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 …
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 …
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 June 2, 2016 update (reflecting data through May 27) is -1.005. Of course, there are a variety of other measures and indices that are supposed to measure financial stress and other related …
For reference purposes, below are two charts of the VIX from year 2000 through yesterday’s (May 31, 2016) close, which had a closing value of 14.19. Here is the VIX Weekly chart, depicted on a LOG scale, with the 13- and 34-week moving averages, seen in the cyan and red lines, respectively: (click on chart …
In the March 9, 2012 post (“Charts of Equities’ Performance Since March 9, 2009 And January 1, 1980“) I highlighted two charts for reference purposes. Below are those two charts, updated through the latest daily closing price. The first is a daily chart of the S&P500 (shown in green), as well as five prominent (AAPL, IBM, …
StockCharts.com maintains long-term historical charts of various major stock market indices, interest rates, currencies, commodities, and economic indicators. As a long-term reference, below are charts depicting various stock market indices for the dates shown. All charts are depicted on a monthly basis using a LOG scale. (click on charts to enlarge images)(charts courtesy of StockCharts.com) …
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 …
As a reference for long-term house price index trends, below is a chart, updated with the most current data (through March) from the CalculatedRisk blog post of May 31, 2016 titled “Real Prices and Price-to-Rent Ratio in March”: (click on chart to enlarge image) _____ The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation SPX …
Doug Short had a blog post of May 31, 2016 (“Consumer Confidence Declined Further in May“) 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 last post (“1st Quarter 2016 Corporate Profits“) I displayed, for reference purposes, a long-term chart depicting Corporate Profits After Tax. There are many ways to view this measure, both on an absolute as well as relative basis. One relative measure is viewing Corporate Profits as a Percentage of GDP. I feel that this …