America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
I found two especially notable items in Walmart’s Q3 conference call transcript (pdf). I view Walmart’s results as particularly noteworthy given their retail prominence and focus on low prices. I previously commented upon their results in the May 20 post. First, from page 13, “Comp store sales for the 13-week period, which ended October 29, …
Gallup has a variety of economic surveys that I find interesting. Here are charts of three that I find especially noteworthy: – Americans’ Standard of Living Optimism: (reported November 5, 2010) – U.S. Economic Confidence (reported November 9, 2010) – U.S. Consumer Spending (reported November 11, 2010) – At each link, details of each survey …
The Philadelphia Fed Fourth Quarter 2010 Survey of Professional Forecasters was released on November 15. This survey is somewhat unique in various regards, such as it incorporates a longer time frame for various measures. The survey shows, among many measures, the following expectations, which are close to other economic survey results featured on this blog: …
The November Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey was published November 15, 2010. I found a couple of items to be especially interesting. First, regarding the impact of QE2: “The economic impact of the Fed’s moves is likely to be modest, the forecasters said. They estimate growth in GDP will rise by 0.2 percentage points …
As those familiar with this blog know, I am very concerned about the vulnerability of the U.S. Dollar to a substantial decline. I have written extensively about this situation. On November 12, Macroeconomic Advisers had a blog post from Larry Meyer that discussed monetary policy (focused on QE2) and the U.S. Dollar. While I don’t …
On November 6 Doug Short posted an interesting chart on his site. This chart shows the post-peak performances, in percentage terms, of four bear markets, as shown. As one can see, the current trajectory of the S&P500 (post-2007 peak) is quite distinct from that of the post-2000 Nasdaq, post-1989 Nikkei, and post-1929 Dow Jones Industrials: …
For the last few quarters, I have been commenting upon revenue growth in corporate results. I have focused on a variety of diversified manufacturers and distributors, all of them well-respected S&P500 firms. Prior posts on this issue are found at this link. For the recently released 3Q 2010 financial results, there generally has been …
On Saturday (November 6) Ben Bernanke took part in a panel discussion. This was part of The Federal Reserve conference “A Return to Jekyll Island: The Origins, History, and Future of the Federal Reserve.” I found these comments, pertaining to QE2, to be highly notable: Ben Bernanke: “There is not really, in my mind, as …
On Sunday, President Obama was interviewed on “60 Minutes.” Here are four excerpts from the transcript that I found especially noteworthy. I may comment upon them in the future as I find them, in various ways, to be (at least) somewhat provocative: – President Obama: “And so, you know, the playing field now is a …
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. However, even if one chooses to look at the official statistics, the following charts provide an interesting (and disconcerting) long-term perspective …