Dave over at ETF Digest (a required read for planners) posted an interesting chart yesterday that shows how the correlation between consumer confidence and spending, that had been so reliable, has broken apart. The logical assumption obviously being that the less confidence consumers had in the...
If you had talked to political experts at the beginning of 2011 and they would have told you Americans would never do what Europeans have done for years and take to the streets, but that has now changed with the rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which with the backing of the Unions has...
With so many contradictory data points it’s very tough to get a definitive answer that explains exactly where the economy is currently “at”. I thought this chart was a pretty good summary of just how bad it got in 2008-2009 and where we are now. It’s a graph from the US...
A couple of months back, sociologist David Harvey spoke to an audience at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in London. His talk was all about explaining the recent crisis as a crisis of capitalism and something that warrants deeper exploration, at...
Some sad data from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan on the dramatic change that's been happening in Detroit for the past 40 years, and looks set to continue.Thanks to Paul Kedrosky. Posted by Ed Cotton
Sometimes you pick up news that seems to contradict with something you heard five minutes earlier. The area where you are hearing this frequently is the economy, so I thought I would start there with two stories I heard today. "Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, and employment numbers in the...
It's hard to keep track of the economic news these days with various divergent perspectives and points of view, but it pays to listen to the experts and in this case, Tim Geithner , who heads up the US Treasury.Here's a quote from a testimony he gave to congress yesterday."However, the financial...
If you look at the data on credit, it's clear there's a massive shift underway. Consumers have become fanatical about cutting back on debt. October credit fell by $3.5 billion (-1.7% year over year). September's decline was dramatic, $8.7 billion. October marked the ninth month of declines, a trend...
Here's a great visual from The Deal that explains the packaging and re-marketing of credit. Sort of explains how the badness was turned into goodness and everyone slept soundly at night until the day they realized the badness was real bad. It's also the system that propped up the consumer economy....
Cantos has a really good discussion on its site where it explores the implications of the credit crunch on the corporate sector. The participants include: Robin Bew from the Economist Intelligence Unit,
Davide Sola from the (ESCP-EAP) European School of Management, and Paul
Anning from Osborne...
Bank of America is a bank that seems to have benefited from the crisis on Wall Street, picking up the brand asset of Merrill Lynch for the bargain price of $50 billion.However, despite the purchase, B of A's CEO is very skittish about the implications of the current crisis.Fortune has a good story...
Posted by Ed Cotton
Argentina suffered a serious economic crisis in 2001, with the devaluation of the currency because of pressure from the IMF to pay debts. This lead to mass unemployment and plunged huge numbers of people into poverty. It was interesting to see what happened in the country which is shown in the film...
According to Marketwatch, thanks to rising gas prices a new America appears to be emerging. America is fast becoming a nation that is- Shunning SUVs for small cars, scooters and public transportation- Avoiding expensive doctor visits and self-medicating- Staying in, rather than going out- Down...
Consumer confidence sank to a quarter century low in the April 2008 survey. The decline was due to high fuel and food prices as well as shrinking income gains and falling home values. “The recent acceleration in the loss in confidence indicates a longer and potentially deeper...