The chart below is something you need to see to have some medium to long term perspective on the economy and the job market. It comes under the heading of something you won’t see in the mainstream media. I have finally been doing this long enough to know that people don’t always like it when I present something that’s troubling and I actually thought about not posting it. But I More…
Posts Tagged ‘Economics’
A Medium to Long Term Perspective on the Job Market
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010Jeff’s First Book Report (at least since the 10th grade)
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010Somewhere in the area of 75 AD the silver content of the Roman Denarius was about 100%. It was solid silver. Somewhere before 300 AD that content had fallen to around 10% or less. The value of the currency fell and the empire’s debt rose as Rome fell apart. I thought that was an interesting fact, so I decided to tie it in to my suggestion to you that you find and read More…
What’s Going on in Greece and Why You Might Care
Monday, May 17th, 2010The concept of the European Community and a common currency worked okay (though with massive misallocation of capital) as long as long as there was lots of growth and lots of money and lots of subsidies for poorer countries and low interest rates. For a long time, what you could earn on a German bond wasn’t that much lower than what you could earn on a Greek bond of similar duration More…
In Case You Have Trouble Sleeping: A Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010You can go here http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.nr0.htm to see the report. If it does help you sleep, it will probably give you nightmares. You can see in the first line of the report, released last Thursday, that they expect total employment "…to increase by 15.3 million, or 10.1 percent, during the 2008-18 period…" Now, that may sound encouraging, but if you push a few calculator buttons, that’s on average about 125,000 jobs a month More…
A Little Random Perspective on the Financial/Market/Credit crisis
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Once upon a time, way back in 2003, an investment bank could only have leverage of up to twelve to one. In 2004, the Security and Exchange Commission gave five investment banks, and only five, the ability to leverage up to 30 or 40 times or so. Guess which five they were? I almost don’t want to bother listing them, because the list is so obvious. But for the benefit of all the readers More…
Subprimes, Teen Spending and the Economy; Yup, It’s a U.S. Recession. Can’t Europe Just Ignore It?
Saturday, March 8th, 2008Daniel is my favorite economic indicator. He and his guys install wood floors. To get him to do some work at our house last summer, we had to book him two months in advance. When I called him to do another room not long ago he said, “How about next Tuesday?” He told me people were becoming more cautious and pulling back on projects. With the Daniel Indicator in the caution zone, I decided More…
