Featured Articles on the Economy
19 Jun 2013
The June 2013 Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released today puts the May year-over-year inflation rate at 1.36%, dramatically below the 3.91% average since the end of the Second World War and over a full percent lower than its 10-...
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12 Jun 2013
As kids, not knowing that we were being politically incorrect on so many levels, we would shout “Geronimo!” when we were playing war or getting ready to do something reckless.
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5 Jun 2013
Given all the attention that the Federal Reserve has garnered for its monetary “stimulus” programs, it’s perplexing to many that the U.S. has been mired in a credit crunch. After all, conventional wisdom tells us that the Fed’s policies...
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4 Jun 2013
The last couple of weeks have been very interesting. Remember that, certain regional differences aside, Japan has, for the past two-plus decades, been the global trendsetter in terms of macroeconomic deterioration and monetary policy.
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3 Jun 2013
The market currently has a mixed profile; the bears have control of the daily trend, but the bulls have not given up the weekly trend. The well-documented fears of Fed tapering are undoubtedly a significant factor in the market’s mixed picture....
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28 May 2013
There are a number of interesting observations we can make this month. The first is that whilst the percentage of economies experiencing a single quarters negative growth seems to have subsided from a meteorite rise.
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21 May 2013
Barry Bannister, Managing Director of Equity Research at Stifel Nicolaus, joins Financial Sense Newshour to discuss whether to “Sell in May and go away” as well as the stark parallels between now and the 1930's.
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21 May 2013
Money matters — it’s a maxim of Prof. Milton Friedman that I repeat often in my columns. Since the Northern Rock bank run of 2007 — the "opening shot" of the financial crisis — the money supply, broadly measured, in the United States, Great Britain...
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15 May 2013
In this special interview with Oxford’s Oliver Inderwildi airing Thursday, Jim and his guest discuss the numerous dynamics of oil and economic growth—what Jim defines as the Petro Business Cycle—and how this relates to riots in Syria, whether non...
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15 May 2013
Seems like hardly a week goes by now, without at least one international think tank or commentator talking about lofty-looking Canadian realty prices and the over-exposure of Canadian banks and taxpayers via the CMHC underwriting of high leverage...
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14 May 2013
A PEW study on European Attitudes shows social mood is darkening in the Eurozone, but especially in France.
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13 May 2013
Although past performance is no guarantee of future performance, it strikes me that previous instances of tighter monetary policy did not trigger immediate widespread declines in equities...
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10 May 2013
In this recent hard-hitting interview with Financial Sense Newshour, successful entrepreneur and twice presidential candidate Steve Forbes likens Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to a blind astronomer, says quantitative easings, or “QE’s”, should be...
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4 May 2013
The week's reports did not start out well with a three-day continuation of the last two months of awful reports. But there was hope and excitement created when weekly unemployment claims fell on Thursday and the jobs report on Friday showed...
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3 May 2013
The market finally has a good enough reason to go up today in the April non-farm payroll report. Not that it needed any prompt from economic data to go up; stocks have been going up irrespective of economic and earnings data lately.
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2 May 2013
Bull and bear markets don’t just happen – they’re created by the Federal Reserve. While few investors dispute the power that Fed interest rate policy has on the market, the extent to which it influences the direction of stock prices in both...
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29 Apr 2013
Early this month Martin Wolf had another of his very interesting articles, this time on China, which I think suggests some of the concerns we must have about the upcoming adjustment.
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25 Apr 2013
Recently, Henry Blodget wrote that "The Economic Argument Is Over - And Paul Krugman Won." The premise of the article is that the ongoing debate between economic schools of thought, since the financial crisis began, over what policies were necessary...
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24 Apr 2013
David Stockman’s The Great Deformation is a tour de force work of historical revisionism that demolishes the conventional economic and political wisdom prevailing both prior to and in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.
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28 Mar 2013
The Census Bureau reported a decline in month to month seasonally adjusted new house sales yesterday, but a solid increase on an annual basis. It was a confusing report, but the bottom line is that new house prices are inflating, but sales are still...
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27 Mar 2013
If we shed our fixation with the Fed and look at global supply and demand, we get a clearer understanding of the tailwinds driving the U.S. dollar higher.
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26 Mar 2013
While inflation seems to be on everyone’s mind these days, misconceptions abound. Indeed, few concepts in economics are as misunderstood as inflation. This month I take a look at some common questions about inflation, and a few that I wish more...
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25 Mar 2013
For the past few years I have been updating four market valuation indicators on a monthly basis, one of which is a regression to trend of the S&P Composite...
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20 Mar 2013
...imagine my delight when correspondent Paul Wegzyn gifted me with $100 trillion. Wow--I'm a trillionaire! Since Paul was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area, he presented me with my $100 trillion bill in person. Paul is holding up another form of...
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16 Mar 2013
The purpose of this essay is to put the latest crisis in the context of longer-term debt trends in the US and to attempt some predictions in respect to the US economy and financial markets.
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13 Mar 2013
On rare occasions I make specific, near-term market predictions, most recently in Q3 last year, when I called for a modest equity market correction. As it happened, only a tiny correction occurred, followed by a large subsequent rally taking the S...
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11 Mar 2013
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died last Tuesday after battling cancer. He was a famous and beloved critic of capitalism. But he was no ordinary critic.
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8 Mar 2013
Pop Quiz! Without recourse to your text, your notes or a Google search, what line item is the largest asset on Uncle Sam's balance sheet?
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6 Mar 2013
We have quarterly GDP data for 11 more OECD countries since our last post “World plunges into recession in Q42012“, and there have been some 2nd estimate revisions (such as the U.S).
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5 Mar 2013
Listening to our top politician in Washington this week was reminiscent of Chicken Little’s apocalyptic warning, “The sky is falling.” In daily appearances the loss of 2.5% of the federal budget has been lamented, implying catastrophic consequences.
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