Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Monday, October 19, 2020
From Recession to an Ever-Deeper One / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: John_Mauldin
Economists who expected a quick recovery from this recession have been revising their forecasts. Mounting evidence suggests the May/June bounce was just that—a bounce, and not a return to prior trends.
I’ve been following Homebase, a payroll/HR data provider for small businesses, whose data gives us high-frequency and nearly real-time information. This is from their September report:
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Friday, October 16, 2020
US Economic Recovery Is in Need of Some Rescue / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Mauldin
Recovery is coming because the economy has found a new equilibrium. That's what we are told. Except, that’s not what the data says.
Last week, I laid out the case that US government debt would be $50 trillion by 2030. That was using straight-line CBO projections along with the 2008 recovery pattern for government revenue.
I added in off-budget debt at its $269 billion yearly average. But now, USdebtclock.org projects off-budget deficit will rise by over $1 trillion this year.
With that in mind, it's not just that we'll have even higher debt by 2030. It's that this mounting debt will further slow the recovery.
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Thursday, October 15, 2020
Fed Chairman Begs Congress to Stimulate Beleaguered US Economy / Economics / US Economy
By: MoneyMetals
Precious metals investors faced choppy market seas this week. Gold bobbed to a slight decline while silver essentially treaded water through Thursday’s close. Both are advancing strongly today.
Metals markets are being overshadowed by equities markets. The S&P 500 broke out to a 5-week high on Thursday. The rally comes on a rising tide of Federal Reserve liquidity coupled with on again, off again hopes for a stimulus deal in Washington.
More stimulus is definitely coming. The only question is how many trillions and whether they get dished out before or after the election.
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Saturday, October 10, 2020
What Happens When the Stumble-Through Economy Stalls / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: John_Mauldin
Our economic prospects looked bleak back in March and April. Much of the economy was closed down, we didn’t know how bad the virus would get, and it was hard to see a good outcome.
Now the outlook is relatively better. Unemployment, GDP, and other indicators aren’t great but they’ve improved. Yet a “better” outlook isn’t necessarily a good one. It’s just “not as bad.”
Today’s numbers would be considered terrible if we weren’t comparing them to truly disastrous numbers from last spring. We avoided the worst because fiscal income replacement and business lifelines maintained consumer spending, and in some cases increased it.
If you fly a lot as I do (or used to), you’ve heard the term “stall speed.” An airplane needs to go a certain speed in order to stay aloft.
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Friday, October 09, 2020
Q2 Was Disastrous. But What’s Next for the US Economy – and Gold? / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The real US GDP plunged with a 31.4 percent annual rate in Q2 of 2020. In that regard, what’s next for the American economy and the gold market?We all know that the second quarter was disastrous for the US economy. And now, it’s official. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the third real GDP estimate in the Q2. According to the report, the real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 31.4 percent (slightly better than the second estimate of 31.7-percent plunge), or 9 percent more from the previous quarter and the second quarter of 2019, as the chart below shows. In other words, the US economy has suffered the sharpest contraction since the government started keeping records in 1947.
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Saturday, October 03, 2020
Congressional Budget Office Tax Revenues Set to Surge! In 2 Years, That Is / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Mauldin
All debt shares one common characteristic. A bill comes due at some point and, if the borrower doesn’t pay, the lender either loses their money or finds someone else to pay.
I’ve warned for several years now that our growing global debt load is unpayable. We will eventually “reorganize” it in what I call The Great Reset, likely later in this decade.
Recent developments suggest debt will be even bigger than I expected, to the tune of $50 trillion in the US by 2030. That's double what I expected just one year ago.
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Saturday, September 19, 2020
A Greater Economic Depression For The 21st Century / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: Kelsey_Williams
Some are calling it the “Greater Depression” but that still makes last century’s Depression of the 1930’s the point of reference. The Great Depression of the 1930s was bad, but what we are facing now is worse.
The Depression Of The 21st Century will likely end up being the new singular event of discussion and comparison for all financial and economic catastrophes. Questions of how much worse and how long it will last are difficult to answer. Predictions about the type and strength of potential recovery could be premature.
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Thursday, September 17, 2020
Peak Financialism And Post-Capitalist Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Steven_Vincent
The protracted malaise of the 1970s, with high price inflation and GDP recession, signaled the advent of Peak Industrial Capitalism.
The maturation of the industrial sector of the economy and the onset of demographic growth challenges required the offsetting growth of the financial sector.
The standard of living has declined under Financialism, but the technology revolution has offset some of the negative associated trends.
Financialization has increasingly skimmed Economic Value out of the economic system into the pockets of a smaller and smaller group of elites as larger and larger percentages of the population have become more and more dependent on government programs.
What comes after Peak Financialization? Where do we go from here? As I have said in previous segments in this series, an Information-Based Economic System, Technocracy, Structural Unemployment and Universal Basic Income are some of the likely outcomes we can expect.
This article is part of an ongoing related series that explores an ongoing long-term secular systemic shift in markets, economics, politics and society. Readers might also like to read:
- Information Is The New Capital
- Understanding The Apparent Mismatch Between Current Economic Conditions and the Financial System
- Debt Financialization, Gross Domestic Product And The Systemic Paradigm Shift
The protracted malaise of the 1970s, with high price inflation and GDP recession, signaled the advent of Peak Industrial Capitalism. The creation of Economic Value from the transformational processes of industrial production (manufacturing, mining, utilities) began to reach its limits of expansion and growth.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Warns of 10% Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: MoneyMetals
Over the past month, gold has traded in a range with support around $1,900. Bulls have made a couple unsuccessful attempts to retake and hold above the $2,000 level following the sharp plunge below it on August 11th.
But we are likely to see a more decisive move in the gold market one way or the other in the days ahead.
The near-term outlook for precious metals markets may be determined by where the U.S. Dollar Index heads next. It has been basing out since August after trending lower earlier in the summer.
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Sunday, September 13, 2020
Is this the End of Capitalism? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Nadeem_Walayat
If one looks at the facts of rampant government money printing to monetize government debt, permanent deficit spending on an epic scale, debt to GDP north of 100% all to finance social projects such as the UK government paying 80% of furloughed employee salaries, with similar or even greater government interventions in nations such as Germany. We'll this begs the question, how can our economies still be labeled as capitalist?
We are not living in capitalist nations, the slogans might be all about free market economies, capitalism, and theories preached of the boom bust cycle in the financial press and taught at universities, instead we tend to have the booms without the busts! Because we are NOT really living in capitalist economies!
Then what are we living in?
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Friday, September 11, 2020
The Inflation Mega-trend is Going Hyper! / Economics / Inflation
By: Nadeem_Walayat
QE4EVER!
Virtually everything that cannot be easily printed is rocketing higher which includes GOLD! It's not hard to see why as a consequence of rampant money printing by governments across the world in the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic economic depression. For instance the UK alone looks set to print about £550 billion this year most of which will be monetized by the Bank of England so that the government can pay the wages of about 1/3rd of Britains workforce for a good 6 months with likely many more economic stimulus measures to follow over the next 6 months towards fighting the Pandemics dire economic consequences.
Whilst the United States has printed $2.2 trillion of stimulus dollars to date with at least another $1.3 trillion to come, that's $3.5 trillion which dwarfs the 2008 financial crisis bailout of $720 billion. Funneling stimulus checks on an epic scale into the back pockets of every working age citizen. Printing money has REAL consequences which is REAL inflation hence what we have been witnessing in markets across the spectrum, and whist I have yet to take a peak at the housing markets, I would not be surprised if the UK housing market at least will start to experience a money printing inflationary boom over the coming year, this despite the fact that people have less disposable income to buy housing, but more on that in a future article.
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Thursday, September 10, 2020
Inflation by Fiat / Economics / Inflation
By: Michael_Pento
The Fed has now officially changed its inflation target from 2%, to one that averages above 2% in order to compensate for the years where inflation was below its target. First off, the Fed has a horrific track record with meeting its first and primary mandate of stable prices. Then, in the wake of the Great Recession, it redefined stable prices as 2% inflation—even though that means the dollar’s purchasing power gets cut in half in 36 years. Now, following his latest Jackson Hole speech, Chair Powell has adopted a new definition of stable prices; one where its new mandate will be to bring inflation above 2% with the same degree and duration in which it has fallen short of its 2% target.Just to be clear, the Fed has no idea what causes inflation. It also deliberately goes way out of its way to under measure it. Is it any wonder then that the Fed's historical record proves it has little ability to meet its own inflation target? As I explained in a commentary written a couple of month ago, the Fed has a tremendous amount of difficulty controlling inflation in either direction. In 7 out of the last 12 years, the Fed has been unable to achieve average annualized CPI of at least 2%. Therefore, 58% of the time the Fed has failed to reach its minimum inflation goal. Conversely, inflation spiked to double digits by 1975 and, after a brief pause in ’76-’77, eventually soared to 14.6% by early 1980. During this process, our central bank found it necessary to raise rates from 3.75% in February 1971, all the way to 20% by the middle of 1980. That doesn’t sound like inflation is easily managed does it? But the Fed is fond of trying to convince investors that is the case.
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Thursday, September 10, 2020
Unemployment Rate Drops. Will It Drag Gold Down? / Economics / Employment
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
The U.S. labor market improved in August, although headlines paint too rosy a picture. What does it all mean for the gold market?Great news for the U.S. labor market: according to the BLS, the American economy regained 1.4 million jobs, while the unemployment rate fell below 10 percent for the first time in the pandemic era! To be more precise, the unemployment rate declined from 10.2 percent in July to 8.4 percent in August, as the chart below shows.
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Sunday, August 30, 2020
3 Truths That Will Define This 3-Part US Economy / Economics / US Economy
By: John_Mauldin
The economy recovery, when it comes—and it will—is going to be uneven.
In some parts of the economy, it's already starting. Other parts will be in what can only be described as a depression for quite some time. And still others are going to take off like a rocket ship.
This three-part economy won't fit compactly into the V- or U-shaped recovery that some are predicting (read: hoping) for. More likely, it will look like a "K."
Whether it's K-shaped or some other to-be-determined letter, there are three truths that will define this economic recovery:
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Friday, August 28, 2020
The US Economy Needs More Than a Vaccine / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: Michael_Pento
The hype and hope being promulgated by Wall Street and D.C. is that the imminent and well-advertised approval of vaccines will bring the economy back to what they characterize as its pre-pandemic state of health. However, even if these prophylactics are very efficient in controlling the pandemic and lead the economy back to “normal”, the state of the economy was anything but normal and healthy prior to the Wuhan outbreak.
The year over year change in GDP in the fourth quarter of 2020 from the trailing 12 months was just 2.3%. Admittedly, this wasn’t indicative of a terrible economy; but it also was very far from what many have portrayed as the best economy anyone has ever seen on the planet. Most importantly, to even get to that rather pedestrian level of just trend GDP growth for the year, the Fed had to slash interest rates three times in the five months prior to the start of 2020. And, please also remember that the Fed felt it necessary to return to Quantitative Easing (QE) in order to re-liquify the entire banking system and save the markets from crashing.
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Thursday, August 27, 2020
What the Covid-19 Economic Recovery Really Looks Like / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: John_Mauldin
The media and politicians like to talk about "the economy" as a general term. These days, there is a lot of talk about it having V- or U-shaped recovery.
But within the economy right now are several different economies, and they won't see recovery at the same time or rate. So if we have to choose a letter for what the recovery will look like, maybe it should be a “K.”
That's because some will go up while others go down. This is already happening and apparent, as Heather Long illustrates for The Washington Post:
"This dichotomy is evident in many facets of the economy, especially in employment. Jobs are fully back for the highest wage earners, but fewer than half the jobs lost this spring have returned for those making less than $20 an hour, according to a new labor data analysis by John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University and co-director of Opportunity Insights."
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Wednesday, August 26, 2020
We Have an Economic Eight-Body Problem / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: John_Mauldin
If you have three large objects that have gravitational impact on each other, you can determine where they have been in the past.
However, you cannot predict where they will be in the future. At least, not without great difficulty.
In physics, this is called the three-body problem.
In economics, we are well beyond the three-body problem. I think it is more like an eight-body problem. See if you agree:
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Wednesday, August 26, 2020
What Makes This Recession Different From the Rest / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: John_Mauldin
"It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job;
it's a depression when you lose yours."
—Harry S. Truman, 33rd US President
In recent weeks, numerous commentators started to suggest the US and the world are entering a depression.
For some areas of the economy, that is clearly true. But not every area.
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Sunday, August 23, 2020
CPI Goes Up in July. Will Inflation Dragon Take to the Air with Gold? / Economics / Inflation
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
CPI rises again in July. But will the inflation dragon take to the air, taking gold with it?The U.S. CPI inflation rate rose 0.6 percent in July, for the second month in a row. The move was driven to a large extent by higher energy prices (the energy index increased 5.1 percent in June as the gasoline index rose 12.3 percent). The core CPI rose also 0.6 percent, following a 0.1 percent drop in May. It was the biggest monthly increase in the core rate since 1991.
On an annual basis, the overall CPI increased 1 percent (seasonally adjusted), following 0.7 percent increase in June. Meanwhile, the core CPI rose 1.6 percent, which implies the acceleration from 1.2 percent recorded in the previous month. So, as the chart below shows, inflation remains low, but it is no longer very low.
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Thursday, August 20, 2020
Economic Data Suggests Reopening, not Recovery. Will Gold Re-Rally Now? / Economics / Coronavirus Depression
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
Retail sales growth has slowed down. What does it mean for the U.S. economy and the gold market?Retail sales increased 1.2 percent in July. The growth was worse than expected, which hit the U.S. stock market. As the chart below shows, the number was also much weaker than in the two previous months (8.4 percent gain in June and 18.3 percent jump in May), when it seemed that the economy started to rebound.
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