With the current recovery stretching to 113 months, it’s easy to forget that the economy is, and always has been, cyclical. Cycles can be manipulated to some degree, but they…
The Peter Pan Economy
Lowering interest rates is not necessarily a bad thing. It can make borrowing cheaper, which – at least in theory – will stimulate business investment. It can weaken the dollar,…
Nothing Lasts Forever
If the Federal Reserve Board has used all of its policy tools during the current expansion, what happens when there’s a recession? That’s a question worth asking, even as the…
Polar Vortex or Recession Redux?
The recovery that wasn’t a recovery may have come to an end, as the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that gross domestic product dropped by 1% during the first quarter…
Wishful Thinking Does Not Create Economic Recovery
This was going to be the year. Remember the predictions of 3% economic growth? More recently, the consensus was 1.2% growth for the most recent quarter. It turns out, though,…
The Economic Recovery That No One Noticed
The average recovery since the end of World War II has been 58 months. The current “recovery” has just reached that milestone. So maybe we should be celebrating. But what’s…
The Unnoticed Recovery
It seems that every day we hear about a stronger economy with real jobs, a recovered housing market and renewed manufacturing strength being just ahead. We hear about it. We…