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Time for graphics

I haven’t done a graphics post in some time, but the following chart of the civilian employment to population ratio really caught my eye. This is not looking good at all.

Civilian Employment Population Ratio

Here’s an accompanying one, in color. The green arrow is “You are Here”. This chart is particularly remarkable because for the first twelve months of the green line many weren’t sure if the US was in recession or not. In Great Depression like-for-like terms, US unemployment is now at 17.5%.

Job Losses in Recession

This one is ’synchronized’ as well.

Synchronized Recession

A similar pattern in vehicle sales – unprecedented weakness.

US Vehicle Sales

Guess what? Property prices have still not inflected. “Home prices in 20 U.S. cities declined 18.2 percent in November from a year earlier, the fastest drop on record.” The 20-city index is down 25 percent from its 2006 peak.

Case Shiller Index to Nov 08

A worrying drop in shipping activity, particularly in the last three months of 2008, though the trend was clearly broken in mid 2007.

Container Volumes

Can’t say the authorities aren’t trying. The money supply is exploding.

Monetary Base

Bank guarantees are multiples of GDP.

Bank Support

There doesn’t seem to be an asset or counterparty the US Fed doesn’t like.

Fed Balance Sheet

Long Term

At times like these one needs perspective. Similar events have happened before, though in the long term the historical evidence indicates that we are all deceased. Debt levels as a percentage of GDP.

Long Term Public Debt Levels

Real returns on various asset classes.

Long Term Returns

Comments 2

  1. Paul wrote:

    From Some Assembly Required:

    Soon, maybe this week, the government is going to give anonymous banks undisclosed sums of taxpayer money for unidentified assets of undetermined worth on terms as yet undecided… in an effort to build confidence.

    Posted 12 Feb 2009 at 8:44 pm
  2. Paul wrote:

    This video clip of an interview with Paul Kanjorski, Congressional representative from Pennsylvania and Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair is frightening. Kanjorski reports on a

    … tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.

    According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two. He says:

    The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed… It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it.

    Posted 12 Feb 2009 at 9:31 pm