America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
Pew Research Center recently published two documents that I found notable. The first is dated January 27, 2014 and is titled “Despite recovery, fewer Americans identify as middle class.” A couple of excerpts include: Despite a slowly recovering economy, the proportion of Americans who identify themselves as middle class has dropped sharply in recent years. …
The February NFIB Small Business Optimism report was released today, February 11. The headline of the Press Release is “Small Business Confidence Edges Up, Ever So Slightly.” The subtitle is “Main Street Still Cautious About The Future.” The Index of Small Business Optimism increased .2 points in January to 94.1. Here are some excerpts from …
I have written many blog posts concerning the worrisome trends in income and earnings. Along these lines, one of the measures showing disconcerting trends is that of hourly earnings. While the concept of hourly earnings can be defined and measured in a variety of ways, below are a few charts that I believe broadly illustrate problematic …
As I stated in my July 12, 2010 post (“ECRI WLI Growth History“): For a variety of reasons, I am not as enamored with ECRI’s WLI and WLI Growth measures as many are. However, I do think the measures are important and deserve close monitoring and scrutiny. The movement of the ECRI WLI and WLI, …
On October 17, 2011 I wrote a post titled “Danger Signs In The Stock Market, Financial System And Economy.” This post is a brief 33rd update to that post. My overall analysis indicates a continuing elevated and growing level of danger which contains many worldwide and U.S.-specific “stresses” of a very complex nature. I have written numerous …
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. …
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 …
While I do not agree with the current readings of the measure – I think the measure dramatically understates the probability of deflation, as measured by the CPI – the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta maintains an interesting data series titled “Deflation Probabilities.” As stated on the site: Using estimates derived from Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities …
On March 28, 2011 I wrote a post (“The STLFSI“) about the St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index (STLFSI) 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 February 6, incorporating data from December 31,1993 to January 31, …
“Stock market capitalization to GDP” is a notable and important metric regarding stock market valuation. In February of 2009 I wrote of it in “Does Warren Buffett’s Market Metric Still Apply?” Doug Short has recently published posts depicting this “stock market capitalization to GDP’ metric. As seen in his February 5, 2014 post titled “Market …