By Spencer Much is being made of the recent bottoming of the Dry Ships Index of bulk cargo rates. Everyone assumes it is a signal of stronger demand. But there are two reasons the index could be bottoming. One is stronger demand. But the other could be falling supply as the index represents theloss minimization […]
By Spencer, Our conservative/libertarian friends keep saying the FDR made the recovery from the 1929-33 economic downturn weak. I keep asking them weak compared to what, and they never have an answer. When I look at the data series like this I find it hard to accept that the recovery under FDR was weak. 1940 […]
By Spencer On the conservative/ libertarian blogs our friends keep telling us that increasing the minimum wage causes teenage unemployment to rise. They base their argument on the basic economic principle that if the price of something goes up the demand will go down. That is a basic principle of economics but as with all […]
By Spencer The employment report shows the economy accelerating to the downside. This is now the worse employment drop in the post WW II era. The index is now at 97.1(100= peak) as compared to 99.0 at this point in both the 1974 and 1981 cycles. Hours worked continue to accelerate downward Although wages are […]
By Spencer Just to put things in perspective. Note, that January auto sales and retailers reports imply another down month.
By Spencer The New Republic recently published an article by Jim Powell calledNot-So-Great Depression How Warren G. Harding got us out of it. Jim Powell wrote: Which U.S. president ranks as America’s greatest depression fighter? America’s greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding…. Harding inherited Wilson’s mess — in particular, a post–World War I depression […]
By Spencer I just read an interesting article on the New Deal by Alan Brinkley in the New Republic titled No Deal, Learning From FDR’s Mistakes”. The first two paragraphs are quote: Does the New Deal provide a useful model for fixing our own troubled economy? In many respects, yes. The frenzy of activity and […]
By Spencer I have been working on setting up bear market shading in my charts rather than recession shading. The results were so unexpected and striking that I though I would share them. First, like recessions these is not a set definition of a bear market. The generally accepted rule of thumb is over a […]
By Spencer Historically quality spreads are leading and/or concurrent indicators of capacity utilization. So are these extreme quality spreads a forecast of capacity utilization and/or the economy?
By Spencer The typical reaction and/or discussion about the decline in manufacturing employment over the years indicates to me that there is a lot of confusion about what it means. Most comments seem to imply that falling manufacturing employment means that industrial/manufacturing output is falling in importance in the economy. But if you compare the […]