Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, February 25, 2016
This is The Problem With Free Trade / Economics / Global Economy
If you join a poker game and can’t identify the “mark,” then chances are, you’re it! The “mark” is the person at the game who is less experienced, or perhaps is given to reckless betting. By including this player in the game, everyone else has an opportunity to walk away a winner.But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Not everyone is a winner, and typically someone ends up the big loser!
The same principle works when countries get together for free or open trade. Everyone talks about how great it will be, how much their economies will grow, about efficiencies and new opportunities. But they almost never talk about the people who will lose.
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Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Don't Expect Global Economy 'Crisis Response' from G-20 Meeting / Economics / Global Economy
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sat down with Bloomberg's David Westin in Washington D.C. ahead of the G-20 meeting later this week in Shanghai, China.
When asked about a response from G-20 to global market turbulence, Lew said: "Don't expect a crisis response in a non-crisis environment. You know, it's not the job of finance ministers and central bank governors to accelerate a crisis. It's our job to try and avoid a crisis. If you're in a crisis, you do different things."
He added: "I don't think this is a moment in time when you're going to see individual countries make the kinds of specific commitments that have been made in some other contexts that have been marked by real crisis. This is not a moment of crisis. This is a moment where you've got real economies doing better than markets think, in some cases."
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Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Central Banks Are Pushing the World Towards Deflation / Economics / Deflation
With the entire world struggling to ward off global deflation, it is prudent to understand why the current actions by the Central Banks are not heading in the correct direction. The massive amount of Quantitative Easing by the Central Banks, globally, have not been converted into inflation as was earlier anticipated. This article will shed light on various aspects leading to deflation.
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Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Eurozone Economic Recovery is Over: Deflationary Pressures Intensify as Growth Slows / Economics / Euro-Zone
ECB president Mario Draghi has his work cut out for him as deflationary pressure in Europe intensify. Average prices charged by companies for their goods and services fell at the steepest rate for a year as firms competed to boost sales.
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Monday, February 22, 2016
U.S. Inflation: Prepare for 4% or more! / Economics / Inflation
Last we visited on the subject of U.S. inflation (November, 2015) we wrote,
"Using those simplistic numbers suggests that U.S. inflation as measured by the [headline] CPI could rise to an annual rate of about 4% ..."
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Friday, February 19, 2016
These 3 Factors Make a U.S. Recession 2016 Highly Probable / Economics / Recession 2016
Dear Investor,
I'm sure you noticed that the markets went off the rails since the start of this year. During this decline, there has been one persistent question market pundits have been trying to answer:
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Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Inflation Doesn't Come From Seasonally Adjusted Employment / Economics / Inflation
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 151k, 000 net new jobs created in the month of January, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.9%. The continuing increase in new job creation and removal of slack in the labor market is causing the Phillips-curve-obsessed Fed to maintain a tightening stance on monetary policy.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Steve Hanke On Hyperinflation Hype / Economics / HyperInflation
The Great Recession of 2008-09 brought with it quantitative easing. This, in turn, spawned a cottage industry of books, articles and blog posts about hyperinflation. The burgeoning literature contains a great deal of hype, which validates the 95% Rule: 95% of what is written about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant.
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Tuesday, February 09, 2016
One Chart Depicts Economic Recovery 100% Fiction / Economics / Unemployment
Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death.Betty Bender
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and this chart is probably worth a lot more. It illustrates how the BLS has been lying through its teeth over the past seven years. Then again anyone with a grain of common sense could figure out that the retarded methodology the BLS employs is bound to create the illusion that all is well. They purposely discount individuals that have stopped looking for work in coming up with their unemployment numbers. Hence, the 5% figure is not an accurate reflection of the landscape. The chart below provides a more realistic view of the unemployed in the U.S and in some areas we believe that the numbers could be more than 30%
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Tuesday, February 09, 2016
Oil Price Collapse U.S. Recession Odds 2016 / Economics / Recession 2016
David Rosenberg, chief economist at money-management firm Gluskin Sheff & Associates, went way out on a limb today.
Even though oil broke $30 to the downside again today, bond yields have crashed, and the price of many commodities is below the cost of production, Rosenberg made this statement today as quoted by the Wall Street Journal :
Read full article... Read full article..."I put the odds of a U.S. recession in the next year as close to zero as anything could be close to zero."
Monday, February 08, 2016
Falling Oil Prices Not the Reason for U.S.’s Economic Woes / Economics / US Economy
The dramatic fall in the global price of oil is being cited by the financial press, government officials, and academia as the catalyst for the recent abysmal U.S. economic data which shows that the economy is, in all likelihood, sliding into a recession or worse.
While falling oil prices sound like a plausible explanation for the abysmal financial numbers, anyone with a modicum of economic sense (which excludes much of the financial Establishment) can see that it is merely a smokescreen to obfuscate the real culprit.
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Friday, February 05, 2016
Illusory Economic Recovery Supported by Hot Money / Economics / Economic Recovery
Is this economic recovery real? Well if you base your observations on how far the Dow has risen since the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and on the B.S statistics the BLS puts out, the answer would be a yes. However, if you do just a little cursory digging, you will spot that this economic recovery is nothing but a grand illusion. The following factors clearly prove that this recovery is not real.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, February 05, 2016
U.S. Recession 2016 has Arrived; Factory Orders Decline 2.9%, Inventories Rise / Economics / Recession 2016
Even though economists see a mere 20% chance of recession in 2016, I am increasingly confident a recession began in December 2015.
It was another disastrous factory orders report this month.
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Thursday, February 04, 2016
South Africa Economy from Hero to Zero / Economics / Africa
On 19 November 2015, the South African Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to hike interest rates by 25-basis points from 6% to 6.25%. The forecast for the next interest-rate meeting on 28 January 2016 was 25-basis points, for an overall interest rate of 6.5%. The SARB surprised everyone when it hiked interest rates by 0.5% to the prevailing interest rate of 6.75%. This bold initiative is one of the more drastic steps that can be taken by the authorities when currencies are depreciating rapidly. This is a way to arrest further declines in the value of the ZAR on the international stage.
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Thursday, February 04, 2016
Currency Wars and a Job Gain Recession? / Economics / Currency War
I am entertaining the notion of a "Job Gain Recession".
A chart of year-over-year nonfarm employment shows that's nearly what happened in the 1970 and 1980 recessions.
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Thursday, February 04, 2016
TPP is Economic Warfare, Trade Can Make Everyone Worse Off / Governments are Stupid / Economics / Economic Theory
Professor Yoram Baumun’s comedic retake of the Principles of Economics appropriately translates “Trade can make everyone better off” to “Trade can make everyone worse off.” Moreover, he translates “Market are usually a good way to organize economic activity” to “Governments are Stupid”.
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Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Europe: Why It's Going to Get a Lot Worse Before It Gets Better / Economics / European Union
New interview with our European markets expert
Brian Whitmer, the editor of our monthly European Financial Forecast, explains what indicators helped him anticipate market volatility.
You'll also learn what he's expecting for the year ahead in European stocks.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
BEA Estimates U.S. Economy 4th Quarter 2015 GDP Growth at 0.69% / Economics / US Economy
In their first "Preliminary" estimate of the US GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a +0.69% annualized rate, down -1.30% from the third quarter.
All of the key line items in this report showed meaningful deterioration relative to the third quarter. The reported growth in consumer spending was less than half of that recorded during the prior quarter. The growth in fixed investments nearly disappeared, as did growth in governmental spending. Exports continued to crater, showing outright contraction.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
Economic Headwinds: Big Players, Regime Uncertainty and the Misery Index / Economics / Global Economy
Before we delve into the economic prospects for 2016, let’s take a look at the economies in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East/Africa to see how they fared in the 2014-15 period. A clear metric for doing this is the misery index. For any country, a misery index score is simply the sum of the unemployment, inflation, and bank lending rates, minus the percentage change in real GDP per capita. A higher misery index score reflects higher levels of “misery.”
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Thursday, January 28, 2016
How The Fed is Suffocating The U.S. Economy / Economics / US Economy
Investors are worried over the prospects that the long-term momentum behind the stock market recovery of 2009-2015 may be in danger of complete dissipation this year. That would mean a certain date with an extended bear market and, potentially, an economic recession perhaps sometime later this year.
Normally, within the context of an established bull market, worry would be a good thing given that the bull tends to proceed along a "wall of worry." In view of recent actions undertaken by central banks, however, those worries are legitimate as I'll explain in this commentary.
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