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This is an update to a post I did several years ago.September 23, 2011An Employment Trend that Has Not FailedI promised an exponential trend that has not failed. Here it comes!We can get this ratio to infinity simply by continuing to shed manufacturing jobs faster than we shed financial activities jobs. It might not be as easy as it looks though.In hindsight, it has not been easy.The following chart shows the natural...

The following chart shows the average of new private housing units authorized by building permits and new privately owned housing units started.Click to enlarge.If cold weather is responsible for the exponential trend failure then, as seen in the chart, it sure has been cold over the past year.Source Data:St. Louis Fed: Custom Cha...

The following chart shows real GDP.Click to enlarge.Four exponential trend lines and their growth rates have been added.Note that each time an exponential trend fails, it is replaced with an exponential trend of lesser quality. What doesn't kill us, doesn't make us stronger. Go figure.The next chart shows the long-term trend of those growth rates. I'm using the midpoint of my hand-picked expansions as the x-axis.Click...

The following chart shows the US trade deficit with China divided by the price of crude oil (annualized billions of barrels).Click to enlarge.It shows the amount of oil China could buy if they were to use their entire trade surplus with us to do so. That's assuming the price of oil would not be driven even higher in response to increased purchases of course, which is no doubt a bad assumption.The next chart plots the...

Click to enlarge.The line in black shows real net corporate dividends.The line in blue shows the real trade deficit (same scale).The red line shows the exponential trend in real dividends from 1947:Q1 to 1987:Q1. Note the exponential trend failure (to the upside).Will real dividends stay permanently elevated? Will profit margins stay permanently elevated? Can we be assured that the worst is behind us? Can we expect...

Click to enlarge.I'm using quarterly averages to eliminate some of the noise.Source Data:St. Louis Fed: Existing Home Sal...

The following chart shows the real home equity loans at all commercial banks per civilian employed (December 2013 dollars).Click to enlarge.A linear trend failure *and* an exponential trend failure? All in the same chart? I think I just died and went to trend failure heaven!October 27, 2005Bernanke: There's No Housing Bubble to Go BustU.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke,...

Click to enlarge.Real GDP growth averaged 3.48% per year from 1947 to 2000.Starting in 2000, this long-term exponential trend began to fail. First the dotcom bubble popped, then came the housing bust. Let's take a close-up look at the most recent recovery for any signs of hope.Click to enlarge.From the bottom of the Great Recession, real GDP growth has averaged just 2.28%. That is an especially pathetic growth rate...