Executive Summary The current economic expansion is the longest and weakest in history. Why is that? This "recovery" was sparked and maintained by unprecedented experimental monetary policy. This included printing $3.7 trillion in liquidity and dropping interest rates to zero. The result was massive expansion of debt [...]
Executive Summary The stock market moves in bull and bear cycles. Investors tend to be the most enthusiastic at the top of the bull cycle when valuations are stretched to the limit. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the "cheerleaders" on financial media rooting for a "new market [...]
Executive Summary According to an op-ed recently in Bloomberg, the labor force has contracted in 2019. Additionally, according to the article, employment according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Household Survey has actually declined by 200,000 this year. This may sound unbelievable when compared to the headlines of a strong [...]
Executive Summary Stock market hype or the stock market cycle, which is more important? As I have written many times before, the financial media is biased toward a positive (hype) slant - even if it means picking individual data points while ignoring the overall picture of the [...]
Executive Summary How should one read the economy and stock market? Should the market reflect the economy, or should the economy reflect what the stock market is doing? Corporate performance should be a reflection of the economy which then drives stock prices. However, in today's world one [...]
Executive Summary Presently, the average Joe and Jane have no idea they are living in a Potemkin Village. After the 2008 Financial Crisis, global monetary experiments were implemented to "save" the economy. The economic "recovery" resulted in a decade of 2% average real GDP growth, 36 percent [...]
Executive Summary In these Weekly Market Updates, I look "under the hood" at hard economic data and present it to our readers. This information may be in contrast to what you hear or read in mainstream media outlets. Below you will find graphs illustrating retail sales and their [...]
Executive Summary I have often written about how debt and demographics are impediments to future growth. In this week's missive, I explain how the Federal government is playing a game with its debt picture. Through some accounting gimmickry, intragovernmental debt is typically excluded from analyses of Federal [...]
Executive Summary In last week's jobs report, did you hear that the unemployment rate increased slightly? Of course not, because you only hear the positive spin from financial media regarding the jobs numbers. In this week's Update, I again share how the employment numbers are derived from two [...]
Executive Summary After the end of the Great Recession, short-term rates were held to zero percent by the Federal Reserve Bank in attempts to boost economic growth through borrowing and spending. Since December 2015, the Fed has raised short-term rates nine times hoping to keep the economy [...]