Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Sunday, October 11, 2009
Five Major Pension Problems and One Simple Solution / Economics / Pensions & Retirement
Even with this huge rally in stocks and corporate bonds, pension plans are in incredibly poor shape. The Washington Post lists Two Bad Choices Cut Benefits Or Take Greater Risks to Rebuild Assets.
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
Measuring CPI Inflation, Alice In Wonderland And The Bond Yield Paradox / Economics / Inflation
This article is not about what inflation is, it's about how you measure one component, CPI (Consumer Price Index), there are other components; but that's the focus of this article.
Big picture to estimate CPI you work out a "basket" of goods and services that consumers buy which you think is representative of the structure of spending in an economy, and you do a survey, then you compare that with how much it would have cost to buy the same "basket" a year before.
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
Government Deficit Spending Killing the U.S. Free Market Economy / Economics / Economic Stimulus
Killing the Goose
What Were We Thinking?
Let's Play Turn It Around
Peggy Noonan, maybe the most gifted essayist of our time, wrote a few weeks ago about the vague concern that many of us have that the monster looming up ahead of us has the potential (my interpretation) for not just plucking a few feathers from the goose that lays the golden egg (the US free-market economy), or stealing a few more of the valuable eggs, but of actually killing the goose. Today we look at the possibility that the fiscal path of the enormous US government deficits we are on could indeed kill the goose, or harm it so badly it will make the lost decades that Japan has suffered seem like a stroll in the park.
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
The September U.S. Employment Rate is 90% / Economics / Employment
The U.S. Department of Labor Official Employment rate in September 2009 is now 90% (Unofficial rate is 75%).And for those Americans who are still employed, they will find it harder to get that sweet deal on a new car because auto dealers won’t be competing with each other now that Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy made the decision (not the Chrysler bankruptcy judge), to close dealerships without regard to profitability.
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Friday, October 09, 2009
Trending Towards Hyperinflation / Economics / HyperInflation
Seven short steps to the cost of living doubling or more inside 3 years...
HYPERINFLATION is widely accepted as a period of out of control price rises, doubling the cost of living inside three years.
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Friday, October 09, 2009
Failed Economic Policies and Rising Unemployment in the U.S. / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
This past week the BLS released the September unemployment statistics and they worsened as usual, as America enjoys its recovery.
U-1–Those unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force was 5.4%.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
The Autumn 2009 Inflation Time Bomb / Economics / Inflation
It's not only the energy markets that threaten the 'low inflation' data now encouraging bondholders to keep buying...
THE PUBLISHED INFLATION DATA are surprisingly unsophisticated in so far as they compare current prices with a snapshot a year earlier.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Does Asia's Economic Rebound Signal the Return to Stellar Growth? / Economics / Economic Recovery
Deleted.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Conservative £7 Billion Spending Cuts a Drop in Britain's Debt Ocean / Economics / UK Debt
Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne announced net public sector spending and budget cuts totaling £7 billion at the Conservative party conference. However the proposed cuts are but a mere drop in the debt ocean that on their own do not amount to anything of real significance when one compares to an annual budget deficit that is expected to break above £200 billion this fiscal year.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Good News, The Economist Says USA Foreclosures Are "Not A Problem!!" / Economics / Mainstream Media
The Economist Magazine, much admired for its Neo-Con views, (for example it's jingoistic support for the invasion of Iraq), has now applied its unique insights to the US housing market.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
The Fed's Schizophrenic Monetary Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
If monetary theory is accurate, it is a subset of general economic theory, which must also be accurate. Monetary theory is not an independent theory of human action that is divorced analytically from a general theory of human action.
Only the Austrian School of economics believes this and adheres to it in practice. All other systems of economic thought segregate monetary theory from general economic theory.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Gold Understands that Stock Market Liquidity Rallies Do Not Create Jobs / Economics / Economic Stimulus
Outside of minimum wage jobs and Wal-Mart poverty line work, today’s US economy appears unable to create good jobs. If the US economy cannot create new jobs, Americans will be in no position to save and invest for their futures, nor will they have any purchasing power that would boost the economy.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
US and UK Savers Your Bankrupt "Babushka" Pensioner's Future / Economics / HyperInflation
Those people who have saved for the future could soon form our own generation of bankrupted, Babushka pensioners...
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the Russians found themselves in a hole.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Marx and Lenin Revisited / Economics / Economic Theory
"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks." Karl Marx
If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Surge in U.S. Unemployment, No Economic Recovery in Sight / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
After the recent unemployment numbers were announced, smug politicians promising economic recovery stuttered a bit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Mainstream economists were predicting a smooth upswing in employment, but in September 263,000 more jobs were lost, 62,000 more than August.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Whalen Says Real Economy Is Dying, Q4 Bloodbath / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Stocks rallied to start the week thanks to a better-than-expected ISM services sector report and a Goldman Sachs upgrade of big banks, including Wells Fargo, Comerica and Capital One.
But all is not right in either the economy or the banking sector, according to Christopher Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics. In fact, Whalen says most observers are drawing the wrong economic conclusions from the stock market's robust rally.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Paul Krugman Would Fail as a Businessman / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently, I traveled to Idaho to meet with several customers over a two-day period. As a surety bond underwriter, I predominantly deal with small-to-medium sized public works and commercial contractors. My objectives, for each meeting, were to gain a better understanding of local market conditions, to see if a viable business plan was in place for each contractor, and to determine which clients would survive this vicious economic downturn.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Strengthening Economic Data for UK, U.S. Economies / Economics / Economic Recovery
After the recent spate of weak economic data, this week began on a more positive note, with yesterday's service sector reports in the UK and US both surprising on the upside. The UK CIPS services sector PMI was particularly firm, with the index rising from 54.1 in August to 55.3 in September - its strongest pace of expansion in two years. That conditions in UK services are improving was also signalled in the latest financial services report from the Confederation of British Industry, which showed confidence amongst UK financial services firms rising for the first time since the start of the credit crisis in 2007.
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Monday, October 05, 2009
Global Ageing Population Financial and Economic Crisis Brewing / Economics / Demographics
We all know that a large wave of Baby Boomers in the US are approaching retirement. But what about the rest of the world? And what happens when those retirees need to spend out of savings? There is more than just a credit crisis and a government deficit crisis in our future. A rising level of retirrees to workers is happening even as I write. And the US is not, for once, the center of the problem. As this week's writer of your Outside the Box Niels Jensen explains, we cannot all export our way out of the problem. There is a global adjustment that must happen and when it does, it will have serious consequences for all. This week's letter is guaranteed to make you think. Set aside a few minutes to do so.
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Monday, October 05, 2009
Currency Crisis Lesson from War Ravaged Iraq / Economics / Fiat Currency
There has been much ado concerning the Federal Reserve's doubling of the monetary base this past year. Many believe a currency crisis or hyperinflation of the dollar is imminent. Some go as far as to say that this crisis will destroy America.
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