Philly Fed's Weak Economic Report

"Bloomberg details:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s general economic index slumped to 8 in June from 21.4 the previous month. Readings above zero signal growth.
Economists forecast the index would fall to 20, according to the median of 58 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 10 to 24.
The figures follow a report from the Labor Department today that showed consumer prices fell in May for a second month. The Labor Department also said jobless claims rose by 12,000 to 472,000 last week.

That employment report is concerning, especially when taken in combination with the Philly Fed report's shift of employment (number of employees / average workweek) to negative territory."
 
at http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2010/06/philly-feds-weak-economic-report.html

Investors Face Long-term Structural Changes of Lower Growth, Higher Volatility and Unemployment

"...What do we get when we put the three structural breaks together? Higher volatility and lower trend growth produce more frequent recessions. More frequent recessions and stubbornly high unemployment rates mean that recoveries will not be long-lasting enough to put everyone back to work who would like to work. This in large part explains why high unemployment is currently so problematic.
What are the investment implications for the Muddle Through Economy? Investors will have to adjust to this new reality. Reducing leverage is one way. Another is to reduce the average holding period of investments. Investors will have to become more nimble. This in itself may add to market volatility.
For longer-term investors, this change of paradigm will mean achieving consistent returns is even more difficult. However, investors with a shorter-term, more tactical outlook may find these new, more volatile conditions a source of great opportunities.
The End Game
John Mauldin and I are writing a book called The End Game, about how government policies around the world will likely play out.
The End Game will be about the structural changes affecting the US and many other developed economies and how this impacts you, the reader. Currently the world is caught in a tug of war between deflation and inflation. The global economy faces powerful deflationary forces, which have induced equally powerful responses from governments around the world. Governments have ratcheted up the creation of monetary reserves and increased public spending across the board. Much of the spending is unsustainable, and the monetary reserves may eventually become a problem, resulting in inflation. The outcomes are binary, and they are not good.
Policymakers have not even begun to deal with the problems. As Chairman Bernanke has pointed out, "A variety of projections that extrapolate current policies and make plausible assumptions about the future evolution of the economy, show a structural budget gap that is both large relative to the size of the economy and increasing over time." He stated that "the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path." Those are strong words for a Fed chairman. I hope Congress is listening.
In the current economic environment, there are bad choices and worse ones. We hope governments around the world will know how to choose wisely..."

at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20249.html

What Makes Deflation Likely Today?

"Bob Prechter, Deflation Survival Guide, free Club EWI eBook
Following the Great Depression, the Fed and the U.S. government embarked on a program...both of increasing the creation of new money and credit and of fostering the confidence of lenders and borrowers so as to facilitate the expansion of credit. These policies both accommodated and encouraged the expansionary trend of the ’Teens and 1920s, which ended in bust, and the far larger expansionary trend that began in 1932 and which has accelerated over the past half-century. Other governments and central banks have followed similar policies. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and similar institutions, funded mostly by the U.S. taxpayer, have extended immense credit around the globe.

Their policies have supported nearly continuous worldwide inflation, particularly over the past thirty years. As a result, the global financial system is gorged with non-self-liquidating credit. Conventional economists excuse and praise this system under the erroneous belief that expanding money and credit promotes economic growth, which is terribly false. It appears to do so for a while, but in the long run, the swollen mass of debt collapses of its own weight, which is deflation, and destroys the economy. A devastated economy, moreover, encourages radical politics, which is even worse.

The value of credit that has been extended worldwide is unprecedented. Worse, most of this debt is the non-self-liquidating type. Much of it comprises loans to governments, investment loans for buying stock and real estate, and loans for everyday consumer items and services, none of which has any production tied to it. Even a lot of corporate debt is non-self-liquidating, since so much of corporate activity these days is related to finance rather than production.

Figure 11-5 is a stunning picture of the credit expansion of wave V of the 1920s (beginning the year that Congress authorized the Fed), which ended in a bust, and of wave V in the 1980s-1990s, which is even bigger.

...it has been the biggest credit expansion in history by a huge margin. Coextensively, not only is there a threat of deflation, but there is also the threat of the biggest deflation in history by a huge margin. ..."

at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20231.html