America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
I found this exchange on last Sunday’s (May 9) “60 Minutes” to be interesting. It is between Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” and Hillary Clinton. For now I will simply post the exchange, and may comment upon it later: Pelley: “Larry Summers, the president’s economic advisor, asked this question: ‘How long can the world’s biggest …
“And long before this recession hit — for a decade — middle-class families had already been expensing — experiencing a sense of declining economic security. Their paychecks were flat-lining even though the cost of everything from groceries to college educations to health care were all going up.” President Obama, during an April 2, 2010 speech …
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 …
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 …
As an additional note to the last post, on April 12 the CalculatedRisk blog had an interesting post titled “Recession Measures.” In it, he discussed key measures that the NBER uses to determine recoveries. In the post he shows four charts, constructed in a “percent of peak” fashion. Here are the two that I find …
It strongly appears as if many taxes will increase at all levels (Federal, State, Local) in the near future. We, as a nation, are in a quandary as taxation needs to increase if we hope to narrow deficits and debt; yet at the same time the adverse economic effects of these increases may be large, …
I came upon some statistics with regard to food stamps. The program is called “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” or SNAP. The figures are impressively large, unfortunately. As well, the growth rates are brisk. Here is a table showing the Number of People Participating; as of January the figure is 39,430,724 up 22.4% from year-ago levels. …
As seen on the following 10-year daily chart, the 10-Year Treasury Yield has been rising as of late: chart courtesy of StockCharts.com There is very little general expectation for a significant rise in interest rates. In fact, the average economist forecast (as seen for the March 2010 Wall Street Journal Economist Survey) for the 10-Year …
Over the years, the topic of productivity has often been mentioned. I’ve had thoughts on the matter for years. An example is this “Letter To The Editor” I wrote concerning a BusinessWeek story back in 1995 (3rd letter down). Here is a March 31 Washington Post story on productivity. As the article says, “One of …
As a continuation of yesterday’s post, here are three other charts that I find disturbing in nature. These charts raise a lot of questions. Many of these questions I have discussed in the blog, as I believe they are very significant in nature. Additionally, these charts should highlight the “atypical” nature of our economic situation …