Home » Posts tagged 'depression' (Page 3)

Tag Archives: depression

The Expectations Game

Posted on by | 16 Comments

Investment is a tricky thing. You put up a lot of money in the expectation that you’ll have a small return year over year. Currently, the expected rate of return is historically small in the developed world, on the order of a few percent. It has to be weighed against the risk that the initial investment will never be paid back, winding up in default.

The slowdown in the global economy is not actually a decline in output all over the world, but a pause in the rate of growth. It wasn’t expected, either, which is the real problem. The developed world is largely stagnant, save some hope in the US for better times ahead. The developing world need to catch up, but appears to be taking a breather after a tremendous run.

As we consider the next few years and the potential for a genuine boom ahead, it is becoming clearer that we aren’t ready for anything more than muddling through until there is a reckoning and a realization of how the next economy will work – for everyone. That will take some patience and public investment all over the world.

Continue reading →

Forward! 2015 & Beyond

Posted on by | 36 Comments

How will the economy perform in 2015? In many ways, it’s a lot like the weather. The first guess is that we should expect more of the same from 2014, which is to say a steady improvement. Last year was a turning point for many people as the bottom hit five years ago was finally shaken off. Progress was made overall – it’s really a question of who benefited and who will continue to benefit.

But when putting together an economic forecast for the coming year something stands out that is quite remarkable. There are hardly any trends for 2015 that should not be important in 2016 as well. Understanding why takes Barataria back to the fundamental principles, theories really, that have guided our understanding of the economy and where it is going.

Continue reading →

2014, ex Machina

Posted on by | 10 Comments

If you had to sum up 2014 in one short sentence, what would it be? Barataria is a blog of social commentary and observation in the largest sense, which naturally includes a lot of politics and economics – the places where the citizens of this great nation express their true values. So for the the purposes of this humble effort, one thing comes clearly to mind for this year:

The system largely works.

That may sound horribly pro-establishment, especially with the terrible failures of the system that made the news this year. Police brutality went unpunished as many people came to fear that there is an open season on their families simply for having the wrong skin color. The Republicans took the Senate easily with a record low turnout, an expression of apathy more than direction.

But this points to the power of the systems we have as much as the successes do, and why the goals looking ahead have to be about getting control so that these mechanisms do what we need them to. The systems work – as they didn’t at all in 2008 and sporadically after that – but for whom?

Continue reading →

Job Loss Hits a Milestone

Posted on by | 8 Comments

Of all the various measures of the economy we have at our disposal, one of the most consistent and real-time is the Unemployment Initial Claims, which comes out weekly. It’s nothing more than a measure of how many people filed for unemployment insurance in the previous week, so it’s a solid number that doesn’t come from a survey or other statistical measure.

It still has its problems, however. It’s noisy, bouncing up and down a bit each week – a problem taken care of by looking at a 4-week moving average. Initial Claims numbers also don’t tell us a thing about hiring, but rather how many lost their jobs.

It hasn’t been useful for at least two years as attention turned away from job loss to job creation that would absorb the surplus workers looking for employment. But it’s worth checking in with this handy number one more time because it has hit an important milestone – and may be as low as it will ever go.

Continue reading →

Jobs: Back to Even!

Posted on by | 7 Comments

According to ADP, the largest payroll processer in the US, the total number of private sector jobs made up the net loss in the last official recession last month. In January 2008 the total number of jobs stood at 116.0 million in January 2008, falling to 107.2 million by February 2010. The net loss of 8.8 million jobs was finally regained in March 2014 when we hit 116.1 million total. That includes 491 thousand gained so far in 2014.

If that’s not a good reason for a party, what is?

Continue reading →