While I have the benefit of observation, experience, practical training and I read and research a lot about the topic, I am not a trained economist.

Mainly I comment on things I have read or provide an opinion on a known economic theory or underlying principles.  Until now I have not proposed a unique and subjective theory of my own making.

Business activity

The world economy is based on business activity.  People produce stuff, from raw material to end product.  This includes the creation, aquisition and sales of anything that others will pay for (real or imaginary property),  if it is valued by someone it can be part of business activity.

Typically, business activity requires resources (e.g.,  raw material, know how, equipment, infrastructure).  However, without exception the most critical resource for business activity is human.    Thus business activity by and large engages humans for monetary return  (or occassionally other compensation).  We call this employment.

In this simplistic analysis employment is a key measure of business activity (aka the economy) and common sense leads us to believe high employment is indicative of a strong economy while low employment is the opposite.

Not Any More

And so we reach the crux of my theory.  Changes in the working population of the industrial world (aging people are not working) is resulting in a higher employment rate (it looks like more people are working)

The conclusion is business activity should be picking up, but it is not.  The normal things that occur with increased business activity – stronger investment markets, greater availability of commodities and most importantly, increased spending, are not happening.

Increased spending occurs because more people are employed, that is a higher rate of enployment.  The  fatal flaw in that thinking is the fact less are employed because there are less people to employee but this lower number of available resources make us think employment is high and therefore business activity on the rise.

I think the behavior of investment markets over the last few days raises some real questions about standard economic theory.