Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Japanese Q2 Real GDP Growth Downshifts Sharply as Export Growth Slows / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
After growing at an annualized rate of 3.2% in the first quarter, Japanese real GDP growth slowed to only 0.5% in the second quarter. To be sure, domestic demand growth slowed - from 1.5% to 0.4%. But, as the first chart below shows, a rising percentage of Japanese real GDP is accounted for by its exports. For example, in Q2:2003, real exports accounted for 11.5% of Japanese real GDP. By Q2:2007, this ratio had risen to 15.3%.
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Making Money vs Creating Wealth - Migrating to New Energy Paradigms Part 5 / Economics / Global Financial System
By: Brian_Bloom
Making money is not the same as creating wealth. The objective of this article is to facilitate an understanding of this deceptively simple statement which, in turn, will facilitate an understanding of the dimensions of the problems now being faced by humanity. Hopefully, this will lead to a realization that these problems – most of them – are soluble within a relatively short space of time.
Perhaps this anecdote will help to set a mental framework:
A long, long time ago I was number two ‘opening bat' for my school's First XI cricket team. I played sport six days a week in those days and had great hand/eye co-ordination. In my mind I can still recall the pleasure of opening my shoulders and smacking a loose ball for six over the bowler's head. The ball would connect with the “sweet spot” of the bat and soar into the bleachers above the sight screen at the far end of the field. It didn't happen often – but when it did, wow!
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Friday, August 10, 2007
Real Estate and Asset Deflation : The Ballgame is Over / Economics / Deflation
By: Steve_Moyer
When those of us at www.PonderThis.net started writing about "the coming asset deflation" in May of 2005, my, my, did our mailboxes fill up with, "Boy, are you ever wrong. The Fed will make sure these bubbles go on forever, stupid!" emails. Still, we had our small, rather quaint following of "fans."
And a motley group we were indeed!
As we developed our argument and saw our stuff get increasingly picked up by financial websites around the world, our "real estate deflation/credit contraction/liquidity crunch will sink all boats" theme took hold and the overwhelming majority of respondents began moving into our camp. Now we receive a stream of emails from readers demanding an update, wanting to know where things will go from here, and/or trumpeting their decisions to get out of (name almost any asset class) while the gettin' was good. Most now think that asset deflation has taken hold. In two years' time, the worm has certainly turned.
That's probably because, um, for the record -- we were right.
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Friday, August 10, 2007
You Know Things Are Bad When The WSJ Trots Out Malpass and Wesbury In The Same Week / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
This headline is from an email I received today from a well-known financial journalist noted for her proclivity for identifying "naked emperors." I will address Malpass' errors in another commentary. But in this short note I want to talk to Wesbury's op-ed piece in today's WSJ, "Fair but Unbalanced".
Before countering some of Wesbury's almost perennial happy-talk, let me acknowledge a bit of truth in his essay. The financial media, especially the broadcast financial media, do like to "spice it up," akin to professional wrestling, by having bulls and bears duke it out. After all, as Wesbury indicates, it's all about ratings and ad dollars. Sound bites sell, not analysis. But that's the extent of our agreement.
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007
US Economic Growth in Domestic Private Final Demand : Its Falling - Can It Get Up? / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
If the housing recession is not spreading to other parts of the economy, how do you account for the fact that growth in real domestic private final demand is slowing? Real domestic private final demand includes the following line items from the gross domestic product (GDP) accounts: personal consumption expenditures, nonresidential fixed investment expenditures and residential investment expenditures. Real domestic private final demand represented about 87% of real GDP in the past five years. Chart 1 shows the growth in real domestic private final demand in recent years – on both a quarter-to-quarter annualized basis and year-over-year basis.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Some Advice For Ben Bernanke on the State of the US Economy / Economics / US Economy
By: Tim_Iacono
Here are a few words of advice for current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke who will prognosticate on the state of the U.S. economy in the FOMC policy statement today.
First, start assigning blame - get political man! The next few months are probably going to be pretty rough and next year might be even worse, so start pointing your finger at the guy who is responsible for all of this.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Monetarism and the US economy / Economics / US Economy
By: Gerard_Jackson
Tom Nugent's article on the US economy and monetary policy inadvertently revealed the severe shortcomings of monetary debate in the US. ( Monetarism: Dead at Last? , National Review Online , 23 July 2007). Nugent refers to Wayne Angell, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, who appeared on the Larry Kudlow show on CNBC , who said that the Fed was targeting the federal funds rate. What was really interesting was his comment that monetary growth merely responded to changes in the demand for money.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Wage rates, Immigration and Jobs / Economics / Immigration
By: Gerard_Jackson
On the other hand we have the opposing fallacy that immigrants steal jobs. In fact, back in July 2004 John Stone, former head of the Australian Treasury, accused illegal immigrants of stealing jobs from Australians. So which is it? The first fallacy actually rests on very important economic truth that too many economists ignore: so long as there is sufficient capital and land to employ people and the free market prevails persistent widespread unemployment cannot. What is missing, however, is the price of labour. I have no doubt that if the hourly wage rates for those agricultural jobs that Americans are said to look down their noses at were to jump to $30 there would be an abundance of applicants.
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Monday, August 06, 2007
Disturbing Trends 2007 - The US Dollar Under Siege / Economics / US Dollar
By: Michael_J_Kosares
A critical juncture for gold and the U.S. economy
from the author of
"The ABCs of Gold Investing:
How to Protect and Build Your Wealth with Gold"
_____________
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Friday, August 03, 2007
US Employment Numbers Don't Look Good / Economics / Financial Markets
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up (+92,000) in July, and the unemployment rate (4.6 percent) was essentially unchanged, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Employment grew in several service-providing industries. Average hourly earnings rose by 6 cents, or 0.3 percent.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Global Money Supply / Economics / Money Supply
By: Mike_Hewitt
This essay makes comparisons between the money supply of 26 selected economic areas and discusses the ratios between the value of official gold reserves to outstanding currency.
For the purposes of this essay, the Euro-Zone includes the thirteen countries that use the Euro currency: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. All other economic areas are individual countries.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
No Worry about US Consumer Spending So Long As Jobs/Income Are Growing? / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
That's the rallying cry of the economic bulls. Aside from the fact that jobs and personal income are coincident indicators, not leading indicators, and that labor compensation as a percent of consumer spending tends to rise just before the onset of recessions (see Payroll Growth = Consumer Spending Growth?), will jobs and income growth alone be enough to sustain real consumption growth going forward? That is, with mortgage equity withdrawals drying up and corporate buybacks and private equity buyouts slowing down, suppose that consumer spending relative to disposable income reverts to its mean. What rate of growth in real consumer spending could we look forward to in 2007?
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The Morality of Economics: The Key Issue of the 21st Century / Economics / Social Issues
By: Richard_C_Cook
Since January 2007, Richard C Cook has published a series of articles on the urgent need for economic and monetary reform.
Some readers have commented on how distant these monetary reform recommendations are from current practice. The reason for this is simply that the recommendations derive from a starting point that is not customary.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Wealth Effect or Borrowing / Asset Sales Effect? / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
In the question-and-answer session following his semiannual monetary policy report to Congress last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pooh-poohed the notion that mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW) had played much of a role in funding household spending in recent years. Rather, Chairman Bernanke, like most academics, cited the "wealth effect" as responsible for stimulating household spending.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Q2 US Real GDP Growth Forecast: Chicago Fed at 2.7%; Consensus at 3.2% / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Of course, the Chicago Fed does not release to the public its GDP forecasts. But it does publish an index called the National Activity Index (NAI), which is, in effect, a darned good coincident indicator of real GDP growth. The NAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of economic activity drawn from five broad categories:Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Composition of the U.S. Money Supply / Economics / Money Supply
By: Mike_Hewitt
How much U.S. money is in circulation? Printed currency and coins amount to less than US$800 billion. This represents only a small portion of the total money supply. The following essay shows the composition of various monetary aggregates used by the Federal Reserves to define the total amount of money available.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 23, 2007
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: The Coming Financial Crash Shows Need for Immediate Monetary Reform / Economics / Financial Crash
By: Richard_C_Cook
US Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., has joined the chorus of those in high places who are warning of a major worldwide economic downturn.
Paulson was quoted at length in a July 23, 2007, article in Fortune by Rik Kirkland entitled, “The Greatest Economic Boom Ever: Enjoy It While It Lasts.” Paulson's remarks came in the context of assessing the ability of the highly-leveraged equity, hedge, and derivative markets to withstand the shocks to come. He told Fortune in an interview:
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
More Evidence of Spillover from US Housing Market to Consumer Sector / Economics / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
We have been forecasting that the housing recession would have a negative knock-on effect on discretionary consumer spending. Six successive months of declining light motor vehicle sales is corroborating evidence of this. If J. D. Power has got its numbers correct, July is on course to mark the seventh consecutive month in which car and truck sales decline.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Chinese Money Supply - How Do You Say "Rube Goldberg" in Chinese? / Economics / China Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
China has an economic problem - inflation. When I speak of Chinese inflation, I am referring to what the People's Bank of China (PBOC, not to be confused with PB&J) is doing - creating massive amounts of credit "out of thin air." Chart 1 shows that the total assets on the PBOC's balance sheet grew by approximately 29% in the 12 months ended May. Although that is down from peak growth of 38% in the 12 months ended September 2005, 29% still is a sizeable increase in central bank credit creation.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Return Of The Gold Standard / Economics / Money Supply
By: James_West_2
We humans are remarkably committed to self delusion.
From the personal level to the most powerful government on earth, we contrive realities with distorted perspectives so we can execute ideas that would otherwise cause us to hesitate if we were to objectively and honestly consider their moral implications. The moral code is constantly being revised to accommodate current events.
World War I is a perfect example.
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