Friday, September 24, 2010

Disturbing Charts (Update 2), Part II

As a continuation of the last post, here are three other charts that I find disturbing in nature.

These charts raise a lot of questions.  Many of these questions I have discussed in the blog, as I believe they are very significant in nature.  Additionally, these charts should highlight the “atypical” nature of our economic situation from a long-term historical perspective.

Here is a St. Louis Fed chart depicting the Median Duration of Unemployment (last updated 9-3-10):

(click on charts to enlarge images)

These next two charts are from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.  These charts really provide a perspective on the length and extent of this downturn.  The first depicts our Unemployment situation (last updated 9-3-10):



This depicts Output (last updated 8-27-10):

I will update these charts on an intermittent basis as they deserve close monitoring.

SPX at 1129.01 as this post is written

2 comments:

  1. Some good observations. You should develop a thesis or practicality of what you are doing. You may wish to read Benajmin Roth's book on the Great Depression. Not because we are in some replica of it, but moreover, because it teaches us today two things: first, credit recessions take many years and have many fits and starts; and second, humans become so conditioned to expectations of their environment that they do not initial adjust or adapt to the changing landscape unde their feet. On this latter, point, to be fair, it should not be expected that we contemplate this readily - large techtonic shifts - because for the most part they are infrequent. Good stuff and figure out what you want to do with this information.

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  2. Necessarily people ignore and particularly they don't like bad news. So these things are quite natural. We see such hundreds of divergences. We ignore, make mistake, fall take some time and recover (& actually become strong in this process) it is like a growing baby.

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