Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Sunday, September 05, 2010
More Economic Stimulus to Fix Unemployment? / Economics / Employment
In a recent WSJ article titled “Romer Calls for More Stimulus” Romer stated that the government has the tools to fix unemployment and that we need more stimulus.
Another article in Yahoo quoted her stating that the government must lower taxes.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Economic Insane Asylum / Economics / Economic Theory
In a Nutshell: Our economy is really an insane asylum run by lunatics.
Common Sense: No problem can be fixed before a solution is formed. No solution can be formed until the underlying problems are clearly identified.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Great Traffic Jam of China, Transport Crisis and Investment Opportunity / Economics / China Economy
Well, it is official now - in addition to the Great Wall, the Great Traffic Jam started on Aug. 14--60 miles and ten-day long on an "expressway" into Beijing from Inner Mongolia (see map)--has earned the capital of China the top spot among the cities with the world's worst traffic…, at least according to Foreign Policy.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
Population and Productivity Fundemental Drivers for Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Recovery
Let's Look at the Rules
Six Impossible Things
Killing the Goose
This week you will get a kind of preview as this week's letter. I am desperately trying to finish the first draft of my book and am one chapter away from having that draft. I have promised my editor (Debra Englander) that she would see a rough draft next week, and the final version will be delivered on the last day of September. More on that process for those interested at the end of the letter. But this week's letter will be part of what will probably be the 4th or 5th chapter, where we look at the rules of economics.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
Stimulus and Full Employment, Averting the Great Depression Again / Economics / Economic Theory
In multiple posts Paul Krugman is saying "I told you so". For example, please consider Nobody Could Have Predicted
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Saturday, September 04, 2010
Economic Suicide as Economies and the Middle Class are Taxed to Death / Economics / Great Depression II
As our socialist progressive leaders in the developed world murder wealth creation, the middle class and our economies under the guise of saving them. Capitalism is now dead in the lands of its birth because there are NO REWARDS for saving, investing, starting a business, hiring an employee, taking a risk or working your ass off to get ahead.
The rewards for doing so now go to GOVERNMENT, public serpents and their supporters to redistribute to themselves and to the desperate, useful idiots who support them (because they do not have the education required to know not to). As the something-for-nothings in society turn to government to save them more torture lays ahead.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
U.S. Government Policy Caused America's Unemployment Crisis / Economics / US Economy
The unemployment rate has risen again for the the first time in 4 months. I predicted a growing, long-term unemployment problem last year.
Indeed, even after the government plays with the numbers to make them look better (using inaccurate birth-death models and other tricks-of-the-trade), this is how the current jobs downturn compares with other post-WWII recessions:
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Friday, September 03, 2010
Weighing In On the Week’s Economic Reports! / Economics / US Economy
The stock market this week is saying I was wrong in warning in last week’s column that we might already be back in recession in this, the third quarter of the year.
I have to agree that the alarming trend of worsening economic reports since May seemed to turn a bit more mixed with this week’s reports.
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Friday, September 03, 2010
U.S. Unemployment Rises to 9.6%, A Look Beneath the Surface / Economics / US Economy
This morning the BLS reported a decrease of 64,000 jobs. However, that reflects a decrease of 114,000 temporary census workers.
Excluding the census effect, government lost 7,000 jobs. Were the trend to continue, this would be a good thing because Firing Public Union Workers Creates Real Jobs.
Friday, September 03, 2010
Bad Monetary Policy Is Redundant / Economics / Economic Theory
George F. Smith writes: A great thinker once wrote that "all things useful are of such a nature that where there is too much of them they must either do harm, or at any rate be of no use, to their possessors."[1]
Having experienced the harmful results of a paper currency manufactured at will, early US statesmen tried to forbid it from ever happening again. Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution specified that no state shall "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts," while the
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Friday, September 03, 2010
If a Pure Market Economy Is So Good, Why Doesn't It Exist? / Economics / Economic Theory
Edward Stringham and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel writes: If a pure market economy is so good, why does it not already exist? If governments are so bad, why are they dominant throughout the world today? Indeed, is the widespread adoption of free markets ever likely to occur?
Many recent authors, including Tyler Cowen,[1] Cowen and Daniel Sutter,[2] Randall G. Holcombe,[3] and Andrew Rutten[4] question the feasibility of a pure libertarian society.[5] They maintain that such a system cannot arise or persist because some people will always have both the incentive and the ability to use force against others. These authors offer several reasons why, even if society starts out in a perfect libertarian world without any states (as Murray Rothbard and others advocate),[6] competing groups will eventually form a coercive government.
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Friday, September 03, 2010
Neo-Keynesian's, Signs of an Evil Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
I am standing on the corner of the street, doing my duty to "give back" to society, in this case by yelling at morons passing by in the cars, "We're freaking doomed, you moron! Your own stupid government has destroyed you by letting the foul, fetid, festering Federal Reserve create too much money that they stupidly, stupidly, stupidly did as part of the stupid neo-Keynesian econometric theoretical lunacy that has mesmerized them, so that a shiny computer in front of a neo-Keynesian econometric economist is like a shiny toy in front of a monkey, and which has mesmerized the Fed and the government for similar reasons, and with similar results, in that the toy is now broken, the monkey cut its hand on the broken toy, the cut is infected, and there is a good chance that the monkey will die a horrible, painful death! Hahaha! How do you like them apples? Horrible, painful death! We're freaking doomed, including you and your hotshot car with the radio turned up real loud, trying to drown me out! And stop honking at me! I have rights, you moron!"
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
Is Asia’s Economic Rebound Sustainable? / Economics / Asian Economies
Tony Daltorio writes: The United States is fretting about the possibility of a double-dip recession. Europe is looking for signs of the next sovereign debt default crisis. And Asia…
Well, Asia has no such worries. This year, economies from the Indian subcontinent to Australia – though not Japan – will expand by 8.6%, their fastest pace in 20 years!
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
U.S. Economic Recovery Collapses / Economics / Great Depression II
Recent weeks have seen a collapse in US home sales, a weakening of manufacturing activity, an upward trend in jobless benefit claims and, on Friday, a downward revision of second-quarter gross domestic product growth from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent.
The latter figure is far below the rate of economic expansion needed to bring down unemployment, now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. On the contrary, the sharp slowdown in economic growth heralds a further rise in the jobless rate.
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
Fed Engineering a Delebrate State of Slow Economic Collapse / Economics / Great Depression II
Almost two years ago the US Treasury was selling large amounts of short-term Treasury bills to fund bailouts and stimulus. That caused a major increase in debt. Most of that paper was 2-year bills and it is coming due for rollover shortly. While that transpires, October will report the annual fiscal deficit of 9/30/10 of about $1.5 trillion, a figure thought impossible just 1-1/2 to 2 years ago.
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
I Renounce Monetarism, That Money Supply is a Leading Indicator for Aggregate Demand / Economics / Money Supply
Monetarism, the notion that the behavior of some definition of the money supply is a leading indicator of aggregate demand, is akin to malaria. Once it is in your "system," it is very difficult to totally purge it from your system. Early in my career, I was strongly sympathetic toward monetarism. In the late 1990s, I was introduced to the Austrian school of economics, in particular, the Austrian theory of the business cycle (ATBC). I was immediately sympathetic to the ATBC because bank credit played such an important role in it.
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Quantitative Easing, Money Velocity Inflationary Armageddon / Economics / Inflation
“The crucial passage comes in Chapter 17 entitled "Velocity". Each big inflation -- whether the early 1920s in Germany, or the Korean and Vietnam wars in the US -- starts with a passive expansion of the quantity of money. This sits inert for a surprisingly long time. Asset prices may go up, but latent price inflation is disguised. The effect is much like lighter fuel on a camp fire before the match is struck.
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Inflation, Rounding Up the Culprits of Rising Prices / Economics / Inflation
From Bloomberg.com we get the bad news that "Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said inflation is likely to exceed the UK government's upper 3% limit in coming months as higher sales taxes drive gains in consumer prices," which "rose 3.1% in July from a year earlier after climbing 3.2% in June."
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Hyperinflation vs. Inflation: Understand the Difference / Economics / HyperInflation
Hyperinflation and inflation may share the same root, but they're two entirely different trees. While many assume that hyperinflation is just inflation's oversized cousin, there is much more to hyperinflation than most are aware.
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Economic Death By Globalism, Economists Haven’t a Clue / Economics / Great Depression II
Have economists made themselves irrelevant? If you have any doubts, have a look at the current issue of the magazine, International Economy, a slick endorsed by former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, by former Secretary of State George Shultz, and by the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which declare the magazine to be “ahead of the curve.”
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