Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, November 08, 2016
US Economy Q3 GDP Was Hogwash / Economics / US Economy
Since most everyone is focused on the upcoming U.S. elections, many investors may not have had the time to peel back the onion on the third quarter U.S. GDP report. So, if you just glanced at the headline GDP number of a 2.9% annualized growth rate, you may have concluded that the U.S. economy was finally on its way to sustainable growth.
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Wednesday, November 02, 2016
The Economic Twilight Zone in Japan / Economics / Japan Economy
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.As I learned in my MBA studies in the early 1990s, the sun was setting on the U.S. as a global economic power, just as it had on the British Empire 80 years before. The Land of the Rising Sun was ascending, and our job was to manage the decline of the U.S. as effectively as possible. There was even a book from famed McKinsey consultant Kenichi Ohmae on the subject, Triad Power.
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Wednesday, November 02, 2016
India, China Face Trade Choices / Economics / Asian Economies
In the coming years, China and India must decide whether their bilateral ties will be based on economic cooperation, political facilitation and strategic trust - or economic walls, political barriers and strategic containment.
In early October, militants attacked an Indian army camp in Indian-administered Kashmir, killing a soldier. In this contested region, the two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, have occasionally been close to devastating military friction. In the mid-October BRICS Summit, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Pakistan "mother-ship of terrorism."
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Make America Economically Great Again / Economics / US Economy
I recall writing (back in the 1990s and early 2000s) that one of the great things about the US was our economic mobility. By that, I mean the ability of people to shift on the economic spectrum—to move from being a low-income family to being a high-income family, for example.
But recent studies tell us this is no longer the case.
It means the America I grew up in is changing. And that cuts right into my emotional comfort zone. I guess this should not surprise me because (a) the US is always changing, and (b) the evidence clearly shows the cultural shifts and economic woes of the younger generation.
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Saturday, October 29, 2016
BEA Estimates US 3rd Quarter 2016 GDP Growth to be 2.91% / Economics / US Economy
In their first ("preliminary") estimate of the US GDP for the third quarter of 2016, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the growth rate was +2.91%, up +1.49% from the prior quarter.
Most of the reported improvement in the headline number came from a +1.77% quarter-to-quarter gain in inventories, a +0.96% rise in exports, and a +0.39% uptick in governmental spending. Offsetting those improvements was an aggregate -1.41% reduction in the headline number from softening consumer spending on both goods and services. Fixed investments remained in contraction at a -0.09% annualized rate.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Globalization Faces Challenges / Economics / Global Economy
For much of the second half of the 20th Century, and even into the new millennium, "Globalization" was the dominant theme used to describe the drift of the world economy. It was widely considered both natural and inevitable that the world economy would continue to integrate and that national boundaries would become less constraining to commerce and culture. And with the exception of the eternal "anti-globalization" protesters, who robotically appeared at large gatherings of world leaders, the benefits of globalization were widely lauded by politicians, corporate leaders and rank and file citizens alike. But a casual glance at the world headlines of 2016 suggests that the belief in globalization has crested, and is now in retreat. What are the consequences of this change?
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Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Government Stimulus is an Oxymoron, Debt to GDP / Economics / Global Debt Crisis 2016
The accumulation of Debt, at its very essence, is simply borrowing consumption from the future. And this is true on any level of debt, be it either public or private. Just as savings is deferred consumption, the exact opposite is true for debt. Therefore, it can only be beneficial in the long-term if it leads to an expansion of productivity in the present. If the funds borrowed do not improve output per unit of labor it is much more difficult to pay back that debt and any perceived benefit ends up being nothing more than an ephemeral illusion.
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Saturday, October 22, 2016
Inflation About To Explode Higher / Economics / Inflation
“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” ― Lysander Spooner
We all know the BLS artificially suppresses the CPI through bullshit substitution adjustments, quality adjustments, and various other incomprehensible hedonic adjustments made by government apparatchiks at the behest of their politician bosses. Some obscure theoretical academic calculation called owners equivalent rent accounts for almost a quarter of the CPI weighting.
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Saturday, October 22, 2016
Why The Global Economy Will Disintegrate Rapidly Back to Olduvai Gorge / Economics / Economic Collapse
We have written little on the topic of energy lately, other than related to oil prices going up and down, empty OPEC ‘promises’ to cut oil production, and the incredible debt load threatening to crush US -and Canadian- unconventional oil and gas. It’s a logical outcome of focusing more on finance than energy, because we feel the former has a shorter timeline than the latter. Something that harks back to our Oil Drum days.
But that doesn’t mean that the idea and/or principle of peak oil has disappeared, or that we have completely forgotten it. It has just been snowed under by the financial crisis (and by unconventinal oil and gas). And while we continue to find that the financial world will dump us into a bigger crisis sooner than energy will, it’s useful to look at oil et al from time to time.
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Friday, October 21, 2016
Central Bankers Can't Stop The Death Blow Of The Post US Election Recession / Economics / Recession 2017
The central bankers are capable of achieving many extraordinary results but not all economic and financial problems can be solved by central bankers. Central Bankers for example have the power to solve liquidity issues, but it is impossible for them to solve solvency issues. Central Bankers through Financial Repression can transfer risk , however they can't remove it from the system. Additionally, Central bankers may be able to delay a recession temporarily, but they can't prevent the business cycle from running its natural course.
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Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Demographics Are the Biggest Drag on the US Economy / Economics / Demographics
BY SAMUEL RINES: The US economy has slowed, and the reasons for the sluggish growth cause heated arguments among market participants and economists alike. There are two outspoken camps: “the good ole days are coming back” and “this is normal.” The camps have little in common, except yelling at one another.
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Wednesday, October 19, 2016
The Limits of Empirical Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Two separate economic developments over the last 100 years have caused macroeconomics to regress instead of progress. The first is the Keynesian, or more accurately Malthusian, notion of aggregate demand. The second is Friedman’s positive empiricism emphasising the importance of empirical verification of economic theory.
According to positive empiricism, adherence to economic facts is the only way to validate economic theories.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Bank of England Blames Brexit for Sterling Drop Inflation, Masks QE Money Printing Cause / Economics / Inflation
The Bank of England's master monetary magician Mark Carney appeared on stage this week presenting his latest magic trick one of blaming the 16% drop in sterling on Brexit on all those who voted for it, and then warning of the inevitable future inflation consequences as the price of imports look to soar. After all the establishment elite remain determined to subvert the will of the British people be they bankers or 80% of the members of the establishment MP's that illustrates that democracy is to to all intents and purposes an illusion.
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Sunday, October 16, 2016
End of Economic Growth Sparks Wide Discontent / Economics / Economic Theory
Former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke quotes my September 26 article “Why There is Trump” so extensively in this article for Consortium News that I thought I might as well post the whole thing here at the Automatic Earth too. The other sources he also quotes -John Gray, Stephen Hadley among them- help to put my points in a solid perspective, which is nice to see. I can only hope that this will open more people’s eyes to the fact that in the end of growth and centralization, we are witnessing the “most important global development in decades.”
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Friday, October 14, 2016
The Next Recession Will Blow Out the Budget / Economics / Recession 2018
The odds that the next US President will face a recession during his or her first four years in office are quite high. Maybe not in the first year, but it’s highly unlikely he or she will get more than two to three years without one.
Given this fiscal reality and the dwindling number of arrows left in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy quiver, the administration will have a hard time dealing with the fallout from a recession.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Samsung's Galaxy Battery Just The Tip Of The Iceberg / Economics / Global Economy
Are Central Bankers Crippling The Global Supply Chain?
Gordon T Long and Charles Hugh Smith begin 'pealing the onion' on a deteriorating global supply chain and what the root cause is.
Though the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery problem is presently receiving a tremendous amount of media and public attention, what few appreciate is that it is only the tip of the iceberg of cracks in the global supply chained as a result of unintended consequences of central bank monetary policies. In this 35 minute video Gordon T Long and Charles Hugh Smith begin 'pealing the onion' on a deteriorating global supply chain and what the root cause is.
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Tuesday, October 11, 2016
The World Is Turning Dangerously Insular / Economics / Global Economy
A toxic mix of short-sighted policy and isolationist politics is endangering the global economy.
In his recent talk at the Strategic Investment Conference 2016, David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff argues that there are growing threats looming over the global economy.
He believes that current macroeconomic and political trends could lead to serious problems in China, and especially Europe, in the not too distant future.
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Friday, October 07, 2016
The Next Recession Looms Large / Economics / Recession 2016
Currently economists and market watchers roughly fall into two camps: Those who believe that the Federal Reserve must begin raising interest rates now so that it will have enough rate cutting firepower to fight the next recession, and those who believe that raising rates now will simply precipitate an immediate recession and force the Fed into battle without the tools it has traditionally used to stimulate growth. Both camps are delusional, but for different reasons.
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Wednesday, October 05, 2016
The Hyperinflationary Death Watch / Economics / HyperInflation
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. – Alan Greenspan
Every hyperinflation is unique. No one wants the chaos it will bring. We are not rooting for it. Monetary crisis is always part and parcel or a extension of the inevitable cycles of history.
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Thursday, September 29, 2016
BEA Revises Q2 2016 US GDP Growth Upward to 1.42% / Economics / US Economy
In their third and final estimate of the US GDP for the second quarter of 2016, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the growth rate was +1.42%, up +0.33% from their previous estimate and up +0.59% from the prior quarter. Most of the improvement in the headline number came from a +0.24% upward revision in commercial fixed investment. None of the other revisions were statistically significant.
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