Analysis Topic: Economic Trends Analysis
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Am I A Bit Too Pessemistic on the U.S. Economy? / Economics / US Economy
A Follow Up To ‘Us Economic Outlook Update’ - I have often said that the best way to truly learn and understand something is to try to teach it. That way, you have to deal with the questions that come from a wide variety of different views. Presenting an article, similarly evokes questions that make us dig deeper to better define or improve our explanation. Several comments I received to my article “U.S. Economic Outlook Update, Is the Downturn Finally Over, if not, When it will end?” http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21778.html said that I was way too pessimistic and that real estate bubbles usually last only a few years. They also questioned weather housing or employment were key issues to the recession as opposed to financial institutions causing the whole mess. So, here is my deeper explanation of why I think that this time it’s different and the intertwined housing/employment relationship has dictated the outcome.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
Deflation, the First Step is to Understand It / Economics / Deflation
"Fed's Bullard Raises Specter of Japanese-Style Deflation," read a July 29 Washington Post headline.
When the St. Louis Fed Chief speaks, people listen. Now that deflation -- something that EWI's president Robert Prechter has been warning about for several years -- is making mainstream news headlines, is it too late to prepare?
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Connection Between Debt and Money Under Fractional Reserve Banking / Economics / Fiat Currency
Is Our Money Based on Debt?
Different groups often notice different aspects of the same phenomenon — this is the point of the famous tale of the blind men encountering an elephant. When it comes to the Federal Reserve, Austrians usually focus on how its tinkering with interest rates leads to the boom–bust cycle.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the 21st Century, Review / Economics / Great Depression II
Kéllia Ramares writes: Orthodox economic theory does not acknowledge the amply documented fact that financial actors can not only influence but actually manipulate the market, make it move in a particular direction…. Economic theory does not address the structural causes of economic collapse…. We are not dealing with a cyclical process; what is at stake is a major dislocation in the financial, trading and productive structures of the global economy. --Michel Chossudovsky, The Global Economic Crisis, p16 (emphasis in original).
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
The Outsourcing Circle of the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
A lot has been written, over the years, about the benefits of outsourcing and its effects on the profitability of the global corporations.
This article aims to draw attention towards the Long Term effects of outsourcing to the same corporations doing so.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
Geithner’s Delusional Economic Recovery / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Bill Bonner here at The Daily Reckoning writes that Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America, is the author of the now-infamous “Welcome to the Recovery” piece he wrote for The New York Times, which I meant to read, and tried to read, but I could only get part way through it before getting visibly upset with such self-serving, lying, sophomoric qualitative excuse-mongering.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, August 16, 2010
President Obama's Nightmare U.S. Economy / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Sometimes it pays to keep flogging a dead horse. In this instance the horse is Obama's destructive economic policies. Before he was even elected I predicted that as president he would prove to a disaster. In December 2008 I warned that Americans would have to fasten their "seatbelts" and in July last year I alerted readers to the dangers of economic stagnation that his policies would produce.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Time for a New, New Deal? / Economics / Economic Stimulus
What are people thinking?
It is interesting to see so many of the same people calling for a "double dip" recession while at the same time railing against government spending. The US Government is spending $3.5Tn this year. Admittedly that's $1.5Tn more than they have, but it's quite a lot of money no matter how you look at it. Conservative, born-again deficit hawks (they were born-again the day Obama was elected) will tell you the solution is to cut taxes and let corporations trickle their wealth down on the bottom 99%, well over 20% of whom are unemployed or under-employed.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
ECRI Leading Economic Indicator Pointing to Double Dip Recession or Just Fine? / Economics / US Economy
Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerji, Co-founders, Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), continue to pour out statements about the ECRI WLI that are worth taking a close look at, if not outright challenging them.
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Russian Forest Fires Cause $15 Billion of Damage to Economy / Economics / Russia
Experts started to calculate the losses, which the Russian economy suffered as a result of unusually hot summer and immense forest fires. The damage may total one percent of the GDP growth in 2010, which is equal to $15 billion, or 450 billion rubles. For the time being, the experts take account of direct costs and negative short-term consequences for the economy.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Double Dip Recession, Keynesianism Is Dying / Economics / Double Dip Recession
Promoting a revamped Keynesian economic theory – one without any guarantee of job growth – is the equivalent of selling a lifetime subscription to a revamped Playboy: one without any photos. It's a tough sell. Yet this is what Keynesians are facing today. This will be fun to watch.
In the last few days, we have begun to see reports from mainstream Keynesian forecasters and economists who are talking about the possibility of a double-dip recession.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Foreclosures and Mounting Unemployment, Signs of Slowing U.S. Economy / Economics / US Economy
Reports released this week on initial applications for jobless benefits, bank seizures of foreclosed homes and retail sales all reflect a dramatic decline in US economic growth and growing social distress.
On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time jobless claims rose by 2,000 last week to 484,000, the third weekly rise in the past month and the highest level in six months. As has been the case with virtually all US economic data in recent weeks, the figures defied the more optimistic forecasts of economists. They had predicted jobless filings would fall by 14,000.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
No Economic Recovery, 40 Statistics Confirm the Collapse of the U.S. Economy / Economics / Great Depression II
Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon. Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth. What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP. At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop. As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable.
Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
China Is Winning the Economic War! / Economics / China Economy
During the ‘cold war’, a term used to describe the tension between communist and capitalist countries, which lasted from 1947 to 1991, one of the fears was a military conflict between Russia or China and the U.S.
It didn’t happen. The potential of a military war instead morphed into an economic war.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Florida Economic Problems Much Worse Than the BP Gulf Oil Spill / Economics / Recession 2008 - 2010
Doug Hornig, Senior Editor, Casey Research writes: Media coverage of the oil spill's effect on the Gulf focusing on tourist income lost by the waterfront towns - with footage of empty beaches, restaurants and T-shirt shops - dominates the news. Interviews with devastated business owners are heart rending. But they always end with references to somehow hanging on until "things get back to normal."
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 13, 2010
Inflation and Deflation, The Flations Moving Towards a Chaotic Conclusion / Economics / Economic Theory
The incessant debate of whether the economy is inflating or deflating suffers from a vocabulary problem. This is as it must be since some (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke) discuss deflation as falling prices of stuff while others concentrate on the debt deflation of an overleveraged economy. The latter is what matters.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 13, 2010
U.S. Economic Recovery, Only It Didn’t / Economics / Economic Recovery
The powers that be are now starting to be shown what should be a very important lesson in the old saying: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”. For a year and a half now, starting at a rather well defined point in time during early March 2009, the govermedia switched gears and pronounced that the shattered American economy was in recovery.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 13, 2010
Inflationary Economic Depression Forecast Revisited…We are Half-Way There / Economics / Great Depression II
Going back a few years ago, I made a forecast that America would be heading toward an inflationary depression. I made that forecast during 2007 and early 2008 when the federal government's policies were very bad.
Today in 2010, the federal government has replaced the bad policies of a few years ago with much, much worse policies today. It is mind-boggling how bad these policies are and it is astonishing that most politicians and many economists don't see the obvious dangers.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 13, 2010
Innovation, What Made America Great is Now Killing Her! / Economics / US Economy
"Creative Destruction is Secular not Cyclical" - What made America great was her unsurpassed ability to innovate. Equally important was also her ability to rapidly adapt to the change that this innovation fostered. For decades the combination has been a self reinforcing growth dynamic with innovation offering a continuously improving standard of living and higher corporate productivity levels, which the US quickly embraced and adapted to. This in turn financed further innovation. No country in the world could match the American culture that flourished on technology advancements in all areas of human endeavor. However, something serious and major has changed across America. Daily, more and more are becoming acutely aware of this, but few grasp exactly what it is. It is called Creative Destruction.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 13, 2010
Foreign Economic Growth Could Bail Out the U.S. Economy / Economics / Economic Recovery
Martin Hutchinson writes: During a period of increasingly worrisome headlines about the U.S. economy, there is one bright spot. The rest of the world appears to be doing much better than we are.
In the long run, that's good news for the United States. Rapid world growth will eventually rekindle the economic fires here, producing a growth that is more balanced than the bubbles of 1995-2008.
Read full article... Read full article...