America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
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 …
Here are four charts reflecting confidence survey readings. These are from the SentimenTrader.com site. I find these charts valuable as they provide a long-term history of each survey, which is rare. Each survey chart is plotted in blue, below the S&P500: (click on each chart to enlarge image) Conference Board Consumer Confidence, last updated 5-30-11: – …
Yesterday, the CalculatedRisk blog posted a chart showing the long-term housing prices for both the Case-Shiller and CoreLogic indices. Here is the chart: – Given the continual decline in residential real estate prices, I have found an April 12 report from Pew Research Center, titled “Home Sweet Home. Still.” (pdf) to be interesting. The report …
As many are aware, Standard & Poors publishes earnings estimates for the S&P500. (My previous posts concerning their estimates can be found in the under the S&P500 Earnings tag) Currently, their estimates for 2011 add to the following: -From a “bottom up” perspective, operating earnings of $98.06/share -From a “top down” perspective, operating earnings of $94.89/share …
On May 2 Gallup had a release titled “In U.S., Optimism About Future for Youth Reaches All-Time Low.” Although the entire release is worth reading, I found the following excerpts to be particularly notable: Forty-four percent of Americans believe it is likely that today’s youth will have a better life than their parents, even fewer …
Recently a NBER Working Paper (#17072) was released titled “Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications.” There are various notable statistics and findings in the paper. From the abstract: This paper examines households’ financial fragility by looking at their capacity to come up with $2,000 in 30 days. Using data from the 2009 TNS Global Economic …
Here is an update on various indicators that are supposed to predict and/or depict economic activity. These indicators have been discussed in previous blog posts: The May Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI)(pdf) updated as of May 23, 2011: – The Consumer Metrics Institute Contraction Watch: – The USA TODAY/IHS Global Insight Economic Outlook Index: An excerpt …
On May 17, CNBC had an article titled “Goldman’s Hatzius: The Next US Recession Is ‘Years Away’” An excerpt: “There’s still a long way to go. The unemployment rate is still 9 percent, we’re nowhere close to a really tight labor market that usually predicates a recession, so I think we’re still be in a …