America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
The following chart is from the CalculatedRisk Blog of June 10, 2010. It depicts Total Household Net Worth as a Percent of GDP. The underlying data is from The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds 1Q2010 report: click on chart to enlarge image As seen in the above-referenced CalculatedRisk blog post: “According to the Fed, household …
The recent steep fall in the ECRI WLI has been widely commented upon. I’ve recently run across two items, an article and an interview, that I think are very notable with regard to interpreting the WLI. The first is an article ( “Is ECRI Growth Rate Index Signaling A Double Dip?”) that discusses the predictive …
The June 14-June 21 2010 Bloomberg BusinessWeek had a cover story titled “Time to Slip Into Something Less Comfortable?” The subtitle reads: “The bearish forecasters who rose to fame in the market crash of 2008 have, for the most part, not surrendered their pessimism. Their moment could be coming back around.” While I don’t necessarily …
I found Ben Bernanke’s comments on the economic outlook, given last Wednesday (June 9), to be interesting. Here are some excerpts, as published in this Wall Street Journal article of June 10: “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered guarded reassurances about the economy in testimony to the House Budget Committee Wednesday, saying a new recession …
I found The June Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was interesting on a couple of fronts. First, as stated in the article, “The economists in the survey put the odds of a double-dip recession at 19%.” Second, as seen in the detail of this survey, the survey now includes more forecast information for December …
On June 8 The Wall Street Journal had an article titled “Bond-Fund Managers See Signs of a Bubble.” While most people wouldn’t think of the bond market as having bubble characteristics, nonetheless such a bubble has developed. The article mentions several vulnerabilities the bond bubble faces. I would add that a major vulnerability is a …
On June 1 The Wall Street Journal had an article titled “Analysts Cheer For Recovery.” From the article: “Current estimates put the S&P 500 on track for earnings per share of $85.26 this year, according to Thomson Reuters, a return to 2007 levels. Analysts’ $96.61 forecast for 2011 earnings would mark a record that surpasses …
As a continuation of the last post, here are three other charts that I find disturbing in nature. These charts raise a lot of questions. Many of these questions I have discussed in the blog, as I believe they are very significant in nature. Additionally, these charts should highlight the “atypical” nature of our economic …
In the next two posts, I am going to display various charts that I find disturbing. These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they depict such a tenuous situation now – nearly a year into what most believe is an economic recovery – is especially notable. Many more such …
On May 18 The Wall Street Journal had an article on a new lead-paint law titled “New Lead-Paint Law Heavy on Budgets.” This law serves as a good example of an important issue I wrote of in my May 2009 article “America’s Economic Future – ‘Greenfield’ or ‘Brownfield’?” In that article I wrote of the …