Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
China: Wen Indicates a 7.5% GDP Growth Forecast for 2012 / Economics / China Economy
By: Asha_Bangalore
One of the major risks to the global economic outlook for 2012 has been the likelihood of hard landing in China. Much of this matter has been laid to rest with China’s premier Wen’s economic predictions at the opening of the National People’s Congress. Wen noted that Beijing projects economic growth of 7.5% for 2012 vs. the 8.0% forecast of 2011.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Did U.S. Q4 GDP Data Pull In Future Economic Growth / Economics / US Economy
By: Tony_Pallotta
No economics degree is required nor any complex analysis to understand how vulnerable the US economy is right now. In Q4 the economy expanded by 3% fueled by a 1.9% increase in inventory. By comparison Q3 inventory contracted (1.4%). In other words if the two year inventory trajectory did not suddenly reverse Q4 GDP quite possibly would have been flat to negative.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
U.S. Economy, Is This As Good As It Gets For Now? / Economics / US Economy
By: Sy_Harding
In Europe, the euro-zone debt crisis has pretty much faded from headlines. The arrangements that will bail out Greece - at least for now - have been pretty much finalized. The European Central Bank has made two huge rounds of low cost 3-year loans available to European banks, and that seems to be working to assure that the eurozone financial system will be okay for several years.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, March 02, 2012
Huge Problem With Bernanke's 2% Inflation Target Explained in Graphs / Economics / Inflation
By: Mike_Shedlock
Ben Bernanke wants prices to rise 2%. There are numerous problems with such a proposal, the first being increases in money supply sometimes lead to asset bubbles and not increases in prices of consumer goods.
Indeed the Fed completely ignored (if not encouraged) the housing bubble because home prices are not in the CPI. A housing bubble and a housing crash was the result.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Get the Dire Economic Stats You Won't Get from 24-Hour News / Economics / US Economy
By: EWI
Dear Investor,
Are you shocked that even with a 24-hour news cycle, crucial bits of economic news still fall through the cracks?
The financial media only seem to regurgitate the same, tired bullish proclamations about the year ahead. It will be better than 2011, they say, but the numbers don't lie. By some revealing measures, the economy is actually worse now than it was at the end of 2010.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Private Sector vs. Government Sector in the Current Economic Recovery / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Asha_Bangalore
Real GDP of the economy is estimated to have grown at an annual rate of 3.0% in the fourth quarter, an upward revision from the advance estimate of a 2.8% increase. Upward revisions of consumer spending, outlays of structures, residential investment expenditures and government spending more than offset downward revisions of exports and equipment and software spending to yield a slightly higher reading of real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2011.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Mish Deflationista vs Current Stagflation Environment / Economics / Inflation
By: David_Petch
This article deals with the current environment of stagflation we are in that will see periods of defined inflation, followed by short but intense deflation, unlike a constant "Deflationista" environment as insinuated in the writings of blogger, Mike Shedlock. A few years back he came out with an article about legendary Strategic Investor Donald Coxe (Who is an extremely captivating writer with his vast knowledge of history and amusing ways in which words are spun together), titled "Donald Coxe Jumps the Shark". Mike got the call on deflation of 2008 correct...KUDOS to Mike. However, the constant beating of drums about deflation deflation deflation is kind of like someone waiting for over 20 years for that 3rd of a 3rd of a 3rd down that just never really seems to materialize. The discovery I made back in July of 2011 that a Contracting Fibonacci Spiral nailed every major high since the 1934 low after much thought defines why the markets are behaving as they do. By completion, this article should explain why defining the present environment as deflationary is like only using one sense to describe an elephant when using the collective of all senses provides a much better answer and explanation.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Ron Paul: U.S. Economy Squeezed As Debt Accelerates / Economics / US Debt
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee has pointed out that our per capita government debt is already larger than Greece's. Per person, our government owes over $49,000 compared to $38,937 per Greek citizen. Our debt has just reached 101% of our Gross Domestic Product. Our creditors see this and have quietly slowed down or stopped their lending to us. As a result, the Federal Reserve has been outright monetizing debt as a way to patch things together and keep the economy on life support a little longer. There is rapidly shrinking demand for our debt, and confidence in the dollar is falling. This phenomenon is hidden only by the fact that confidence in all other fiat currencies is falling faster.
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Saturday, February 25, 2012
Can the U.S. Economy Sidestep Europe’s Recession? / Economics / US Economy
By: Sy_Harding
The surprises continue in the U.S. economic recovery.
This week’s reports include that home prices rose 0.7% in December, an encouraging ending to a year in which prices were down another 2.4% for the full year. And existing home sales rose 4.3% in January. Even more surprising, the inventory of unsold homes has now fallen to its lowest level since March, 2005.
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Friday, February 24, 2012
Fed Conflates Inflation with Growth / Economics / Inflation
By: Michael_Pento
It is a sad situation when everything the man in charge of our central bank professes to understand about inflation is wrong. Mr. Bernanke does not know what causes inflation, how to accurately measure inflation or the real damage inflation does to an economy. He, like most central bankers around the globe, persists in conflating inflation with growth. The sad truth is that our Federal Reserve believes growth can be engendered from creating more inflation.
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Thursday, February 23, 2012
Kondratieff Waves and the Greater Depression of 2013 - 2020 / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Christopher_Quigley
There are very few heroes in economics but for me one of the patron saints of that profession
should be Nikolai Kondratiev who was shot by firing squad on the orders of Stalin in 1938. He
died for what he believed was the truth. His execution was ordered because his academic work
propounded that the capitalist system would not collapse as a result of the great depression of
1929. This truth Stalin did not want to hear, thus Nikolai was exterminated and his work
suppressed for over two decades. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
U.S. Inflation Expectations Forecast No More QE / Economics / Quantitative Easing
By: Tony_Pallotta
If you study the difference between real or inflation adjusted treasury yields as measured by TIPS and nominal or non inflation adjusted yields you come up with inflation expectations. The Fed has specifically referenced this analysis leading up to QE2. In fact the deflationary trend as measured by TIPS in the summer of 2010 was the basis for expanding their balance sheet.
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Inflation Held in Check by Fear / Economics / Inflation
By: John_Browne
History has shown us time and again that out of control money supply expansion creates inflation. In light of the trillions of synthetic dollars that have been injected into the economy by the Federal Reserve over the past five years, most observers (this one included) had expected prices to spiral upward. But in making these determinations, many of us forgot to factor in the supply side of the supply/demand equation. Inflation remains low now because of game changing events that have reduced the demand for money.
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Saturday, February 18, 2012
Tax Receipts And Economic Expansion They Don't Add Up / Economics / US Economy
By: Tony_Pallotta
Taking economic data at face value "trusting" the seasonal adjustment is comparable to looking at an income statement and ignoring cash flow. In other words if the income statement says a company generated a profit well the cash flow will be there.
In the case of US economic data the closest thing we have is monthly tax receipts. I will be digging more into this data in the coming weeks and months to get a better sense just how well the economy is doing. For now I wanted to share an analysis based purely on tax receipts.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2012
I only have eyes for you. And Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Jan_Skoyles
You may have seen them already but some of them were so, so bad (and some pretty good) that we just had to say something about them.
Yep, we’re talking about the Fed Valentine’s.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2012
January U.S. Retail Sales Decelerating Trend Remains in Place / Economics / US Economy
By: Asha_Bangalore
Retail sales increased 0.4% in January after a steady reading in December. The December estimate was revised down slightly from the earlier reading of 0.1%. In January, auto purchases in the retail sales report show a 1.1% decline, while unit auto sales increased to an annual rate of 14.2 million units in January vs. 13.6 million units in December. Unit auto sales matter in the computation of consumer spending. Gasoline sales rose 1.4% in January, a price related gain.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012
U.S. Trade Deficit Data Belies Economic Recovery / Economics / US Economy
By: Michael_Pento
Wall Street is extolling the virtues of our rising U.S. trade deficit as a sure sign the economy is well on the road to a full and viable recovery. It was reported last week that our level of trade imbalance jumped to a six-month high in December to $48.8 billion (up 3.7%), from $47.1 billion in the prior month. For all of 2011, the shortfall grew 12% to $558 billion, the most since 2008.
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Monday, February 13, 2012
Keynesians Jump the Gun on Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Peter_Schiff
Advocates of government stimulus are running victory laps on recent developments that appear to vindicate their strategy. In particular, Paul Krugman compares the sluggish growth in Europe to the somewhat-less-sluggish growth in the US to prove that stimulus was more effective than austerity. Other economists are using government inflation measures to defend Fed Chairman Bernanke's easy-money policy. The only problem is, they're calling the race before the finish line is even in sight.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, February 12, 2012
US Trade Deficit Trouble On The Horizon / Economics / US Economy
By: Tony_Pallotta
I'm intrigued how studying one economic data point can give you valuable insight into others. One such example is that of the recent US trade deficit. The December trade deficit increased to $48.8 billion from $47 billion in November. Although this report will have a slight negative impact on Q4 GDP there is something possibly more telling about the trajectory of the US economy.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
China, Economy, Inflation, Investing and on Buying U.S. Debt / Economics / China Economy
By: Bloomberg
Bloomberg TV's Trish Regan spoke to Stephen Roach, non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, ahead of soon-to-be Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the U.S. next week.
Roach said that he hoped U.S. political leaders would turn the visit "into an opportunity and not into a politically inspired, perceived threat." He also said that he foresees a "soft landing" of China's economy and that market access should be the main political issue with China, not currency.
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