ECRI’s Achuthan: Ignore GDP and the Fiscal Cliff, U.S. Is Already in Recession

Aaron Tasker of the Daily Ticker Interviews Lakshman Achuthan November 29, 2012:


The U.S. economy grew 2.7% in the third quarter, up from a previously reported 2% the government reported Thursday. But the guts of the report raised some concern, notably a big increase in inventories and a big downward revision to consumer spending.

For most economists, the GDP report provides further evidence of a U.S. economy that's growing modestly, but far from robustly. For Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, the report is a distraction from the real story: the U.S. economy is already in recession.

Read more here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cathie Wood: The Big Risk Is Deflation, Not Inflation

The big risk ahead over the next five years is deflation, not inflation, and it will benefit investments in innovation strategies, according to Cathie Wood, founder and chief executive officer of Ark Invest. Robert England Innovator companies, who share prices have tumbled 30-35% from their heights earlier this year, are likely to return 25-30% in each of the next five years from their current levels, Wood is predicting. “In terms of the recent behavior of value stocks, especially those we believe are in harm’s way, compared to the severe draw down of innovation stocks, I like the set up very much,” Wood said.   While the current situation is reminiscent of the runup in prices from 2006 to 2008, the bond market is signaling that may not be the case, Wood said.    Instead of 10-year Treasury yields rising sharply higher as it did during the 2008 financial crisis, the bond market “has settled down” following a sharply higher move in yields earlier in the year on inflation f...
Read more

Early “Catastrophic” Blackstone Deal Led to Schwarzman’s Passion for Preserving Capital

W e tend to remember and apply best those life-changing lessons that were painfully learned. For Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of The Blackstone Group, one of those early painful lessons was the importance of establishing and following a rigorous process for assessing all the risks before making an investment. By Robert Stowe England “We go from the premise that our first job, sort of like a doctor, is do no harm – and in the financial business that means don’t lose money,” Schwarzman said November 6 at a Reuters Newsmaker event for his new book  What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence . He was interviewed at the Thomson Reuters building in New York before invited guests by Reuters editor-at-large Sir Harold Evans. Schwarzman in his book cited “don’t lose money” as the number one rule at Blackstone, acknowledging that saying that out loud sometimes prompts smirks.  Since before the September 17 release of the book, Schwarzman has granted...
Read more

Crypto Index Funds Scramble to Win Over Hesitant Investors

Image
Hunter Horsley, chief executive officer of Bitwise Entrepreneurs believe that crypto index funds will greatly expand the crypto investor base just as the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 indexes have done for stocks.   By Robert Stowe England As entrepreneurs look to take cryptocurrency mainstream, they’re copying a tried-and-trusted approach from traditional investing: indexing. Index investing is designed to generate returns that are similar to a broad market index. This approach can reduce the risk of picking individual assets which might underperform the broad market. So, in the case of an equity index,  instead of picking say Exxon, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Ford, for example, you invest in the broad market.  Several new crypto index products have launched recently, offering investors new avenues into the market without some of the risks associated with putting money into single blockchain projects.  Crypto indexers take their cu...
Read more