Economist Global Housing analysis

Full article here

cutout: Based on the average of the two measures, home prices are overvalued by about 25% or more in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden (see table). Indeed, in the first four of those countries housing looks more overvalued than it was in America at the peak of its bubble. Despite their collapse, Irish home prices are still slightly above “fair” value—partly because they were incredibly overvalued at their peak, and partly because incomes and rents have fallen sharply. In contrast, homes in America, Japan and Germany are all significantly undervalued. In the late 1990s the average house price in Germany was twice that in France; now it is 20% cheaper.

Economist prediction chart

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/poll-forecasters

" What our polls forecast for 2011 GDP growth and inflation

EVERY month The Economist surveys a group of economists and records the average and range of their predictions for GDP growth, consumer prices and the current-account balances for 14 economies (see this month's poll). The charts below show our pollsters' monthly 2011 economic growth and inflation predictions for America, Japan and the euro area since March 2010. The evolution of the forecasts shows that as 2011 has progressed economists have been gradually becoming increasingly pessimistic about the fortunes of the American economy and its ability to fight inflation. A marked divergence is also noticeable in Japan after the Fukushima earthquake in April, while the outlook for GDP growth in the euro area had been slowly improving but has deteriorated over recent months. "

Economist -- nice overview

Excellent article -- worth a full read (it's not that long, even!)

last paragraph: In 2008 governments were credible backstops for their banks and the Fed, the central bank at the heart of the crisis, was willing to do everything it could to create confidence. Now the sovereigns are the problem and the ECB’s help is limited and conditional. That is the real horror film.

http://www.economist.com/node/21531467?fsrc=nlw|edh|09-29-11|editors_highlights

past, present, future

long term GDP economist chart 

A NEW book, discussed in this week's Economics focus, by Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that China’s economic might will overshadow America’s sooner than people think. Mr Subramanian combines each country’s share of world GDP, trade and foreign investment into an index of economic “dominance”. By 2030 China’s share of global economic power will match America’s in the 1970s and Britain’s a century before. Three forces will dictate China’s rise, Mr Subramanian argues: demography, convergence and “gravity”. Since China has over four times America’s population, it only has to produce a quarter of America’s output per head to exceed America’s total output. Indeed, Mr Subramanian thinks China is already the world’s biggest economy, when due account is taken of the low prices charged for many local Chinese goods and services outside its cities. China will be equally dominant in trade, accounting for twice America’s share of imports and exports. That projection relies on the “gravity” model of trade, which assumes that commerce between countries depends on their economic weight and the distance between them.

9/11/01 - 9/11/11

Economist looks at Suez traffic vs. world GDP

Running aground

Sep 2nd 2011, 13:56 by The Economist online

An alternative indicator points to a slowing world economy

FURTHER economic strife may be ahead as a swathe of recently released data points to a slowdown in the world economy. This is confirmed by one alternative measure: the amount of cargo passing through the Suez Canal in Egypt. Approximately 8% of the world's international trade is estimated to flow through the canal, so it acts as a good early indicator of the prevailing economic conditions. The average increase in the total weight of cargo passing through the canal was 5.7% in the three months to July, down from 9.5% in December. Making a simple forecast based on the past few months' data suggests that world GDP will fall from 3.8% in the first quarter to 3.3% in the second quarter.

Economist World Debt Guide

World Debt Guide interactive chart -- check it out.

Also, here's a fun chart from the same site:

Interactive Eurozone Chart

from the economist

Economist Overheating Economies Index (interactive chart)

Full Article
More info on this chart

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