The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate: Stable prices and maximum employment! Given the state of that mandate vis a vis the current condition of the U.S. economy, the answer to the question of if and when the Fed will begin to raise rates is that no one knows. But nonetheless that question has become […]
This is a question worth pondering particularly with the rampant speculation over what the Fed will do with interest rates this month! First the obvious thought, what is ZIRP? In a nutshell…’Zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP) is a macroeconomic concept describing conditions with a very low nominal interest rate, such as those in contemporary Japan and, […]
Weakness, unfortunately, permeates the June jobs report! It’s likely when President Obama steps before the microphone today he will tout the fact that the economy added over 200,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate ticked down to 5.3% from 5.5%. Some in the media will also focus on the two headline numbers without checking the […]
If we use 5% as the benchmark for full employment in the United States and the unemployment number released on Friday was 5.5%, then by extension.. …the nation is only 1/2 of 1% from reaching a significant milestone that would seem to indicate total recovery from the horror that was the financial crisis of a […]
27 Statistics About The U.S. Middle Class Summary: Do you consider yourself a member of the middle class or has it become increasingly difficult to know that answer for sure? Much commentary continually gets bandied about concerning the state of the middle class in the United States! One side of the political argument (typically the incumbents […]
This slightly irreverent article title is meant to ask the question of whether those tasked with deciding economic policy, and US policy in particular, actually have a strong handle on the how and why it will work as drawn up on the blackboard? Additionally do they have any inkling concerning what any of the unintended […]
This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment report for June and by all measures it appears to be that the numbers were great news! To further clarify that statement, however,it was a great report with the exception of one glaring mostly out-of-the-news statistic called the labor force participation rate. The labor force participation rate is the […]
