NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to l

NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING

Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to look smart during a boom. The arrow is in flight. We only need to watch its arc.

But Europe fell back into recession and its confirmed as of today. And I don’t see why the USA won’t as well. I thought that we’d stimulate like hell but I can’t see any sings that the status quo will change in congress or the fed.

But I’m not following the numbers. I’m following the people that follow the numbers. And they are quiet and clueless still.

I was pretty wrong on china. Late on the euro. Early on the states. And right on housing prices. So my record is now mixed.

But I think I’ll be proven right about structural unemployment. Every contradictory paper I can find presupposes that demand will cause us to sop up people. And I agree a bit. I just don’t agree it’s meaningful. This unemployment will be with us I think.

When I said 2014 at the earliest followed by the demographic cliff in 2017-2020 I sounded nuts. But it looks pretty rational now. Economics in the end, all other things being equal, is reducible to demographics.

I stopped fussing with data and started focusing exclusively on political theory about a year ago. And the reason is that I don’t see that anything interesting will occur to get us out of this scenario for a couple of years.