Steven Hansen is an international business and industrial consultant specializing in turning around troubled business units; consults to governments to optimize process flows; and provides economic indicator analysis based on unadjusted data and process limitations.
Weekly Economic Analysis Summary For Week Ending 21April2012 2 comments
Apr 21, 2012 5:18 AM
Other Economic News this Week:
The Econintersect economic forecast for April 2012 shows a less good growth. There has been a degradation in our government and finished goods pulse points.
ECRI has called a recession. Their data looks ahead at least 6 months and the bottom line for them is that a recession is a certainty. The size and depth is unknown but the recession start has been revised to hit around mid-year 2012.
This week ECRI's WLI index value declined marginally to 1.2. This ended twelve weeks of index improvement. This index continues to indicate the economy six months from today will be marginally better than today.
(click to enlarge)
Initial unemployment claims essentially increased from 380,000 (reported last week) to 386,000. Historically, claims exceeding 400,000 per week usually occur when employment gains are less than the workforce growth, resulting in an increasing unemployment rate (background here and here). The real gauge - the 4 week moving average - rose from 368,500 (reported last week) to 374,750. Because of the noise (week-to-week movements from abnormal events AND the backward revisions to previous weeks releases), the 4-week average remains the reliable gauge.
(click to enlarge)
Data released this week which contained economically intuitive components (forward looking) were rail movements and the manufacturing portion of Industrial Production . Rail movements are soft even without considering the overall contraction caused by coal, while IP manufacturing softened somewhat, but still remained clearly in expansion territory.
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It looks like thinking Europeans are trying to organize and fight this with letters and petitions to EU politicians. One can only hope that they are successful.
Thanks for linking Ellen's article. There are some reference links at the end of her article to work posted by a couple of excellent but obscure bloggers in Europe who have been working hard on researching the ESM problem and the obfuscation of the Goldman Sachs - Greek debt manipulation along with the ethics questions associated with Mario Draghi and the EU Parliament handling of his appointment review.
If you are distressed by the capture of government and society by financial interests in the U.S., multiply that by some factor larger than 1 (much larger?) to get the size of the problem in Europe.
PS: If you post your comment also on Steve's weekly article I'll copy mine over there as well.
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Weekly Economic Analysis Summary For Week Ending 21April2012 2 comments
Other Economic News this Week:
The Econintersect economic forecast for April 2012 shows a less good growth. There has been a degradation in our government and finished goods pulse points.
ECRI has called a recession. Their data looks ahead at least 6 months and the bottom line for them is that a recession is a certainty. The size and depth is unknown but the recession start has been revised to hit around mid-year 2012.
This week ECRI's WLI index value declined marginally to 1.2. This ended twelve weeks of index improvement. This index continues to indicate the economy six months from today will be marginally better than today.
(click to enlarge)
Initial unemployment claims essentially increased from 380,000 (reported last week) to 386,000. Historically, claims exceeding 400,000 per week usually occur when employment gains are less than the workforce growth, resulting in an increasing unemployment rate (background here and here). The real gauge - the 4 week moving average - rose from 368,500 (reported last week) to 374,750. Because of the noise (week-to-week movements from abnormal events AND the backward revisions to previous weeks releases), the 4-week average remains the reliable gauge.
(click to enlarge)
Data released this week which contained economically intuitive components (forward looking) were rail movements and the manufacturing portion of Industrial Production . Rail movements are soft even without considering the overall contraction caused by coal, while IP manufacturing softened somewhat, but still remained clearly in expansion territory.
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Bankruptcies this Week: None
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
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It looks like thinking Europeans are trying to organize and fight this with letters and petitions to EU politicians. One can only hope that they are successful.
Thanks for linking Ellen's article. There are some reference links at the end of her article to work posted by a couple of excellent but obscure bloggers in Europe who have been working hard on researching the ESM problem and the obfuscation of the Goldman Sachs - Greek debt manipulation along with the ethics questions associated with Mario Draghi and the EU Parliament handling of his appointment review.
If you are distressed by the capture of government and society by financial interests in the U.S., multiply that by some factor larger than 1 (much larger?) to get the size of the problem in Europe.
PS: If you post your comment also on Steve's weekly article I'll copy mine over there as well.
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