All the charts are looking about the same to me.
We had a big move down, which found support helped by the automatic fiscal stabilizers, followed by a brief V shaped bounce that appears to be followed by a leveling off at modest rates of growth and absolute levels well below previous highs of a few years ago, which weren’t all that high to begin with.
And most of the V looks to have been from oversold inventories.
Looks like at least for now the great moderation has returned but with a much larger output gap/unemployment rate?
New jobs can get us back to a ‘get a job buy a car’ credit expansion, but looks like that could be a while.
And external risks remain, with euro zone aggregate demand at risk and maybe China as well if second half State sponsored lending does its usual swan dive.
Also, my nagging suspicion that a 0 rate policy is fundamentally highly deflationary, allowing the benefit of lower levels of taxation, continues to be reinforced by the data.
In other words, it feels like for the current size of govt. we are grossly overtaxed.
See the smaller attachment for my selected charts, the larger for the full chart package.
Link:
You know, I very much appreciate your comment in previous posts that there is a “right-sized” government depending on how one defines its public purpose. The current level of taxation in the US feels almost abusive, which may be why so many are showing up at the tea parties.
any level of taxation that results in unemployment is too high.
🙂