Category Archives: Economics

Understanding Economic and Financial Data 🧮

This has been going unnoticed by some.

In finance and economics, many times, for the untrained eye, nothing seems to be happening.

For the trained eyes, many things are brewing and building up if not completely happening.

Every financial downturn in the past occurred in the same pattern although the underlying fundamentals might be different: Nothing happens and then everything happens!

Furthermore, charts or data you follow may appear to be random in isolation, but in conjunction, metrics monitored and measured exhibit either causality or correlation, providing meaningful insights.
In this article, I expand on some important financial metrics and what kinds of signals they disseminate. I’ll analyze them in isolation first and then in combination. I’ll also establish the relationship among fundamental metrics, deciphering what all of that means for an ordinary investor. I’ll try to corroborate the reality of financial markets, which is that nothing appears to be happening while something underneath is brewing and yet it has always been very hard to predict when a bubble will burst or a crisis comes forth.

On economics you have been taught wrong 🧭

Unfortunately, the dismal science taught in our schools and universities rests on many blatantly wrong assumptions.
From the definition and calculation of inflation to investment management and worshipping only a small subset of assets while ignoring those that would lead to greater financial freedom, the economics, as a subject, is losing ground while being mired in farfetched quant analyses and losing its connection with the realities of daily life and our changing world.
In this article, I elaborated on the most common misconceptions that are being perpetuated through the teaching of economics. The reality appears to be quite different from what you are being told every day.

On outdated measures concerning how big a country’s economy is and what this means for your purchasing power, i.e. your salary or income

Many national income measurement methods of today are misleading and hardly reflect the realities of the state of a national economy. 🧭

Quoting from Michal Hudson’s “The Bubble & Beyond”

“By rejecting the classical distinction between productive and unproductive labor and credit, today’s national income accounts classify rentier gains as “earnings” on a par with wages and profits, adding to national product rather than simply being transfer payments.

This approach treats all wealth as being earned as part of the production process, not extracted from the economy in the form of a free lunch (“economic rent”) by rentiers. ”

In this article, I will investigate why current measures related to how big the economies of countries are trick many. Although many countries tend to jack up their GDP evaluations by using favorable methods, the reality for the average citizen is generally fundamentally different from what all these numbers tell. I will also share some other measures that will be more helpful for citizens in gauging their purchasing power, together with some additional considerations assisting them in making more informed decisions informed decisions.