America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
I am currently finding a variety of charts and market indicators to be of great interest as they depict internal stock market dynamics that are either less-than-robust or disconcerting / alarming. One such chart, which I have previously featured, is that of the NYSE Summation Index. I have put in the S&P500 as an overlay …
Previously I have written of the financial difficulties of states. Of particular interest, for a variety of reasons, is the precarious situation in Illinois, of which I wrote of in the January 19 post (“Financial Situation Facing Illinois“) The Wall Street Journal had a June 9 editorial titled “Illinois Tax Firesale” which contained the following …
The June Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published June 13, 2011. The headline is “Sluggish Hiring Seen as a Threat to Recovery.” I found various aspects of the survey to be interesting. One was “On average, the economists put the chances of a double-dip recession in the next year at just 16%, but …
On Wednesday, June 8, The Wall Street Journal had a story titled “Faded Malls Leave Cities In the Lurch.” Some notable excerpts: Sales taxes are a critical source of funding for many cities, typically second in size only to property taxes. They accounted for roughly 23% of all U.S. state and local tax collection in …
From time to time I post quotes from others regarding Ben Bernanke. Here is one from this week’s Barron’s (June 4) “Mailbag” section. It is a quote from J. Eftin Frenett. While I don’t necessarily agree with (all of) it, I thought it was an interesting perspective and one that deserves contemplation: To the …
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk blog post of June 9, 2011, titled “Q1 Flow of Funds: Household Real Estate assets off $6.6 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 1Q 2011 report: (click on chart to …
On June 2, Janet Yellen, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, gave a speech titled “Assessing Potential Financial Imbalances in an Era of Accomodative Monetary Policy” (pdf) While I don’t agree with many of her points and assertions, I nonetheless think the topic is very important. As such, here are …
On March 1 I wrote a post titled “The Stock Market Bubble – Various Aspects.” In that post I highlighted a variety of factors that support my conclusion that the entire stock market is experiencing a bubble. One of the factors listed was “Extremely rapid valuation increases seen in a variety of private (tech) companies to …
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 …
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 …