Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
U.S. Jobless Claims 4-Week Moving Average Inching Below 450K / Economics / US Economy
By: Asha_Bangalore
Initial jobless claims rose 2,000 to 439,000 during the week ended November 13. Continuing claims, which lag initial jobless claims by one week, fell 48,000 to 4.295 million, the fourth consecutive weekly decline. A large part of the decline is attributed to expiration of eligibility for unemployment insurance. Unemployment claims under special programs increased 121,238. It remains a challenge to sort out the special programs data as a number of people could be no longer eligible under the guidelines of the programs.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Index of Leading Economic Indicators Posts Second Impressive Monthly Gain / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) rose 0.5% in October, following an upwardly revised 0.5% gain in September. The June-August readings of the LEI cast a shadow on the nature of the recovery. Moreover, the three-month annualized increase of the LEI, at 4.8%, is the largest increase since June 2010 (see chart 2). The reversal of the 3-month annualized change of the LEI supports predictions of faster economic growth in 2011.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Is the Philly Fed Survey the Precursor of More Bullish Economic Numbers? / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's business survey results for November show a strong rebound. The broadest measure of factory conditions increased to 22.5 in November from 1.0 in the October (see chart 1). The index tracking new orders rose to 10.4 in November from -5.0 in the prior month. Indexes measuring shipments (16.8 vs. 1.4 in October), number of employees (13.3 vs. 2.4 in October) and the employee workweek (22.3 vs. 15.9 in October) also advanced in November.
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
What Drives Business Profits? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Kel_Kelly
The economic and business community constantly attempts to forecast the effects of various economic changes and government policies on corporate profits. But both the cause and effect of increasing profits are other than what most people imagine. It will therefore be helpful to gain a concrete understanding of what profits do and do not represent.[1]
Thursday, November 18, 2010
U.S. Inflation Remains Contained, In Contrast to Fed’s Preference / Economics / Inflation
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) moved up 0.2% in October, after a 0.1% gain in the prior month. The year-to-year change is 1.2%, with the CPI trending down after a 2.7% increase in December. During the July-October period, energy prices have lifted the overall CPI. In October, higher gasoline prices (+4.6%) were responsible for nearly 90% of the increase in the CPI. The CPI excluding energy held steady in October after a similar reading in the prior month. Food prices inched up 0.1% in October, putting the year-to-year gain at 1.4%.
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
China Continuing Pointers to Strong Economic Growth For 2011 / Economics / China Economy
By: Money_Morning
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes:
BEIJING, People's Republic of China – While other investors are busy rounding up all sorts of economic data, tea leaves and fortune cookies in an attempt to figure out China's economic situation next year, I'm heading out the door once again to take a look at hairy crab prices.
Because of the timing of this trip, I'm a bit late in the season – but not enough that I won't be able to get a good reading on this surprisingly accurate indicator of China's economic health.
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Six Million Benefit Paying Jobs Vanish in One Year! / Economics / Employment
By: Mike_Shedlock
Analysis of weekly unemployment data and covered employees shows that 5,977,844 benefit paying jobs have been lost in the last year.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Turkey Deepens Strategic Relationship with China / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Global_Intel_Report
INCIDENT: The visit by Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Beijing a week ago, follows by a scant three weeks the visit by China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Ankara on 78 October as part of the latter's European diplomatic tour also including Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Italy in the margin of his participation in an EU-China summit.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
U.S. Factory Production Moves Ahead in October, Energy Costs Pushing Up Inflation / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Asha_Bangalore
Industrial production held steady in October after a 0.2% drop in the prior month. Activity at the nation's mines (-0.1%) and utilities (-3.4%) declined in October and offset the gains in manufacturing output. Factory production rose 0.5% in October after holding nearly steady for two consecutive months. Nearly all major categories of manufacturing posted gains in October - autos (+5.0%), wood products (+2.5%), machinery (+1.4%), computers (+0.7%) and furniture (+0.8%). The small reversal of a decelerating trend (year-to-year change, see chart 1) is the important aspect to note from the October data.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Economies are Crumbling as Governments Play Musical Chairs with Money Printing / Economics / Quantitative Easing
By: Captain_Hook
If there were a truism to fit a broad cross-section of behaviors in our society today, the catchphrase ‘desperate men do desperate things’ fits well, for sure. This is because you can see it everywhere on an increasing basis as economies of all shapes and sizes disintegrate. And it spreads like a disease, reaching all quarters of our society(s), in one way or another, propagated at the core by greedy money-center bankers and their political oligarchs hopelessly attempting to prevent a collapse of the larger fiat currency economy, hegemony economics, and US Dollar ($) supremacy. Here, it’s important to understand that when the US can no longer print the money to pay its bills the present game of musical chairs will cease and centralization will quickly reverse into regionalism, returning us to more primitive but sound economies.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Age of Debt Deleveraging Deflation, Decade of Slow Economic Growth / Economics / Deflation
By: John_Mauldin
Before we get into this week’s outstanding Outside the Box, I want to comment on QE2 and the efforts by some Republican economists to urge legislators to get involved to stop it (see the front page of Monday’s Wall Street Journal). That pushes my comfort zone a little too much.
First, I am not a fan of QE2. Never have been. If it had been my call, I would have punted and told the guys in the Capital that the ball was in their court to get their fiscal house in order, because that is the main source of the problem. But Bernanke and the Fed felt they had to “do something,” to demonstrate they got the seriousness of the situation. If the only policy tool you have left is the hammer of printing money, then the world looks like a nail.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Quantittaive Easing Ignites Real Price Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Q1_Publishing
The Federal Reserve’s moves are backfiring.
The Fed’s recent announcement that it’s going to keep the free money spigot flowing for at least another six months was the last straw.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Bernanke and Greenspans Pretense of Economic Knowledge Continues / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Douglas_French
Two years after the Wall Street '08 come-apart, with the economy still lingering in a funk, the Federal Reserve announced, a day after the elections, what the Associated Press called "a bold effort to invigorate the economy": the purchase of $600 billion of government bonds from now through the middle of next year, at a pace of $75 billion a month. This $600 billion is on top of the $250–$300 billion the Fed will be buying to reinvest proceeds from its mortgage portfolio.
Monday, November 15, 2010
The Great “Depression” / Economics / Economic Depression
By: Howard_Katz
Today I would like to continue my discussion of the (so-called) Great Depression as this is the giant lie which is behind most of the other economic lies which have deceived so many people and cost them so much money.
What is a depression? It is a period in a country’s economic history where the large majority of the people become poorer. It is alleged that such a period occurred in the early 1930s. I have pointed out previously that Economic Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, reports that during this period Americans shifted from margarine to butter. They increased their per capita meat consumption (from 129 lb to 144 lb.). And they gave (substantially) more to charity. Further, real wages rose during this period, and the savings of the average American increased in value (buying power) by 30%. This does not sound like a getting poorer to me.
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Bank of England Inflation Propaganda Suggests Invisible Depression, Bankrupting Ireland Seeks Bailout / Economics / Inflation
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Bank of England released its latest quarterly inflation report that shows that after a near year of temporary CPI Inflation mantra at above 3%, Mervyn King, the Bank Governor now expects CPI to spike to 3.5% during 2011 before falling back to below its 2% target and therefore implying that the real threat that the press and population should concern themselves with is DEFLATION.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Keynesian Vacuum Universe / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
If only we existed in a Keynesian vacuum universe, then the current Administration's economic policies may have actually succeeded in fixing the ailing, debt-ridden economy! Here are some of the reasons why:
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Saturday, November 13, 2010
Global Monetary Stalemate, Quantitative Easing Won't Work / Economics / Quantitative Easing
By: Bob_Chapman
Mr. Bernanke is trying to avoid the Japanese experience of the past 20 years. Underlying deflation is being offset again, as it has been for the past eight years, by creating more money and credit. The only one lose to our prediction of mid-May of $5 trillion over two years is Keynesian economist Paul Krugman. He said the Fed would need $6 trillion. The Republicans seized the House and all that has really been accomplished is gridlock, the end of stimulus and a cut of perhaps $100 billion in debt.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Modern Economists Failed at Disaster Recovery / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Barry_Elias
When a recent Nobel Laureate in Economics, a current Federal Reserve Board president, and MIT economist with the National Bureau of Economics (NBER) agree — take serious note: It is quite rare.
"I believe that during the last financial crisis, macroeconomists (and I include myself among them) failed the country, and indeed the world,” Dr. Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, wrote this past May.
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Friday, November 12, 2010
U.S. Federal Budget Deficit Reduction Plan Analysis / Economics / Economic Austerity
By: Money_Morning
Martin Hutchinson writes:
The two leaders of U.S. President Barack Obama's Deficit Commission Wednesday produced a proposal for deficit cuts that slaughtered a lot of budgetary "sacred cows" and cut $3.8 trillion off the deficit over the next 10 years.
And the cuts were even made in just the right ratio – with $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases.
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Friday, November 12, 2010
Ireland Goes Bust, Irish Bank Run / Economics / Credit Crisis 2010
By: Mike_Whitney
There was a bank run in Ireland on Wednesday. LCH Clearnet, a London based clearinghouse, surprised the markets by announcing it would increase margin requirements on Irish debt by 15 percent. That's all it took to send investors fleeing for the exits. Yields on Irish bonds spiked sharply as banks tried to close positions or raise the capital needed to meet the new requirements. The Irish 10-year bond soared to 8.9 percent by day's end, more than 6 percentage points higher than "risk free" German sovereign debt. The ECB will have to intervene. Ireland is on its way to default.