Mike Mandel has a new post which might make you a bit uncomfortable. He suggests that the US has been miscalculating its trade gap in a manner which leads to overstating GDP growth. Now, if you believe the official statistics, it drives your entire interpretation of the past ten years. If nonoil imports have not grown […]
Posts Tagged ‘GDP’
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Can You Figure Out This Puzzle
Posted by Tom Lindmark on December 1st, 2010
Tyler Cowen posted this graph of health care expenses as a percentage of GDP today and asked “What happened in 1980?” I’d ask not only what happened but why did it apparently cause U.S. expenditures to continue rising at a rate in excess of other economies’? Anyone care to offer some thoughts on this one?
Economic Recovery Looking A Bit More Solid
Posted by Tom Lindmark on November 24th, 2010
I’ve had a brush with a touch of pneumonia, hence blogging has taken a back seat to healing. Good drugs have helped turn the corner so I’ll try and get back to some semblance of regular posting. Anyway, there were a couple of fairly positive economic reports over the past few days that would seem […]
More Bad Revisions For Economic Growth
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 25th, 2010
The incredible shrinking recovery continues apace. In case you missed it, the latest iteration of Q1 GDP growth is now 2.7%. Remember the initial number was 3.5%, then it got chopped down to 3.0% and now, well here we are in the two’s. To add insult to injury the inventory growth is now reputed to […]
How Strong A Recovery?
Posted by Tom Lindmark on August 5th, 2009
A graph you’ve no doubt seen before but still worth revisiting. It traces the ISM Index over the past 60 years or so. A couple things pop out at me. One, historically, once the index starts moving up it tends to continue on that slope for a reasonable period of time. You don’t see moves […]
How Defense Saved Second Quarter GDP
Posted by Tom Lindmark on July 31st, 2009
I bought into the meme floating around earlier today and credited fiscal stimulus with playing a part in the better Q2 GDP numbers. It turns out that government spending helped a lot but not money being spent under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It came from the Defense Department. From the WSJ Real Time […]
JPMorgan Chase Sees Strong Turn In The Economy
Posted by Tom Lindmark on May 1st, 2009
Having occupied the outer limbs of a very tall tree for some time with my prediction that the economy would turn in the second half, it was with great relief that I read this excerpt from a JPMorgan Chase report on Across the Curve. I would like to steal the whole thing from John but […]
