Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Copper Calls the Economic Recovery BS / Economics / Global Economy
By: Graham_Summers
For the last four years, the financial world has traded largely based on hope of more intervention from Central Banks.
That was and is the single driving factor of the markets. Good news was good news (it’s a recovery!) but bad news was even better (the Fed will have to print more money!) as far as stocks were concerned.
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
BEA U.S. Economy Grows by 2.5% Annualised in Q1 2013 / Economics / US Economy
By: CMI
In their first estimate of the US GDP for the first quarter of 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a 2.50% annualized rate, some 2.12% better than the 0.38% growth rate for the prior quarter.
Although the headline number itself indicates moderate mid-cycle growth, the details within the BEA's report cast at best a mixed message for the overall health of the economy. For example: although the overall contribution from consumer spending was up, it came mainly from spending on services (boosting the headline number by 1.46%, and principally spent on non-discretionary rents and utilities), with consumer spending for goods contributing to the headline number at a more modest 0.78% (down about -0.24% from the prior quarter). And although fixed investments were still contributing a positive 0.53% to the headline number, that was down over a full percent from the prior quarter. In fact, inventories swinging back to growth (after contracting during the prior quarter) arguably provided all of the quarter-to-quarter improvement in the headline growth rate.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Commanding Heights Of Keynesian Nonsense / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Andrew_McKillop
KRUGMAN'S BLUES
American singer Loudon Wainwright III has a song with this line: "I read the New York Times, it's where I get the news. Paul Krugman's on the op-ed page, that's where I get the blues".
Every era needs its gurus and sages, we are told. Keynes was in fact only an elite-approved guru right at the end of his life, but managed to do a lot of damage before quitting this world, leaving us the IMF as well as the already long-dead Bretton Woods agreement.
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
U.S. Economic Recovery Explained in One Simple Chart / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Money_Morning
Ben Gersten writes: If you thought Americans were better off financially than a few years ago, the following chart shows that's not the case for most of us.
Instead, it looks like an economic recovery for the rich.
According to a new Pew Research Center study, the wealthiest 7% of Americans saw their net worth increase 28.2% from 2009-2011, while the net worth of the other 93% declined 4.3%.
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
Global Economy Still at Risk, Just Look at the Jobs Picture / Economics / Global Economy
By: InvestmentContrarian
George Leong writes: Consistent jobs growth remains an issue here in the U.S.
We also know that the lack of jobs is a worldwide problem that is only made worse by the world’s growing population and the stalling global economy.
The reasoning behind this worldwide jobs problem is simple.
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
The Fed's Money Printing Flaw, Velocity and No Inflation / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Mauldin
Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington launch into their first-quarter "Review and Outlook," this week's Outside the Box, with a statement that some may find eye-opening: "The Federal Reserve (Fed) is not, and has not been, 'printing money'…" But given the facts of life about how money is really created (and destroyed), they are of course right: it's all about the acceleration – or deceleration – in the M2 money supply.
But there are deeper currents here. For, as Van and Lacy say, "A review of post-war economic history would lead to a logical assumption that the money supply (M2) would respond upward to [the Fed's] massive infusion of reserves into the banking system. And yet, the Fed's 3.5x expansion of the monetary base over the past five years has only grown M2 by 35%, and year-over-year growth through March, 2013, was less than 7%. "In other words," say our authors, "there is no evidence that the massive security purchases by the Fed have resulted in a sustained acceleration in monetary growth; nor is there evidence that economic conditions have improved."
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Economic Depression Is Deepening / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Bill_Bonner
Gold seemed to be stabilizing at the end of last week. Commodities remained weak. Steel has fallen 31% this year. Brent crude is off 17% since early February. And copper is down 15%.
Copper is the metal you need to make almost anything – houses, cars, electronics. When it goes down, it generally means the world economy is getting soft.
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
What Do Economies Grow Into? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Raul_I_Meijer
"The world’s leading economies acknowledged on Friday that 'further actions are required' to put the global economy on track for strong, stable and balanced growth.", writes the FT. The torture never stops. Not that we had expected it to just today.
Well, alright then, you can make a point that the biggest news in economics last week was the revelation of the errors in Rogoff and Reinhart's "debt over 90% is deadly" paper. Personally, I think what is still much bigger is the - renewed - revelation that actual policies executed by actual politicians have been based on that paper. Talk about poverty of ideas and imagination. But maybe that shouldn't be surprising. If anything's the core of economics it's such poverty. And that politicians in turn base their policies on that poverty is only fitting. As an old Buddhist adage says: If and when everyone is mindlessly stupid, will anyone notice?
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Theory Of Deflation / Economics / Deflation
By: Andrew_McKillop
CLASSIC THEORIES
This holds that deficiency of aggregate demand leads to over-production and unemployment, further depressing demand, and deflating the economy. By aggregate demand, this means personal and business as well as State consumption spending, and aggregate investment expenditure.
Staying with classic theories, private investment is governed by the marginal efficiency of capital and the real rate of interest. Deflation will occur when investment declines, for three main reasons, which are low marginal efficiency of capital, low profitability of capital and high real rates of interest.
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Monday, April 22, 2013
Is China's Economic Miracle About to Burst Like a Bubble? / Economics / China Economy
By: Pravda
The bright Future of China is being predictably pushed back indefinitely. The GDP growth has slowed down. In the first quarter of 2013, the growth made up 7.7 percent, while China closed last year with the index 7.9 percent. Despite the fact that this growth may seem low for China, the consequences of the reduction already affect the world.
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Sunday, April 21, 2013
The Price of Employment is Wrong – and So is Krugman / Economics / Employment
By: William_Anderson
Every once in a while, Paul Krugman gives an object lesson in Keynesian economics and his M.O. generally is as follows:
- create a caricature of other points of view which is built on faulty assumptions and outright misrepresentations of the real position
- discredit that phony caricature
- claim victory
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Euro-zone Debt Crisis Bang! Moment, Economic Austerity Consequences / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Mauldin
Two seemingly different questions and comments from readers and friends crossed my path the last few days, but I saw a definite connection between them. The first question was, Why do we pursue austerity when it seems not to work? And then many readers wrote to ask this week, What do I think about the real problems that are surfacing in the Rogoff and Reinhart assertion that debt above a ratio of 90% debt to GDP seems to slow economic growth by 1% (especially since I have quoted that data more than a few times)? We’ll deal with each question separately and then see if we can connect the dots.
The first question comes from correspondence I have had with Ms. Aga Barberini, who works in the investment world in Milan, Italy. She came there from Poland some 20 years ago. The first part of her note contains the question on austerity, but I’ll pass along more of her letter, as I think it will give us all some insight into the seeming chaos that voters are facing in choosing a path for Italy. (And I hope my editors leave some of the charming grammar in her letter. You can almost hear the musical tones of her Italian English.)
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Japan Steps into the Void, Trying to Reflate Busted Bubbles / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
In the years following the global financial crisis, economists and investors have gotten very comfortable with very high, and seemingly persistent, government debt. The nonchalance may be underpinned by the assumption that globally significant countries that can print their own currencies can't get trapped in a sovereign debt crisis. However, it now appears that Japan is preparing to put this confidence to the ultimate stress test.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Gold Sell off Reveals Global Economy Skating on Thin Ice / Economics / Global Economy
By: Michael_Pento
Explanations for this gold selloff abound everywhere and nearly all of them are inane and incorrect. The silliest among all the reasons offered for the current bear market in gold is that Bernanke has recently morphed into a form of Paul Volker; even though he has maintained the Fed’s zero percent interest rate policy and massive money printing continues unabated. His policies have, and will continue to significantly weaken the intrinsic value of the dollar—so you can just summarily dismiss that reason.
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Thursday, April 18, 2013
Discerning the Value of Economic Information / Economics / Economic Statistics
By: David_Galland
It has become tradition at La Estancia de Cafayate for Casey Research to host an intimate conference in conjunction with the Harvest Celebration. In the most recent of the series, Bill Bonner, editor of the Diary of a Rogue Economist and a friend of long standing, kicked the program off with a thought-provoking discussion about the nature of information.
With a nod to Nietzsche, Bill dissected the nature of information into two categories.
The first sort is that which is derived from direct observation. For an example, Bill pointed to the tangible information that comes from living in a tribal village. As a member of the tribe, you knew your neighbors, you knew what sort of crops would grow in the different seasons, where and when to hunt, etc.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Is Bernanke’s Worst Nightmare Just Around the Corner? / Economics / Deflation
By: Graham_Summers
First off I want to say that all of us here at Phoenix Capital Research are sending our prayers to the victims of the Boston Terror Attacks. We sincerely hope none of you, our readers, or your loved ones were injured or harmed by these events.
The markets today are snapping back from yesterday’s sharp drop. However, in the bigger picture we believe that Ben Bernanke must be terrified.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
U.S. Economy to Get Jolt from 1.2 Million Homebuilding Jobs / Economics / US Economy
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes: An accelerating rebound in new home construction over the next two years should finally give the U.S. economy the jump-start it needs to progress toward a truly robust recovery.
New home construction continues to bounce back from the lows of 2009, after the housing bubble burst, but still has a long way to go.
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
An Imaginary U.S. Recession? / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Mauldin
An engineer, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a deserted island. They are starving, when miraculously they find a box filled with canned food. What to do? They consider the problem, bringing their collective lifetimes of study and discipline to the task.
Being the practical, straightforward sort, the engineer suggests that they simply find a rock and hit the cans until they break open. “No, no!” cry the chemist and economist, “we would spill too much food and the birds would get it!”
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
Ponzinomics - The Entire Global Economy Is an Insolvent Ponzi Scheme / Economics / Global Economy
By: Washingtons_Blog
Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.
Former Reagan budget director David Stockton just agreed:
So did a top Russian con artist and mathematician.
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
What Was Wrong with Thatcher's Poll Tax / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
Riots in the streets; protest against a hated government; cops arresting protesters. A familiar story these days. But suddenly we find that the protests are directed, not against a hated Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe, but against Mrs. Thatcher's regime in Britain, a supposed paragon of liberty and the free market. What's going on here? Are anti-government demonstrators heroic freedom-fighters in Eastern Europe, but only crazed anarchists and alienated punks in the West?