Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Sunday, March 08, 2020
Iran Is Not Hyperinflating / Economics / HyperInflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Each and every day we read that Iran is hyperinflating or about to hyperinflate. The same is written about Zimbabwe and Venezuela, as well as a potpourri of other countries that are experiencing inflation flare-ups. While Iran came close to hyperinflating in the fall of 2012, it has never experienced an episode of hyperinflation. And while Zimbabwe experienced episodes of hyperinflation in 2007–08 and in 2017, it is not experiencing one now. At present, Venezuela is the only country experiencing hyperinflation.
It’s clear that journalists and those they interview tend to play fast and loose with the word “hyperinflation.” To clean up the hyperinflation landscape, we must define the word. So, just what is the definition of the oft-misused word “hyperinflation?” The convention adopted in the scientific literature is to classify an inflation as a hyperinflation if the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50 percent. This definition was adopted in 1956, after Phillip Cagan published his seminal analysis of hyperinflation, which appeared in a book edited by Milton Friedman, Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money.
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Saturday, February 29, 2020
The Greatest Economic Depression Just Began. This Is No Drill / Economics / Great Depression II
By: The_Gold_Report
Bob Moriarty of 321gold rings the alarm bells on the fallout from the coronavirus. Exactly a month ago I warned that the coronavirus outbreak was going to pop the "Everything Bubble." I did something fairly subtle. I buried my main message under a whole heap of cow manure. It doesn't make a rat's ass if I was right or wrong about calling for a market crash in October or the Fed dumping piles of new crisp $100 bills onto a bonfire in September.
This time I'm going to put my message right at the top so no one can miss it. I quote from the January 27th piece, "This has the potential for being the biggest mass casualty event in world history. At the very least it will take down the financial system as the world economy grinds to a halt with efforts to contain the virus."
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Sunday, February 09, 2020
The End of the Global Economy / Economics / Global Economy
By: Richard_Mills
The Trump administration has just granted its Commerce Department sweeping powers to slap tariffs on countries it decides are manipulating their currencies to the detriment of the United States and its exporting companies.
For some this will come as news; at AOTH, it is confirmation that our earlier warning, reported here, has come true.
In our article ‘US prepares for currency war’, we warned readers about these new powers when they were first proposed by the US government several months ago, amid its trade war with China.
The Commerce Department now says it will proceed with the plan, which gives Commerce a wide scope of power to decide whether or not a country is under-cutting US exporters by keeping its currency artificially low. Whereas Commerce normally follows the advice of the Treasury Department - which issues a twice-yearly report to Congress on suspected currency manipulators - on whether to impose trade sanctions, the new rules allow Commerce to slap duties on goods from accused countries and individual businesses, even in cases where the Treasury did not find them to be guilty of currency manipulation. Bloomberg neatly explains what broadening the Commerce Department’s mandate to impose anti-subsidy duties could mean:
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Saturday, February 08, 2020
The Historical Impact of Recessions on Gambling Activity / Economics / Gambling
By: Submissions
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Friday, January 03, 2020
Where the World Is Going in 2020 / Economics / Global Economy
By: Patrick_Watson
We all want to know the future. Unfortunately, the future isn’t talking. It’s just coming, like it or not.We can, however, make educated forecasts. I think John Mauldin is broadly correct: the future is bright, but we’ll go through darkness first.
In fact, many of us are already in pretty dark situations, “left behind” in a supposedly thriving economy. We’re told there is no inflation even as the real cost of living rises ever higher.
Where is it leading us? To answer that, we have to think about how we got here.
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Saturday, December 28, 2019
Hacking The Economy To Determine An Election: Is It Happening? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Dan_Amerman
On August 27th, 2019, in an editorial published in Bloomberg, William Dudley, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York, did what had previously been considered unthinkable. The foundation premise of the Federal Reserve is that it is supposed to be completely nonpartisan, insulated from all political considerations. However, Dudley wrote that Donald Trump was a threat to the Federal Reserve and the nation, and urged Fed officials to make decisions that would take into account the need to keep Trump from being reelected.
The freezing up of the repurchase agreement (repo) market had nearly collapsed the U.S. financial system as one part of the financial crisis of 2008, however, the market had enjoyed 11 years of relative calm since then. Three weeks after Dudley's editorial, during the week of September 16th, 2019, the repo market returned to crisis mode and was likely saved only by emergency interventions on the part of the Federal Reserve. A contributing factor was some major mistakes that were made by career officials at the New York Fed - Dudley's former staff.
If the current related crises in the repurchase agreement market and with the funding of the national debt continue and get worse (which is far from certain at this time), crossing over into the wider markets, interest rates and the economy, it could become one of the defining political events of our lifetimes.
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Monday, December 23, 2019
The Fed Celebrates While Americans Drown in Financial Despair / Economics / Inflation
By: John_Mauldin
The Federal Reserve System is supposed to be independent. But it’s not. And as much as Donald Trump doesn’t like it, the Fed shouldn’t follow the president’s orders.
The Fed operates under a legal mandate from Congress. Its monetary policy role is “to promote maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”
So how is it doing?
Long-term rates are certainly moderate. Employment is historically high, though wages and job quality aren’t always great.
As for that “stable prices” part… it depends on what you are buying.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
US Fed Wooing Inflation / Economics / Inflation
By: Gary_Tanashian
The Continuum (the systematic downtrend in long-term Treasury yields) has for decades given the Fed the green light on inflation. Sometimes it runs hot (as per the red arrows) and sometimes it runs cold. One year ago people were confused about why a declining stock market was not influencing Fed chief Powell to reverse his relatively hawkish tone.
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Thursday, December 19, 2019
What to Expect in Our Next Recession/Depression? / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Raymond_Matison
Over the last several years numerous highly respected money managers and other economic writers have been warning investors about a coming recession or depression. However, few have been willing to describe as to what we may actually experience going through such an economic period.
Of course it seems a daunting task to foresee the future. To predict how technology may change our lives years from now is admittedly impossible, because such change seems to be taking place at an exponential rate, and we have little past experience as to how modern technology changes society, life style, or culture in a reliable way. Projecting how we might live ten years in the future from an economic perspective is not that challenging – particularly since this rate of change is relatively slow and such events have been experienced in numerous countries over hundreds of years. As a result, it is not impossible or even particularly difficult to foresee many of the important changes that we could expect to see from the onset of the next recession/depression.
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Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Inflation Threat Looms in 2020 as Fiscal and Monetary Stimulus Ramp Up / Economics / Inflation
By: MoneyMetals
The Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate unchanged as expected last week. However, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell made news with some of his most dovish remarks to date – stating flatly that he won’t hike rates again until inflation moves up significantly.
“In order to move rates up, I would want to see inflation that’s persistent and that’s significant,” Powell said at a news conference following the Fed’s announcement.
He would be anticipating “a significant move up in inflation that’s also persistent before raising rates to address inflation concerns.”
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
ONS UK Unemployment Statistics Paint a FAKE Picture of Falling Unemployment / Economics / Unemployment
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Today the ONS published it's latest labour market statistics which include headline grabbing news that unemployment has continued to fall to an historic low of just 1.28 million as the below graph illustrates, far below the trough before the financial crisis hit Britain. However there is a fly in the ointment of this rosy picture that the Governments economic propaganda arm (ONS is painting which is that official unemployment statistics have been manipulated lower by successive governments all the way to the point that on their own they are pretty much meaningless. For instance there are over 8.6 million people of working age who are ECONOMICALLY INACTIVE, that's another word for UNEMPLOYED!
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Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Economic Tribulation is Coming, and Here is Why / Economics / Great Depression II
By: Michael_Pento
The global fixed income market has reached such a manic state that junk bond yields now trade at a much lower rate than where investment-grade debt once stood. Investment-grade corporate debt yields were close to 6% prior to the Great Recession. However, Twitter just issued $700 million of eight-year bonds at a yield of just 3.875%. That is an insanely low rate even for investment-grade corporate debt. But, the credit rating on these bonds is BB+, which by the way, happens to be in the junk category.One has to wonder how fragile the fixed income world has become when investors are tripping over each other to lock up money for eight years in a junk-rated company that is offering a yield only 1.5 percentage points above the current rate of inflation. And, in a company involved in the technology space, which is a sector that evolves extremely rapidly with a high extinction rate. Oh, and by the way, Twitter missed on both revenue and earnings in its last quarterly report. Nevertheless, this issue was so oversubscribed that the dollar amount for the offering was boosted by $100 million just days before coming to market.
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Friday, December 06, 2019
What Fake UK Unemployment Statistics Predict for General Election Result 2019 / Economics / Unemployment
By: Nadeem_Walayat
It's the economy stupid! The party in government tends to lose elections to the opposition on the basis of where the economy stands at the time of the general election. So whilst Boris Johnson's "Get Brexit Done" headline grabbing mantra sounds like it could deliver the Tories enough votes to win. However, if the economy is on the slide then all slogans and promises will be ignored, much as was the case for Theresa May's 2017 all about getting Brexit done election campaign.
So the focus of this analysis is where the economy stands and it's direction of travel relative to where economy stood in the run up to the June 2017 General Election as one of the 9 key election forecasting lessons learned from the outcome of the 2017 general election.
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Wednesday, December 04, 2019
America’s “Full Employment” Hides a Dirty Secret / Economics / Employment
By: John_Mauldin
Should just being “employed” make people/workers happy?
On one level, any job is better than no job. But we also derive much of our identities and self-esteem from our work.
If you aren’t happy with it, you’re probably not happy generally.
Unhappy people can still vote and are often easy marks for shameless politicians to manipulate. Their spending patterns change, too.
So it ends up affecting everyone and everything.
Friday, November 29, 2019
We Are on the Brink of the Second Great Depression / Economics / Great Depression II
By: John_Mauldin
You really need to watch this video of a recent conversation between Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones. Their part is about the first 40 minutes.
In this video, Ray highlights some problematic similarities between our times and the 1930s. Both feature:
- a large wealth gap
- the absence of effective monetary policy
- a change in the world order, in this case the rise of China and the potential for trade wars/technology wars/capital wars.
He threw in a few quick comments as their time was running out, alluding to the potential for the end of the world reserve system and the collapse of fiat monetary regimes.
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Tuesday, November 26, 2019
This Artificial Economic Boom Is Coming to an End / Economics / Global Economy
By: John_Mauldin
Nothing is forever, not even debt. Every borrower eventually either repays what they owe or defaults. Lenders may or may not have remedies. But one way or another, the debt goes away.
One of Western civilization’s largest problems is we’ve convinced ourselves debt can be permanent. We don’t use that specific word, of course, but it’s what we do and is why government debt keeps rising.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Preconditions for BRIC-style growth in Philippines / Economics / Asian Economies
By: Dan_Steinbock
In the postwar and post-Cold War era, the Philippines could have been an economic success story. Yet, the opportunity was missed between the mid-'60s and mid-2010s. In the Duterte era, the country is back on track, but BRIC-style growth is needed to overcome the legacy of past policy mistakes.In the postwar era, the Philippines was one of the expected economic success stories in Southeast Asia. The country was positioned for rapid growth.
Or so it was thought.
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Tuesday, November 19, 2019
China's Grand Plan to Take Over the World / Economics / China US Conflict
By: John_Mauldin
When the US and ultimately the rest of the Western world began to engage China, resulting in China finally being allowed into the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, no one really expected the outcomes we see today.There is no simple disengagement path, given the scope of economic and legal entanglements. This isn’t a “trade” we can simply walk away from.
But it is also one that, if allowed to continue in its current form, could lead to a loss of personal freedom for Western civilization. It really is that much of an existential question.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Venezuela’s Hyperinflation Drags On For A Near Record—36 Months / Economics / HyperInflation
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Venezuela is the only country in the world that is suffering from the ravages of hyperinflation. But, you wouldn’t know it from reading the press, where playing fast and loose with words is commonplace. Indeed, the word “hyperinflation” is thrown around carelessly and misused frequently, with claims that multiple countries are suffering from hyperinflation. The debasement of language in the popular press has gone to such lengths that the word “hyperinflation” has almost lost its meaning.
So, just what is the definition of this oft-misused word? The convention adopted in the scientific literature is to classify an inflation as a hyperinflation if the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50%. This definition was adopted in 1956, after Phillip Cagan published his seminal analysis of hyperinflation, which appeared in a book, edited by Milton Friedman, Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Intellectual Property as the New Guild System / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
The standard justification for intellectual property — i.e., patents and copyrights and trademarks — is that the creative process would be significantly reduced if such protection did not exist. The underlying assumption is that the financial reward must be augmented by a grant of exclusivity enforced by the coercive power of government. Because we can freely copy an invention, innovation or other creative ideas, a financial reward is viewed as necessary for these intangible ideas unlike a tangible object sold in the marketplace.
But did inventors or artists starve before IP laws? The answer is no because they benefited from the first-to-market advantage. Boldrin and Levine explain how during the 19th century British authors with IP protection in the UK would sometimes make more money off their non-IP protected US sales by reaching an agreement (a contract) with a US publisher and then flooding the US market with cheap original copies.1 Since any potential copycat will wait to see if an idea is successful, the gains of being first-to-market could be substantial. Many drug makers retain important market share on a drug even though their patent protection has expired and the market is awash with cheaper generic alternatives. There are also many other indirect ways to profit from creative ideas. Many artists make more money off concerts and other appearances than from the original digital sales of their song.
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