America's Economic Future – A Discussion By Ted Kavadas
Ben Bernanke gave a speech on Monday at the Economic Club of New York. Here is the link: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20091116a.htm I found his comments on unemployment to be noteworthy: Here are some excerpts: “In addition to constrained bank lending, a second area of great concern is the job market. Since December 2007, the U.S. economy has …
One of the charts that I follow is the ratio of Gold to XLF. As XLF is a prominent ETF of the financial stocks, it can serve as a proxy to “paper assets.” While I think it is difficult to make concrete conclusions based upon the Gold:XLF chart, I think it does provide a “feel” for …
Here is a link to the latest (November) WSJ Economic Forecast Survey: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125797275784744057.html There doesn’t appear to be any major changes in expectations among the surveyed economists. As the survey states, “The economists expect gross domestic product to expand around 3% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate through 2010, slightly slower than the 3.5% recorded in the …
I ran across this piece, titled “What Singapore Can Teach the White House,” in the Wall Street Journal from October 20. I found it very interesting, as it discussed the healthcare system for Singapore. SPX at 1110.73 as this post is written
There is so much that can be said about our healthcare system and the reform efforts underway. Here is my previous post on the topic from August 19: https://www.economicgreenfield.com/2009/08/19/healthcare-a-few-thoughts/ There is one special aspect of the current legislation that I would like to comment upon. This aspect is that no member of Congress or the President would …
Just a quick administrative note… For those unaware, I maintain a separate site that mirrors all of the blog posts found on this site. This second site can be accessed should there be problems accessing this site. As well, this second site is easy to do keyword searches on. Here is the link to this second site: …
I would like to comment on a commentary by Ron Paul in the November 16 edition of Forbes. It is titled “Be Prepared for the Worst” and subtitled “The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly.” The commentary can be found at this link: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/opinions-great-depression-economy-on-my-mind_print.html While I don’t agree with everything that Ron …
On October 30 The Chicago Tribune had an article titled “Trying to keep up with hunger.” The article was about food assistance provided by the Northern Illinois Food Bank, of which Dennis Smith is executive director and CEO. There are some interesting (and disturbing) passages in the article. Here are a few: “‘The number of people visiting …
Gold’s recent price performance has been very strong. There are, however, quite a few indicators that, from a historical perspective, seem to disconfirm Gold’s current price, which as I write this is $1101 for the December futures contract. One of the factors that seems to be speaking against Gold is the lagging performance of the HUI …
The following chart is from the CalculatedRISK blog of November 8 http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/11/summary-and-look-ahead.html I like this chart as it presents a relative depiction of Post WWII recession job losses. As one can see, our current period of economic weakness’s job losses are outsized both in duration and severity: Here is a long-term view of the official stated Unemployment Rate. …