Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Saturday, May 16, 2015
No Money, No Growth / Economics / US Economy
Last August, the US Fed stopped creating new currency out of thin air and dumping it into the banking system. Which is another way of saying the US money supply stopped growing. Here’s the adjusted monetary base — a proxy for the amount of new currency the Fed is creating — over the past eight months:
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Friday, May 15, 2015
How GDP Metrics Distort Our View of the Economy / Economics / Economic Statistics
Chris Casey writes: GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided.
For example, even if a ship — built at great expense — cruised without passengers, fished without success, or ferried without cargo; it nevertheless contributed to GDP. Profitable for investors or stranded in the sand; it added to GDP. Plying the seas or rusting into an orange honeycomb shell; the nation’s GDP grew.1
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Friday, May 15, 2015
Hyper-Deflationary Death Race 2000 / Economics / Deflation
It is quite fascinating that the ultimate case for continued equity and bond price growth comes from the unspoken assumption that we will get another round or rounds of QE.
This open assumption is that things are so good that we are about to move into perpetual growth mode as the recovery breaks away into the growth.
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
Is the Keynesian Output Multiplier a Real Thing? / Economics / Economic Theory
It is accepted by most economists that initial increases in consumer spending or other outlays tend to set in motion a reinforcing process which supposedly strengthens the economic growth by a multiple of initial spending.
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
US Economy Nearing Recession, Dollar Falling Hard / Economics / Recession 2015
The dollar soars by a record amount versus the euro and the yen in 2014. And economists predict strong growth in 2015. Really? If a country can have a rapidly-appreciating currency with all the benefits that that confers, and strong economic growth with all the obvious advantages that that confers, why wouldn't everyone be going for powerhouse currencies?
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
See No Evil: What We Chose to Ignore in the April Jobs Report / Economics / Employment
We live in an age where bad economic news is not only unwelcome, but it is routinely overlooked or excused. On the other hand, good news is spotted and trumpeted even when it doesn't exist. An ideal illustration of this dangerous tendency towards collective selectivity came last week when the markets and the media somehow turned an awful employment report into an ideal data set that confirmed all optimism and contained nothing but good news for investors. In truth, it was anything but.
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Monday, May 11, 2015
U.S. Economy is the Tallest Midget / Economics / US Economy
Dick Parsons, former chairman and chief executive officer at Time Warner, spoke with Bloomberg Television's Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle about the future for former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, the challenge to build your own brand in digital media and looks at the future of cable M&A. He also discussed the state of banking in the U.S. as firms face penalties for Libor rate-rigging and continued regulatory oversight by the U.S. and global governments.
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Friday, May 08, 2015
Is a Global Economic Recession Coming? / Economics / Recession 2015
Last month a lot of negative data on the global economy was brought to light. China's trade plunged in March and the World Trade Organization cut the 2015 global trade growth outlook to 3.3 percent from the previous 4 percent. We have already suggested in the Gold News Monitor that weak worldwide trade indicates a coming global slowdown. It is time we shared more details and in this article we analyze whether the global economy is coming into recession and what it would mean for the gold market.
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Friday, May 08, 2015
Politicians Warn UK Election Exit Poll is Wrong But BBC Seats Forecast Confirms Conservative Strong Win / Economics / UK General Election
Politicians of virtually every political party bar the Conservatives have been warning all night that the Exit Poll must be wrong with statements such as that they would 'eat their hat' (Paddy Ashdown) and that during the course of the night the actual results would come inline with the opinion polls that painted a much tighter race. However, with 102 actual results declared by 3.20am, the BBC continues to maintain its exit poll seats per party forecast that puts the Conservatives on 316 seats, Labour on 239, Lib Dems on 10 and SNP on 58.
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Thursday, May 07, 2015
"Glinda the Good" Deflation Isn't Looking So... Good / Economics / Deflation
Cold weather, falling wages, bizarre fluke? The real reason consumers aren't spending is... defensive, deflationary psychology
Editor's note: You'll find the text version of the story below the video.
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Sunday, May 03, 2015
U.S. GDP Sucking Spoilt Milk From A Bloated Dead Sow / Economics / US Economy
With US GDP growth ‘officially’ back where it belongs, in the Arctic zone close to freezing on the surface but much worse in real life, for reasons both Albert Edwards and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (not exactly a pair of Siamese twins) remarked this week; that is, excluding the “biggest inventory build in history, the economy contracted sharply”, it’s time for everyone to at long last change the angle from which they view the world, if not the color of their glasses.
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Sunday, May 03, 2015
French Unemployment Hits New Record High - Whose to Blame? / Economics / France
While ECB president Mario Draghi brags his economic policy of negative interest rates is working, I ask for whom?
On April 23, 2015 I noted Spain's Unemployment Rate Increases to 23.7%; 114,300 Jobs Vanish in First Quarter, Public Sector Jobs Rise.
Let's now turn our attention to France.
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Friday, May 01, 2015
Investigating The U.S. GDP Deflator: Wildly Differing Results Depending on Your Choice / Economics / Economic Statistics
As noted in Real Q1 GDP 0.2% vs. Consensus 1.0%; Disaster in the Details I got the first quarter GDP forecast details correct.
However, a bit of self-assessment with differing GDP deflators shows my prediction of close to zero growth could easily have looked rather silly.
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Thursday, April 30, 2015
The Many Failures of the CPI Consumer Price Index / Economics / Inflation
Austrians oppose the whole notion of trying to accurately measure “inflation” which mainstream economists see as a general rise in prices. (Austrians view inflation as a politically engineered increase in the money supply.)
A few years ago, mainstream economists like Paul Krugman chastised the Austrians for the lack of anticipated price inflation in the economy. However, their mistake was a fixation on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). If you looked around at other prices in the economy you could see higher prices in just about every other market, such as commodities, oil, gold, producer goods, real estate, and stocks.
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Thursday, April 30, 2015
Why Deflation is Unlikely / Economics / Deflation
Financial markets are becoming aware that the US economy is stalling, so investors increasingly take the view that with demand likely to stagnate or even fall, prices for goods and services will soften. This is already threatening to be the situation in a number of other advanced nations, with negative interest rates to combat it becoming commonplace. For this reason, gold and silver priced in dollars are expected by many traders to drift lower.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 30, 2015
What Does The Strong U.S. Dollar Mean For The Economy? / Economics / US Economy
The Fed no longer keeps promises of being "patient". The March's FOMC statement was, however, interpreted as dovish, which caused the plunge in the U.S. dollar. Nevertheless, the renewed expectations of the interest rate hike (caused by some Fed officials' hawkish statements or stronger economic data in the second quarter due to low base in the first quarter) may cause the U.S. dollar to rally further, which could harm the emerging markets and unwind the carry trade. It is then high time we explain the consequences of the possible next bull in the greenback for the global economy.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
BEA Reports Weak U.S. 1st Quarter 2015 GDP Growth at 0.25% / Economics / US Economy
In their first estimate of the US GDP for the first quarter of 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a +0.25% annualized rate, down sharply (-1.97%) from the +2.22% growth rate recorded for the prior quarter. And according to the "real final sales of domestic product" (BEA's very own "bottom line" for the economy), the economy actually shrank during the quarter, contracting at about a half percent (-0.49%) annualized rate, down -2.81% from last quarter's +2.32%. The difference between the headline number and "final sales" is inventory growth, which is excluded from the "bottom line" figure.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
U.S. GDP Economic Growth Flat-Lines, Fed Interest Rate Hike Evaporates / Economics / US Economy
As pretty much everyone is now aware, US Q1 growth was way below expectations. And the only reason it was even marginally positive was because businesses expanded their inventories at a record rate. Here’s a chart from Zero Hedge comparing the economy’s growth with that of inventories:
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Monday, April 27, 2015
Greece: Down and Probably Out / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Led by the charismatic Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza party took office in Athens on January 26th. The most prominent member of the new Prime Minister’s cabinet is Yanis Varoufakis, the Finance Minister. He is an economics professor, with a complete repertoire of anti-capitalist rhetoric. And with government spending amounting to 58.5% of Greek GDP, Varoufakis’ hot anti-austerity harangues have turned the meaning of the word “austerity” on its head.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 27, 2015
Economic Stagnation - Let's Blame The Savers / Economics / Economic Theory
Just like in the world of fashion, economic terminologies come in and out of vogue. One such economic term trending recently is Secular Stagnation. First proposed by Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen back in the 1930s, Secular Stagnation was coined to explain America's dismal economic performance -- in which sluggish growth and employment levels were well below potential.
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