Signs of Fundamental Economic Weakness
Just about everyone these days wrings his or her hands over the state of the economy. Some concerns are bogus, some legitimate. One of fundamental importance has received less notice […]
Tag Archives: economic growth
No Recession – No Acceleration
In the six plus years of this plodding recovery, sentiment has swung several times from extremes of pessimism to optimism and back again. A good quarterly figure on the real […]
A New American Consumer?
The great recession of 2008-09 seems to have changed the American consumer fundamentally. For at least 30 year prior to those shocking economic and financial events, households in this country […]
Capital Spending: Not the Prettiest of Pictures
The emerging picture on capital spending is far from encouraging. To be sure, a number of temporary influences beset the quarter just past, a circumstance that will likely produce a […]
A Delicate Balance
It might remind some of a choreographed duel in a stage play. The Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) are carefully playing off each other’s moves. The […]
Soft First Quarter
Economic growth seems to have all but stopped during the first quarter. Preliminary Commerce Department figures on real gross domestic product (GDP) show only 0.2 percent annual rate of expansion. […]
The Burden of Aging is Especially Hard on the Young
The country is aging. Numbers of dependent retirees have grown absolutely and as a proportion of the population, and they will continue to do so, trends that will dampen the […]
The Economy Won’t Move Because Managers Won’t Move
This economy needs more “animal spirit.” The great economist, John Maynard Keynes, coined this term to describe the willingness of business managers to expand aggressively and identified it as essential […]
Oil Prices and the Economy — Some Misconceptions
A few months ago, when the rise of ISIS pushed up oil prices, articles abounded about the danger posed to the U.S. and the global economy. Now that oil prices […]
Japan: Policy Is Too Little Too Late
For all Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s energy, he needs to think deeper and work harder still. Japan’s economy requires radical and fundamental reform. Yet much of what Abe has […]
Thirty Tomorrows 