Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
All eyes will quickly be turning to Friday's...
...revised estimate of 2nd quarter GDP growth. Rodney Johnson has some thoughts.
If you want to see how the economy (or at least a large part of it) is doing...
...in almost real time, check out the Consumer Metrics Institute's website. Fascinating, and a little scary.
I have much more faith in these numbers than in the official government statistics quoted most often in the press.
I have much more faith in these numbers than in the official government statistics quoted most often in the press.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Deflation
US existing home sales down 27.2 percent in July versus analyst expectations of "only" a 12 percent decline.
Why do analysts even bother anymore? They missed it by more than a 100 percent!
UPDATE:> Forbes documents just how lame economic forecasting really is. But, it's not just forecasts. The fact is that historical economic data is often revised months or in some cases even years after the fact.
AND MORE:> Economist Greg Mankiw on the lamentable state of our economic models:
[T]he CEA took a conventional Keynesian-style macroeconomic model and used those set of equations to estimate the effect the stimulus should have had. Essentially, the model offers an estimate of the policy's effect, conditional on the model being a correct description of the world. But notice that this exercise is not really a measurement based on what actually occurred. Rather, the exercise is premised on the belief that the model is true, so no matter how bad the economy got, the inference is that it would have been even worse without the stimulus. Why? Because that is what the model says. The validity of the model itself is never questioned.
Why do analysts even bother anymore? They missed it by more than a 100 percent!
UPDATE:> Forbes documents just how lame economic forecasting really is. But, it's not just forecasts. The fact is that historical economic data is often revised months or in some cases even years after the fact.
AND MORE:> Economist Greg Mankiw on the lamentable state of our economic models:
[T]he CEA took a conventional Keynesian-style macroeconomic model and used those set of equations to estimate the effect the stimulus should have had. Essentially, the model offers an estimate of the policy's effect, conditional on the model being a correct description of the world. But notice that this exercise is not really a measurement based on what actually occurred. Rather, the exercise is premised on the belief that the model is true, so no matter how bad the economy got, the inference is that it would have been even worse without the stimulus. Why? Because that is what the model says. The validity of the model itself is never questioned.
Monday, August 23, 2010
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