On Monday March 25, many African Government offices, businesses and banks grind to a halt in order to commemorate Africa Day. In schools up and down the continent, little children are taught that heroic Africans liberated the continent from racist white colonial regimes and various events and parades are held to celebrate the occasion. Colonialism in Africa is remembered as …
Fossil Fuel Subsidies To Hit $5.3 Trillion In 2015, Says IMF – Ed King
Subsidies for fossil fuels that cause climate change have soared since 2013, a new study from the International Monetary Fund has revealed. Oil, gas and coal costs will be subsidized to the tune of US$5.3 trillion a year in 2015. The last time the IMF ran the data it calculated they were worth $1.9 trillion. Economists say the latest figures …
Wall Street Just Got More Pessimistic About the U.S. Economy. Will the Fed Follow Suit? – Matthew Boesler Catarina Saraiva
Federal Reserve officials will probably cut their forecasts for economic growth when they gather again next month, though not enough to deter their intent to raise interest rates later this year. The median respondent to a survey of 79 economists conducted by Bloomberg from May 8 to May 13 said U.S. gross domestic product would grow 2.3 percent in the final quarter of 2015 …
The Debt To GDP Ratio For The Entire World: 286 Percent – Michael Sndyer
Did you know that there is more than $28,000 of debt for every man, woman and child on the entire planet? And since close to 3 billion of those people survive on less than 2 dollars a day, your share of that debt is going to be much larger than that. If we took everything that the global economy produced this year …
US Economy Collapses Again – JACK RASMUS
Data released last week by the U.S. government showed the U.S. economy came to a near halt in the first three months of 2015, falling to nearly zero – i.e. a mere 0.2 percent annual growth rate for the January-March quarter. The collapse was the fourth time that the U.S. economy in the past four years either came to a …
Economic Disinformation Keeps Financial Markets Up – Paul Craig Roberts
Today’s payroll jobs report is more of the same. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 223,000 new jobs were created in April. Let’s accept the claim and see where the jobs are. Specialty trade contractors are credited with 41,000 jobs equally split between residential and nonresidential. I believe these are home and building repairs and remodeling. The rest of …
The Dwindling US Economy – Paul Craig Roberts
The announcement today (April 29) of a barely positive GDP first quarter 2015 growth rate of 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) is an intentional exaggeration. Today’s GDP report is the “advance estimate.” There will be two revisions, with the first occurring in one month on May 29. Although the “consensus estimate,” which is Wall Street’s estimate, declined dramatically over …
Is the Stock Market Another Bubble? – DEAN BAKER
The stock market has recovered sharply from the lows hit in the financial crisis. All the major indices are at or near record highs. This has led many analysts to worry about a new bubble in the stock market. These concerns are misplaced. Before going through the data, I should point out that I am not afraid to warn of …
World Happiness Report ranks Canada fifth happiest country in the world
The 2015 World Happiness Report, published today, ranks Canada fifth for subjective well-being among 158 countries worldwide. Canada has moved up one place in the rankings since the last report in 2013. The report, produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), contains analysis from leading experts in the fields of economics, neuroscience, national statistics, and describes how measurements of subjective …
Bakken Shale Oil Well Output Drops To Lowest Since 2009 – Tyler Durden
In addition to the EIA’s amusing oil price forecast, which as noted previously leaves quite a bit to be desired considering it was a year ago that the EIA completely failed to anticipate the plunge in crude prices, which have collapsed far below its worst case estimate… … there is another more substantial problem with the EIA predicting a consistent increase in …