Thursday, August 16, 2012

Unified Field Theory of the Economy?

Interesting to see these four charts together:

Regulation, Money Supply, Federal Spending, and Unemployment

As you can see, there really was a time, corresponding roughly to the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton administrations, when the government exercised some restraint in printing money, regulating, and spending. This coincided with an unemployment rate considerably lower than we have today.

I’ll leave it to you to determine what conclusions, if any, may be drawn.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.


Technical stuff:
All data are three-year moving averages.
New regulations are actual pages published in the Federal Register (total pages minus blank and skip pages). Source: FederalRegister.gov
Money supply data is seasonally adjusted M2. Source: Federal Reserve
Spending data sources: Federal outlays from the Office of Management and Budget; GDP is current dollar from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Unemployment data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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