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 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 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 [...]
"And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending." – Ben Bernanke Executive Summary Have you heard interest rates are rising? Do you know all interest rates are not the same? In this week's newsletter, I explain [...]