Thursday, January 10, 2013

Extreme Initial Claims Danger v.31 (Musical Tribute)


Click to enlarge.


Click to enlarge.

On and on we rode the storm. The flame has died, and the fire has gone.



Is anybody out there? Anybody there? Does anybody wonder? Anybody care?

See Also:
Extreme Initial Claims Danger v.30

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Initial Claims
DOL: Initial Claims

14 comments:

jeff said...

Is there a point were unsustainable exp trends fail? Probably not being these are dynamic systems with lots of moving parts but is there a range where they often fail.

Stagflationary Mark said...

jeff,

It is pretty much guaranteed that exponential trends fail at some point.

I don't think there is any way to generalize them or spot the point of failure in advance by simply looking at the trend though.

That said, once an exponential trend does fail it can often be very easy to spot.

31 weeks ago I thought I was seeing a failure in this post's chart. Still tracking it!

I cannot prove that it has failed over the long-term but I can definitely offer an opinion that it has. As a side note, I can prove that a 2% inflation rate over the long-term must fail in one way.

Picture what a bank statement would look like a million years from now. Not going to happen. At the very least, the powers that be will have to remove some of the digits and rebalance. How much longer will we pretend that the penny is an important part of our currency? It's only worth about 1/20th of what it once was.

Luke The Debtor said...

Haver Analytics had a story on unemployment insurance on its front page (1/10).

Anonymous said...

Initial claims should just level out in modestly growing economy.

The seasonal trend in employment has January jobs drop off dramatically. Then all the job growth for the year happens February through June, when employment flatlines, more of less, for the rest of the year.

The jump in unadjusted unemployment claims for the first week of January was high as expected but way less than the comparable week a year ago. This is a good start. If it continues then January may indicate decent job growth follows.

Troy said...

Pyromania is the third studio album by British rock band Def Leppard, released on 20 January 1983

'83 was a great year for me.

'93, 2003, not so much.

Troy said...

Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2011 and 1967, they would cost you $0.05 and $0.01 respectively.

So nickels have turned into pennies over our lifetime.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Joseph Constable,

Initial claims should just level out in modestly growing economy.

That's certainly true in theory. I believe we live in a boom and bust economy though. Once the boom is over, watch out below. Just an opinion of course.

Further, the mind boggles at just how much unsustainable government spending/borrowing it is taking to get this very modest growth. Sigh.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

'83 was great for me as well. Freshman in college! Completlely ignorant of the economy! Bliss! ;)

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

So nickels have turned into pennies over our lifetime.

And yet we still use pennies. Makes no sense. Sigh.

Troy said...

I was blissfully ignorant of the economy until 2010.

That 1987 crash -- some other planet. Went off to Japan in 1992 with zero idea of their macro situation and I came back in 2000 with zero understanding of the US's position and how we got to the dotcom peak (my interview was at the EXACT peak nasdaq bubble day, the crash came right after).

I kept my 401k in cash 2000-2002, that was the beginning of some understanding I guess. Then I discovered Georgism in late 2002 and a lot of things got a lot clearer, in a very real and ugly way.

I played the crash in 2008 reasonably well, and went long in 2009 at the right time too. Still didn't understand the potential of this socio-economic system to totally corrupt itself as it has since then.

Looks like Japan is going to abandon any pretense at austerity now. Could be interesting, think I want to go back there again. A weaker JPY + USD-denominated income would be schweeet, just gotta get that moving.

Troy said...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=eAb

real (2012 dollars) per-capita national debt.

The System can remain insolvent a lot longer than you and I can remain rational.

Troy said...

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=eAe

per PAYEM not capita

gulp

Ed said...


http://www.showrealhist.com/RHandRD.html
Sad but true: "The public be suckered" describes a large share of the whole ...

Stagflationary Mark said...

Ed,

Bond prices would look similarly frothy. I may too be a sucker. That said, never planned to sell my bonds to a greater fool anyway. There's something to be said for holding to maturity. Go figure.