Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Sunday, June 02, 2013
What If Economic Stimulus Is Self-Defeating? / Economics / Economic Austerity
It's sort of funny to see a wider - though still faint - recognition developing in the financial world that perhaps it's true that the more stimulus is applied in today's global economies, the faster it will hit a wall. Some may finally even begin to see one or more inbuilt mechanisms at work. I personally think it all harks back to what I've long said, that stimulus by governments and central banks may have a function in certain economic cycles, but that applying it without across the board and thorough debt restructuring is a borderline criminal and useless use (and waste) of present and future taxpayer money. Still, we all know by now what will happen when stimulus starts to stutter: ever more will be blindly thrown at that wall.
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Sunday, June 02, 2013
Ponzi Central Bankers Gone Wild, Japan Exporting Deflation / Economics / Deflation
When Jonathan Tepper and I wrote Endgame some two years ago, the focus was on Europe, but we clearly detailed how Japan would be the true source of global volatility and instability in just a few years. “A Bug in Search of a Windshield” was the title of the chapter on Japan. This year, I wrote in my forecast issue that 2013 would be “The Year of the Windshield.” For the last two weeks we have focused on the problems facing Japan, and such is the importance of Japan to the world economy that this week we will once again turn to the Land of the Rising Sun. I will try to summarize the situation facing the Japanese. This is critical to understand, because they are determined to share their problems with the world, and we will have no choice but to deal with them. Japan is going to affect your economy and your investments, no matter where you live; Japan is that important.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
Euro-zone Unemployment Crisis Driving Workers to Migrate to UK / Economics / Unemployment
Euro-zone unemployment rates hit new economic depression extremes, with Greece leading the PIIGS nations that collectively have a youth unemployment rate of more than 50% that continues to encourage mass migration out of the PIIGS to either Germany, or the UK as the below table illustrates there exists a huge gap between the single markets jobs markets.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
Euro-zone Keynesian Economic Dogmatism / Economics / Economic Theory
Lest I be accused of picking on US-centered media outlets, we’re going to spend a bit of time this week dissecting a Eurozone Reuters article which puts on full display the completely absurd rationale of the Keynesian economic model. This folks is truly the stinker of the year (so far) right here. Unfortunately, it also lays bare the dogmatic nature of economic thinking. It should be no surprise really; the same dogmatism exists in the political and religious arenas as well. Dogmatism was once explained to me as ‘clinging to a particular belief or beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary’. While this is not the ‘official’ Webster’s definition, it makes the most sense to the average person and is very fitting for this discussion.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Keynesian Insanity Defence Against Austrian Austerity / Economics / Economic Theory
I just finished reading The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity by Paul Krugman and I believe it is the most disingenuous piece he has ever written.
Krugman comes out blazing with the statement "Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter how badly it fails in practice."
Sunday, May 26, 2013
U.S. Economy Drowning in a Liquidity Trap? / Economics / US Economy
Bruce Bartlett recently lamented in The New York Times that given the current state of economic affairs we need more Keynesian medicine to fix the US economy. According to Bartlett, the core insight of Keynesian economics is that there are very special economic circumstances in which the general rules of economics don’t apply and are in fact counterproductive. This happens when interest rates and inflation rates are so low that monetary policy becomes impotent; an increase in the money supply has no boosting effect because it does not lead to additional spending by consumers or businesses. Keynes called this situation a “liquidity trap.” Keynes wrote,
There is the possibility ... that, after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity-preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers cash to holding a debt which yields so low a rate of interest. In this event the monetary authority would have lost effective control over the rate of interest.[1]
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Sunday, May 26, 2013
Japan Money Printing Economy - Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead! / Economics / Japan Economy
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
– Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
I wrote several years ago that Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. And in January I wrote that 2013 is the Year of the Windshield. The recent volatility in Japanese markets is breathtaking but characteristic of what one should come to expect from a country that is on the brink of fiscal and economic disaster. I don't mean to be trite, from a global perspective; Japan is not Greece: Japan is the third-largest economy in the world. Its biggest banks are on a par with those of the US. It is a global power in trade and trade finance. Its currency has reserve status. It has two of the world’s six largest corporations and 71 of the largest 500, surpassed only by the US and comfortably ahead of China, with 46. Even with the rest of Asia's big companies combined with China's, the total barely surpasses Japan's (CNN). In short, when Japan embarks on a very risky fiscal and monetary strategy, it delivers a serious impact on the rest of the world. And doubly so because global growth is now driven by Asia.
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Saturday, May 25, 2013
Chinese and German Manufacturing Now Both Contracting / Economics / Global Economy
Michael Lombardi writes:
A recession for the global economy is becoming an increasingly likely scenario.
The Chinese economy, the second-biggest in the world, witnessed a contraction in manufacturing in May. The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) registered 49.6 for May, declining from 50.4 in April. (Source: Markit, May 23, 2013.) Any number below 50 represents contraction in the manufacturing sector.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Is the United States the Next Argentina? Part 2 / Economics / Inflation
Garrett Baldwin writes: As I wrote yesterday, government interventions in the marketplace and out of control cronyism have decimated Argentina, one of the most prolific economies of the early 20th century.
But after my week spent there, I can tell you the people of Argentina face an even more troubling problem. It's out of control inflation and it continues to grow worse.
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Hot Money, Cold Credit - Misguided Monetary Policy / Economics / Money Supply
Money matters — it’s a maxim of Prof. Milton Friedman that I repeat often in my columns. Since the Northern Rock bank run of 2007 — the "opening shot" of the financial crisis — the money supply, broadly measured, in the United States, Great Britain, and the Eurozone has taken a beating. Recently, in the United States, money supply growth has started to rebound, but only slightly. In the U.K. and the Eurozone, things are much worse. This is cause for concern, because the quantity of money and nominal gross domestic product are closely related.
Not surprisingly, in the U.S., growth has been anemic, at best. In the U.K., the economy has fluctuated between stagnation and recession. And, in Europe, growth has been replaced by the Eurozone’s longest recession ever. Indeed, 9 of 17 E.U. countries that use the euro are in a recession, including France, and Eurozone unemployment sits at a record 12.1%.
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Economic Philosophy And The New Cycle / Economics / Economic Theory
DENY THE NEGATION
Unknown to many, the dominant political economic doctrine of today, certainly in the OECD countries is the "liberal market doctrine" was built on denial. Since the 2008 crisis, this doctrine has become a mix-and-mingle of 1980s Neoliberalism plus a rejuvenated or reycled 1940s Keynesianism. In other words there is non-intervention in markets, certainly when it concerns fighting near-total monopolies like Microsoft or Google or finding the populace a job, plus massive state borrowing and bail outs of Bad Banks, called too big to fail. The principle is:
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Let’s Export Our Deflation - All Japan, All the Time / Economics / Deflation
The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then we must be content to return, quo ad hoc, to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property, for want of a stable, common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers. –Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, 21 March 1819
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Why Jim Chanos is Wrong About China's "Ghost Cities" / Economics / China Economy
Greg Madison writes: China's "ghost cities" present the West with the shocking images of vast urban areas that sit nearly empty.
In a striking report, shown recently on CBS News' "60 Minutes,"there are rows of high-rise apartment buildings, tracts full of suburban American-sized detached homes and imposing government edifices in China's western desert that are empty and utterly devoid of any signs of life.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Prohibition Caused the Greatness of Gatsby / Economics / Government Intervention
The new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a good movie, but it is no indictment against capitalism, as some may contend. It is rather an implicit condemnation of government prohibition.
When I read the book in high school I did not like it. I found it hard to read, not because it was overly complicated or poorly done, but because of the subject matter. The book (as well as the movie) dwells on decadence, licentiousness, promiscuity, and recklessness, or what was called “luxury” in the old days. I have an aversion to all that, and there was only so much I could take.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2013
BRICs Are a Bust, South Korea is Only Real Economy Left in the World / Economics / South Korea
Martin Hutchinson writes: With most of the world's major economies running the printing presses to the point where it's becoming absurd, there's one country out there that is in the catbird seat when it comes to a strong, stable economy, growing export markets and strong stable companies.
And it's only going to get better.
Yes, there's a world of opportunity out there, but for all the good there are some serious risks in the usual investing suspects:
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013
How the Fed Undermines the Econcomy - Stable Prices, Unstable Markets / Economics / Inflation
According to European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sees no risk of inflation in the United States. According to Nowotny, Bernanke had given a “very optimistic” portrayal of the US outlook.
“They see absolutely no danger of an expansion in inflation,” Nowotny said. Bernanke had said US inflation should be 1.3 percent this year.
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Anti Economic Growth, De-growth, Re-growth / Economics / Economic Theory
DECRECIMIENTO POSTWACHSTUM
Anti-consumerism is steadily advancing and gaining political visibility in Europe, as a Lost Decade opens up for Europe's present 29 million unemployed persons. Europe's huge ranks of youth unemployed, sometimes over 50% of the 16-25 year age group in the worst affected countries, know they have No Future. In some countries like Greece, they have been simply and officially told by the government that their only chance is to get out of the country. In others like Spain, the depth of crisis has forced the state to seize some foreclosed properties, simply to prevent the country's ever growing number of homeless families becoming too socially explosive, but its youth has No Future.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Central Bank Asset Price Bubbles Inflating Faster Than GDP / Economics / Liquidity Bubble
Global central banks have clearly demonstrated the ability to re-inflate stock and real estate bubbles. Global stock markets are roaring ahead of their economies and real estate prices are quickly rebounding from their recent collapse. However, rock-bottom interest rates and massive money printing have yet to show an aptitude for creating sustainable GDP growth.
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Monday, May 13, 2013
U.S. Jobs Crisis - Skills, Education, and Employment / Economics / Employment
"The large shortfall of employment relative to its maximum level has imposed huge burdens on all too many American households and represents a substantial social cost. In addition, prolonged economic weakness could harm the economy's productive potential for years to come. The long-term unemployed can see their skills erode, making these workers less attractive to employers. If these jobless workers were to become less employable, the natural rate of unemployment might rise or, to the extent that they leave the labor force, we could see a persistently lower rate of labor force participation." - Janet L. Yellen, Vice-Chair, US Federal Reserve, March 4, 2013
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Monday, May 13, 2013
Europe's Fragile Competition Quest, From QE To Bangladeshi Pay / Economics / Euro-Zone
Any leading politician in Europe, today, has a "competitivity" speech ready at the touch of the Talk button. Europe's CNN-lookalike business TV channels have almost daily "great debates" on how to make Europe competitive. Against what and who? More than 65% of trade for most countries in Europe is with other European countries - the EU is a free trade area and customs union. Many observers say that is the only good thing European union ever brought about.
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