Archive for June, 2010

These two topics are not directly related, but in the interests of brevity let me combine them into one comment.
First consumer confidence:
If you haven’t already seen today’s news, don’t look it’s awful. Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board dropped sharply in June, all the way down to 52.9 from May’s revised [downwardly] 62.7…. »

It takes a particularly virulent form of mean spiritedness for a nation to walk away from its most vulnerable citizens at a time of their greatest need. Yet that is what the US, and by implication you and I, has just done. The Senate was unable to muster enough votes to continue the extension of… »

A quiet week has been punctuated by a horrible report for sales of new homes. They slumped 33% in May to a record low annual rate of 300,000. That’s simply rotten.
There is growing concern amongst policy makers that the recovery is weakening and may even be reversed. The odds of a double dip recession, which… »

Please read Paul Krugman’s article in today’s New York Times. He nails the anti-austerity argument. Which supports the point I made a few days ago.
The simple fact is that enforcing austerity measures at the moment will be counter-productive. It is absurd for anyone to argue that there is a sound economic reason for budget cuts… »

The first phase of the recovery is now well and truly over. The economy is showing signs of slowing down. The issue has now become how slow will ’slow’ be?  Most of the reports being released at the moment confirm that the heady days of late last year and early this were showing an economy… »

I go away for a while and things get out of hand.
I am shocked at the current spate of calls for austerity worldwide. It’s an epidemic of Puritanical self-loathing. None of which makes any sense.
It should be obvious, but evidently is not, that the economy is still weak. Last week’s poor retail sales figures tell… »

The ongoing saga of the BP oil spill has generated an enormous amount of nonsense at practically every level. The media has made the story its central news item for weeks, and now the White House is piling on. None of the spewing forth helps at all. Most of it simply highlights our astonishing ability… »