Money and Finance
- John Mauldin: A Lost Generation
It is pretty well established that a tax increase, especially an income tax increase, will have an immediate negative effect on the economy, with a multiplier of between 1 and 3 depending upon whose research you accept. As far as I am aware, no peer-reviewed...
- John Mauldin: Boomers Are Breaking The Deal
There is something missing from this thing we are calling a recovery. For most in the US it does not feel like a recovery, and for good reason: the jobs aren’t there. But for some groups it is a recovery, and more. And that reveals an even bigger problem....
- John Mauldin: The War For Spain
I fully intended to ignore Spain this week. Really, truly I did. I had my letter all planned, but then a few notes drew my attention, and the more I reflected on them, the more I realized that the inflection point that I thought the ECB had pushed down...
- John Mauldin: It's All About Jobs
Today's employment numbers were decidedly soft, but the unemployment rate went down anyway, and that is about the best you can say. And this being a holiday weekend, it provides us an opportunity to look deep into the employment numbers, while we...
- My Weekly Stock List (12/14)
It looks like my portfolio is shrinking, but as long as I don't sell anything I have hope for future recovery of stocks. At least one of my "mistake" investments finally moved to a green zone for me. BBW - Build a Bear Workshop. I bought this stock...
Money and Finance
John Mauldin: Will the Real Unemployed Please Raise Your Hands?
This week’s letter will be a very short part of a book I am writing with Bill Dunkelberg (the Chief Economist of the National Federation of Independent Businesses) on the future of employment. It has taken longer to write than I initially anticipated, for a host of reasons, chief among which is that the future is not as obvious as I originally thought. Diving into the data has brought a few surprises. It doesn’t help that I have (probably to the frustration of Dunk, although he is way too polite to say it) changed the focus from “merely” what we need to do to create jobs (which is still an important part of the book) to what kinds of jobs will the future bring and who will get them.
But to understand the future of employment, we have to be able to measure what we mean when we say employment. And the data that we all too often think of as hard and fast is anything but. Is unemployment in the eye of the beholder? We know what we mean when we say our brother-in-law is unemployed. But does the government data mean the same thing? The answer is “maybe, sometimes, and it depends.”
I selected this part of the book not only because it is toward the beginning but also as a result of a conversation I had this week that got me to thinking about data and its usefulness. It is in this context that we will look at unemployment data.
But first, a quick comment on why this letter is not about Cyprus, which seems to be the topic du jour. I wrote four weeks ago, after my visit to Athens, that Cyprus would be a problem and to pay attention.
- John Mauldin: A Lost Generation
It is pretty well established that a tax increase, especially an income tax increase, will have an immediate negative effect on the economy, with a multiplier of between 1 and 3 depending upon whose research you accept. As far as I am aware, no peer-reviewed...
- John Mauldin: Boomers Are Breaking The Deal
There is something missing from this thing we are calling a recovery. For most in the US it does not feel like a recovery, and for good reason: the jobs aren’t there. But for some groups it is a recovery, and more. And that reveals an even bigger problem....
- John Mauldin: The War For Spain
I fully intended to ignore Spain this week. Really, truly I did. I had my letter all planned, but then a few notes drew my attention, and the more I reflected on them, the more I realized that the inflection point that I thought the ECB had pushed down...
- John Mauldin: It's All About Jobs
Today's employment numbers were decidedly soft, but the unemployment rate went down anyway, and that is about the best you can say. And this being a holiday weekend, it provides us an opportunity to look deep into the employment numbers, while we...
- My Weekly Stock List (12/14)
It looks like my portfolio is shrinking, but as long as I don't sell anything I have hope for future recovery of stocks. At least one of my "mistake" investments finally moved to a green zone for me. BBW - Build a Bear Workshop. I bought this stock...