Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, May 16, 2017
How the China Belt and Road Could Change the 21st Century / Economics / China Economy
Until recently, globalization was led by the West and benefited only a few advanced economies. After China’s three decades of rapid growth, the Belt and Road initiatives hold potential for more inclusive globalization.During the weekend, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation flooded Beijing with almost 30 heads of state and government leaders, 1,500 delegates from over 130 nations, and over 70 international organizations.
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Sunday, May 14, 2017
US Economy End Game On? / Economics / US Economy
For many years now, thousands of bloggers, writers, and such have chronicled the debacle that is the USEconomy. It is a joke. That fact has been well-established. We can liken it to a cancer. Not every section is influenced in the same manner or degree of severity, but all areas are affected somehow. This publication has struggled to stay firmly on the economic side of the fence and not delve into politics – especially the personal type of politics where Mr. X is the bad guy, but Mr. Y is the good guy. We have, however, entered the arena of geopolitics or the politics of nation vs. nation on many occasions because this is where the arena of battle happens to be.
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Friday, May 12, 2017
The Jobs Market Has Divided Into People Who Are Tech Savvy And Those Who Aren’t / Economics / Employment
Things keep changing. And at an accelerating pace. One of the most important things to write about—and the most difficult—is the future of work. New Technology destroys old jobs, but it would also create new jobs and opportunities.
A clear example of this is the use of drone technology by the military. It requires about 100 people to prep and launch and maintain an F-16 for a single mission. Keeping an unmanned predator drone in the air for 24 hours requires about 168 workers.
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Friday, May 12, 2017
Robots May Perform Half The Jobs In The US Within 20 Years: Here’s What That Could Mean / Economics / Employment
Perhaps you don’t think the change that is upon us is a profound one. But consider this: Within two decades, half the jobs in this country may be performed by robots. What then of our unemployment rate? And what of our social safety net?
Opinion is divided. Will the next technological wave further skew the wealth distribution toward the uber-rich? Or will it ultimately create more entrepreneurial and job opportunities than it destroys?
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Thursday, May 04, 2017
New Risk for Investors: Fed Considers Jacking Up Inflation Target / Economics / Inflation
Stefan Gleason : Investors are under-estimating inflation risk. As a consequence, they are under-pricing inflation protecting assets including precious metals.
The Federal Reserve has given itself the objective of engineering an inflation rate of around 2%. However, there are many ways in which real-world inflation can potentially outpace the Fed’s 2% target.
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Monday, April 24, 2017
IMF Says Austerity Is Over - Surplus or Stimulus / Economics / Economic Austerity
Austerity is over, proclaimed the IMF this week. And no doubt attributed that to the ‘successful’ period of ‘five years of belt tightening’ a.k.a. ‘gradual fiscal consolidation’ it has, along with its econo-religious ilk, imposed on many of the world’s people. Only, it’s not true of course. Austerity is not over. You can ask many of those same people about that. It’s certainly not true in Greece.
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Friday, April 21, 2017
Median US Household’s Wealth Has Declined by 40% Since 2007 / Economics / Demographics
Nominal US household wealth is at an all-time high. But my friend Marc Faber (publisher of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report) says that's mostly an illusion.
Below, Marc looks at the relationship between asset prices and US household wealth, and the effect of that relationship on the economy.
It seems the wealth of the top 0.1% has vastly improved in recent decades (and the top 10% haven’t done at all badly). But “the median household’s or asset owner’s wealth has declined by close to 40% in real terms (adjusted by the CPI) from its peak in 2007.”
Median household increases in wealth are also illusory because the main component of household wealth is pension fund assets (approximately US$22 trillion).
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Thursday, April 20, 2017
The Real Story of China’s Strong First-Quarter Growth / Economics / China Economy
After the solid first quarter performance, the central government may be in the unique position to achieve its growth target - even while tightening.In the first quarter, China’s economy grew 6.9 percent; slightly faster than expected and led by strong expansion at factories. What the first quarter data reflects is solid growth in several fronts.
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Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Is US Economy at the Cusp of the Next Recession? or Maybe Worse? / Economics / Recession 2017
Part II takes a look at the macro economic backdrop for the trade of the year. Spoiler alert- its not a pretty picture, but don’t think doom and gloom, instead embrace crisis and opportunity! With our understanding of the history of oil we now focus on the macro backdrop for our Big Trade.
“When the tide goes out you find out who has been swimming naked”– Warren Buffet
“This time around everything gets revealed in the next recession”-Plunger
In the next recession those leaning the wrong way… the levered players, will be forced to heave out their non-productive assets at fire sale prices. Commodity producers with entrenched costs will have to increase production as lower prices beget even lower prices since insufficient cash flows can only be recovered through higher volume production.
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Friday, April 14, 2017
China Starting To Resemble Bernie Madoff / Economics / China Economy
Aubible.com just released a new show on Bernie Madoff (Ponzi Supernova, available for free to subscribers) that explains how the world’s biggest financial scam was enabled by banks and hedge funds who were making so much money that they chose to ignore obvious red flags.
Which sounds a lot like today’s China, Inc. Here, for instance, is a sequence of events involving China Huishan Dairy Holdings, an apparently too-big-to-fail chain of dairy farms:
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Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Map Shows 16 Countries Will Be Hit Hard By The Global Exporters’ Crisis / Economics / Global Economy
The world is currently in the midst of an exporters' crisis. The stagnation in global consumption levels and decline of commodity prices have led to increased instability and insecurity in countries heavily dependent on exports.
The origins of the exporters’ crisis lie in the economic recessions that the United States and Europe experienced due to the 2008 financial crash. These countries were major consumers of Chinese goods, notably low-cost manufactured products.
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Thursday, April 06, 2017
From Inflation to Imflation, Agflation and Munflation / Economics / Inflation
Vakhtang Charaia and Vladimer Papava write: Inflation is an important macroeconomic indicator for the analysis of an established economic situation as well as forecasting the economic development for any country.The “consumer basket,” which helps to indicate the consumer price index (CPI) or the average inflation rate, incorporates several commodity groups and given the correspondent weights encompasses different goods and services. Some of the commodity groups (e.g. electronics, new and used cars, furniture, hotel and restaurant services, etc.) fails to reflect the problem of the low-income population.
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Wednesday, April 05, 2017
Odd, Ominous Economic Trend in the US That Is Not Seen Anywhere Else in the World / Economics / US Economy
I’ve written about this previously, but there are 10 million American men of prime working age (25 to 54) who have simply dropped out of the workforce. And most of them have not only dropped out of the workforce, they have also dropped out from any commitments or responsibilities to society.
It is not just the labor force they are not participating in; they are not participating in the normal ebb and flow of community life.
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Wednesday, April 05, 2017
India’s Technological Revolution Has Already Left the West Behind / Economics / India
My friend Raoul Pal, mastermind of Global Macro Investor, writes one of the most expensive macroeconomic letters in the world. His subscriber list is short and extremely exclusive.
Raul comes up with more unique ideas per year than any man I know. What’s fascinating is that once he comes up with an idea, you then begin to see it filtering into the trading/hedge fund community.
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Tuesday, April 04, 2017
The Fake US Economic Recovery May Be Ending / Economics / US Economy
The “real” Atlanta Fed’s reading of Q1 GDP went off a cliff to less than 1%:
No one has the slightest idea of what is happening as insane levels of debt distort the model’s which economists use to forecast the future economic trends. From here on out, there will be unpleasant surprises all the way around. According to shadow stats, the GDP is in contraction at the rate of -2%.
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Monday, April 03, 2017
Trump's Reflation Trade is Deflating / Economics / US Economy
The election of the 45th President brought with it great enthusiasm for the U.S. economy to break out of its eight-year growth malaise and to provide it with a huge adrenaline shot of inflation. But the optimism behind Trump's economic agenda took a serious blow with the inability of House Republicans to even get a vote on repealing and replacing Obamacare.
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Sunday, April 02, 2017
Maybe The US Economic Recovery Wasn’t Real After All / Economics / US Economy
For a while there it looked like the US and its main trading partners had finally achieved escape velocity. Growth was up, inflation was poking through the Fed’s 2% target, and most measures of consumer sentiment were bordering on euphoric.
Then it all started to evaporate. Lackluster manufacturing and consumer spending reports sent the Atlanta Fed’s reading of Q1 GDP off a cliff to less than 1%:
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017
The Last G-20 Meeting Marks the End of Free Trade / Economics / Global Economy
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : In the last G-20 meeting, its members agreed to drop the forum’s commitment to free trade at the insistence of the United States. That agreement was reached at one meeting and was contained in a single document—such agreements and documents are far from written in stone.
In spite of that, it must be regarded as a historical moment. Excluding the free trade commitment from the agreement marks a fundamental shift in a concept that has been central to global economics for more than a generation.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Charts That Reveal US Real Employment Status and It’s Not Good / Economics / Employment
The “labor force” from which we get unemployment statistics includes only those people who are either working or wish to be working.
It ignores the retired, those in school, the disabled, and nonworking spouses—as well as those who are not interested in working.
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Sunday, March 26, 2017
China’s Rise in Global Robotics: Toward Consolidation / Economics / Robotics
Chinese robotics is positioned for leadership in global robotics, as the emerging industry is moving toward increasing rivalry and consolidation.In the new and emerging industry, the rise of innovative robotics startups heralds the future. In 2016, almost 130 companies were funded by venture capital, including China-based RooBo, Israeli Roboteam, and German ReActive Robotics. While the most valuable deals involved unmanned aerial systems companies (read: drones), they were followed by agricultural robotics, service robots for businesses and personal use.
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