America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
On Thursday President Obama signed the HIRE Act, a jobs stimulus. The summary of the signing can be found here. There is also a transcript of his remarks found here. I could make many comments about this jobs stimulus. However, as an intervention measure, it has many of the same characteristics of other interventions. As …
Crain’s recently came out with their list of the largest Chicago-area employers. What I found notable was that the top 5 employers are various government entities (federal, state and local). Of course, this situation is not unique to the Chicago area. Many states have a large percentage of their total jobs as government jobs. While …
Those familiar with this blog know that I believe (based off of my overall analysis) that our current purported economic recovery is not sustainable. As I have indicated in previous writings, we as a nation need to be more “strategic” in nature if we are to attain true Sustainable Prosperity. One critical question that we …
On January 13 I wrote the following blog post concerning the overall situation of the US Dollar: https://www.economicgreenfield.com/2010/01/13/the-us-dollar-a-few-comments/ In that post, I wrote that there appeared to be few if any signs that a severe US Dollar decline was impending. However, the situation has changed. When viewed from a technical analysis perspective, US Dollar seems …
Here are some indicators that are supposed to predict and/or depict economic activity. These indicators have been discussed in previous blog posts: The USA TODAY/IHS Global Insight Economic Outlook Index: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/economic-outlook.htm an excerpt dated 2/24: “The February update of the USA TODAY/IHS Global Insight Economic Outlook Index shows real GDP growth, at a six-month annualized …
I found the March Wall Street Journal Economic Forecast Survey contained three sets of interesting material. First, it contained the survey results and comments of economists with regard to what impact interventions (The Federal Reserve’s actions as well as that of the ARRA) have played in “rescuing the U.S. economy from the financial crisis.” Second, …
The climb in the S&P500 has been notable over the last few sessions. According to SentimenTrader.com, through yesterday, “Yet another up day pushed the S&P 500 futures to its 10th straight gain, only the second time since their inception (01/15/87 was the other).” Here is a chart of the S&P500 price action of the last …
I ran across the following paper titled “Financial Conditions Indexes: A Fresh Look after the Financial Crisis” (pdf) dated February 22, 2010. This paper discusses and explains this new attempt to create a “financial conditions index” that will accurately predict economic activity. From the abstract: “As of the end of 2009, our FCI showed financial …
On January 25 Fortune had an article on asset bubbles titled “Beware the 4 new asset bubbles.” The four purported bubbles mentioned in the article are Gold, oil, the stock market, and Treasuries. I have discussed each of these markets, with the exception of oil, in previous posts. I found the logic and discussion in …
Lately there have been an increasing number of people citing the possibility of a “double-dip” recession. Much of this scenario is predicated upon the belief that as government stimulus spending fades, so too will economic activity. This March 5 article from CNBC.com summarizes some of the opinions regarding the double-dip reasoning and possibilities. I find …