I've been wondering for awhile if any of our infotainer economicysts really study things like balance sheets, or M1/2/3/4 currency flows, or any of that stuff they like to talk about.

Balance sheets refer to corporate reports, and that's finance, not economics.

M3 money supply figures are no longer published, mostly because the Fed believes people may become upset about how much money the banks have squirreled away. Alan Greenspan has admitted that definitions of "money" and "money supply" are so nebulous that Fed governors can't cope with them. Go figure.

Shadow Government Statistics has unofficial numbers if you're interested, but those are guesses.

Being a non-economicyst, I say: the US economy will continue to get worse for AT LEAST the next year. (June 24, 2009)

Serious economists have predicted that the US economy won't bottom out for years at best, but those are avoided by the press for obvious reasons. They can't say how many because that depends on how and how much the government and the banks screw around with the economy. They could very well end up causing a complete failure. There are historical examples.

I've been wondering for awhile if any of our infotainer economicysts really study things like balance sheets, or M1/2/3/4 currency flows, or any of that stuff they like to talk about.

It's impossible to tell. Whenever I read a column from one of those guys, or see one on teevee, they hedge every. single. word. They describe at LEAST two countervailing forces in play. Then they conclude with some kind of comment about how complicated everything is. I literally cannot recall *ever* seeing one of them cite specific sources for concrete statistics that support whichever interpretation they're trying to sell that day.

They don't disappoint me, at least--I expect them to predict trends accurately just about 50% of the time. And that's about how well they do.

Being a non-economicyst, I say: the US economy will continue to get worse for AT LEAST the next year. (June 24, 2009)

50/50, baybee!

PS: Pin that prediction (er, no, ECONOMONIC FORECAST) right up next to whatever the hell Krugman said last week.

Corporate and government "economists" are in disarray because reality has failed to conform to their economic propaganda.

Economics, as practiced by corporatists, is not a science precisely because it does not follow facts and reason, fakes a lot its data, is not self-correcting, and creates self-serving rationalizations rather than valid explanations. It is very much a charade perpetuated to deceive rather than to enlighten for the purpose of "justifying" the financial scams of economic predators on Wall St. and in DC.

This is why economics is so often unable to provide useful predictions. Economics in general lacks that predictive power which is typical of real sciences like biology or physics. Economics has made very little real progress since Adam Smith's day.

If forecasters are "surprised" it is only because they have deluded themselves into actually believing that their forecasting models have more than a casual basis in reality, when it should be obvious that they are very purposefully flawed. That so many would complain that "everything's unexpected" amounts to a confession that corporatist economics cannot be anything a sham, possessing only enough truth to make it seem plausible.

At best, there are a number of attempts to pursue real economics on certain web sites and blogs like Shadow Government Statistics and Calculated Risk, but even these are compromised because their sources of economic data are governments and corporate think tanks with overt political and economic agendas. Any science is only as good as its data, and economic data is often pretty poor, quite aside from the usual weaknesses of the agenda-driven theories which purport to explain those data.

Please. Please.

Nothing is in the category of "growing" until...well...it actually is. Seeing a spike in durable goods is not unexpected, at least not where I sit. People have put off major purchases (which is what durable goods -- things like refrigerators, air conditioners, new digital televisions, cars -- are) and now there may be some pent up demand showing itself as a temporary spike...which is more or less what I think this number reflects.

I mention A/C units above for a good reason: I live in the south and this time of year is when everything from window units to large new central air/heat pump systems see sales go through the roof. It's hot down here. And humid. Anyway...that's what I think.

that if somebody buys one airplane from Boeing it causes a sales jump of 3%. Talk about overhyping the message...

They're just admitting it (finally).

If there's an analyst out there who uses constant polling and understands the "tipping points" in chaos theory, i.e. is doing more than pulling numbers out of his or her a_s to explain what's going on, I've yet to see it. They need to be polling the bankers to see if they've crawled out form under their beds yet.

What's happening, now is that the economy has very little motion in any direction. That being the case, EVERY little blip of statistical information becomes a tipping point in which perceptions and behavior change radically. This can happen two or three times a day.

Added together, all these changes make for very erratic market/financial behavior. This will continue until some overriding sense develops that there's a reason for things to move forward or a reason for things to go backward.

I'm convinced that the leaders of our national financial institutions have been so badly burned by their own collective shortsighted, stupid, illogical behavior, that they're shy of taking any risks at all, right now.

I'm equally convinced that new ideas, new products, new research are all out there waiting to be funded until they become profit-making ventures. The real tipping point will be when the financial folks stop trying to figure out how to hang onto what they've got, personally and corporately, and start funding new possibilities.

Of course it would also help if they began actually investing in productive activities that create jobs instead of continuing to do what they've done for the past thirty years: trying to find new ways to make money playing games with other people's money.