finance charts

Great graphic from the Economist. Note that 7 of the 10 are government-run. Amazing WalMart employs almost as many as the People’s Liberation Army. Gives new meaning to the “Human Wave Theory.”

Here is a chart of the relative performance of various asset classes over the past year. One asset class outperforms the others… by a wide margin.

Today, it is euro banks that are the problem. For example, Goldman Analyst Alan Brazil suggests that euro banks need $1 trillion in additional capital. This has created distress in funding markets, particularly because of US money market…

I don’t ascribe that much importance to confidence data as a leading indicator. Moreover, as we saw during the 2000s, low consumer savings can bolster GDP growth for quite a long time. Nevertheless, I agree with the underlying message here,…

In July, the employment-population ratio for youth—the proportion of the 16- to 24-year-old civilian noninstitutional population that was employed—was 48.8 percent, a record low for the series.

Here’s a Bloomberg chart of the yield on 10-year German bonds since reunification. The overall trend is down, most precipitously since 2009.

Despite the widespread view in the US that taxes are high, taxes in the US are relatively low both in the global and historical context. These two charts from the Globe & Mail make that plain.

The Chinese 2-5 year swap spread has flattening to 1 basis point. The last time it was so flat was 2008.

The employment-to-population ratio had been much higher in the US than Europe. This gap narrowed dramatically in the last decade and had almost disappeared by the end of 2009. Draw your conclusions about what this says about the different…

This comes from the Washington post: Since 1980, the debt ceiling has been raised 39 times. It was raised 17 times under Ronald Reagan, four times under Bill Clinton and seven times under George W. Bush. Congress is currently in a…