America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
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 …
Doug Short had a blog post of February 2, 2018 (“Michigan Consumer Sentiment: January Final Remains Favorable“) 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 …
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 (through January 31, 2018) from Doug Short’s blog …
U.S. Dollar weakness is a foremost concern of mine. As such, I have extensively written about it. I am very concerned that the actions being taken to “improve” our economic situation will dramatically weaken the Dollar. Should the Dollar substantially decline from here, as I expect, the negative consequences will far outweigh any benefits. The negative impact of a substantial …
The St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index (STLFSI) is one index that is supposed to measure stress in the financial system. Its reading as of the January 25, 2018 update (reflecting data through January 19, 2018) is -1.463. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other …
While the concept of Americans’ incomes can be defined in a number of ways, many prominent measures continue to show disconcerting trends. One prominent measure is the Employment Cost Index (ECI). Here is a description from the BLS document titled “The Employment Cost Index: what is it?“: The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly …
I found President Trump’s State of the Union Address last night (January 30, 2018) to contain some noteworthy comments. While I could comment extensively on many parts of the speech, for now I will indicate excerpts that I found most relevant with regard to the economic situation, and may comment upon them at a future point. I …
Each month I have been highlighting various estimates of U.S. recession probabilities. The latest update was that of January 4, 2018, titled “Recession Probability Models – January 2018.” While I don’t agree with the methodologies employed or the probabilities of impending economic weakness as depicted by these and other estimates, I do believe that the …
Here are three charts from the St. Louis Fed depicting the velocity of money in terms of the MZM, M1 and M2 money supply measures. All charts reflect quarterly data through the 4th quarter of 2017, and were last updated as of January 26, 2018. As one can see, two of the three measures are very near …
For reference purposes, below is a chart from Doug Short’s “Q4 GDP Advance Estimate: Real GDP at 2.6%” post of January 26, 2018, depicting Real GDP, with a trendline, as depicted. This chart reflects the Gross Domestic Product Q4 2017 Advance Estimate (pdf) of January 26, 2018: _________ I post various indicators and indices because I believe they …