Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, March 29, 2016
The UK Auto Market Is Booming, So Is It a Sign of Economic Recovery? / Economics / UK Economy
The UK has been one of those economies that cannot exactly be classified as recovering or struggling over the last couple of years. To put it clear, the UK economy has not been as good as the US economy in terms of growth amongst the developed countries or as bad as the Euro Zone.
The UK economy has been more or less stuck in the past few years with no significant movement either side of the growth curve. Nonetheless, one of the country’s key performance indicators in the manufacturing industry has shown some significant improvement, and recent numbers suggest that things could even get better in 2016 and 2017.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
China Boasts Most Billionaires in the World and Makes For a Great Long Term Investment / Economics / Demographics
"An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains." ~ Dutch Proverb
Our Asian edge Index and trend indicator clearly stated back in 2005, that China would lead the way in economic growth and eventually overtake the US in many areas. China now boasts the World's Largest Middle Class, and it is growing much faster than our Middle-Class.
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Sunday, March 27, 2016
China Economy Soft Landing or Bust? SSEC Stock Market Analysis / Economics / China Economy
China’s stock market ‘bubble’ was fueled by "speculative mania" which has proven to have had grave implications of the global stock markets. The collapse of this "speculative mania" will have far reaching ramifications on our current global stock markets. This indicates that Central Bank interventions cannot alter market cycles.
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Friday, March 25, 2016
BEA Revises U.S. GDP Economic Growth Upward to 1.38% for Q4 2015 / Economics / US Economy
In their third and final estimate of the US GDP for the fourth quarter of 2015, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the economy was growing at a +1.38% annualized rate, up +0.38% from their previous estimate for the fourth quarter, but still down -0.61% from the third quarter.
The improvement was broadly based, with the revision to consumer expenditures for services having the greatest impact (+0.34%). Exports (+0.09%) and imports (+0.02%) also improved, as did commercial fixed investment (+0.04%) and governmental expenditures (+0.03%).
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Fed's Bullard: We Are Overshooting on Inflation / Economics / Inflation
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard spoke with Michael McKee and Tom Keene on Bloomberg TV and Bloomberg Radio this morning. He discussed Fed policy, the U.S. economy global inflation, and moving toward a more normal nominal interest rate structure.
Bullard said policy makers should consider raising interest rates at their next meeting: "You get another strong jobs report, it looks like labor markets are improving, you could probably make a case for moving in April."
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
The Chinese Economic "Miracle" Evaporates / Economics / China Economy
There’s no doubt that the Chinese economic miracle is real. When you move 500 million people from rural to urban settings, taking them from small farms and putting them in a specialized labor force, the economic dividend is massive. That’s how you keep GDP growing more than 7% for 25 years. But along the way, they wanted more.Beyond building factories and housing for new arrivals, local politicians started building massive, wasteful projects.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Greenspan Now Worried About Inflation, Says 'Entitlements Crowding Out Investment, Productivity is Dead' / Economics / US Economy
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke with Tom Keene and Mike McKee for Bloomberg TV & Radio. He discussed the ramifications of negative interest rates, entitlement spending, and declining productivity.
On the state of the U.S. and global economy, he said: "We're in trouble basically because productivity is dead in the water."
On whether he is optimistic going forward, Greenspan said: "No. I haven't been for quite a while. And I won't be until we can resolve the entitlement programs. Nobody wants to touch it. And that is gradually crowding out capital investment, and that's crowding out productivity, and it's crowding out the standards of living where do you want me to go from there."
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Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Here We Go Again: U.S. Government Ramps Up Borrowing As Private Sector Slows / Economics / Government Spending
This morning, US existing home sales plunged and the Chicago Fed’s national activity index turned negative. Both are obvious signs of a slowing economy.
Anticipating this kind of news, Credit Bubble Bulletin’s Doug Noland in his most recent column analyzed the Federal Reserve’s quarterly Z.1 Report for signs of changing financial trends, and found something potentially serious. The following three charts tell the tale:
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Monday, March 21, 2016
Unemployment vs Inflation - May the Phillips Curve Rest in Peace / Economics / Economic Theory
In 1958, economist William Phillips claimed there was a historical inverse relationship between the rate of unemployment and the corresponding rate of inflation. His conclusion was that full employment (whatever that means) was inflationary. He illustrated his claim through a chart referred to as the Phillips Curve.
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Friday, March 18, 2016
The Profound Impact of E-commerce on International Trade / Economics / Global Economy
When we consider the effect of e-commerce on the global economy, it is said to be one that is both far-reaching and very influential. E-commerce is a type of trade that has a significant and profound effect for businesses located all over the world, and is more powerful than many different traditional resources which the majority of global businesses have adopted over time. E-commerce has been able to successfully remove the global barriers between businesses and customers from differing countries, helping customers to easily locate and contact vendors with minimum hassle.
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Thursday, March 17, 2016
UK Economic Growth Evaporating, Worse to Come than OBR Budget 2016 Forecasts / Economics / UK Economy
The governments fantasy projections on the economy made by their Office for Economic Propaganda (OBR) shortly following the Conservatives May 2015 election victory are fast unraveling as the OBR's latest propaganda nudged expected growth for 2016 lower to 2% from 2.4%, and growth for 2017 lower to 2.2% from 2.5%, whilst maintaining more distant year overly optimistic forecasts.
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Thursday, March 17, 2016
UK Government Debt Propaganda Continues as OBR Revises Borrowing Higher / Economics / UK Debt
The Office of Budgetary Responsibility has once more dutifully pumped out economic propaganda for the UK government in its latest report, where the most notable revision was to increase the amount the government will borrow over its term in office from the original £115 billion (May 2015) to now £178bn, a 54% increase in the amount they said they would borrow at the outset, and which is set against their November 2015 revision higher to £143bn.
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Tuesday, March 15, 2016
The Fed Just Confirmed Inflation is Here / Economics / Inflation
As we warned last week, the inflation genie is out of the bottle…
We now have confirmation that the Fed is aware of this…
Two key Federal Reserve officials said Monday they expect inflation to get closer to the central bank’s target…
Their comments came after data late last month that showed core inflation rose 1.7 percent in the 12 months ended in January.
Source: CNBC
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Monday, March 14, 2016
U.S. Inflation Comeback: Did Inflation Ever Go Away? / Economics / Inflation
This is a guest post by Joseph Y. Calhoun at Alhambra Investment Partners. His post starts off with this quote by Stanley Fischer, Fed Vice-Chair in a speech before the National Association for Business Economics.
Says Fischer "We may well at present be seeing the first stirrings of an increase in the inflation rate -- something that we would like to happen."
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Monday, March 14, 2016
President Obama is the One Peddling Fiction on State of US Economy / Economics / US Economy
In his final State of the Union Address, President Obama chided, "Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction." Following the recently released February Non-farm Payroll Report, which showed a net increase of 242 thousand jobs, he doubled down on that same contention. The seemingly robust number of new jobs created prompted the President to remark, "The numbers and the facts don't lie, and I think it's useful given that there seems to be an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps. It's not. America is pretty darn great right now."
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
The Fed is About to Trigger Another Great Depression / Economics / Great Depression II
It’s literally 1937 all over again.
Many analysts have called for the Fed not to repeat its mistake of 1937.
That mistake?
Raising rates when the economy was already weak. Doing this prolonged the Great Depression.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
International Trade Sinks with the Baltic Dry Index / Economics / Global Economy
Economists and professional investors follow the Baltic Dry Index because it is a leading indicator on the forecast for international trade. A week ago this gauge hit an all time low. Since then a small upturn has moved the index upward slightly. Hellenic Shipping News observes in Baltic Dry Index climbs to 349, up 7.
“Baltic Dry Index is compiled by the London-based Baltic Exchange and covers prices for transported cargo such as coal, grain and iron ore. The index is based on a daily survey of agents all over the world. Baltic Dry hit a temporary peak on May 20, 2008, when the index hit 11,793. The lowest level ever reached was on Wednesday the 10th of February 2016, when the index dropped to 290 points.”
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
OECD Warns Leading Indicators Point to Slower Global Economic Growth / Economics / Global Economy
Pitifully Late Recognition of the Obvious
It's been pretty clear that the global economy has been slowing for some time, but recognition of that fact has been pitifully slow.
In January, the Fed still believed it would get in four rate hikes this year. The IMF also held to its overoptimistic global growth estimates.
Amusingly, the Fed still believes recent weakness is "transitory", but the always late to the party IMF changed its tune today in the wake of miserable trade data from China.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
China And Fracking: The Pillars Of “The Recovery” Are Crumbling / Economics / China Economy
When historians sort out this era of once-a-decade financial bubbles, they’ll marvel at how dissimilar the drivers of each boom were. The junk bonds of the 1980s were essentially leveraged tools for extracting wealth from companies. The dot-coms of the 1990s were vehicles for exotic new technologies and untested business models. The sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps of the 2000s were semi-fraudulent fee-generation schemes.
All, in retrospect, were strange, unsteady foundations on which to build a global economy. But they look positively sane compared to the pillars of the current expansion: China and fracking.
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Monday, March 07, 2016
Free Trade Is the Path to Prosperity / Economics / Economic Theory
Georgi Vuldzhev writes: The political circus of the 2016 presidential election has revived and reinvigorated popular belief in age-old protectionist fallacies. Currently both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are both in favor of expanding protectionist trade policy, with both of them arguing that free trade “destroys” jobs and hurts domestic workers and producers by exposing them to foreign competition. Both candidates espouse an utterly misguided zero-sum view of economics, in which one side to an exchange wins only when the other side loses. Both men are, of course, completely wrong.
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