Friday, October 10, 2014

China's Miraculous Parabolic Growth Engine

The following chart shows the 12 month moving average of the natural log of U.S. imports of goods from mainland China. When using natural logs, constant exponential growth is seen as a straight line.


Click to enlarge.

It's a miracle! Just look at how well it follows the upside down parabola. Sure, there were a few hiccups (dotcom bust and Great Recession, as seen in the chart), but we're right back on the toppy lookin' long-term trend. Woohoo!

In all seriousness, China better find more customers if it wants to continue to grow like it has been. How about France or Japan?



Oops. Sorry about that. It wasn't all seriousness apparently. I apologize.

In all seriousness (attempt #2), thank goodness the global economy has apparently decoupled again. The USA will be completely sheltered from what happens next no doubt! Woohoo!



Oh, crap. I wasn't serious again? Seriously? Shame on me.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

8 comments:

Troy said...

Speaking of Japan, I figured out how to solve their deflating population:

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

Our young adult population has grown by 7M since 1990, theirs has fallen 7M since 1990.

It'd take the world's fleet of A380s about two months to transfer this surplus youth population to Japan. Problem solved!

Troy said...

Japan's population of 15-25 YOs has fallen 7M since the early 1990s, ours has risen 7M.

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

The solution is obvious; the world's fleet of A380s could restore the population balance of both the US and Japan in under two months.

Or, if we wanted a more 1940-60s style employment solution, we could induct 7M youth into our armed forces and start a war in East Asia somewhere for them to fight in.

Troy said...

also not apropos, but:

wait... there's a *new* version of Carnage Heart?? Man, I'd love to see that localized but I imagine the odds of that happening are between zero and the square root of -1. And that's a shame.
nowak | November 13, 2007 8:14 AM

^that guy won the internet, 7 years ago already

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

Or, if we wanted a more 1940-60s style employment solution, we could induct 7M youth into our armed forces and start a war in East Asia somewhere for them to fight in.

I thought the plan was to induct them into our prison system. Sigh.

Carnage Heart

Oh, man. I never played that one. D'oh! My bad.

The last game I bought was XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It was a weekend deal ($9.99) a few months ago on the Playstation network. Fun! Managed to get an Ironman Classic victory out of it (Ironman autosaves for you and won't let you reload to earlier saved games if things start going poorly).

Stagflationary Mark said...

Difficulty Levels: Easy -> Normal -> Classic -> Impossible

I tried the "Impossible" difficulty a few times. While I know it is possible in both theory and practice, I don't think it offers all that much fun. It's more like an exercise in extreme frustration, lol.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

Just noticed that your first comment here (I think) fell into Blogger's SPAM bucket. So annoying!

In any event, I rescued it. :)

Troy said...

I am hopeful that our overpopulation and console discussion has a common answer -- panem et circenses

it's pretty economic just giving people food and game consoles to occupy their time.

problem comes when they create > 2.1 progeny a la Idiocracy

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

it's pretty economic just giving people food and game consoles to occupy their time.

Just need to fill those games up with product placement!

Basic Living Stipend + Free Gaming for the win! What's the worst that could happen?

Idiocracy

Oh, yeah. Well, there's that, lol. Sigh. ;)