Economic Overviews

For those who haven’t yet grasped the uselessness of government policy, please read Charles Hugh Smith’s simple fourteen point explanation below. It details the steps government has taken, why they are failing, why the middle and poorer classes must get poorer and suggests that we are close to the end of the Ponzi scheme that has provided the myth that our economy has been strong for the last couple of decades.

When you get into too much debt, eventually really bad things start to happen. This is a very painful lesson that southern Europe is learning right now, and it is a lesson that the United States will soon learn as well. Words: 826

The mainstream media is absolutely giddy that the U.S. unemployment rate has hit a "four-year low" of 7.7% but is unemployment in the United States actually going down?...Headlines all over the nation boldly declared that "236,000 jobs" were added to the economy in February, but what they didn't tell you was that the number of Americans "not in the labor force" rose by 296,000. That is how they are getting the unemployment rate to go down - by pretending that huge numbers of unemployed Americans don't want jobs. Words: 596; Chart: 1; Table: 1

Russia may be the ninth largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product, but its abundance of natural resources in the Ural Mountains, Siberia and the Russian Far East makes it much more important in the world of commodities. Below, we dissect Russia’s commodity industry to give investors an in-depth look...and some specific ideas on how investors might participate. Words: 935

"Do we really have a time machine and have reset to 2007 or have we in fact entered the uncharted territory of unsustainable, runaway trends the likes of which have never been observed in recorded history? Also, just how relevant is the Dow Industrials Index in all of this?"

This infographic highlight changes in economic indicators, reports relevant news stories, reveals commodity and financial trends, provides technical analysis and looks at the recent price of gold and real interest rates with relevant charts.

The euphoria, New Year’s Eve at the Big Casino, continues but the price will be high when it all ends and it will end because it is not this or that asset class that is in a bubble but the entire world that is a giant soap bubble that will float until the heat of the sun pops the thing in one ugly mess. I fear that subprime loans, dot.com fantasies, and the S&L crisis will pale when we are done with this party because, my friends, the bill for the festivities must get paid.

You will be surprised at the amount of trade between Canada and the U.S. and vice versa. Here is a list of the products involved each way - and both ways. Take a look. Words: 712

Dmitry Orlov's repeated travels to Russia throughout the early nineties allowed him to observe the aftermath of the Soviet collapse first-hand. Being both a Russian and an American, Dmitry was able to appreciate both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the United States is going the way of the Soviet Union and has concluded that when the U.S. economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse - and permanent - because the factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here. Words: 3730; Slides: 28

I read many hundreds of articles every week looking for writers who have an in-depth understanding of our economy and who are not reticent to tell it like it is. Monty Pelerin (a pseudonym) does just that week after week, year after year. This post includes introductory paragraphs and links to 25 of his most enlightening and current articles. Take a look. There are bound to be several that will grab your interest.