Excellent news on productivity

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 11, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good afternoon everyone, I have been talking about the difference between ephemeral economic growth vs. real economic growth for a while now. Real economic growth is closely approximated by productivity growth. So if we are looking for signs of an emergence from recession we would want to see increases in productivity. Lo and behold! Productivity in the second quarter of 2009 grew 6.4%. This is...
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Mixed messages

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 10, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 2 comments I have been reading the business and economic news with interest over the last several weeks. Increasingly there are a lot of stories that contradict one another in the same newspaper and on the same day. This reporting regards the state of the economy and usually centers on a quote from several prominent market prognosticators. In other words, the news stories are not factually based, but...
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Investing in the stock market makes sense, part 4

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 8, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 5 comments This is the final edition of why investing in the stock market makes sense. ***** Liquidity Another advantage of investing in the stock market vs. other types of investments is liquidity. Even for thinly traded shares of stock, it usually only takes a day or two to sell your interest in a publicly traded firm. Compare this to trying to sell a house, office building, baseball cards, art, gold...
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Unemployment percentage improves (!) barely

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 7, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Since this is the 200th blog posting since I went live last October to address friends, family and associates’ concerns about the (then) impending recession, it almost seems obligatory to talk about the unemployment rate and unemployment. In the month of July there were 247,000 additional job losses. However, that number was below jobs added, consequently the unemployment rate fell 0.1% to...
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Investing in the stock market makes sense, part 3

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 7, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 6 comments This is the third part of the “Investing in the Stock Market Makes Sense” series. How is it that publicly traded businesses can regularly grow their earnings at a pace significantly higher than that of GDP? After all, isn’t GDP the aggregate measure of all economic growth (i.e. profits) in the economy? And don’t the publicly traded firms represent a disproportionate...
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That paragon of arrogance, AIG, reports profit

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 7, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments That paragon of tremendous arrogance and horrible corporate “empire-culture,” AIG, reported its first profit in a year and a half yesterday. Gasp! If I sound bitter it’s because AIG was one of the worst investment mistakes of my life. Why? Because the pompousness oozed from AIG – and overwhelmingly I steer clear of arrogance; yet, with AIG I did not. Consequently, I lost...
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The PMI numbers are improving

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Aug 7, 2009 in Best of the Blog, Blog | 0 comments OK, by now it’s a broken record: Jason sees signs of recovery. Sorry. Some of these numbers need watchin’ and well, due to a horrible chemical accident I don’t have eyelids, so I can’t help but watch. Hah! What the heck is the PMI? PMI is short for the Purchasing Managers’ Index and is an economic indicator of production. The number is based on a monthly survey of...
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