Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Flow of Funds Accounts: some are deleveraging, while others are not

by Rebecca The Federal Reserve released its quarterly Flow of Funds Accounts, and the message is crystal clear: the private sector is dropping debt burden, while the public sector is growing it. Quarterly private sector debt growth, households + nonfinancial business + finance, has been slowing or negative since the second half of 2007. In […]

Bleg of the Day, or Noted for the Record

So I ran DataFerret in Batch mode. (I’m using other data and thought I would be nice. Never again, apparently.) Got the popup that said, “We’re gonna do it, dude. You can pick it up later at URL.” And the URL was (1) complicated and (2) not copyable from the popup. Haven’t gotten an e-mail […]

Australia…escaped a total meltdown, but still far from healthy

by Rebecca Australia is another on the short list of countries that “escaped recession” (another is Poland, which I wrote about earlier). As much of the developed world struggles with job loss and weak economic groundwork, Australia managed to push through the global meltdown with just one quarter of negative growth, -2.8% annualized growth in […]