Friday, March 4, 2016

Where's That Recession?




This is not what a recession looks like,

The idea that the Fed is going to reverse its  December interest rate hike is absurd.

 "As far as the Fed is concerned, it is already seeing a clear acceleration in core price inflation, so it can’t delay raising interest rates for much longer. A June rate hike is coming.” — Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist, Capital Economics.

The Fed manipulated boom is in full swing.




-RW

6 comments:

  1. Mr. Wenzel - Jim Rogers sure thinks we're on the brink of a recession. His premise seems to be that just because there's an arbitrary period of time has passed that we're somehow "due" for a recession. He's clearly not watching the money supply data and indicators that you've mentioned time and time again that show we're in the BOOM phase of the business cycle.
    http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/jim-rogers-theres-a-100percent-probability-of-a-us-recession-within-a-year/ar-BBql35O?li=BBnb7Kz

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  2. With the biggest wage drop on record.

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    1. Glen - here's a quote from Don Boudreaux that addresses your point: "It’s quite possible that, despite the fall in the average wage, the wage of each and every worker rose. If most of the jobs created in February pay wages below the average wage for January, then this growth in jobs for newly hired workers can easily pull down the average wage even if no workers’ wages were cut – indeed, even if all workers’ wages rose. In this plausible scenario, all workers’ incomes rise: newly hired workers’ wages rise from $0 to whatever wages they now earn, while non-newly hired workers also enjoy higher wages."

      Additionally, relying on this bit of aggregated data fails to take into account trends in certain industries that will skew the overall data. Take, for example, oil and gas. Many in this industry easily earn three times the wages of the average American worker. Given the 250,000+ layoffs recently, without these workers' salaries aggregated, you're likely to see a wage drop. Same concept goes for manufacturing, as has been pointed out many times on this site, the strong dollar has led to reductions in these high paying jobs as well.

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    2. I obviously didn't see that Robert already posted the reference I quoted from.

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  3. I see lots of busy people busily responding to perverse incentives and distorted price signals. THey may be employed, but that doesn't mean they doing things that actually create wealth. The fed printed a zillion dollars and paid people to perform arbitrary tasks that keep them busy. That's not the same thing as real economic growth. World War Two saw little unemployment. Everyone had plenty to do. That doesn't any of it was productive.

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  4. Meth addicts are always busy and never rich

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