ECONOMICS

Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

The world economy is an amazingly complex, physics-based, self-organizing system. The three major elements are extracted resources including energy resources, human population, and demand coming through the financial system.

Figure 1. Major elements of the world economy according to Gail Tverberg. These are human population, extracted resources including energy resources, and financial demand.

All three of these elements (more…)

It was ugly in macro-land today with existing home sales crashing (as home prices hit record highs). But a couple of Regional Fed surveys really laid an egg…

First out of the gate was the Philly Fed Services Activity Survey, which puked in July from two-year highs to near four-year lows…

Source: Bloomberg

The indexes for general activity at the firm level, new orders, and sales/revenues turned negative. The full-time employment index suggested a decline in (more…)

By Stuttgart Daily Leader

While La Ñina is helping ease the traffic knots at the Panama Canal, repeated attacks by Houthis — some fatal — have driven shippers to find alternatives to the Suez Canal, said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

The Panama Canal is a key route for global trade, including for Arkansas commodities such as soybeans and corn. In March, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that (more…)