ECRI’s Recession Reaffirmation Of March 15, 2012 – Notable Excerpts

On September 30, 2011 ECRI released a statement titled “U.S. Economy Tipping Into Recession.” Since that time, Lakshman Achuthan of ECRI has reaffirmed that view in various interviews, such as that on February 26, parts of which I highlighted in the February 28 post titled “The Velocity Of Money – Comments And Charts.” Yesterday, ECRI …

Read more

Impact Of Interest Rates On The Federal Debt Interest Payments

On March 12, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “Uncle Sam’s Teaser Rate.”  The subtitle is “Low interest rates disguise the federal debt bomb.” I find this editorial notable as it highlights a variety of important issues that lack recognition, including the refinancing schedule of U.S. Treasury debt, the sensitivity of debt interest …

Read more

U-3 And U-6 Unemployment Rate Long-Term Reference Charts As Of March 9, 2012

Shortly after each monthly employment report I have been posting a continual series titled “3 Critical Unemployment Charts.” Of course, there are many other employment charts that can be displayed as well. For reference purposes, below are the U-3 and U-6 Unemployment Rate charts from a long-term historical perspective.  Both charts are from the St. …

Read more

3 Critical Unemployment Charts – March 2012

As I have commented previously, as in the October 6, 2009 post (“A Note About Unemployment Statistics”), in my opinion the official methodologies used to measure the various job loss and unemployment statistics do not provide an accurate depiction; they serve to understate the severity of unemployment. However, even if one chooses to look at the …

Read more

St. Louis Financial Stress Index – March 8, 2012 Update

On March 28, 2011 I wrote a post (“The STLFSI“) about the  STLFSI (St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index) which is supposed to measure stress in the financial system.  For reference purposes, the most recent chart is seen below.  This chart was last updated on March 8, incorporating data from 12-31-93 to 3-2-12 on a …

Read more