Clik here to view.
The Economic Foundation, Part 1
I have been a pretty consistent and often times harsh critic of the mainstream economic accounts we generally use to gauge the economic system. Any of those critiques are not necessarily directed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What’s Left After the Currency Circus Leaves Town?
The running narrative all over the developed world is temporary factors. In the US it is weather-related, while Europe is seized by not enough euphoria (more on that later), and Japan by the tax...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Housing Relates To Income More Than Credit Now
“High frequency data”, as some of these data series are known, causes an inordinate problem for those that are unwilling to move outside of monthly changes. These are the kinds of accounts that are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
They Really Should Begin to Model The Inverse
As I noted yesterday with US housing construction, there has been a very unusual amount of emphasis added to the month-to-month changes of various indications. Maybe that is no more than normal, but it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Seven Years Without Trend and the Clock Is Ticking
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that is not the only ingredient in the asphalt used to make the highway to Perdition. Typically, intent is augmented (or actually degraded)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Markets’ Want More Yen Debasement?
The good news in Japan for August trade figures is that imports fell 1.5% Y/Y, but that was balanced by an almost identical 1.3% Y/Y decline in exports. Confounding all orthodox expectations, the yen’s...
View ArticleDoomed to Repeat
I’m not too sure about the relationship between skipping dental appointments and the tendency of markets to crash, but in terms of gaining some anecdotal insight into economic function and consistency...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inflation and Devaluation Are But Temporary ‘Highs’
The reason I spend so much time on Japan is that it is the purest “laboratory” conditions available in which to determine, hopefully for all time, the (un)viability of monetarism. The orthodox...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Wages, No Spending Despite ‘Pump Priming’ Autos
The orthodox notion of monetary policy, following its Keynesian root, is that spending for the sake of spending will lead to a healthy economy. It does not matter, to this philosophy, how or why that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pity Them: Sweden Relents To Krugman
We have clearly entered unchartered financial and economic terrain, a sentiment that applies so broadly as to lose almost all meaning. In fact, the world has strayed off the beaten path for so long...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stimulus Europe
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish philosopher, coined the phrase “dismal science” in economics to describe his inability to get the slaves in the West Indies to conform to any rational order of thought about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The True State of Recovery
With all the election post-mortems flying about, there really only needs to be reference to pre-mortems that predicted such results. Even typically leftist media outlets have seen the “message” for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
CBO: QE Failed As It Has Shown Nothing For The Economy
As I have said before, the handoff from Bernanke to Yellen was significant not just in terms of background but also in philosophy and viewpoint. Both were strictly academic statisticians (they call...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economists Don’t Even Know What Prosperity Is
Like the initial or preliminary GDP report in Japan for Q3, the first revision caught almost every economist totally the wrong way. Expectations were for upward re-figuring which should have been taken...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Can’t Figure You Out’
The unifying element of the prospect for recession in 2015 is how it will reveal the hugely mistaken assumptions that were taken on faith alone. Entering 2008, for example, the FOMC kept some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Happens When Everything That Was Supposed To Doesn’t
Last week, the CBO updated some of its calculations and methods for estimating the effects of “automatic stabilizers” on the deficit. These are Keynesian concepts whereby the government increases...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economists Try To Find ‘Missing’ GDP Rather Than The Lost Economy
With the advance report on GDP for Q2 set to be released this week, economists are working hard to explain why it doesn’t represent the utopian delivery that they swear had already occurred via...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Confidence Experiment
I typically stay away from sentiment indicators and measures of “confidence” not just because they are of dubious construction but they often don’t mean what they are taken for. In the case of consumer...
View ArticleTroubled History For Depending On The Fed To Save The ‘Dollar’
The relevant part about eurodollars these days is that the term itself is a misnomer, or at the very least not a comprehensive description. “Eurodollar” itself is not necessarily a dollar (or even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Second Thought, A Money Tree Seems So Very Appropriate
I understand the conceptions very well, as the dominant economic theory is something like “no pain, no gain.” In the words of many central bankers, almost in unison of not just intention but tone and...
View Article
