America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk blog post of September 20, 2012 titled “Fed’s Q2 Flow of Funds: Household Mortgage Debt down $1 Trillion from Peak.” It depicts Total Household Net Worth as a Percent of GDP. The underlying data is from The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds 2Q 2012 report: (click on chart to enlarge image) …
Yesterday, FedEx conducted their Q1 2013 Earnings Conference call. A New York Times article dated September 18, titled “FedEx Lowers Forecast, Citing Weak Economy” summarizes various aspects of FedEx’s results and outlook. While I found several comments and forecasts to be interesting, I found a couple of statements by Frederick W. Smith regarding global trade, …
In the September 20, 2010 post I first highlighted the lack of significant long-term growth in Real Median Income. Doug Short, in his September 18 blog post titled “U.S. Household Incomes: A 44-Year Perspective,” has a variety of charts and commentary on various facets of Household Income distributions and growth. One chart, seen below, seems …
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 …
Yesterday saw the release of “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2011″ (pdf) from the U.S. Census Bureau. As seen on page 5: Median household income was $50,054 in 2011, a 1.5 percent decline in real terms from 2010. This was the second consecutive annual decline in household income. In 2011, real median …
In the August 9, 2011 post (“QE3 – Various Thoughts“) I posted a chart that depicted the movements of the S&P500, 10-Year Treasury Yield and the Fed Funds rate spanning the periods of various Federal Reserve interventions since 2007. For reference purposes, here is an updated chart from Doug Short’s blog post of September 7 …
GDP is an economic measure that I rarely mention in this blog, as I believe that, for a variety of reasons, it is a complex indicator that has various computational, structural and theoretical limitations, and as such should be used with caution. However, given its prominence (or perhaps dominance) in policy making and near-ubiquity in …
On September 4, Gallup released the poll results titled “Economic Confidence in August Ties 2012 Low.” The subtitle is “U.S. economic outlook lowest since December 2011; still better than year ago.” Two of the most notable excerpts: The Gallup Economic Confidence Index registered -27 in August, matching the prior monthly low for the year, recorded in …
Many people place emphasis on Durable Goods New Orders as a prominent economic indicator and/or leading economic indicator. For reference, here are a few charts depicting this measure. First, from the St. Louis Fed site (FRED), a chart through July, last updated on August 24. This value is 230,733 ($ Millions) : (click on charts …
I find the following charts to be disturbing. These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they depict such a tenuous situation now – 38 months after the official (as per the 9-20-10 NBER announcement) June 2009 end of the recession – is especially notable. These charts raise a lot …