From the category archives:

economics

The Mule trips up

21 April 2010

In my last post, I fell into a common trap when dealing with financial time-series data: I did not adjust for inflation. This post fixes that by looking at growth in “real” personal consumption in the US.

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Has the US consumer shaken off the financial crisis?

19 April 2010

American consumers appear to be returning to their traditional role of fueling the global economy as consumption shows strong growth for the fifth month in a row.

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Where is debt headed now?

20 March 2010
Debt levels - thumbnail image

As expected, government debt levels exhibit a marked up-swing. What is striking, however, is that the levels of household debt have not yet fallen. While US and the UK are consumers “deleveraging”, Australian households are showing no signs yet of reducing their debt.

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Mule Stable demo video

25 February 2010

A demonstration video showing how to get started on the Mule Stable discussion forum. Anyone familiar with Twitter will feel at home straight-away, for everyone else, this video should ease your way into posting in the Stable.

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Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

23 February 2010
Thumbnail image for Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

Clusterstock’s “Chart of the Day” has a chart showing business lending “falling like a knife”. But closer examination of the chart reveals that it is in fact quite misleading.

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Blame Greece’s Debt Crisis on the Euro

Thumbnail image for Blame Greece’s Debt Crisis on the Euro 18 February 2010

Ever since they joined the European monetary union and adopted the Euro as their currency, they lost the power to create their own money. The Euro is the real reason Greece finds itself facing a debt crisis.

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The Mule on Mortgages

13 February 2010

So you’ve saved up a deposit for your first house, you want to take advantage of the government’s first home owner grant while you still can, and the bank is actually prepared to lend you money. But how much should you borrow?

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Banks, Central Banks and Money

18 December 2009

One misconception about the mechanics of money that I mentioned in my last post is the idea that banks can hoard their reserves at the central bank* rather than lending them out. Here I will explain why this idea simply does not make sense, but no more casinos and gaming chips. No more senior croupiers [...]

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How Money Works

11 December 2009

Over the last couple of years as the global financial crisis unfolded, a subject I have spent a lot of time thinking about is the nature of money. I have been planning a blog post on the topic and the time has finally come. The catalyst for finally writing this post was attending last week’s [...]

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Which countries work the hardest?

1 December 2009

Last week over dinner with friends, a debate arose as to whether Australians worked harder than Americans or not. Since we had more wine than data, the argument did not last very long and we instead moved on to the question of whether China now more closely resembles a fascist regime than a communist one. Reflecting later on the first discussion, I decided to dig up some data on hours worked and attempt to determine a winner for the debate.

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