Apropos of all the claims about unemployment floating around the Republican and Democrat conventions, here is a handy chart:
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While employment rose by 160,000 jobs in July, the overall unemployment rate remained at 8.3%.1 “Hurrah” is not the correct response to these data. (“Hurrah” is the response seen the most in the MSM.) First, the trends: The payrolls chart (right) reveals a largely flat trend for the past year, which says that job [...] Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June suggests that economic activity decelerated somewhat over the first half of this year. This is the first line of the FOMC minutes announced today which shows that, if nothing else, the Fed is the master of understatement. Today, as if to underscore the [...] In Sunday’s USA Today there was an article on what is seen as growing poverty in America: The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, [...] Once again ECRI’s Lakshman Achuthan discusses his negative forecast with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene. Now he says we are already in recession. This is a very interesting observation because he says it’s more than just output, but things like unemployment, spending, and income. While the common definition of a recession is two negative quarters of GDP, [...] Krugman-in-Wonderland Paul Krugman is in Spain this week, most likely telling the Spaniards what they want to hear: The European Central Bank can end the country’s unemployment miseries painlessly by buying near-unlimited amounts of Spain’s government bonds and then floating massive amounts of new euros around the world. Yes, for the umpteenth time, Krugman insists that if [...] Krugman-in-Wonderland When it became clear in 2007 and beyond that the housing bubble was breaking up and the bills for the national spending spree were coming due, the Bush administration shifted into “stimulus” mode. (It was nice getting an extra $2,100 in my checking account, but I defied the government and paid some bills instead [...] With today’s weak employment numbers, most economists are looking for reasons to excuse this negative trend rather than trying understand it. They blame it on the warm winter weather, or “same thing as last Spring,” or “consolidation”, anything but what is really happening in the economy. You need to look at employment in the context of [...] Unemployment rates remain high as job growth sagged and the so-called “improving” data has more to do with a shrinking pool of job seekers than job growth. Consumer credit also sagged with two months of contractions, especially in credit card debt. The Empire State manufacturing report was down, reflecting higher inventories and flattened new orders. [...] Economists cling to statistical data like barnacles in order to have some kind of anchor to explain what is going on in the world. They will try to cram the square data peg into the round holes of economic ”laws” rather than abandon them when they are obviously wrong. Which is not a very satisfactory way to explain things. [...] This article is another white paper where we try to give our assessment of the economy and where it is headed. These white papers are geared more for the investment community rather than the general public, but we have found our readers to be sophisticated investors and advisers. This represents a [...] |
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