Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.
Friday, August 03, 2007
US Employment Numbers Don't Look Good / Economics / Financial Markets
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up (+92,000) in July, and the unemployment rate (4.6 percent) was essentially unchanged, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Employment grew in several service-providing industries. Average hourly earnings rose by 6 cents, or 0.3 percent.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Global Money Supply / Economics / Money Supply
By: Mike_Hewitt
This essay makes comparisons between the money supply of 26 selected economic areas and discusses the ratios between the value of official gold reserves to outstanding currency.
For the purposes of this essay, the Euro-Zone includes the thirteen countries that use the Euro currency: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. All other economic areas are individual countries.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
No Worry about US Consumer Spending So Long As Jobs/Income Are Growing? / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
That's the rallying cry of the economic bulls. Aside from the fact that jobs and personal income are coincident indicators, not leading indicators, and that labor compensation as a percent of consumer spending tends to rise just before the onset of recessions (see Payroll Growth = Consumer Spending Growth?), will jobs and income growth alone be enough to sustain real consumption growth going forward? That is, with mortgage equity withdrawals drying up and corporate buybacks and private equity buyouts slowing down, suppose that consumer spending relative to disposable income reverts to its mean. What rate of growth in real consumer spending could we look forward to in 2007?
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The Morality of Economics: The Key Issue of the 21st Century / Economics / Social Issues
By: Richard_C_Cook
Since January 2007, Richard C Cook has published a series of articles on the urgent need for economic and monetary reform.
Some readers have commented on how distant these monetary reform recommendations are from current practice. The reason for this is simply that the recommendations derive from a starting point that is not customary.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Wealth Effect or Borrowing / Asset Sales Effect? / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
In the question-and-answer session following his semiannual monetary policy report to Congress last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pooh-poohed the notion that mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW) had played much of a role in funding household spending in recent years. Rather, Chairman Bernanke, like most academics, cited the "wealth effect" as responsible for stimulating household spending.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Q2 US Real GDP Growth Forecast: Chicago Fed at 2.7%; Consensus at 3.2% / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Of course, the Chicago Fed does not release to the public its GDP forecasts. But it does publish an index called the National Activity Index (NAI), which is, in effect, a darned good coincident indicator of real GDP growth. The NAI is a weighted average of 85 existing monthly indicators of economic activity drawn from five broad categories:Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Composition of the U.S. Money Supply / Economics / Money Supply
By: Mike_Hewitt
How much U.S. money is in circulation? Printed currency and coins amount to less than US$800 billion. This represents only a small portion of the total money supply. The following essay shows the composition of various monetary aggregates used by the Federal Reserves to define the total amount of money available.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, July 23, 2007
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: The Coming Financial Crash Shows Need for Immediate Monetary Reform / Economics / Financial Crash
By: Richard_C_Cook
US Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., has joined the chorus of those in high places who are warning of a major worldwide economic downturn.
Paulson was quoted at length in a July 23, 2007, article in Fortune by Rik Kirkland entitled, “The Greatest Economic Boom Ever: Enjoy It While It Lasts.” Paulson's remarks came in the context of assessing the ability of the highly-leveraged equity, hedge, and derivative markets to withstand the shocks to come. He told Fortune in an interview:
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
More Evidence of Spillover from US Housing Market to Consumer Sector / Economics / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
We have been forecasting that the housing recession would have a negative knock-on effect on discretionary consumer spending. Six successive months of declining light motor vehicle sales is corroborating evidence of this. If J. D. Power has got its numbers correct, July is on course to mark the seventh consecutive month in which car and truck sales decline.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Chinese Money Supply - How Do You Say "Rube Goldberg" in Chinese? / Economics / China Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
China has an economic problem - inflation. When I speak of Chinese inflation, I am referring to what the People's Bank of China (PBOC, not to be confused with PB&J) is doing - creating massive amounts of credit "out of thin air." Chart 1 shows that the total assets on the PBOC's balance sheet grew by approximately 29% in the 12 months ended May. Although that is down from peak growth of 38% in the 12 months ended September 2005, 29% still is a sizeable increase in central bank credit creation.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Return Of The Gold Standard / Economics / Money Supply
By: James_West_2
We humans are remarkably committed to self delusion.
From the personal level to the most powerful government on earth, we contrive realities with distorted perspectives so we can execute ideas that would otherwise cause us to hesitate if we were to objectively and honestly consider their moral implications. The moral code is constantly being revised to accommodate current events.
World War I is a perfect example.
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Friday, July 20, 2007
Central Bankers - Stop! Or the Economy Gets It / Economics / Inflation
By: Adrian_Ash
"...If only consumers hadn't taken the world's central bankers at their word..."
WE ONLY have ourselves to blame. Consumers in the West, rich in credit ratings if not cash, shouldn't have borrowed and spent so much money when interest rates hit a half-a-century low in 2003.
Nor should we have continued to borrow and spend when the rate of interest slipped below the inflation rate – making debt pay as cash savings lost value – over the next two years.
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Thursday, July 19, 2007
Who Do We Owe and How Much? / Economics / US Debt
By: Mike_Hewitt
This essay takes an in-depth look at the magnitude and consequences of the large debt levels within the United States. Topics discussed include: composition of foreign and domestic holders of U.S. debt, consequences of the government borrowing from the Federal Reserve, and a look at the current U.S. housing market.
The National Debt
The national debt (also known as public debt) is money owed by the federal government. As the government represents the people, government debt can be seen as an indirect debt of the taxpayers. The U.S. government incurs debt by issuing treasuries (bills, notes and bonds).
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Saturday, July 14, 2007
Philly Fed President Plosser: Consumer Spending, Exports Are Cause for Optimism / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Really?
Light motor vehicle sales down for six consecutive months (see Chart 1) is cause for consumer spending optimism? Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears Holdings, Home Depot and West Marine recently issuing profit warnings are a cause for consumer spending optimism?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
US Economy Nightmare Warnings! and How to Protect Yourself Now! / Economics / Financial Crash
By: Money_and_Markets
Larry Edelson writes: I hate to say it, but I believe the next five to six months will harbor nightmares for the U.S. economy so profound that they will impact each and every one of us.
Before I go any further, let me say that I'm not a gloom-and-doomer. Longer term, I am very optimistic about U.S. and global economic growth. I'm even optimistic on the U.S. real estate market. But I'm also a realist …
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Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Crack-up Boom Series Part V, Introduction - It's Bigger Than Just the dollar! / Economics / Money Supply
By: Ty_Andros
For greater insight into our publication, have a look at the Overview of Tedbits . It helps current and potential subscribers understand our mission in serving you. It also gives a broad description of what's unfolding globally and what you can expect from Tedbits as a regular reader.
Crack-Up Boom Series Intro
The Crack Up Boom series is exploring the unfolding “Indirect Exchange” (as detailed by Ludvig Von Mises), that dollar holders will be using to exit their holdings now and eventually is will be followed by all holders of fiat currency holdings no matter which country is perpetrating the “crime” of confiscation of wealth through the printing and credit creation process that all such monetary schemes evolve into.
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Tuesday, July 10, 2007
US Bureau of Labor Statistics "Phantom" Workers Now Account for 56% of Payroll Increase / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics attempts to estimate how many jobs were created (or eliminated) by smaller businesses not yet included in its survey of employers. This estimate is referred to as the "birth/death" adjustment. In the 12 months ended June, total-not-seasonally-adjusted nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.982 million. During the same interval, the birth/death adjustment contributed 1.111 million jobs to the total. That is, in the 12 months ended June, the birth/death adjustment accounted for 56.0% of the 12-month increase in total nonfarm payrolls.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Explaining the US Consumer Price Index / Economics / Inflation
By: John_Mauldin
This week in Outside the Box we look at a Congressional Budget Office publication that dives us the details on how the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) is created. This is, as the CBO posits, the best-known official measure of inflation.The brief that follows will venture to explain the methods used to construct the CPI-U, and how and why the index's estimates of inflation might differ from a consumer's perceptions of price changes. Though I think this article may be somewhat akin to discovering what components comprise the makeup of sausages (knowledge that is usually best left undiscovered), it is useful to understand just how the inflation data is constructed. Some of the points they make are controversial, especially when it comes to "hedonic" pricing, which they refer to as "shifts in the quality of goods and services over time." This does allow for some quite subjective influence in the inflation numbers. While I will visit this topic in a later letter, it is good to know what is and is not being measured.
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Friday, July 06, 2007
The Tentacles of the Housing Recession Are Beginning to Strangle the US Consumer / Economics / US Economy
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
Light motor vehicle sales in the U.S. dropped 3.4% month-to-month in June to a seasonally adjusted rate of 15.6 million units. Excluding the Katrina-depressed sales of September 2005, the June 2007 sales rate was the slowest since September 2002. Light motor vehicle sales have declined sequentially for six consecutive months (see Chart 1). On a quarterly average basis, new light motor vehicle sales contracted at an annual rate of 12.7% in Q2 vs. a 6.2% increase in Q1.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Credit as a Public Utility: the Key to Monetary Reform - Part 2 / Economics / Money Supply
By: Richard_C_Cook
A continuation of Richard C Cook's two part article on reforming the US Monetary System - Click Here for Part 1
THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Monetary matters were clearer in England's American colonies. From the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to late in the American Revolution in 1779 there was not a single bank in North America. Goods were bartered, coinage entered the colonies through trade, and even Indian wampum was utilized. But all this was insufficient, so the colonial governments began to issue their own paper money. Notes were issued to landowners who use their land as collateral, or, in Virginia, to owners of tobacco in government warehouses.
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