America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
The June NFIB Small Business Optimism was released July 12. The headline of the Press Release is “Small Business Optimism Stagnates: Main Street Desperately in Search of Reasons to be Positive.” The Index of Small Business Optimism declined .1 points in June, falling to 90.8. Here are some excerpts from the report that I find particularly notable: Earnings …
On June 20, I wrote a post about the latest Business Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Survey and the Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey titled “CEO & CFO Surveys 2Q 2011.” Subsequent to that post, on July 8, the Conference Board released its 2nd Quarter CEO Confidence Survey. The overall measure of CEO Confidence was at …
Yesterday Ben Bernanke gave his testimony before the Committee on Financial Services as part of the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. His prepared testimony didn’t seem to contain content significantly different from that he has previously stated. However, in my opinion, his prepared testimony does serve as a convenient collection of various of …
In the June 29 post (“Financial Stocks – Notable Price Action”) I wrote the following: I think that the relatively poor “price action” of various financial stocks is notable. It is one of many current indications that overall stock market health is not as strong as a casual glance at the major indices would indicate. …
As I have commented previously, as in the October 6, 2009 post, 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 official statistics, the following charts …
For a variety of reasons I believe that an understanding of the Great Depression and its causes are important. The stock market Crash of 1929 and the events leading up to it are particularly noteworthy. Along those lines, I have always found the American Experience documentary titled “The Crash of 1929” to be of great …
On June 30 The Wall Street Journal published a chart titled “QE2: A Quantitative Assessment.” It commented on QE2 and showed how various economic and market metrics fared over the course of the program. The question of QE2’s impact is an important one, for a variety of reasons. This impact is especially important as I …
Recently McKinsey released a report titled “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future” (June 2011)(pdf) While I don’t agree with various of the report’s assumptions and conclusions, I am posting the report because it is a notable long-term forecast and discussion of the U.S. employment situation. An excerpt from the Executive Summary (page …
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 …
On March 28 I wrote a post (“The STLFSI“) about the STLFSI (St. Louis Fed’s Financial Stress Index) which is supposed to measure stress in the financial system. Here is the most recent chart. This chart was last updated on June 30, incorporating data from 12-31-93 to 6-24-11 on a weekly basis. The present level …