Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, October 29, 2009
South Africa Rocked by Financial Crisis as Unemployment and Debt Soar / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Johannesburg: There was lots of skepticism when I came to South Africa two years ago to show my film IN DEBT WE TRUST. While my critique of consumer debt resonated, the film’s forecast of a financial crisis didn’t. Their economy seemed to be doing well and it was hard to tell a society that tends to look inward that they would be affected by a financial crisis in America, l0,000 miles away.
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
Financial Markets Primary Focus on U.S. Q3 GDP Economic Data / Economics / Economic Recovery
It is a busy calendar for economic figures today but markets will primarily focus on the advance estimate of US Q3 gdp this afternoon. Despite a 'bolt from the blue' from the UK last week, we believe it is still worth highlighting that the consensus is for annualised US growth of 3.2%, with the range from 2% to 4.8%. We look for a rise of 3.5%, following a drop of 0.7% in Q2 and bringing to an end the longest series of quarterly declines since such records started in 1947.
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard Sacrificing for an Idea / Economics / Economic Theory
Lew Rockwell gave a lecture on the trials and tribulations of three free market economists: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard. He showed that their commitment to free market economic theory cost them their careers in an era of Keynesianism. Yet today, they are remembered by a growing number of readers. Their bureaucratic opponents are long forgotten: lost in the noise of "we, too."
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The ABCs of the Economic Crisis, Capitalism on the Ropes? / Economics / Economic Theory
Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff
1. Mike Whitney---In your new book, "The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know", you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a "free market" ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? ("The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know" By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Stealth Inflation / Economics / Inflation
Over the past two years, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have dispersed trillions of public dollars, run up enormous deficits, and kept interest rates at zero. In just about any economic textbook, this combination of policies would be described as the perfect recipe for inflation. Yet, with the exception of the usual increases in health care and education, prices by and large are not rising. Many have concluded that our economic leadership has simply outsmarted the textbooks.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Bankrupt Britain, A Short History / Economics / UK Debt
"If we manage to escape national bankruptcy, we have set up a slavery far more oppressive than any previous form of bondage..."
BRITAIN'S BANKRUPTCY has been a long time coming.
"By our political folly we have a put a large part, probably the greater part, of the nation in possession of rights to draw from the public purse," wrote Ernest J.P.Benn in his hilarious Account Rendered of 1930.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Are You Ready for the Next Financial and Economic Crisis? / Economics / Great Depression II
Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Hyperinflation, When Money Dies So do People / Economics / HyperInflation
Bottom line: "When money dies, so do people." Hyperinflation in a modern urban nation would kill people. I think it would kill a lot of people.
Why? Because we rely on the social division of labor to feed ourselves, heat our homes, and supply everything else that we buy or sell. This requires a highly complex price system. At the heart of this system is money. It would not exist without money.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
PhD In Distress about Overqualified Candidates Fresh Out of College With Nowhere To Go / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
In response to How Being The Slightest Bit Overqualified Can Cost You A Job I received several interesting Emails.
Here is an Email from "PhD In Distress" about overqualified candidates fresh out of college with nowhere to go, competing for jobs that essentially do not exist.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How the Free Market Works / Economics / Economic Theory
In the great book Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard's vast compendium of economic wisdom, we read much that has not yet been properly popularized. Rothbard's production theory, for example, is quite different from the standard account. I have tried to distill this theory into the following synopsis, although it is by no means the only part of the book that warrants exposition.
Economics is about using our available means to achieve the best possible ends. Achieving an end is called consumption and applying a means towards an end is called production.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Twelve Reasons For A Job Loss Economic Recovery / Economics / Economic Recovery
I have been talking about the Job Loss Recovery for quite some time. Here are a few recent examples.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
U.S. Treasury Bonds Under Pressure / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
US treasuries were under pressure most of yesterday, ahead of heavy issuance this week. There was some follow-through to higher UK swap rates, but these fell back after market sentiment for equities turned negative towards the close of play. Ahead today, the CBI distributive trades survey will provide an early indicator of UK retail activity in October.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Consequences of Deficit Spending Debt Build up in Our Lifetime / Economics / US Debt
I am in Argentina today, but still have found time to read a rather provocative speech by David Einhorn, who is President of Greenlight Capital, a "long-short value-oriented hedge fund", which he began in 1996. Einhorn has long been a critic of the current investment banking business, and today he discusses the problems with not only the proposed new government regulations (or lack thereof), but also the problems with the US debt and our currency valuations. It is a most thought-provoking and fun speech.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 3 / Economics / Economic Theory
Karl Marx: Apocalyptic Reabsorptionist Communist
Karl Marx was born in Trier, a venerable city in Rhineland Prussia, in 1818, son of a distinguished jurist, and grandson of a rabbi. Indeed, both of Marx's parents were descended from rabbis. Marx's father Heinrich was a liberal rationalist who felt no great qualms about his forced conversion to official Lutheranism in 1816. What is little known is that, in his early years, the baptized Karl was a dedicated Christian.[43]
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
Communism as the Kingdom of God on Earth: The Takeover of Münster
Thomas Müntzer and his Sign may have gotten short shrift, and his body be a-mouldrin' in the grave, but his soul kept marching on. His cause was soon picked up by a Müntzer disciple, the bookbinder Hans Hut.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples / Economics / Economic Theory
The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist.
A seemingly trite and banal statement set alongside Marxism's myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, and culture, yet Marx's devotion to communism was his crucial focus, far more central than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Macro Economics for Dummies / Economics / Economic Theory
“He who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing.”
The quote comes from Ben Franklin. But it was recalled to us neither by America’s president, nor Britain’s Prime Minister. Instead, the
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Monday, October 26, 2009
America's Jobs Disaster / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Is the Great Recession about to end? This has been the dominant meme at least since June, when my local paper, the Anniston Star, ran a front page story by McClatchy's Kevin Hall with the headline, "Economists: Recession Nearing End as Unemployment Dips."
Sad to say, though, that if such news is the basis for optimism, in June or today, then we are in trouble.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Abolishing Risk Destroys America and Your Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
Our willingness to engage in risks drives our prosperity. We urgently need a public debate on risk, one driven by reason, not emotion. Without risk, individuals are bound to lose the purchasing power of their savings; corporations that don’t take risk will fade into oblivion; and governments that regulate away risks destroy the growth engine of their nation.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Civilisation Sweeping Towards Destruction, Economics Needs Moral Courage / Economics / Economic Theory
It must be really painful to be an economist of the mainstream today, or, at least, it should smart to some extent. In a financial and economic calamity of the current scale, people naturally want to know who issued the warnings about the real estate bubble and its likely aftermath.
When private sector jobs have grown none at all in ten years, and when ten years of domestic investment is systematically undone in the course of 18 months, when housing prices in some sections of the country collapse 80%, and when formerly prestigious banks go belly-up or receive many billions in rescue aid, people want to know which economists saw this coming.
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