by Rebecca Yesterday’s post on the Australian economy sparked some discussion of its housing market. I agree – Australia’s bubble is large relative to that in the US (interestingly enough) and Canada. The chart illustrates the price to rent ratio in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, the UK, and the US, which measures the trade-off between […]

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 […]

Rebecca The BLS establishment survey (nonfarm payroll) reports that the accumulated job loss since December 2007 is 5.02% (almost 7 million jobs), blowing the total job loss of the previous “biggie” recessions, the 73-75 and 81-82 recessions, out of the water by 2.5% and 2%, respectively. There’s no question that it has been bad, with […]

Rebecca Let’s investigate these pre-BLS reports. There are many job reports out there, but here are some of the biggies that come out right before the official government BLS employment situation (not a coincidence). Monster Employment Index (not seasonally adjusted) – an index geared toward online recruiting trends. Challenger job cuts (not seasonally adjusted) – […]

Rebecca Wilder With the developed and developing economies printing money like it’s going out of style, the exit strategy – i.e., taking back the hundred percent increase in the monetary base (at least in the US) – is rumored to be the topic du jour at the G-20 summit later this month. According to Reuters, […]

Rebecca Wilder Poland: the bull of eastern and central Europe. While most of central and eastern Europe are either defending exchange rate pegs – this limits the ability to stimulate the economy through monetary policy – and/or running large current account deficits (see chart 2 here), Poland grew a remarkable 1.1% in the second quarter […]

by Rebecca Wilder Thrill. The Conference Board reported that the August consumer confidence index (CCI) jumped 14% in August to 54.06. In contrast, the August University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index (CSI) fell; but the two generally trend together, and the CSI is subject to revisions reported tomorrow. Confidence can be swayed by current political […]

by Rebecca Wilder Actually, murky is something of a good thing when referring to business cycle dynamics. It usually means that a bottom is forming. In some sense, the key to recovery is the stabilization of home values. If home values would just “stop” declining – I understand that there is a market mechanism going […]

By Stormy New Scientist has some kind words for the Obama science budget: Both [the budget and the stimulus package] are packed with funding for science and technology ventures, from healthcare research to an electricity supergrid. The stimulus alone hands out more than $20 billion for basic research and about $50 billion to support renewable […]

I should title this: Yeah, it is just like 1929 you freak’n see, hear and speak no inequality monkeys. I have this pile of income data sorted out from Saez’s work (the GDP is BEA). My thoughts regarding our economy is that income inequality (or equality) matters. It matters so much, that it is the […]