Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Commerce Is a People's Revolution / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Douglas_French
The big-box book business has begun to crumble with the bankruptcy filing of book-selling behemoth Borders. The Chapter 11 filing indicates the company is looking to restructure its debts and continue on. But as in the case of bankrupt Blockbuster, there may not be anything to restructure, with both of these old-technology companies destined for liquidation and futures of little more than Wikipedia entries chronicling each company's past glories.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Global Economy on the Edge of Chaos / Economics / Economic Theory
By: David_Knox_Barker
Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek’s most enduring legacy is his defense of classical liberalism and free market capitalism. The Road to Serfdom is Hayek’s case against central planning, something he viewed as a product of human design as opposed to human action. Hayek and his mentor Ludwig von Mises were the preeminent writers and thinkers of the Austrian school of economics and political economy.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
An Improving U.S. Economy, But Where Are the Jobs? / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: John_Mauldin
I am on yet another plane and writing, and I'll finish this letter in Phoenix. As I start, I am not sure of a theme for this week's letter, so (with a tip of the hat to my friend Burton Malkiel, who I will see at Rob Arnott's conference in a few months), today we do a Random Walk Around the Frontlines, surveying what's going on in the world. We'll start with the Fed and interest rates, look at inflation, and see how far we get. And I might get a little controversial, but long-time readers know that is not all that unusual.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Egypt's Economy in Crisis / Economics / Middle East
By: Global_Research
Dr. Ali Kadri writes: Just a week after the Tunisian revolution, at a conference in Beirut, an astute Egyptian social scientist was asked, would the Tunisian contagion spread to Egypt? And his answer was a categorical, ‘it is not likely, Egyptians are religious, conservative and the security apparatus has a good grip on the country.’ Not long after, of course, the Egyptian popular uprising had proven once more that not only cultural explanations of revolutions were inapposite tools of analysis, but it has also shown that when the time comes for people to rise up, they just do so unexpectedly. Suddenly, all the facts on the grounds explain the revolution. They fall into place like a two piece puzzle. It would thereafter be said that the revolution was historically overdetermined despite the most recognisable fact, which is, no one could have predicted it and the social seismic metre did not even record any serious pre-traumatic tremors. All the conditions for the revolution were there last year and the year before. So why now?
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Bernanke Says Two Speed Economic Recovery Requires Different Policies / Economics / Economic Recovery
By: Asha_Bangalore
Chairman Bernanke's speech was drawn from his paper examining the nature of international capital flows prior to the global financial meltdown. The analysis is long on detail and useful for policymakers and research. More importantly, Bernanke indicated that the two speed global economy calls for different policies.
Friday, February 18, 2011
What Economics is Not / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Andy_Sutton
It is starting again. It is a phenomenon that occurs more regularly now, especially with daily talk of massive imbalances right along with a massive boost in activity. More and more people are scratching their heads wondering what gives. Once again, economics has become a debating society. There are Keynesians, Austrians, the Classic folks, and those who will use ridiculous rationale and textbook, but not applicable accounting definitions to try to assert that we’re really getting rich every time the government borrows another dollar. It is no wonder people are confused. Like so many other areas of our society, particularly morality, the definitions have been skewed, the lines, blurred, and the waters made muddy.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Calculating the Misery of Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Richard_Daughty
I was, unfortunately, sober enough to realize that I needed to get a lot drunker if I was going to withstand the horror of reading of even more economic fallout of the Federal Reserve's disastrous decisions to create So Freaking Much Money (SFMM).
In particular, Michael Pento, in an essay in the Euro Pacific's Weekly Digest newsletter, writes, "For the year 2010, the trade gap surged 43%, which was the biggest jump in a decade, as our government's efforts to reignite consumer borrowing and spending led to a record number of imported consumer goods."
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Friday, February 18, 2011
Egypt's Next Crisis: The Economy / Economics / Middle East
By: STRATFOR
Until just a few years ago, Egypt’s ruling military elite was able to “borrow” money from Egyptian banks with no intention of paying it back. President Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal changed all that, reforming and privatizing the system in order to build an empire for himself. For the first time in centuries, Egypt’s financial position was not entirely dependent upon outside forces. Now, Mubarak and his reform-minded son are out of the picture and Egypt has a budget deficit and a government debt load that are teetering on the edge of sustainability.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Food and Energy Prices Major Culprits in U.S. Consumer Price Index Gains / Economics / Inflation
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% in January, after a similar increase in the prior month. The difference between December and January price data is that food (+0.5%) and energy (+2.1%) and the core CPI (+0.2%), which excludes food and energy, rose in January, while higher energy prices (+4.0%) played the major role in December. The CPI has moved up 1.63% from a year ago, which is a 48 bps increase since June 2010 (+1.05%), the recent low for the CPI (see Chart 1). Higher food and energy prices accounted for two thirds of the increase in the overall CPI in January.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Global Systemic Crisis, World Geopolitical Breakup By End of 2011 / Economics / Global Economy
By: LEAP
With this issue our team is celebrating two important anniversaries in anticipation terms. Exactly five years ago, in February 2006, the GEAB N°2 suddenly encountered worldwide success by announcing the next "Triggering of a major global crisis" characterized especially by "The end of the West as we have known it since 1945”.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Fed's Policy of Creating Inflation: A Massive Wealth Transfer / Economics / Inflation
By: Prof_Rodrigue_Trembl
"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President
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Thursday, February 17, 2011
Fed Upgrades U.S. GDP Growth Forecast, Remains Significantly Concerned About Unemployment / Economics / US Economy
By: Asha_Bangalore
The minutes of the January FOMC meeting show the Fed more optimistic about economic growth in 2011. The Fed raised the central tendency for real GDP growth in 2011 to 3.4% - 3.9% from the November forecast of 3.0% to 3.6% (see Table 1). The revisions to projections of economic growth in 2012 and 2013 were small compared with the revision of estimates for 2011.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Bank of England Quarterly Inflation Propaganda Report Attempts to Mask Stagflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The Bank of England latest quarterly inflation report continued the trend of pumping out economic propaganda masquerading as forecasts so as to better manage the British populations inflation expectations and prevent a wage price spiral from taking hold by continuing the mantra of temporary factors driving inflation as each month for the past year the Bank of England MPC has danced between differing temporary factors.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Inflation Fools and Central-Bank Clowns / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
With interest rates impotent, more or less quantitative easing looks the only policy choice open...
YOU CAN'T BLAME the financial press for being so wrong, so often.
Every financial decision you might make today is now a speculation on what will happen to interest rates. So pretty much every story a financial journalist might write starts and ends with central-bank cant, too. Because outside the inaction of each monthly vote, central-bank policy is a mass of half-truths and bunk.
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011
America Poised for a Hyperinflationary Event? / Economics / HyperInflation
By: Michael_Pollaro
It is a long standing proposition of many, supported on both theoretical and historical grounds, that one of the surest roads to hyperinflation is one grounded in a government whose answer to every economic and social problem is to borrow and spend the problem away, supported by a central bank able, willing and ready to finance the effort. That support is of course to simply print the money through which to buy the debt so issued by the government – what is euphemistically called monetizing the debt – thereby exploding the supply of money and eventually trashing its value.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The Politics of Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Axel_Merk
In arguing food inflation is not the Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) fault, Fed Chairman Bernanke points the finger at everyone but him. Just as with a lot of Bernanke’s policies, his argument may hold in an academic setting, but the real world is a bit more complicated.
Summarizing the greatest money printing experiment in monetary history, Bernanke proudly stipulates that the program has been “effective”, because:
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011
China Inflation: Getting Worse and Coming To A Wal-Mart Near You / Economics / Inflation
By: Dian_L_Chu
On Tuesday Feb. 15, China reported its consumer prices (CPI) rose 4.9% year-over-year (yoy) in January, which came in less than expected. Economists were expecting 5.4% inflation, based on a Bloomberg survey.
However, after digesting the data, Asian markets closed mixed on that news, with China’s Shanghai Composite staying flat after a choppy trading session.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
U.S. Economy Flight 666, On a One Way Inflation Ticket To Zimbabwe Part2 / Economics / Inflation
By: D_Sherman_Okst
Part 1 Here: In the fine book “I.O.U.S.A.” former Comptroller General David Walker said, ”[The] fourth and most serious of all is a leadership deficit.” The material I reviewed underscores Walker’s observation.
I’m a huge Paul Ryan fan. I’m impressed with his handle on our budget. I give him a tremendous amount of credit for addressing our dismal fiscal situation head on. I commend him for making it the center of his work. This is something most politicians refuse to even mention, let alone address in public.
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Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Mergers and Acquisitions and the Destruction of Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Douglas_French
The stock market has been on a tear and it's all about mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Last year ended up being a blockbuster for global mergers and acquisitions, with the total number of deals and values both rising by over 20 percent for 2010, hitting $2.4 trillion. Private equity buyouts meanwhile rose 7.2 percent, marking the strongest year for buyouts since 2007. Activity in M&A more than doubled in Australia; the Asia-Pacific region saw M&A deal value reach its highest value on record; and M&A deals also jumped 37 percent in Europe.
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Tuesday, February 15, 2011
U.S. Fed Inflation Policy Means The Weak and the Slow Get Crushed / Economics / Inflation
By: Fred_Sheehan
"We do not now have a problem.... Inflation made here in the U.S. is very, very low" - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, February 10, 2011
"Inflation is a means by which the strong can more effectively exploit the weak.... [Inflation] introduces an element of deceit into our economic dealings.... [T]he increasing uncertainty in providing privately for the future pushes people who are seeking security toward the government." - Federal Reserve Governor Henry C. Wallich, Fordham University, Commencement Address, June 28, 1978
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