Jill from Nakedtrader.com brings us some sobering stats. I’ve followed the misery index for years and while we are certainly not in the neighborhood of the late 70’s we are certainly feeling it. The inflation component may not be a big issue yet but certainly unemployment is a major concern. The comparisons to other countries is startling. Let me know what you think of this great synopsis.
The big stories in global financial markets have rumbled along for the past week, but there have been no major developments. Perhaps we shall discover after the final holiday weekend of the summer whether Bank of America and/or some French banks really need a another big bailout, or whether the one in progress for Greece will collapse, but for now there is nothing new to say.
This break gives us the chance to comment on a topic which has held our interest for some time, the misery index. This evocatively named economic statistic, which came to the fore in the dark days of the late 1970s, is obtained very simply by adding the unemployment rate to the 12 month rate of price inflation. Given that these twin ogres feature regularly at the top of the list of the greatest fears in the minds of the general population, it comes…
