The economy appeared to stabilize in December/January, but is now taking a turn for the worse. Many will continue to call bottoms, only to be disappointed shortly thereafter. Eventually the economy will turn around, but we have a rough couple of years ahead of us. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.
Category Archives: Economics and finance
Surviving Deflation
Last week’s CPI (-1.0%) and PPI (-2.8%) confirmed what many economists feared - the financial market crash and economic slowdown was triggering a period of deflation (falling prices). Deflation is bad because it can cause an economy to come to a grinding halt. It works through a number of insidious pathways. Consumers defer purchases because [...]
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Some really troubling economic signs
Last week, the unemployment rate rose to 6.5%, the highest it has been since early 1994. However, that’s not the big story. The big story is how fast it’s rising given how early it is in the current recession. The last recession ran from March 2001 through November 2001. The unemployment rate started rising two [...]
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Living off-grid versus de-gridding
One of the recurring themes of this blog will be optimizing your dependence on the grid. In most cases, this means lessening your dependence on the grid, but still maintaining some level of dependence where it makes sense. There is an inverse relationship between efficiency and reliability. Efficiency simply refers to how much of an output you [...]
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