Economics

A recent post I published on both Credit Writedowns and Naked Capitalism, “Both initial claims and continuing claims now pointing to recovery,” has left the impression that I am a wild-eyed bull – for which I have been duly smacked about…

I'm back after a brief hiatus.  I would like to present you with some data on jobless claims, an economic data series that will become increasingly important in the weeks and months ahead.  The data suggest that a recovery is imminent.…

Marc Faber participated in a roundtable discussion on CNBC this morning about the dreadful figures coming out of Europe (see articles here and here). At one point, the German CNBC correspondent made a very good comment about Eastern Europe…

For the time being, I am more worried abut the potential inflationary effects of quantitative easing than about the deflationary impact of deleveraging.  But, the latest news from Ireland shows us that deflation is alive and well. This…

The following is an excerpt from Murray Rothbard’s excellent book, “A History of Money and Banking in the United States.”  The passage outlines how the gold standard prevented governments from using inflation as a device to manipulate…

Below is a chart of the actual non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates as calculated via the household survey. All of the unemployment rates are down from March to April. And the broad measure is down the most, from 16.2% to 15.4%.…

Marshall Auerback here with a few thoughts about the monetary policy end game. Bernanke has to continue to make hawkish comments about inflation so as to avoid a complete blow out in bond yields, but the the dirty little secret is…

The ECB went aggressive today and a big way.  They were the last holdout in the move to quantitative easing (a.ka. printing money).  They have lowered rates to a record low 1.00% and issued a statement that the European Central…

While the Chinese were adding to their gold stock over the last several years, Europeans were selling – with disastrous results.  Back in 1999, Gold prices were depressed after an almost two-decade bear market.  For some strange…

FT Alphaville » Just how big a problem is falling capacity utilisation? Nice reference to Austrian School economist Josef Steindl. "Former commodity mega-bulls Goldman Sachs are expecting markets to continue to pull back from current…