China's Fragile Economy, Its Housing Bubble, and What It Means To Us: Download

As promised, here is the complete article, China’s Fragile Economy, Its Housing Bubble, and What It Means To Us, in a downloadable PDF. You can download it, print it out, and read the entire piece at your leisure. The conclusions aren’t encouraging.

China's Fragile Economy, Its Housing Bubble, and What It Means To Us: Part III

UPDATED

We think that China is an indestructible economic juggernaut but its economy is very fragile and it is sitting on a property bubble which will burst. What China does in response has major implications for their economy and the rest of the world. This is the third part of a three-part series on this topic

Inflation [...]

China's Fragile Economy, Its Housing Bubble, and What It Means To Us: Part II

We think that China is an indestructible economic juggernaut but its economy is very fragile and it is sitting on a property bubble which will burst. What China does in response has major implications for their economy and the rest of the world. This is the second part of a three-part series on this topic.

China’s [...]

Party Boy Roubini Worries About Double Dip

My favorite party boy economist, Nouriel Roubini, just came out with his analysis for the second half and he notes that wemay be heading toward a double-dip recession. Too much negative news, he frets. I have been saying this for some time. The difference between me and Roubini is that he believes in the necessity [...]

US Transportation Agencies to Lay Off 2000 as Funds Expire

March 1 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Transportation Department will lay off 2,000 employees today, halting construction projects, reimbursements to state governments and highway safety programs, according to a statement.

Employees will be furloughed without pay because a funding measure stalled in Congress, the department said in a statement today. The affected workers are in the Federal [...]

It's Supposed to Work: The CPI and Further Adventures in Keynesian Policy

The core Consumer Price Index fell for the first time since 1982–0.1%–in January. Economists are lauding this deflation as a good thing on the theory that it gives the Fed more flexibility: in keeping interest rates low, as they have been doing,  they don’t have to worry about inflation. I’m not sure what they mean [...]

GDP Numbers Come Out Friday

I predicted that we would have a Q4 09 “bump.” But so did everyone else.  I think we’ll have a positive Q1 10 also. The latest report from Goldman Sachs reveals that they have upped their Q4 estimate to 5.8%:

We have boosted our estimate for fourth quarter growth to 5.8% from 4.0% (annual rate). However, [...]

It's Still Not My Fault and I Feel Your Pain

Comments on President Obama’s State of the Union Speech

I will say that President Obama is pretty good at this speech stuff. Remember last year when Professor Obama said that the adults are now in charge and we’re going to clean up the mess the kids made? This year had a much different tone. At [...]

Is Obama's Populist Rage Valid?

President Obama used his bully pulpit on Thursday to chastise banks and bankers while announcing a punitive tax on them to assuage an angry populace. Is his rage against the big paydays justified? Not for the reasons he [...]

That Nice Mrs. Romer Is . . . Dangerous

By Jeff Harding.

As my readers know, every so often I get fed up with what comes out of Washington (Our Nation’s Capital) and feel the need to vent. My recent irritation is a letter Christina Romer, the president of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, published in the Wall Street Journal.

The letter is an apologia for the economic policies [...]

Why The Housing Market Is In Trouble

By Jeff Harding.

Since the biggest financial collapse in world history was built on credit related to housing, it is pretty obvious that we should be paying very close attention to that market. The reasons are complex, but a recovery must be based on the liquidation of bad debt. The sooner that happens the quicker a recovery [...]

Q3 GDP: Proceed At Risk

By Jeff Harding.

The Commerce Department announced Thursday that GDP grew 3.5% in Q3 2009. This is the “Third Quarter Bump” I had been expecting.

Economists and the news media are jumping on the “It’s Over!” bandwagon. Their conclusion is based on the premise that government spending (“stimulus”) will actually create real economic growth. It won’t and never [...]

Nassim Taleb: His Solution Won't Work

By Jeff Harding.

As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swan and Fooled By Randomness. He is an independent thinker and he has enlightened us on some basic epistemological issues about investment risk. He seems to embrace the Hayekian-Misean concepts of the fallacies [...]

Tell It Like It Is

By Jeff Harding

Why does it seem that every article from mainstream media seems to declare that the recession is over and that we’re on the road to recovery? I notice a trend in certain publications to trumpet the good news and downplay the bad. Forbes and the Wall Street Journal seem to [...]

Our Recession versus Past Recessions

By Jeff Harding

This is a really interesting article from the Wall Street Journal comparing this recession with other post-WWII recessions. I’ve added emphasis to the interesting stuff. This is bit of Recession 101, but you will like it.

What makes the current recession so bad? Other downturns have been more painful by some measures, but none [...]

Home Prices Fall — Again

By Jeff Harding

The Case-Shiller 20 cities index showed home prices in April fell on a seasonally adjusted basis about 0.9%, or at a rate of about 10% per year. There has been an 18% decrease in home prices for 2009, and the decline is about 33% since the peak in 2006. This is [...]