Gloom and doom is the way of blogs lately. Nothing is good; everything is bad. Unfortunately, lost in this translation is a set of monthly trends that shows the worst is over. Now -- this does not mean everything is roses. Far from it. As I have mentioned in the...

Doom sells. When someone says "the sky is falling" it's easy to say "yes it is -- and we're all just plain going to hell." However, the data points of the last 3-4 months indicate the economy is bottoming. In addition, the leading economic indicators tell us the possibility of...

There has been a war of words written about Washington's recent increase in spending. However, none of this has focused on the numbers -- as in the data. So, let's take a look at the numbers to see what they tell us.

First, some background. I was against Bush's deficit...

This article is a joint article between Bonddad and Invictus at Blah3.

When economist David Rosenberg left Merrill Lynch to head back to his native Canada, he gave a nod to Bob Farrell's Ten Rules To Remember by penning his own. They are both keepers. Among the most...

Total US GDP is roughly $14 trillion dollars in total size. Because of this size it simply won't reverse on a dime -- especially considering the length and breadth of the current recession. Instead gradual change is how to measure progress. On several fronts this week we saw the news...

Yesterday the right wing world was ablaze with an Art Laffer editorial in the WSJ. Hyper inflation is on the way -- at least according Art Laffer and echoed by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, and Scott Johnson at Powerline. The problem is Laffer's...

A lot has been written about the yield curve lately. Some are saying Treasuries are dropping only because of the increase in federal spending while others are saying we're simply going through a standard correction. In fact, both are correct as the undercurrents of both issues are present in the...

Sometime last week Glenn Beck posed a question: what if one million people did not pay their taxes? Beck couched this statement in the context of civil disobedience, citing a quote from Gandhi. He also added a disclaimer: ""I want to be clear on one thing, I am not advocating...

Over the last few months we're had several important signs that the economy may be bottoming. The Conference Board has recently reported that leading indicators spiked up last month and consumer confidence has improved. In addition, the number of people who say the country is on...

A commonly expressed concern regarding the Federal Reserve's recent policy actions is by increasing money supply the Federal Reserve is stoking the fires of inflation once the recovery starts. This statement could be true in a limited set of circumstances. However, the far more probable scenario is the increased money...

The latest retail sales news was followed by a fairly bearish commentary. However, I disagree with this sentiment for the following reasons.

Here is a chart of the month and year over year percentage changes

The month to month percentage change dropped hard in the last quarter of...

From Barron's

Layoffs appear to have peaked. Initial jobless claims fell 34,000 this week to 601,000. Continuing claims edged up to a new high of 6.351 million from 6.295 million. However, initial claims, which reside in the index of leading economic indicators (LEI), appear to have peaked on...

Before we move into today's information, let's backtrack over last week's GDP report. In the previous article I expressed a high degree of bearishness regarding consumer spending. Yet in the latest GDP report personal consumption expenditures increased 2.1%. This was largely due to a 9.1% increase in durable...

Last week on my blog I took an in-depth look at the four sub-parts of GDP -- personal consumption expenditures, gross private domestic investment, exports and government spending. The point of this was to try and get an idea for what part of the economy will lead us out of...

Several important economic people have publicly stated they see the economy getting better. Over the last several weeks, Larry Summers said he has heard anecdotal information that things are improving. President Obama made similar statements recently as did Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The question is, "does the data back up...

Today there are supposed to be many teabag rallies across the country. They are getting together to protest reckless government spending or the large deficits the Obama administration is racking up implementing their policy. My only question is this: where were these people 8 years ago? More importantly, where were...

One of the most common refrains about the US tax code is it's too complicated -- and that compliance costs far too much for the average business. Compliance costs (the cost of paying people to plan tax-advantaged strategies) are very high. But there are reasons for that complication.

First...

On January 23 of this year I wrote an article titled The Problems of Nationalization In it I outlined three inherent problems with nationalization. Who do you nationalize, how do you actually accomplish the process of nationalization with minimal market disruption and how do you prevent the politicalization...

Offshore Tax Havens have been in the news a great deal lately. Stanford Financial utilized an offshore jurisdiction for their banking needs and now we've learned the AIG utilized certain offshore jurisdiction's secrecy laws to avoid oversight. However, none of these stories has placed any of these actions...

Paul Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist and one of the leading thinkers in the Democratic Party. He is held in high regard by many people -- myself included. In fact, I have cited his work on several occasions and used his statements on television to refute several right...