Economics Roundtable
Calculated Risk
Read the Bill McBride interview.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
June Payroll Employment
The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.
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Focus on the Problem
U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
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EconModel
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
Carpe Diem (Mark J. Perry)
"Mark J. Perry’s Blog for Economics and Finance”
In the WSJ yesterday, a great quote from Benjamin Franklin was featured on the ecvonomic folly of export duties, which he described as a “knavish attempt to get something for nothing.” As Don Boudreaux points out on Cafe Hayek in a March 19 post titled “Gasbags in Congress,” ...
In the WSJ yesterday, a great quote from Benjamin Franklin was featured on the economic folly of export duties, which he described as a “knavish attempt to get something for nothing.” As Don Boudreaux points out on Cafe Hayek in a March 19 post titled “Gasbags in Congress,” ...
1. Mobile Internet
2. Automation of Knowledge Work
3. The Internet of Things
4. Cloud technology
5. Advanced robotics
6. Autonomous and Near-Autonomous Vehicles
7. Next-generation genomics
8. Energy storage
9. 3-D printing
10. Advanced materials
11. Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery
12. Renewable energy
From CNN Health, another story about how 3-D printing is revolutionizing medicine:
To save a dying baby, University of Michigan doctors tried the medical equivalent of a “Hail Mary” pass. Using an experimental technique never before tried on a human, they created a splint made out of biological ...
From Dvice.com:
When you think 3D printers, chances are you think of a cube-like desktop device. Something that can create anything you can design — as long as your creation is small enough to fit within the printer’s build platform. You can throw ...
We hear a lot about the well-publicized increases in oil production in America’s top two oil-producing states: Texas (2.295 million barrels per day/bpd in February) and North Dakota (783,000 bpd in March). But the recent breakthroughs in advanced drilling technologies have ...
Highlights from today’s report from the Census Bureau on new home sales in April:
1. Both the average sales price ($330,800) and the median sales price ($271,600) established new all-time record highs in April (see chart above). Compared to ...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported today on its House Price Index (HPI) for March, based on the purchase prices of houses involving conforming, conventional mortgages purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The FHFA ...
From today’s op-ed in the New York Times titled “When America Stops Importing Energy” by Ian Bremmer and Kenneth Hersh:
You’ve probably heard by now about the American energy revolution. Breakthroughs in drilling technology have opened access to enough new oil and gas reserves in the United States ...
Rand Paul at the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee hearing yesterday:
I’m offended by a government that convenes a hearing to bully one of America’s greatest success stories. I’m offended by the spectacle of dragging in executives from an American company that is not doing anything ...