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Country Shares of World GDP

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Here's a chart of world GDP, broken down by country share. ( HT: Carpe Diem ). Careful with the x-axis, it is not at all to scale! The basic idea is that India and China had large shares pre-industrial revolution, after which Europe rose. The U.S. shoots up, to over 40% of world GDP by 1950. Then, Japan begins to grow in the 1960s, and China in the 1980s. Suppose countries end up with GDPs proportionate to their populations. What would that picture look like? I've added a bar to the right, showing the break-down of world-population. Look at the U.S. squished down, with less that 400 million out of a world population of over 7,000 million. The biggest change is in the previously un-noticed 'rest of the world". If Africa, the Middle East and so on moved toward freedom, that could be the story of the century.  What if they do not? Here's a chart with a new assumption. Suppose the "rest-of-world" does not increase its relative s...
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TARP

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The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook ( Link, in case the video above does not play ) In the video above, the Daily Show slams the Fed for giving banks $7.7 trillion in secret. This is a gross misrepresentation that started with a shoddy Bloomberg story and was later echoed elsewhere in the Blogosphere. Simply put, the Fed did not lend anywhere near $7.7 trillion . It was closer to $2 Trillion. Secondly, this total was widely publicized at the time. (What was kept secret was the details about which banks got funds and how much. Everyone knew the details were not being disclosed, and some politicians were quite vocal asking for the details.) The Fed responded to Bloomberg's article, and Bloomberg says they "stand by their reporting", but the details of their clarification show that they were at least guilty of writing in a way that readers might easily be misled. As much as I woul...
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How're we doing on Unemployment? (Feb 2012 Edition)

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In October I posted some GDP graphs from the excellent Calculated Risk blog. In summary,  "Real Personal Income"  was still 5% below the pre-recession peak when ignoring "transfer payments".  Additionaly, in four years of recession, the population has grown, and the numbers look worse on a per-capita basis. In this post, I switch my focus to unemployment. Unemployment rate has bottomed:   Here is a graph ( sharper original on Calculated Risk ), comparing the rise of unemployment (downward in the graph) in past recessions, and how soon the rate recovered to its pre-recession level. Post WW-II,  the unemployment rate has never turned so weak nor has it remained weak for so long. Based on historical patterns, it is optimistic to think unemployment will return to its recent pre-recession low (about 5%) any time in the next 2 years. Participation rate falling: One problem with the unemployment rate is that it under-counts dejected workers who have gi...
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