America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
I find the following charts to be disturbing. These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they (on average) depict such a tenuous situation now – 67 months after the official (as per the September 20, 2010 NBER BCDC announcement) June 2009 end of the recession – is especially notable. These …
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 …
The financial condition of many Americans remains very disconcerting on many fronts, as seen in many statistics and empiricism. I have have written many posts on this widespread problematical financial condition, and many of these posts are seen in the “paycheck to paycheck” tag. One recent notable report on the financial conditions of Americans includes …
Yesterday, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury went below 1.90%, before closing at 1.963%. As a reference, here is a long-term chart of the 10-Year Treasury yield since 1980, depicted on a monthly basis, LOG scale, with price labels: (click on chart to enlarge image)(chart courtesy of StockCharts.com; chart creation and annotation by the author) …
One notable aspect of the financial markets is the continuing sharp drop in crude oil prices. Other commodities have also been under selling pressure. I view these declines, as well as other aspects of the overall financial system, to be manifestations of “deflationary pressures,” of which I have extensively written. For reference purposes, here is …
Doug Short had a blog post of December 30, 2014 (“Consumer Confidence ‘Rebounded Modestly’ In December“) in which he presents the latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence and Thomson/Reuters University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index charts. They are presented below: (click on charts to enlarge images) – – There are a few aspects of the above charts that …
For reference purposes, below are two sets of charts depicting growth in the money supply. The first shows the MZM (Money Zero Maturity), defined in FRED as the following: M2 less small-denomination time deposits plus institutional money funds. Money Zero Maturity is calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Here is the “MZM …
Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, below are charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through November, updated on December 23, 2014. This value is 242,275 ($ Millions) : (click on charts to enlarge …
The Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) and the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index (ADS Index) are two broad-based economic indicators that I regularly feature in this site. The short-term and long-term trends of each continue to be notable. Doug Short, in his blog post of December 19, 2014, titled “The Philly Fed ADS Business Conditions …
In the last post (“Total Household Net Worth As A Percent Of GDP 3Q 2014“) I displayed a long-term chart depicting Total Household Net Worth as a percentage of GDP. For reference purposes, here is Total Household Net Worth from a long-term perspective (from 1949:Q4 to 2014:Q3). The last value (as of December 11, 2014) …