eventually becoming self-evident to even the less endowed.
Monday, November 02, 2009
The Government Will Default on Its Debts / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Gary_North
The governments of every major nation are going to default on their debts. There are two relevant questions: (1) How? (2) When?
Establishments around the world all deny this. They have gained power and wealth by means of the expansion of government. They have justified their success by insisting that the government-business alliance is the only way to establish economic growth and economic security for the masses. This claim rests on a more fundamental claim, namely, that an unhampered free market is destructive of economic stability and will inevitably lead to economic depression.
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Monday, November 02, 2009
Economic Recovery, The Great Hoax of 2009-2010 / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Martin_D_Weiss
Before he died, Dad warned me of false profits … and fake promises.
“Beware,” he said, “of shaky gains hyped up by Wall Street.
“Watch out,” he insisted, “for unsustainable economic recoveries trumpeted by Washington.
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Monday, November 02, 2009
Global Economy is Firing on All Cylinders / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Money_Morning
Jon D. Markman writes: What a difference 12 months can make.
Just one year after every national economy on earth was in deep trouble, a powerful global rebound is underway. In fact, the global upswing is a lot stronger than most investors realize.
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Monday, November 02, 2009
Is Debt-Deflation Economic Depression Just Beginning? / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Mike_Shedlock
Last Thursday I received an email from David Meier, Associate Advisor at the MotleyFool concerning Debt-Deflation.
David asked if I had any comments on his article Debt-deflation: Just the beginning? Here is a partial listing:
Monday, November 02, 2009
Financial Markets Look to Central Banks on Quantitative Easing Policy / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Lloyds_TSB
Today's main economic data releases are the US ISM manufacturing and UK PMI manufacturing surveys for October, both expected to register modest improvements. Final October PMI data are published for the euro-zone, following the recent 'flash' estimates.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Nanny State and the Cost of Unfunded Government Liabilities / Economics / Economic Theory
By: James_Quinn
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Declaration of Independence
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Economic Stimulus / Economics / Economic Stimulus
By: Mike_Whitney
The recession is over. Thursdays report from the Commerce Dept. confirmed that the economy expanded in the third quarter by 3.5 percent, better than most economists estimates. GDP had contracted in the four previous quarters in the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression. Massive government stimulus, cash for clunkers, and inventory restocking accounted for most of the surge in economic activity.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Economic Crisis in the Post-industrial Age / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Sergey_A_Stroev
Already in the second half of the past century such insightful thinkers as Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler discerned the beginnings of the transition from the industrial to the information level of social development. By the end of the 20th century and especially today this awareness has become almost universal. The question is now not whether the information society is real, but rather how to define its still forming structure, what are the contradictions that determine the dynamics of its development.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween and it's Candy Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker
Dale Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a "socialist tenor" because "menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified 'trick' if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell."
And yet, for overall kid excitement, Halloween seems to surpass Christmas, at least from what I can observe. The kids spend months preparing their costumes, and thrill to every detail of the ceremony: pumpkins, scary things, and of course candy. For the children, too, there is the attractive fact that parents are not all that happy about Halloween with its goblins, gore, and gluttony.
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
The US Recession Is Not Over, But The Party Is / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
By: Andrew_Butter
“Technically” it’s over, perhaps, but that 3.5% annualized was entirely due to the government borrowing money and giving it to people to spend on things that will not generate long-term economic value:
Cash for Clunkers (1%) + $8,000 New Homebuyers (1%) + Government Spending (0.5%) + This and That (1%) = 3.5%.
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
United States Catching the Argentinian Economic Disease of Hyperinflation? / Economics / US Debt
By: John_Mauldin
Catching Argentinian Disease?
The Ascent of Money
The Independence of the Fed Threatened
A Few Quick Thoughts on the Dollar, GDP, and the Recession
I have been in South America this week, speaking nine times in five days, interspersed with lots of meetings. The conversation kept coming back to the prospects for the dollar, but I was just as interested in talking with money managers and business people who had experienced the hyperinflation of Argentina and Brazil. How could such a thing happen? As it turned out, I was reading a rather remarkable book that addressed that question. There are those who believe that the United States is headed for hyperinflation because of our large and growing government fiscal deficit and massive future liabilities (as much as $56 trillion) for Medicare and Social Security.
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Friday, October 30, 2009
Our Enemy the State / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Christopher_Quigley
A Tribute to Mr. Raymond Crotty 1925-1994Economics Lecturer Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
"Our Enemy the State", so said Raymond Crotty in 1988 in his book "A Radical's Response". In this treatise Mr. Crotty, former farmer and economics lecturer at Trinity College, tried to explain why Ireland should not have joined the EEC. Through his efforts the constitution was correctly used to try to protect the Irish people from what he saw as abuse of privilege by an immoral political class that usurped power from the British in 1922. This class, he believed, were using the resources of the Irish people for their own selfish benefit.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Ready for inflation in finance, living costs and bone-headed stupidity...? / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
SINCE MONEY MAKES the world go round, more of it would set the earth spinning faster, right? Which would be a good thing, of course...