Updates On Economic Indicators

Here are various indicators that are supposed to predict and/or depict economic activity.  These indicators have been discussed in previous blog posts: The April Chicago Fed National Activity Index (pdf) (last updated 4/29/10) The Consumer Metrics Institute’s Contraction Watch: The USA TODAY/IHS Global Insight Economic Outlook Index: an excerpt dated 4/29/10: “The April update of …

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Four Confidence Survey Charts

Here are four charts reflecting confidence from the SentimenTrader.com site.  They provide a longer-term historical timeframe, which I have found to be rare. Here are the charts.  Each is plotted vs. the S&P500: Conference Board Consumer Confidence, last updated 4/27/10: University of Michigan Consumer Confidence, last updated 4/16/10: ABC News Consumer Comfort Index, last updated …

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Home Prices Vs. Gold

On April 23, chartoftheday.com had an interesting chart, shown below, that compares the median home price vs. the price of Gold: Traditionally, houses have been viewed as “hard assets.”  However, as one can see above, their recent (from a long-term historical perspective) price pattern seems more geared to that of a “paper asset” – i.e. …

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Two Quotes From Alan Greenspan

As an extension of the last post concerning bubbles, here are two of Alan Greenspan’s past comments that I find particularly relevant given our current environment: This is from a September 26, 2005 speech he gave in which he speaks about how negative “shocks” may impact the economy.  I find this quote interesting as it …

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Mishkin’s Previous Comments On Bubbles

On April 8 I commented upon William C. Dudley’s “Asset Bubbles” speech. In that speech, he refers to Frederic Mishkin’s speech of May 15, 2008.  It should also be noted that Mishkin offered similar thoughts in a Financial Times op-ed of November 9, 2009. There is much I can comment about in each of Mishkin’s …

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Pricing In Our Current Environment

Pricing is a very complex discipline even during periods of economic growth and stability.  With the onset of increased economic uncertainty and volatility over the last few years, pricing’s complexity has significantly grown. Of course, it is impossible to characterize all firms as having the same pricing issues, as each industry and firm has a …

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Inventories

One of the key questions with regard to economic activity is the extent to which it is being driven by inventory replacement.   As seen in the CalculatedRisk blog of March 12, “the contribution to GDP in Q4 from ‘Change in private inventories’ was 3.88 of the 5.9 percent annualized increase in GDP.” Here are …

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Three Unemployment Charts

This post provides updated charts to the “Three Unemployment Charts” post of January 12. As I have commented previously, most notably in an October 6 post, in my opinion the official methodologies used to measure the various job loss and unemployment statistics do not provide an accurate depiction.  However, I believe that the following charts …

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