America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
The April Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published April 11, 2011. The headline is “Economists See Growth Accelerating Later in Year.” I find the most notable aspects of this survey to be in the survey detail (spreadsheet), in which the economists judge factors that have recently adversely impacted the economy, and also predict …
In the March 28, 2011 edition of Forbes, Steve Forbes wrote an article titled “Ban Bulb Lunacy.” An online caption of the article reads “Next year the federal government begins the phaseout of traditional incandescent lightbulbs, giving us yet another enlightening example of politicians short-circuiting free markets.” In the article, Steve Forbes says “This prohibition of …
The March NFIB Small Business Optimism was released April 12. The headline of the Press Release is “Hiring Up, But Optimism Down in March.” The Index of Small Business Optimism declined 2.6 points in March, falling to 91.9. Here are some excerpts from the report that I find particularly notable: “The index is consistent with recession-level readings. The …
I find the following charts to be disturbing. These charts would be disturbing at any point in the economic cycle; that they depict such a tenuous situation now – 21 months after the official (as per the 9-20-10 NBER announcement) June 2009 end of the recession – is especially notable. These charts raise a lot …
On April 7, the CalculatedRisk.com blog had a post titled “House Prices: Nominal, Real, Price-to-Rent.” The following chart is from that post, and it shows the historical price trends of both the Case-Shiller (Composite 20 Index as well as the National Index) and the CoreLogic indices: (click on chart to enlarge image) – My comments: …
On March 31, I wrote a post about the latest Business Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Survey and the Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. Subsequent to that post, the Conference Board released its 1st Quarter CEO Confidence Survey. The overall measure of CEO Confidence was at 67, up from 62 in the first quarter. An excerpt …
One year ago, Ben Bernanke presented a speech titled “Economic Policy: Lessons from History.” I view this speech as highly noteworthy – epochal, even – especially in relation to the efforts made to “bring the economy back” from the depths of the Financial Crisis. Here are some excerpts that I find particularly relevant: “I draw …
In yesterday’s post I displayed various charts of the U.S. Dollar from a long-term perspective. Below is a chart that I find interesting. It shows, from the year 2000 to present, the prices of Gold and the U.S. Dollar on a daily basis, linear-scale: (chart courtesy of StockCharts.com; annotation by the author) (click on chart …
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 …
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 …