Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
How to Protect Your Money When the U.S. Debt Bill Comes Due / Economics / US Debt
By: EWI
Dear Reader
Ever heard of a wedding crasher? You know -- that distant “cousin” who shows up uninvited, hangs around the open bar all night, chugs down double-everythings and falls on his butt on the dance floor -- all before mysteriously vanishing and leaving his night of indulgence on the father of the bride’s tab.
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Saturday, October 26, 2013
Peak Prosperity - The Fed Can Only Fail. And We'll All Lose / Economics / US Debt
By: Dr_Martenson
The basic predicament we are in is that the current crop of leaders in the halls of monetary and political power does not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation.
The mind-boggling part about all this is that it's not really all that hard to grasp.
Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever.
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Friday, October 25, 2013
Deflationary Forces Stymie the Fed's Economic Rescue Efforts / Economics / Deflation
By: EWI
See a stunning chart of the Federal Reserve's assets
The Federal Reserve's efforts to rescue the economy have been historically aggressive, starting with the initial round of quantitative easing in 2008 and continuing through 2013.
The central bank's assets have skyrocketed due to the Fed's bond purchases, which you can see clearly in this eye-opening report that Robert Prechter presented to the Market Technicians Association and his Elliott Wave Theorist subscribers.
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Thursday, October 24, 2013
Structural Demographic Trends in U.S. Employment Data / Economics / Employment
By: PhilStockWorld
Courtesy of Doug Short: The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is a simple computation: You take the Civilian Labor Force (people age 16 and over employed or seeking employment) and divide it by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (those 16 and over not in the military and or committed to an institution). The result is the participation rate expressed as a percent.
The first chart below splits up the LFPR data since 1948 in two ways: by age and by gender. For the former, I chose the 25-64 age cohorts to represent what we traditionally think of as the “productive” (pre-retirement age) work force. The BLS has data for ages 16 and over, but across this 64-year time frame college attendance has surged dramatically. So I opted for age 25 as the lower boundary to reduce the college-years skew.
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Thursday, October 24, 2013
What’s Really Behind China’s Economic Growth and Why It Won’t Last / Economics / China Economy
By: InvestmentContrarian
Sasha Cekerevac writes: When I read some of the headlines by other news organizations, sometimes I can’t help but chuckle at their oversimplification. Other media outlets take a kernel of truth, and ignore the rest of the picture, only to blow that tiny piece of truth out of proportion.
As an example, there was a recent release by the National Bureau of Statistics of China that reported the Chinese economy grew 7.8% year-over-year for the three months of July to September. (Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China, October 18, 2013.)
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Lackluster U.S. Non Farm Payrolls Employment Report Leaves Fed on Hold / Economics / Employment
By: Victoria_Marklew
The sluggish hiring pace visible in the September employment report justifies the Federal Reserve’s decision to postpone tapering of asset purchases. Data for the September report were gathered prior to the government shutdown, but October employment numbers will contain distortions arising from not collecting data during the typical survey period, rendering comparisons difficult.
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Saturday, October 19, 2013
To Save Europe, Free the Markets / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
Frank Hollenbeck writes: The current European economic strategy is to kick the can down the road. Debt levels in almost all European countries continue to rise and growth seems to be a long forgotten memory. The day of reckoning is around the corner, as Rudi Dornbush once warned, “[t]he crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought, and that’s sort of exactly the Mexican story. It took forever and then it took a night.”
Sunday, October 06, 2013
U.S. Economy Heading For Another Economic Slump / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Mike_Whitney
“Slumping asset prices show a recession is probably on its way. … Stocks tend to fall more frequently and further than property values, so they are better recession-predictors.” - IMF research paper by economists John C. Bluedorn, Joerg Decressin and Marco E. Terrones.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Warning - Deflation Will Take the Most by Surprise / Economics / Deflation
By: EWI
Google searches offer an insightful glimpse into economic expectations
The last thing on the minds of most people is deflation. It's easy enough to determine that with a quick quiz -- and that quiz is found in the just-published Elliott Wave Theorist.
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Monday, September 30, 2013
Free Immigrants, Free Capital, Free Markets / Economics / Economic Theory
By: David_Howden
Early this year, the Saudi Arabian government decided to crack down on foreign workers. Writing for The Globe and Mail, Martin Dokoupil and Marwa Rashad argue that this will lead to a “stronger, more diverse economy.” In particular, they focus on the plethora of businesses open at the moment — more than they think is necessary — and the resultant reduction in both “unnecessary” labor and businesses that would be possible if these foreign workers were forced to leave.
Monday, September 30, 2013
America to Become the Next Poland? / Economics / US Economy
By: Profit_Confidential
Michael Lombardi writes:
I want to share with my readers a chart that I find very interesting. The chart below (courtesy of our research group) compares the number of Americans on food stamps since the so-called recovery began in the S&P 500.
As you can see for yourself, they are following the same trajectory! Our research shows that since late 2009, for every one-percent increase in food stamps usage in the U.S., the S&P 500 increased two percent!
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Syria’s Other Problem: Inflation, 193% Hyper-Inflation War / Economics / HyperInflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Wars wreak havoc; life, property, and dreams are destroyed. In the process, wars — including civil wars, like Syria’s— progressively consume a country’s accumulated capital stock, too. In other words, as wars rage on, the destructive war economy gradually eats away at productive assets like land, factory capacity, and raw materials. Just where this process leads was well illustrated by the great Austrian economist, Prof. Fritz Machlup, in a 1935 article about Austria’s World War I inflation:
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Robert Prechter Warns Deflation Will Take the Majority by Surprise / Economics / Deflation
By: EWI
Google searches offer an insightful glimpse into economic expectations
The last thing on the minds of most people is deflation. It's easy enough to determine that with a quick quiz -- and that quiz is found in the just-published Elliott Wave Theorist.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Iran Rouhani Delivers Lower Inflation, and other Troubled Currencies Project Updates / Economics / Inflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Iran: Prior to Hassan Rouhani’s election as Iran’s new president in June, the black-market Iranian rial to U.S dollar (IRR/USD) exchange rate stood at 36150, implying an annual inflation rate of 109 percent (June 15th 2013). Since Rouhani took office, Iranian expectations about the economy have turned positive, or at least less negative, and the black-market IRR/USD exchange rate has strengthened to 29200. In consequence, the implied annual inflation rate has fallen like a stone, and currently sits at 20 percent. That’s even lower than the most recent official annual inflation rate of 35.1 percent. (August 2013).
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Why Economic Turnaround in the Eurozone Won’t Happen - U.S. Companies Beware / Economics / Euro-Zone
By: Profit_Confidential
Michael Lombardi writes: On Sunday, we saw the results of the election in Germany, the powerhouse of the eurozone. Angela Merkel won again. Her re-election sent a wave of optimism through Europe. I can just hear the chants declaring “the worst is over for the eurozone” starting up again.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
The American Economy is Not a Free-Market Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
Those of us who favor the free market must confront a problem. The virtues of the market, and the vices of socialism and interventionism, have been made incontestably clear by Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt and others. The case for the free market, as these great figures explain it, can readily be grasped and demands no esoteric knowledge. Yet many academics reject the market. They condemn capitalism for leaving many in poverty and for glaring inequalities. How can so many academics fail to grasp what seem to us obvious truths?
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
QE Worked For The Weimar Germany For A Little While Too / Economics / HyperInflation
By: LewRockwell
Michael Snyder writes: There is a reason why every fiat currency in the history of the world has eventually failed. At some point, those issuing fiat currencies always find themselves giving in to the temptation to wildly print more money. Sometimes, the motivation for doing this is good. When an economy is really struggling, those that have been entrusted with the management of that economy can easily fall for the lie that things would be better if people just had “more money”. Today, the Federal Reserve finds itself faced with a scenario that is very similar to what the Weimar Republic was facing nearly 100 years ago. Like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. economy is also struggling and like the Weimar Republic, the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve has decided to adopt the same solution that the Weimar Republic chose.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Fear the Boom, Not the Bust / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
Frank Hollenbeck writes: If you listen to TV commentators, you’ve been told the worst is behind us. Growth is picking up, and Europe is coming out of its slumber. No one seems to be concerned that this tepid below-2-percent growth is being entirely fed by the central bank’s massive money printing. It’s a “growth at any price” policy. How quickly we forget.
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Trajectory of Global Wage Equalization / Economics / Wages
By: Submissions
Keith Hilden writes: We are in a world in which our current governments, current monetary policies, current developmental policies, and current macroeconomic conditions are creating a new world in which wages will be set by skill, the ability to do the job, and productivity, rather than geographic location. A country's location on the globe is no longer a guarantee of the success of the inhabitants of that country, now that the globalized economy has arrived. This will further be achieved by the development of areas of the globe that as of now have largely missed out on economic development prospects. A CPA of equivalent ability and work produced in Africa will make roughly as much as a CPA in New York. A bus driver in Oklahoma City will make roughly as much as a bus driver in Tallinn, Estonia working the same amount. The ability to access these higher-paying jobs via higher education and training, and a solid educational foundation in their country of adolescence will still be a factor in separating higher wage jobs from lower wage jobs, but once anyone in the world is able to attain those requirements, they make roughly the same wages for the work produced, regardless of geographic location. Based on the trajectory the world is currently on, this will take a generation or so to occur. This is the track that governments and policymakers across the world have chosen our world to follow.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Can Quantitative Easing Create Economic Growth? / Economics / Quantitative Easing
By: Frank_Shostak
Some commentators such as Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management (PIMCO), are of the view that the Federal Reserve’s policy of massive asset purchases has added very little to economic growth. A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City explores various channels through which monetary pumping can grow the US economy. On this, the study indicates that the Fed’s purchases of mortgage backed securities (MBS) can have a strong beneficial effect. The study however suggests that with respect to the purchases of Treasury Bonds the effect on the economy is minimal.