Economics

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    WSJ: Real time economics

  • U.S. Factories Are ‘Grossly Underutilized’

    6 Nov 2009 | 1:18 pm
    U.S. manufacturing is finally on the mend — though as many factory bosses are quick to point out, when you’re in a hole this deep, everything looks up. That’s certainly true of capacity utilization. The numbers show U.S. factories remain “grossly underutilized,” writes Daniel Meckstroth, chief economist of MAPI/Manufacturers Alliance, in a new report. Capacity utilization, which includes manufacturing, mining and utilities, has been hit hard in this recession, reaching 70.5% in September after being in the 80s for years. In the manufacturing sector, factory utilization for…

  • Jobs Report: Something for Politicians of Every Political Stripe

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:07 am
    Friday’s employment report may not have provided any clear signal as to when the U.S. economy might start creating jobs, but it did have something to offer for politicians of just about any stripe. President Barack Obama speaks about Friday’s jobs report. (Getty Images) Democrats who want to argue that the Obama administration’s stimulus measures are working can point to the headline number: a shrinkage of 190,000 jobs on nonfarm payrolls in October. While not pretty in itself, it suggests that the job market is worsening at a slower rate. The economy lost an average of 226,000 jobs…

  • Airlines Illustrate Why Layoffs Continue

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:03 am
    Why are companies still laying people off if the economy’s looking better? A closer look at the airline industry might help answer that question. While carriers say they see glimmers of evidence that the plunge in passenger demand that began a year ago is bottoming out, they aren’t seeing many signs that travelers are coming back or are willing to pay more for tickets. So the airlines are continuing to trim jobs, drop money-losing routes and take seats out of the air. The shrinking began in earnest in 2008, when oil prices were surging, but the recession gave them new incentives to…

  • Unemployment Extension Adds Up to 99 Weeks of Benefits

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:37 am
    The latest extension of unemployment benefits couldn’t come at a better time, it seems; President Barack Obama signed legislation into law Friday providing an additional 14 to 20 weeks of benefits for those who have already exhausted theirs or will do so by year-end. Job seekers search for work at a jobs fair. (Getty Images) The extension comes on the same day the Labor Department announced the U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.2% in October, crossing into double-digits for the first time in 26 years as the nation’s jobless swelled to 15.7 million. The bill, passed earlier this week by both…

  • Jobs Report Shows No Pressure on Fed to Raise Rates

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:39 am
    For all the inflation worriers chafing at the bit for a rate increase, the October jobs report shows why the Federal Reserve will be on the sidelines for a long time. On Friday, the government reported payroll losses came to 190,000 in October, after a revised drop of 219,000 the prior month. The relative moderation in job losses was about the only good news the report could offer. The rest was a tale of woe. At 10.2%, the unemployment rate is at its highest point since April 1983. It is also near the top end of what’s seen as the high point of joblessness in the U.S.: Fed officials, in…
 
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    naked capitalism

  • Einhorn: First, Let’s Kill All the Credit Default Swaps

    Yves Smith
    7 Nov 2009 | 12:13 am
    David Einhorn, who enjoys his considerable reputation for hard-fought battles against firms with shaky finances and dubious accounting (Alliance Capital and Lehman), has taken aim at a new and equally deserving target: credit default swaps. In an interesting bit of synchronicity, Einhorn’s comments in a letter to investors overlap to a considerable degree with a post we wrote yesterday on why a clearinghouse for derivatives wasn’t a solution to the dangers posed by credit default swaps (and note the Orwellian branding, the reforms are about “derivatives” which include…

  • Guest Post: Investor Psychology … Fear Turns People Into Sheep

    George Washington
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:23 pm
    By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. Investors are basically rational, right? In fact, as many studies have demonstrated, the answer is no. But instead of wading through all of the investment psychology research, let’s look at research into people’s basic reasoning abilities. Bear with me for a minute. A study in an area unrelated to investing sheds light on people’s basic thinking processes. Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq…

  • The less optimistic view of Treasury’s handling of the crisis

    Edward Harrison
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:09 am
    By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote on this topic. In their wildly optimistic view, the banking industry is solvent and always has been. All that was needed to ‘solve’ than banking crisis was a lot of liquidity, government backstops and, most importantly, time. This…

  • Links 11/6/09

    Yves Smith
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:18 am
    Newborn Babies Cry in Native Tongue Live Science (hat tip reader John D) Understanding long term chronic pain symptoms from minor motor vehicle accidents RFK Action Front, This is intriguing. Second Life creates virtual world for businesses Raw Story (hat tip reader John D) Fannie Mae’s results – oh, and what if Bank of America reported the same way… John Hempton Dollar rise *alert* FT Alphaville Reed Apologies for Glass Steagall Repeal, Building Citigroup Bloomberg Banks Thwarting Feinberg Pay Model by Changing Bonus Formulas Bloomberg. I’d post on this, but it has been in…

  • The Fantasy of the Clearing House Magic Bullet

    Yves Smith
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:32 am
    As Gillian Tett points out in the Financial Times today, clearing derivatives centrally has come to be viewed in policy circles as a magical solution. As a result, it has not gotten the scrutiny it deserves. The reason for the enthusiasm is that, in theory, a clearinghouse would make sure all agreements were adequately backstopped, so that if customer defaulted, it would not produce cascading counterparty defaults. The clearinghouse would have enough margin and capital to absorb the loss. And observers take great comfort from the fact that no significant exchange (which also has central…
 
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    Economics Latest News, Politics Breaking Stories, Market Top Headlines

  • Google China Music Search Gets Fans

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    BEIJING—Google Inc.'s online music service in China is now providing about five million songs a day and is starting to attract major advertisers though its revenue remains small, a top executive at the U.S. search company's Chinese partner said. Google's music search, launched in March and currently available only in China, has been closely watched by the music industry because it is the only major service in the world to let users download and stream licensed songs free. The service is a joint venture between Google and Top100.cn, a site owned by Chinese company Orca Digital. Offering…

  • NEC Plans to Raise $1.48 Billion

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    TOKYO -- NEC Corp. said Friday it plans to raise up to 134 billion yen, or about $1.48 billion, through a new share issuance aimed at boosting its weakened financial standing as it steps up capital spending. The Japanese computer and network equipment maker is planning a public offering of 537.5 million new shares. An additional offering of 37.5 million new shares is expected under an over-allotment arrangement, meaning the maximum possible number of new ...

  • Leap, Metro PCS See User Growth Stall

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    MetroPCS Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc. both saw customer growth slide in the third quarter amid intensifying competitive pressure on the prepaid end of the wireless industry. Leap and MetroPCS, which operate similar regionally based prepaid wireless services, both relied on new cities for growth in the period, but lost customers in their existing markets. Both cut their expectations for growth for the year. The business of offering prepaid service—where customers pay ahead of time for the minutes they use and aren't required to sign a contract—has…

  • JDA Software to Buy Rival i2

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    JDA Software Group Inc. said it plans to buy i2 Technologies Inc. for $434.4 million, a deal the companies said will create global leader in helping corporate-supply chains. A deal between the software companies fell apart in December as JDA needed more time to close a deal, then valued at $346 million. The offer has been increased to ...

  • The Fed s Bridge to Wall Street

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    The Federal Reserve pumped $1 trillion into the financial system during a year of harried efforts to rescue the economy. Brian Sack's job is to figure out how to get the money back out. Mr. Sack, 39 years old, is an economist who runs the markets group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The group runs the Fed's trading, making it the bridge between the marble corridors of the Federal Reserve in Washington and the bustling trading floors of Wall Street. In normal times, it buys and sells Treasury securities to influence the level of interest rates. During ...
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    NYT: Paul Krugman

  • Why not a WPA?

    By Paul Krugman
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:44 am
    It might be worth discussing whether we shouldn't try to include a public option in stimulus, too.

  • Nominally misguided (wonkish)

    By Paul Krugman
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:20 am
    When you're in a liquidity trap, focusing on nominal magnitudes doesn't clarify matters; it obscures them.

  • Obama's trap

    By Paul Krugman
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:50 am
    Was Mr. Obama really led to believe that his stimulus proposal was as bold as he claimed it was?

  • The lost generation

    By Paul Krugman
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:36 am
    On the right, the politically correct thing is to pretend that nothing good happened until Reagan came along.

  • I'm not sure what the moral of this is, but ...

    By Paul Krugman
    4 Nov 2009 | 11:52 am
    Dire warnings from the distant past.
 
 
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    alpha.sources

  • Too Much of a Good Thing in Australia?

    CV
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:51 am
    (click on pictures for better viewing) It is indeed an old adage that while goods things are to be preferred over bad things it is possible to get too much of the former. Looking at recent comments from the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia it is not difficult to imagine how these, albeit old and worn, pearls of wisdom may well have inspired Mr. Stevens in his effort to tiptoe the thigthrope between signalling the intention to raise rates into an expected economic recovery on the one side and trying to prevent the Aussie shoot of on helium into the sun with wings of wax on the other.

  • Japanes Companies, Exports and the Current Account

    CV
    2 Nov 2009 | 8:54 am
    (click on pictures for better viewing) Last week, we learned that industrial production rose yet again in Japan clocking in at 1.4% month-on-month in September after having increased by 1.6% in August. Companies said they planned to increase production in October and November as well, indicating the recovery from a record export collapse in the first quarter is holding up. Growth in China is generating sales for manufacturers including Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., which this week said it has worked off stockpiles that piled up during the recession. “The pace of the recovery is…

  • Are Americans Becoming Less Nomadic?

    CV
    25 Oct 2009 | 10:53 am
    As a puny yet honest attempt to show you that I actually read other things than plain economics I thought that I would share this piece with you on declining nomadism amongst Americans; it is written for Newsweek by author Joel Kotkin. I am not quite sure whether he believes the ageing of the population to be the decisive factor contributing to the rise of localism which he speaks about or just a factor among many. I would presume that sociologists and historians could find an explanation for this development in their distinct theoretical tool kits too without invoking the demographic…

  • Whoops, No Recovery in the UK It Seems ...

    CV
    23 Oct 2009 | 2:05 am
    ... at least not yet that is. Let us see how the rest in Europe will fair. (From Bloomberg) U.K. gross domestic product unexpectedly dropped in the third quarter as enduring slumps in services, manufacturing and construction kept the economy mired in its longest recession on record. Gross domestic product dropped 0.4 percent from the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. Economists predicted a 0.2 percent increase, according to the median of 33 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. The economy has now contracted in six quarters, the most since records…

  • The Burden of Rebalancing

    CV
    21 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm
    (click on graphs for better viewing; sorry for lack of x-axis formatting) Nothing good lasts forever, or so at least many would have us believe. I shall neatly leave it aside of whether this is true in a general sense but merely note that it appears that we are moving closer to some form of another of crunch here. And my rationale you ask? Well, let me simply note that it appears, despite the fact one would believe that investors' and punters' should know better, that we are headed right back into the same dead end as we did the last time the Dollar was canooled with the Euro taking center…
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    American Prospect: beat the press

  • Same Store Sales Mean Less When There are Fewer Stores

    6 Nov 2009 | 3:36 am
    Why do reporters and analysts always fail to take note of the fact that there are fewer stores this year than last year? This is important when we compare same store sales, because the stores that have survived over the year now have a larger share of retail business. In a normal year there is growth in the number of stores year to year, so flat same store sales would be consistent with rising total retail stores. With many chains having closed stores in the last year and many smaller stores having gone out of business, flat same store sales would imply a decline in total retail sales.

  • Why Does the Government Spend So Much More on Peter Peterson Than It Does On Poor Children?

    6 Nov 2009 | 3:18 am
    It probably has something to do with the fact the billionaire investment banker owns lots of government bonds on which he collects interest. (Okay, I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing that he does own bonds.) The interest that a billionaire like Peterson collects on government bonds would almost certainly exceed by a huge amount payments for poor children for items like health care or child care. Is this an injustice? Perhaps, but most people would consider the fact that Peterson paid for the bonds to be an important factor in the discussion. In the same vein, where does Steven…

  • When Fannie Mae Sells Tax Credits to Goldman Sachs, Taxpayers Lose

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:16 am
    Fannie Mae is losing money, therefore it owes no taxes. However, it does have tax credits on its books. Enter the geniuses at Goldman Sachs. They want to buy the tax breaks from Fannie so that they can put them to good use. The Post mentions this proposal in the context of a report on Fannie's 3rd quarter losses. It notes a Treasury Department analysis showing that any gains to Fannie from the sale will be offset by a loss of tax revenue to the Treasury. Actually, this does not require much analysis and the government will be a guaranteed loser on this deal. Goldman does not pay $1.00 for…

  • Why Does the Post Never Report on Job Loss from Defense Spending?

    5 Nov 2009 | 2:57 am
    The Post told readers this morning that critics of measures to limit global warming warn that legislation could be:"a job-killer in states dependent on manufacturing and natural resources." While the risk of job loss associated with measures to limit global warming have been frequently mentioned in the Post and elsewhere in the media, the same economic models that show job loss from these measures would show much larger job loss associated with the increases in defense spending that we have seen this decade. Nonetheless, there has been virtually no discussion of job loss associated with…

  • Cash for Clunkers Pushes Up Used Car Prices

    4 Nov 2009 | 9:37 am
    I was waited to see if anyone would notice. USA Today gets the prize. It was pretty much inevitable that there would be a rise in used car prices following the C4C program. If you require that 900,000 trade-ins get destroyed rather than being resold, this has to create somewhat of a shortage in the used car market. It's remarkable that no one seemed to have noticed (there were big jumps in used car prices in the CPI for both August and September). --Dean Baker
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    Robert Reich's Blog

  • How Obama Can Convince Congress to Enact a Larger Stimulus, and Why He Must

    Robert Reich
    3 Nov 2009 | 4:49 pm
    The Administration's biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by Fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus -- settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn't go nearly far enough. Obama has to return to Congress, seeking a larger stimulus. Yes, I know. We're already in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections (look at the bizarre attention given to gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and even to a congressional election in the 23rd district of New York, as supposed…

  • Health Care Reform is Critically Important, But Getting Americans Back to Work is More So

    Robert Reich
    1 Nov 2009 | 4:55 pm
    Presidents tend to overcompensate for the errors of their predecessors in the same party and in so doing sow seeds of their own mistakes. Bill Clinton wanted above all to avoid Jimmy Carter's fate -- losing re-election because the economy was heading south on Election Day. So Clinton made a deal with Alan Greenspan to slash the budget deficit and thereby jettison much of his ambitious campaign agenda (that was Greenspan's precondition for lowering interest rates and causing an economic boom in time for the re-election) and then Clinton took direction from Dick Morris, who told him to move to…

  • Too Big to Fail: Why The Big Banks Should Be Broken Up, But Why The White House and Congress Don't Want To

    Robert Reich
    25 Oct 2009 | 7:33 am
    And now there are five -- five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called"talent," and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do. And like a giant, gawking adolescent who's just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can't…

  • Why Wall Street Reform is Stuck in Reverse

    Robert Reich
    21 Oct 2009 | 8:03 am
    At a conference in London, a Goldman Sachs international adviser, Brian Griffiths, praised inequality. As his company was putting aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009, up 46 percent from a year earlier, Griffiths told us not to worry. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” he said. Eight months ago it looked as if Wall Street was in store for strong financial regulation -- oversight of derivative trading, pay linked to long-term performance, much higher capital requirements, an end…

  • Why Obama Has to do What Letterman Did: Refuse to Pay Hush Money

    Robert Reich
    18 Oct 2009 | 7:37 am
    Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the American Medical Association the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of healthcare reform, as long as they were paid off. But now that it's time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and it's going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin). So the President has to do what Letterman did:…
 
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    cool global BIZ

  • Disney and Shanghai: A New Global Brand Icon & Business Partnership

    Edward Iwata
    4 Nov 2009 | 2:56 pm
    "Admiring Shanghai from the Bund" by Stuck in Customs, under a Creative Commons license on flickr.com. In the popular mindset of globe-trotting consumers, a new Disneyland-style theme park in Shanghai will be hard to top as a business/vacation destination.  Disney, of course, has been an iconic corporate brand and pop culture symbol for much of the last century, and Shanghai will be one of the great megacities of the new century.  This business fusion of cross-border media and entertainment will be fascinating to watch evolve in the coming years.

  • Michael Jackson: Media Freak Show, or Global & Cultural Revolutionary?

    Edward Iwata
    28 Oct 2009 | 10:42 am
    Note:  This post on Michael Jackson's death, plus another post on the superstar's global brand, ran originally in July.  The Michael Jackson documentary, "This Is It," premiers today.  Interesting Time magazine story below on Sony's global marketing of the film. Sony forked over $60 million for the rights to the movie, according to the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times, "Michael Jackson Should Have Been There." MTV Music Television, "Michael Jackson's 'This is It': The Reviews Are In." Bloomberg…

  • Western Union's Global Branding Campaign Says Yes! Si! हाँ! Oo! 唉! to Immigrant Consumers

    Edward Iwata
    28 Oct 2009 | 10:14 am
    Western Union and Publicis Hong Kong's "Yes!" global brand campaign. PHOENIX, ARIZONA, U.S.A. -- During the frontier era of the American West in the 1800s, Western Union helped pioneers send telegrams to their loved ones many miles away by train or horse.  Today, the money-transfer corporation in Colorado sends billions of dollars in "remittances" from immigrants on all continents to their loved ones around the world.  "The multicultural consumer is front and center," says Gail Galuppo, chief marketing officer at Western…

  • Global Rapper, Entrepreneur & Tech Evangelist MC Hammer: "Music is a Global Language"

    Edward Iwata
    12 Oct 2009 | 12:08 pm
    MC Hammer speaks on global and Web 2.0 branding at an ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity conference in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A., at the Arizona Biltmore (10-5-09).   PHOENIX, ARIZONA, U.S.A. -- HammerTime is in real time, and still legit.  If you don't follow tech news, you might not know that rapper MC Hammer is a serious social-media evangelist and Twitter freak (over 1 million followers at twitter.com/mchammer) who rivals actor Ashton Kutcher for digital savvy.  Hammer hangs with legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and…

  • CNN Anchor Soledad O'Brien, Latinos and the New Multicultural Mainstream

    Edward Iwata
    8 Oct 2009 | 10:40 am
    CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien speaking at the ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. (10-5-09).   PHOENIX, ARIZONA, U.S.A. -- Countless studies, books and news reports boil down to this storyline:  While U.S. ethnic groups of all hues take pride in their ancestral cultures, the great crucible of acculturation melds all of us into Americans.  Perhaps moreso than President Obama and others, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien symbolizes the New Multicultural America -- what former Time journalist Guy Garcia calls "the new…
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    Calculated Risk

  • NY Times: Unemployment Measure U-6 Highest Since Great Depression

    CalculatedRisk
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:59 pm
    From David Leonhardt at the NY Times: Broader Measure of Unemployment Stands at 17.5% Excerpts:Officially, the Labor Department’s broad measure of unemployment goes back only to 1994. But early this year, with the help of economists at the department, The New York Times created a version that estimates it going back to 1970....If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous high was 17.1 percent,…

  • Bank Failure #120: United Commercial Bank, San Francisco, California

    CalculatedRisk
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:40 pm
    Sunrise in the East United Commercial Bank Sunsets in the Westby Soylent Green is PeopleFrom the FDIC: East West Bank, Pasadena, California Assumes All the Deposits of United Commercial Bank, San Francisco, California United Commercial Bank, San Francisco, California, was closed today by the California Department of Financial Institutions, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. ...As of October 23, 2009, United Commercial Bank had total assets of $11.2 billion and total deposits of approximately $7.5 billion. ...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the…

  • Unofficial Problem Bank List Grows to 505

    CalculatedRisk
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:27 pm
    Note: This was before the FDIC seized four banks today.This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks. Changes and comments from surferdude808: The steady climb in members on the Unofficial Problem Bank list continued this week despite the failure of the multi-bank holding company FBOP Corporation, which took down 9 banks including 5 banks with aggregate assets of $17.5 billion that were on the Unofficial Problem Bank List. There were 10 additions this week, which pushes the total number of institutions on the list to 505, up from 500 last week. Aggregate assets did drop to $330 billion from…

  • Bank Failures #118 & 119: Banks in Minnesota & Missouri

    CalculatedRisk
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:13 pm
    Whats a "Prosperan"? A breakfast food, car or band? Answer: money pitLooming Gateway Arch Symbol of pioneer spirit Their bank now a ghost.by Soylent Green is PeopleFrom the FDIC: Alerus Financial, National Association, Grand Forks, North Dakota, Assumes All of the Deposits of Prosperan Bank, Oakdale, MinnesotaProsperan Bank, Oakdale, Minnesota, was closed today by the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. ...As of August 31, 2009, Prosperan Bank had total assets of $199.5 million and total deposits of approximately…

  • Bank Failure #117: Home Federal Savings Bank, Detroit, Michigan

    CalculatedRisk
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pm
    Motor City crash. Home Federal has spun out. Bagholders totaledby Soylent Green is PeopleFrom the FDIC: Liberty Bank and Trust Company, New Orleans, Louisiana, Assumes All of the Deposits of Home Federal Savings Bank, Detroit, Michigan Home Federal Savings Bank, Detroit, Michigan, was closed today by the Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. ...As of September 24, 2009, Home Federal Savings Bank had total assets of $14.9 million and total deposits of approximately $12.8 million. ...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the…
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    Wall St Examiner: Winter (Economic & Market) Watch

  • What to do with the Old Maid Cards?

    Winter Watch
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:29 am
    From the recent Treasury Borrowing advisory Committee minutes:Several members noted the graph discussing net fixed income supply in 2009 and 2010, and how issuance will ramp up dramatically in 2010. Federal Reserve purchases have taken an enormous amount of supply out of the market this past year across fixed income markets, but next year, financial [...]View the full article

  • The Dirt Road to Serfdom

    russwinter
    5 Nov 2009 | 2:37 pm
    The latest iteration of the road to serfdom is out, and it is a doozy.(WSJ) The Deed for Lease Program,  will offer borrowers who fail to complete or don’t qualify for a loan modification or other workout to deed their property to the lender in exchange for a lease. Borrowers-turned-tenants will be [...]View the full article

  • House of the Falling Sun

    Winter Watch
    5 Nov 2009 | 9:28 am
    Japan’s latest government bond auction was sloppy as observers eye the oversupply issue. The oversupply story from the US also continues to build.Incredibly it cost 73 basis points to insure a 10 year JGB against default, or about half it’s yield.An image of Japan’s population pyramid of dependency.  Japan’s working population is dropping at about [...]View the full article

  • Burned Through and Through

    Winter Watch
    4 Nov 2009 | 2:30 am
    Cash reserves of  equity mutual funds are being burned through, as October dropped from 4.0% to 3.8%.You may recall that I was using margin debt compared to market cap as a measure of liquidation potential. At the time a large portion of margin was liquidated in but tandem with the market cap. Ultimately margin debt [...]View the full article

  • The Japan-US Fiscal Bust: Just a Matter of Time

    Winter Watch
    2 Nov 2009 | 7:23 am
    It has been awhile since I posted remittance data from the US back to Mexico, but the results (down 15-20% YoY) are not too surprising, running  somewhat worse than the wages withheld data (-10% YoY).Zero Hedge mentioned a very timely chart on US Treasury maturities, and it really looks like things can only get worse [...]View the full article
 
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    Crooked Timber

  • The OS Wars are over

    John Quiggin
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:27 pm
    One of the longest-running of culture wars, that of Mac vs PC (or rather, Mac OS vs MS-DOS and then Windows) can finally be declared at an end. After this piece by Charlie Brooker, nothing more need ever be written on the subject (hat tip, Nancy Wallace).

  • Bookblogging: The failure of micro-based macro

    John Quiggin
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:22 am
    Work on my book-in-progress has been slowed by other commitments. Among other things I’m fighting privatisation proposals from a Queensland Labor government that seems to have learned entirely the wrong lessons from the global financial crisis. Here’s a section on the GFC and the failure of the micro-foundations approach to macroeconomics. As always, comments much appreciated The obvious criterion of success or failure for a macroeconomic theoretical framework is that it should provide the basis for predicting, understanding and responding to macroeconomic crises. If that…

  • Applications

    Michael Bérubé
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:05 pm
    It’s that time of year again, only worse. The academic job search process is under way, and in the modern languages, things look quite dismal.  Yes, I know, things have looked quite dismal for some time now, but this is extra extra dismal, because the effects of the Great Collapse of 2008 are only hitting this part of the academic machinery now.  Colleges and universities have already taken—and administered—hits elsewhere, via salary cuts and/or freezes, furloughs, elimination of travel and research budgets, etc.  And I don’t know how many searches were…

  • Consequentialism and communism

    Chris Bertram
    4 Nov 2009 | 9:17 am
    Fred Halliday writes, as part of a (not unsympathetic) twenty-year retrospective on communism: … underpinning these three ideas – “state”, “progress”, “revolution” – lay a key component of this legacy: the lack of an independently articulated ethical dimension. True, there was a supposedly ethical dimension – whatever made for progress, crudely defined as winning power for a party leadership, and gaining power for a, mythified, working class – was defended. However, the greatest failure of socialism over its 200 years,…

  • Most of my friends are two-thirds spambot

    Henry
    3 Nov 2009 | 6:08 pm
    So we were down for a few hours this afternoon thanks to a massive flood of comment spam. Tyler Cowen had a post a few weeks ago on the cognitive benefits of spam, which made me realize that much of my knowledge of the society I live in comes from trawling this spam and deleting it. At least 80% of the (presumed) female celebrities whose nude pictures are yours if only you click on this dodgy-sounding address are known to me from spam and spam alone (Jessica Simpson???). I would have no idea that “Ugg boots” (whatever they are) existed, let alone that anyone cared about them, were…
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    Dealbreaker

  • Write-Offs: 11.06.09

    6 Nov 2009 | 3:13 pm
    Want a bailout? There's an app for that. [The Deal] Stamford police seize $1 million in cash, 37 kilos of cocaine [TA] Harvard Derivatives Whistleblower: Larry Summers Got Me Fired [BI] The Reading Habits Of Wall Street CEOs [NYM] Will an ex-Bear guy win the World Series of Poker? Will Jimmy Cayne be named "Most Improved" at bridge camp? Stay tuned. World Series of Poker - Poker - Games - Gambling - Wall Street

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    6 Nov 2009 | 3:13 pm

  • Einhorn: CDS Part Of The Communist Conspiracy

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:03 pm
    Having already made his millions on credit-default swaps, David Einhorn wants to see a last call on the controversial derivates. In his recent speech to the Value Investing Conference, the Greenlight Capital founder lambasted CDS, blaming them for a whole array of social problems and calling them a slippery slope toward Stalinism. What to do with such a social virus? Stamp it out. "I think that trying to make safer credit-default swaps is like trying to make safer asbestos," Einhorn said. Quite a statement from one of the hedge fund chieftans who earned the ire of many a Wall Street CEO…

  • Mama Goffer Threatens To Call The Police (Not On Her Sons)

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:50 pm
    Yesterday was apparently not the first time Emanual Goffer has been accused of wrongdoing in conducting his biz. In 2003 Boston.com outted Emanuel as the owner-operator of a cheat-sheet note system for coeds at Boston University. Goffer's firm, which he called Beantown Notes, operated out of Boston on Beacon Street. The University's lawyer sent a cease and desist order to Goffer's firm, threatening to sue if they didn't shut it down. Goffer conceded, and moved on to bigger and better things, like (allegedly) trading on material non-public information with his brother, Zvi. Speaking of:…

  • Guy Who Helped Build Citi: My Bad

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am
    John Reed, who played kind of a big role in cobbling together the world's largest diversified whorehouse, has something to get off his chest: "I'm sorry," Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. "These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it's not easy to see what's happened." John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., was apologizing for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts. Is he really sorry? Or was this just an attempt to get…
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    Econbrowser

  • Some Thoughts Elicited by Reading Some Calibration Papers

    Menzie Chinn
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:28 am
    (Warning: Might be considered "wonky" by some) In many economic analyses, one wants to isolate the "business cycle" component of macroeconomic series. Here is one such series, which has had a detrending technique applied to it. Try to guess what it is. Figure 1 The above series is the Hodrick-Prescott filtered net exports to GDP series for the United States. (I've discussed the HP filter in the context of output gaps before [1].) If one believes that the HP filter properly identifies the cyclical versus trend components, then the plot shows the cyclical component of net exports; hence in this…

  • Current economic conditions

    James Hamilton
    4 Nov 2009 | 6:14 am
    The U.S. recovery is underway. But so far it doesn't look as strong as we had been hoping. Data source: Wardsauto.com U.S. light vehicle sales last month were up slightly from September and about the same as October 2008. Given how dismal those comparison months were, that's not saying much. Last month's sales were 3.5% below the average level of April through June, which, because sales usually decline a bit more than that in the fall, counts as a modest seasonally-adjusted improvement. We seem to be past the bottom for autos, but climbing back painfully slowly at this point. Source:…

  • Prospects for Employment under Differing Econometric Specifications

    Menzie Chinn
    2 Nov 2009 | 6:32 pm
    Most economists are projecting a slow recovery in terms of employment. What do historical correlations imply? In order to investigate this question, I examine the relationship between GDP and nonfarm payroll employment over the 1986-2009 period, which encompasses the "Great Moderation". Figure 1 illustrates the log GDP and log nonfarm payroll employment series. Figure 1: Log nonfarm payroll employment (blue, left scale) and log real GDP (red, right scale). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray, assumes last recession ends at 2009Q2. Source: BEA 2009Q3 advance release, and BLS via FREDII. I…

  • On Revisions and on Conditioning

    Menzie Chinn
    31 Oct 2009 | 10:50 am
    Both have to be "handled with care". Revisions We're all tempted to make predictions on the basis of the last data point. And even more difficult to resist is the temptation to make definitive statements on the basis of data that are sure to be revised. For instance, we see this question from Casey Mulligan, "Where's the GDP Disaster?". Last October, when we were told that spending and incomes were about to collapse, I predicted that "real GDP will not drop below $11 trillion (chained 2000 $)." Professor Mulligan provides this graph. Figure from Mulligan, "Where's the GDP Disaster?" I think…

  • A welcome GDP report

    James Hamilton
    29 Oct 2009 | 6:14 pm
    The Commerce Department reported today that the seasonally adjusted real value of the nation's production of goods and services grew at a 3.5% annual rate during the third quarter, a little better than the 3.2% average seen since 1947. Rate of growth of real GDP (annual rates), 1947:Q2 to 2009:Q3. Shaded regions represent dates of recessions as declared by NBER. Consumption spending is the biggest component of GDP and the main contributor to third quarter growth, accounting by itself for 2.4 percentage points out of the 3.5% total, and with consumer purchases of motor vehicles and parts alone…
 
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    Library of Economics & Liberty: Econlog

  • Book Update

    Arnold Kling
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:47 pm
    (November 6, 2009 04:47 PM, by Arnold Kling) It looks like I will have two books come out in the same month. The first one will be out in two weeks, but you cannot pre-order it on Amazon. The second one will be out in three weeks, and...

  • Hitting a Nerve in Singapore

    Bryan Caplan
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:34 pm
    (November 6, 2009 01:34 PM, by Bryan Caplan) After Singapore's Law Minister used my article in Ethos to rebut international criticism, Singapore's Online Citizen asked permission to run a longer version of "Two Paradoxes of Singaporean Political Economy."  Reactions were... mixed.  Several readers backed me up:I would say...

  • Arnold Kling on Money

    David Henderson
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:45 pm
    (November 6, 2009 12:45 PM, by David Henderson) In his post today on money, Arnold writes: However, as you know, I prefer to think of money as designed top down, to serve the needs of government. But shouldn't what you "prefer to think" count for literally zero? What...

  • Money--Designed or Emergent?

    Arnold Kling
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:21 am
    (November 6, 2009 10:21 AM, by Arnold Kling) George Selgin writes, Economists generally take for granted, if only tacitly, a teleological view of money's historical development, according to which it first takes the "primitive" form of mundane commodities such as cowrie shells and cacao seeds, and then advances...

  • Two Links

    Arnold Kling
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:47 am
    (November 6, 2009 08:47 AM, by Arnold Kling) Both feature Tyler Cowen. Here (or perhaps you should start here), he talks about stories. It is classic Tyler, playing cat and mouse games with your head. Basically, he is saying that stories have an advantage in that they serve...
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    Economist's View

  • "Why the Renminbi has to Rise to Address Imbalances"

    Mark Thoma
    7 Nov 2009 | 12:33 am
    Martin Feldstein joins those arguing that China must let the value of the renminbi rise: Why the renminbi has to rise to address imbalances, by Martin Feldstein, Commentary, Financial Times: Global leaders have agreed reducing global imbalances is a priority. ...[T]hat agreement means the US must raise its national saving to be less dependent on foreign funds. China must lift domestic spending to maintain high employment without producing so many exports. Some progress is happening on both fronts. The US household savings rate has risen, driven by the need for US households to rebuild wealth.

  • "Demystifying Social Knowledge"

    Mark Thoma
    7 Nov 2009 | 12:24 am
    Daniel Little looks at different approaches to "understanding society": Demystifying social knowledge, by Daniel Little: There seem to be a couple of fundamentally different approaches to the problem of "understanding society." I'm not entirely happy with these labels, but perhaps "empiricist" and "critical" will suffice to characterize them.  We might think of these as styles of sociological thinking.  One emphasizes the ordinariness of the phenomena, and looks at the chief challenges of sociology as embracing the tasks of description,…

  • "A New Approach to Gauging Inflation Expectations"

    Mark Thoma
    7 Nov 2009 | 12:15 am
    Good news for those worried about inflation: A new measure of inflation expectations indicates that "longer-term inflation expectations remain near historic lows, in the neighborhood of 2 percent": A New Approach to Gauging Inflation Expectations, by Joseph G. Haubrich, Economic Commentary, FRB Cleveland: This Economic Commentary explains a relatively new method of uncovering inflation expectations, real interest rates, and an inflation-risk premium. It provides estimates of expected inflation from one month to 30 years, an estimate of the inflation-risk premium, and a measure of…

  • links for 2009-11-06

    Mark Thoma
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:49 pm
    Yet Another Budget Commission? - Forbes.com Why not a WPA? - Paul Krugman Nominally misguided (wonkish) - Paul Krugman 9.5% productivity growth. How unusual? - Antonio Fatas What is systemic risk, anyway? - macroblog

  • Paul Krugman: Obama Faces His Anzio

    Mark Thoma
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:07 am
    The failure to give the economy the fiscal stimulus it needs may be costly Democrats: Obama Faces His Anzio, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Remember those Republican boasts that they would turn health care into President Obama’s Waterloo? Well, exit polls suggest that to the extent that health care was an issue in Tuesday’s elections, it worked in Democrats’ favor. But while health care won’t be Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, economic policy is starting to look like his Anzio. True, the elections weren’t a referendum on Mr. Obama. Most voters focused on local issues... Yet there…
 
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    Library of economics & Liberty: Econtalk

  • Heller on Gridlock and the Tragedy of the Anticommons

    Russell Roberts
    2 Nov 2009 | 3:30 am
    Michael Heller of Columbia Law School and author of The Gridlock Economy talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the idea that fragmented ownership is a barrier to innovation. Heller makes an analogy between the tragedy of the commons and what he calls the tragedy of the anticommons--the problem of bundling together numerous individual claims to a resource. Examples discussed include drug innovation when the innovator wants to use technologies of multiple patent holders, new music or visual media where the creator wants to use multiple copyrighted works, and allocation of…

  • Calomiris on the Financial Crisis

    Russell Roberts
    26 Oct 2009 | 3:30 am
    Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the financial crisis. Calomiris argues that it is important to put the crisis in historical perspective in the context of other bank crises. He argues that bank crises differ widely across time and place--some times and some places are placid, others are prone to regular crises. Calomiris argues that frequent episodes of failure are tied to government guarantees such as various forms of deposit insurance or similar incentives for risk-taking. Looking at the current crisis, Calomiris indicts "too big to…

  • Munger on Shortages, Prices, and Competition

    Russell Roberts
    19 Oct 2009 | 3:30 am
    Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the limits of prices and markets, especially in the area of health. They talk about vaccines, organ transplants, the ethics of triage and what role price should play in allocating. The discussion concludes with a discussion of how markets respond to price controls, particularly minimum wages. Play Time: 1:08:00 How do I listen to a podcast? Download Size: 31.2 MB Right-click or Option-click, and select "Save Link/Target As MP3. Readings and Links related to this podcast Podcast Readings HIDE READINGS About this week's…

  • Willingham on Education, School, and Neuroscience

    Russell Roberts
    12 Oct 2009 | 3:30 am
    Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia and author of the book Why Don't Students Like School? talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how the brain works and the implications for teaching, learning, and educational policy. Topics discussed include why we remember some things but not others (and what we can do about it), the central role of memory in problem solving and abstract reasoning, the current state of math education in America, and what makes a good teacher. Play Time: 1:03:00 How do I listen to a podcast? Download Size: 28.9 MB Right-click or Option-click, and select…

  • Gary Stern on Too Big to Fail

    Russell Roberts
    5 Oct 2009 | 3:30 am
    Gary Stern, former President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Stern's book, Too Big To Fail (co-authored with Ron Feldman), a prescient warning of the moral hazard created when government rescues creditors of financial institutions from the consequences of bankruptcy. Stern traces the origins of "too big to fail" to the rescue of Continental Illinois in 1984 and then follows more recent rescues including those of the current crisis. The conversation explores the incentive effects of such rescues on the decision-making by executives in large…
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    EconTech

  • Links for 2009.11.06

    computer.economist
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm
    ZOMFG WTF!!!!! 9.5% THIRD QUARTER PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH NUMBER!!!!: Brad DeLong With tax break, a big carbon footprint – The Boston Globe

  • Links for 2009.11.02

    computer.economist
    2 Nov 2009 | 3:31 pm
    Charlie’s Diary: How habitable is the Earth?

  • Links for 2009.10.31

    computer.economist
    31 Oct 2009 | 4:31 pm
    Where Did the Bush Tax Cuts Go?: Mark Thoma

  • Links for 2009.10.30

    computer.economist
    30 Oct 2009 | 4:31 pm
    In Which the Financial Times Echoes St. Augustine of Hippo: Brad DeLong

  • Links for 2009.10.29

    computer.economist
    29 Oct 2009 | 4:31 pm
    Laundry and Human Rights: Erik Voeten
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    Environmental Economics

  • What I did today

    John Whitehead
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:36 pm
    I just finished presenting Tim's (and Rob's and Kurt's) paper in our Department Seminar Series:Appalachian State UniversityDepartment of EconomicsSeminars2009-2010All seminars are in Raley 3010 at 2:00 P.M. unless otherwise indicated.November 6, John Whitehead, "Angler Heterogeneity and the Species-Specific Demand for Marine Recreational Fishing"They were wowed (not) and now they are going to buy me a beer (I hope) ... I'll post more details on this project later

  • "You guys are interested in cow farts, right?"

    Tim Haab
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:09 am
    Well, I'm offended you even had to ask. The title comes from a message from David Zetland (at aguanomics) who, besides asking questions with obvious answers, thinks posts about cow farts cheapen his blog.  To that I say, nothing can cheapen our blog--er, or something like that. The World Watch Institute has released a new report arguing that the FAO’s estimate of livestock’s total contribution to global GHG emissions (18%) is a serious underestimate and that the true footprint of livestock production is around 51% of higher.  It bases this figure on the claim…

  • What's that saying about not wanting to be a member of club that would have you?

    Tim Haab
    5 Nov 2009 | 8:27 am
    From the inbox: Thank you for your interest in the [EPA Science Advisory Board] Environmental Economics Advisory Committee. This is to let you know that you were not selected. We were privileged to have many qualified candidates such as yourself from which to fill just 4 openings on this committee. Well at least I wasn't not selected from a pool of unqualified candidates.

  • BREAKING NEWS (I just love writing that)

    Tim Haab
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:12 am
    From Reuters: The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday approved a Democratic climate change bill that would require industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. With Republicans boycotting the committee's work saying more analysis of the legislation was needed, 10 Democrats voted to approve the legislation and one Democrat, Senator Max Baucus, voted against it. The bill will now become one of several initiatives aimed at attacking global warming. Senator John Kerry is leading an effort with some…

  • "Ask yourself some questions about climate change and then answer them."

    Tim Haab
    5 Nov 2009 | 6:36 am
    From an Ask the Expert column I wrote for onCampus: The Ohio State University faculty staff information hub (aka on-line newsletter): What are the basics of the recent energy policy proposals in Congress?There are two energy bills moving through Congress right now: The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the House of Representatives (*cosponsored by Waxman-Markey) and the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act in the Senate (**sponsored by Boxer-Kerry). The meat of both energy policy proposals is a Cap and Trade program for carbon dioxide emissions — a principal greenhouse gas to…
 
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    Footnoted

  • CBS’ last CFO still hanging around…

    Michelle Leder
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:56 am
    Back in June, CBS (CBS) announced that its CFO, Fred Reynolds, planned to retire in mid-August. That same day, the company announced that Joseph Ianniello would be taking over as CFO on July 20.Now Ianniello was no novice. He had been with CBS or Viacom (VIA) for the past 12 years and had been deputy CFO since November 2008. Indeed, in the press release that announced Ianniello’s promotion, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said this:”“He’s been involved in every major financial decision of this company, from the time that the new CBS Corporation was formed to the present day, and he’s…

  • J. Crew Designer Benefits from “Obama Bump”

    Sonya Hubbard
    5 Nov 2009 | 7:18 am
    After the public learned that the Obama girls wore J. Crew-designed coats for their father’s inauguration, the company enjoyed what became known as “the Obama bump.”  Sales soared – especially after the company crowed about its connection to the First Family – and online traffic spiked so high that the company’s web site crashed.The “Obama bump” no doubt contributed to J. Crew’s (JCG) decision to reward Jenna Lyons Mazeau (who’s often referred to as “Jenna Lyons”), the company’s Creative Director for its women’s clothing.In an 8-K and Special Bonus Agreement…

  • On Black and Decker’s CEO and unicorns…

    Michelle Leder
    4 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am
    Though we often read filings several times just to make sure we’re reading (and interpreting them) correctly, we honestly did a double-take when we read the 8-K that Black and Decker (BDK) filed late yesterday. The filing was a follow-up to the $4.5 billion deal that was announced on Monday. The part that caught our attention was the agreement with Chairman and CEO Nolan D. Archibald. Here’s a snip:Under the terms of his amended and restated employment agreement with Black & Decker, Mr. Archibald would be entitled to certain benefits upon the termination of this employment by…

  • SEC Madoff exhibit list now available…

    Michelle Leder
    3 Nov 2009 | 11:22 am
    Yesterday, we poked at the SEC for not just dumping 6,100 pages of material on a Friday afternoon, but for failing to provide a road-map to the 536 exhibits. In separate conversations with me, a representative of the SEC and SEC Inspector General David Kotz each suggested that it was the other’s fault for not making this information available.Whose fault was it? Well the Inspector General’s office has just made the list of the 536 exhibits available on their site, while the SEC’s list remains uncategorized. You can see the full list here:Public Exhibit List If only this had…

  • Diedrich’s odd disclosure…

    Michelle Leder
    3 Nov 2009 | 8:01 am
    Late yesterday, Peet’s Coffee & Tea (PEET), my personal favorite when it comes to caffeine delivery devices, announced that it was buying Diedrich’s Coffee (DDRX) for $213 million.Coincidentally, Diedrich’s filed what’s likely to be its last 10-Q yesterday. But what’s surprising was the very first exhibit in the 10-Q: an agreement with CFO Sean McCarthy. Now, McCarthy was named CFO back in January 2006. But the agreement was dated May 1, 2008 and was filed yesterday — roughly 17 months after it went into effect.We don’t mean to be sticklers here,…
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    NYT: Freakonomics

  • What Are the Most Notable Quotes From 2009?

    By Fred Shapiro
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:43 am
    Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred solicits your nominations for most notable quote of 2009.

  • A Different Kind of Organ Market?

    By Freakonomics
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am
    Who gets bumped to the front of UCLA medical center's liver-transplant line? The godfather of the Japanese mafia, according to this 60 Minutes video...

  • Charity Won't Contain This Secondary Market

    By Daniel Hamermesh
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:20 am
    Each year I receive about 10 introductory economics textbooks from publishers. The purpose is to induce me to adopt the book in my 500-student principles class...

  • Do Earmarks Matter?

    By Freakonomics
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:31 am
    Making fun of earmarked Congressional spending is easy, feel-good entertainment. But is it a distraction from the bigger problem?

  • SuperFreakonomics Book Club: Emily Oster Answers Your Questions

    By Stephen J. Dubner
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:34 am
    Our first guest was University of Chicago economist Emily Oster, whose research, co-authored with Robert Jensen, formed the basis of the section where we discuss how the introduction of television turned out to be an unlikely boon for rural Indian women. (I should have also mentioned that we cite Emily's fascinating research on how women were regularly put to death for centuries on charges of witchcraft.)
 
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    Umair Haque

  • Can Google Take on Wall St — and Win?

    Umair Haque
    29 Oct 2009 | 10:46 am
    Dear Google, Eric Schmidt recently said, "CIOs are trapped in a 1980's architecture." Actually, the world is trapped in a 1970's architecture: a financial architecture that was designed for a bygone era, without the prosperity of future generations and the natural world in mind. So here's my challenge to you. The global IT market is worth a few hundred billion bucks. But you're (still) the most innovative company in the world — and there are bigger fisheries to rescue. A better global financial architecture is worth 10x more: at least $12 trillion, if the amount spent on the bailout is…

  • Is Your Business Useless?

    Umair Haque
    27 Oct 2009 | 11:45 am
    These days, lots of people ask me: "Phew! So, the crisis is over, right?" Wrong. The real crisis is in the DNA of the industrial economy — and it's just as lethal as ever. Most businesses are socially useless. They're about as useful to society (to paraphrase Gloria Steinem) as bicycles are to fish. Sound controversial? If it does, it only underscores just how out totally of touch with real value we've gotten. (Here, for example, are Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, and Lord Turner all discussing social uselessness.) What has socially useless business cost just over the last five years? $12…

  • Why Freakonomics Can't Beat Geekonomics

    Umair Haque
    19 Oct 2009 | 1:12 pm
    Weekend drama: Formula 1, NFL, Sunday talk shows? Forget it: this weekend, the drama was in the econoblogsphere — where the new book SuperFreakonomics inspired a mass freak-out. Freakonomists Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's chapter on climate change met furious charges of irresponsible journalism and deliberate contrarianism from economists, climate scientists, and journalists alike. I think there's a deeper one. The real problem with the Freakonomics school of thought is this: it's economics 1.0 applied to the entire natural, social, and political world. But what today's world…

  • Reinventing Wall Street From the Bottom Up

    Umair Haque
    15 Oct 2009 | 11:55 am
    Yankee ingenuity, good old fashioned enterprise, thrift, relentless hard work — they're values that made the American economy great, right? Hasta la vista, baby. Here's a tale of four headlines: Wall Street On Track To Award Record Pay Along With Layoffs, Recession's Cost Can Be Seen in Pay Cuts Subprime and the Banks: Guilty as Charged Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds Welcome to the new trickle-down economics. Here's how it works: Banks massively misallocate capital. The government uses money reserved for public goods — education, transportation,…

  • The New (New) Mediaconomy

    Umair Haque
    14 Oct 2009 | 7:20 am
    It's a clash of civilizations: the paywalls are rising again, Rupert's on a rampage against the Internetz, and the subtext is none too subtle. Can media survive the www? It's the wrong question. The right one is: how did it ever survive without it? Let's think of the mediascape as an economy. In it, there are two kinds of goods: wine and soda. Soda is low quality communication: thin information, low-quality information, and just plain disinformation. Wine is high-quality communication: analysis, debate, and knowledge. What was yesterday's big media economy composed of? Robo DJs and 30 seconds…
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    HedgeFundBlogger.com by Richard Wilson

  • Insider Trading Charges

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:22 am
    Insider Trading Charges 14 People Charged in Hedge Fund-Related Insider Trading The hedge fund industry's image took a blow when fourteen individuals were accused of insider trading by federal prosecutors.   Stacy-Marie Ishmae has been following the case for the Financial Times and gave a good overview in a recent interview.  Here is the transcript from the audio interview discussing the insider trading charges, if you would like to download the audio visit this website. JUDY WOODRUFF: The world of hedge funds was rocked again today with new charges of insider trading. Fourteen…

  • Hedge Funds Target Transparency Liquidity and Fraud

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:14 am
    Transparency Liquidity and Fraud A study just came out from the TABB Group showing a growing trend in the use of managed accounts. Hedge fund managers particularly are looking for ways in which they can increase transparency and liquidity while decreasing the chance that someone within their firm will commit some sort of act of fraud.  Here is a quote from the story and link to it: The focus on transparency, liquidity and flexibility are the primary drivers of the increased interest in managed accounts. TABB Group estimates assets in the industry invested through managed accounts will…

  • Hedge Funds Sweden

    5 Nov 2009 | 10:50 am
    Hedge Funds Sweden Swedish Plan Removes Leverage Limits for Hedge Funds The Swedish government recently advocated for some reform of the hedge fund industry but warned against "overzealous" regulation.  Now, the Swedish government, which holds the European Union's 6 month alternating presidency, has unveiled a plan that would take away a general limit on hedge funds' leverage.  This runs against the EU Directive aimed at reducing leverage used by buyout firms and hedge funds.  The Swedish government's compromise is to empower regulators to place limits on leverage "where the…

  • Commodities Asset Class

    5 Nov 2009 | 10:33 am
    Commodities Preferred Asset Class Poll: Commodities is Preferred Asset Class for Next Year A global poll by Bloomberg has found that commodities are now the preferred investment during the next year.  Bloomberg users were asked which asset class will offer the highest returns and the lowest and the majority voted for commodities; in a July poll, users believed stocks offered the best returns.  The change follows a 27% increase in the UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index and a smaller 17% gain in the S&P 500 Stock Index since that July poll. Real estate and bonds also…

  • Hedge Fund Cow Paths

    4 Nov 2009 | 9:48 am
    Hedge Fund Cow Paths I recently heard Eben Pagan speak in LA at a marketing conference on how business is typically conducted.  I was reminded of that talk while I was in Boston last week for our Hedge Fund Premium networking event (which was great). The streets in Boston were actually old cow paths that the city decided to just pave over to create the roads of the city.  The result, is a very complicated maze of one way streets which really only make sense to the most veteran cab drivers.  This is not the cows fault they simply walked typically in the direction of least…
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    the economist: free exchange

  • Link exchange

    Economist.com | WASHINGTON
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:29 pm
    TODAY'S recommended economics writing:• On the price elasticity of American citizenship. (Felix Salmon) • Price comparison shopping online probably won't lead to "frictionless commerce". (NBER, via Mark Thoma) • Tyler Cowen tells stories about storytelling, at TED. (TED) • Manufacturing in Britain began earlier than we thought. (ABlogAboutHistory)• The Obama administration is focusing on measures to boost job growth. (Bloomberg) • A look at life behind the Berlin Wall:

  • Government: Now hiring

    Economist.com | WASHINGTON
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:48 am
    HERE is Paul Krugman:As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through private contractors.You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work. Think of it as the stimulus equivalent of getting the middlemen out of the student loan program. So why aren’t we doing this?

  • Rethinking the Luddites

    Economist.com | WASHINGTON
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:51 am
    OVER at Angry Bear, Rdan posts something by Martin Ford, in which he ponders the issue of technology-induced long-term structural unemployment:I'm not talking about far fetched science fiction-level technology here: this is really a simple extrapolation of the expert systems and specialized algorithms that can currently land jet airplanes, trade autonomously on Wall Street, or beat nearly any human being at a game of chess. As technology progresses, I think there is little doubt that these systems will begin to match or exceed the capability of human workers in many routine job…

  • Crank up the helicopter

    Economist.com | WASHINGTON
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:59 am
    PAUL KRUGMAN responds to discussion on the David Beckworth chart—tracking nominal spending—that I posted yesterday. He discusses a liquidity trap model he drew up in 1998, while thinking about the Japanese economy, and writes:In that model, prices are assumed sticky in the short run, so P [the price level] is predetermined. What, then, determines Y [real GDP]? Well, it’s a real thing — as opposed to a nominal thing. In the model it’s actually tied down by an Euler condition, by future consumption and the real interest rate (which is stuck thanks to the zero lower…

  • What can America learn from Europe?

    Economist.com | WASHINGTON
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:24 am
    SEVERAL (though by no means all) of Europe's larger economies have come through the current recession without experiencing quite the large jump in unemployment that has plagued America, turning on its head the usual perception of European labour markets as persistently beset by high rates of joblessness. What explains the difference? The Economist investigates:The United States has put in place a hefty fiscal stimulus, but relatively little of that money has gone into labour-market policies—schemes to slow firing, boost hiring or support the jobless. Although America has extended…
 
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    Global Economy Matters

  • The Dollar As A Funding Currency

    Edward Hugh
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:13 pm
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaNouriel Robini is not a man who is known for mincing his words. “We have the mother of all carry trades,” he tells us, “Everybody’s playing the same game and this game is becoming dangerous.” There is a “wall of liquidity” sweeping the planet, pushing asset prices ever higher in one country after another. I wholeheartedly agree.Investors across the globe are taking advantage of the ultra low interest rates on offer at the US Federal Reserve to borrow in dollars in order to buy assets like government debt, equities and commodities, in the process, as…

  • Too Much of a Good Thing in Australia?

    CV
    4 Nov 2009 | 2:30 pm
    By Claus Vistesen: Copenhagen(click on pictures for better viewing) It is indeed an old adage that while goods things are to be preferred over bad things it is possible to get too much of the former. Looking at recent comments from the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia it is not difficult to imagine how these, albeit old and worn, pearls of wisdom may well have inspired Mr. Stevens in his effort to tiptoe the thigthrope between signalling the intention to raise rates into an expected economic recovery on the one side and trying to prevent the Aussie shoot of on helium into the sun…

  • Norwegian Wood

    Edward Hugh
    3 Nov 2009 | 2:22 pm
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, if John Lennon had still been around today he would undoubtedly have entitled his song Norwegian oil, but whatever way you want to put it Norway is back in the news, and this time not because of adolescents who find themselves with no alternative to sleeping overnight in the bath-tub, but rather because its central bank has been put in a position where it has little alternative but to raise interest rates, even if in fact it would be more comfortable for it not to do so. So, not being in the habit of looking for a quiet life, decision makers over at the Norges…

  • Global Manufacturing, France Outperforms, As Spain Continues To Flounder

    Edward Hugh
    3 Nov 2009 | 6:15 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaWell, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today's Financial Times is just too good to resist.French manufacturing output rose at its fastest rate for nine years, according to a survey on Monday, confirming that France has become the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Purchasing managers’ indices for manufacturing showed France performing significantly better than the continent’s other main economies – thanks to robust domestic demand.Plenty of food for…

  • A New Spectre Is Haunting Europe, A Spanish One

    Edward Hugh
    31 Oct 2009 | 12:59 am
    by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaA spectre is haunting Europe, but this time it is not the spectre of revolt by the popular masses, or even one of yet another wave of bank bailouts. No, the spectre which is currently stalking the corridors of Europe's most prestigous institutions is one of a Spanish economy which stays on a flatline while Europe's other economies, one by one, start to struggle back to life. And the main reason that this particular ghostly image is giving everyone so many sleepless nights is because Europe's current institutional structures, and especially the monetary policy tools…
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    Greg Mankiw's Blog

  • Environmentalism vs Homeownership

    Greg Mankiw
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:01 am
    My Harvard colleague Ed Glaeser looks at the negative externalities from suburban sprawl.

  • Assuming a Can Opener

    Greg Mankiw
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:39 am
    I have previously expressed skepticism about projected Medicare spending assumed in the health reform effort making its way through Congress. If reductions in spending don't materialize as Congress now posits, health reform will not turn out to be deficit neutral but will, instead, add to the large fiscal gap we are bequeathing to future generations. In a recent letter, CBO gives some numbers about projected Medicare spending that shows how wildly unrealistic it is:The bill would put into effect (or leave in effect) a number of procedures that might be difficult to maintain over a long period…

  • Counting Jobs

    Greg Mankiw
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am
    How to create or save 9 jobs for $889,An amusing story about how government statistics are not always completely reliable.

  • Taking out the Trash

    Greg Mankiw
    2 Nov 2009 | 6:18 pm
    I don't usually respond to illogical cheap shots from around the blogosphere (life is too short). But when the cheap shot comes from a Nobel prize winner in economics, I will make an exception.Paul Krugman says I should be ashamed of myself for calling into question Obama administration estimates of how many jobs have been "created or saved." Here is what Paul writes on his blog:The Obama administration’s “jobs created or saved” is just a way of saying “other things equal” in non-economese. Of course it makes sense to ask how many more people are working than would have been the…

  • Disincentives from Reform: House Edition

    Greg Mankiw
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pm
    In my Sunday Times column, I discussed the marginal tax rates implicit in the Senate Finance Committee version of the health reform bill. CBO has just released some numbers on the version of health reform being considered in the House of Representatives.The bottom line: The implicit marginal tax rates are even higher in the House bill.If you are interested in a more specific comparison, here is what I wrote about the Senate Finance bill on Sunday, with the new numbers for the House bill added in brackets:A family of four with an income, say, of $54,000 would pay $9,900 [$6,200] for…
 
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    Interfluidity

  • Sympathy for the Treasury

    Steve Randy Waldman
    4 Nov 2009 | 11:11 pm
    On Monday, I was among a group of eight bloggers who attended a discussion with "senior Treasury officials" in Washington. Several nice accounts of that meeting have already been posted (see...

  • Asset inflation, price inflation, and the great moderation

    Steve Randy Waldman
    27 Oct 2009 | 3:10 pm
    Commenter "reason" asks a question:...

  • The shortest, best case for financial innovation

    Steve Randy Waldman
    17 Oct 2009 | 3:10 pm
    ...

  • Information is stimulus

    Steve Randy Waldman
    12 Oct 2009 | 1:10 pm
    Suppose that the Federal government were to offer sizable loan guarantees for any and all "green energy" companies. Any firm, including new entrants, would be eligible. The government would do some...

  • Vanilla afterthoughts

    Steve Randy Waldman
    6 Oct 2009 | 8:10 am
    Note: I use the word "state" in this post to mean "the state", government generally, not state as opposed to federal government in the US. Thanks to Richard Serlin for...
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    Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up

  • Anatomy of a Murder…on Wall Street

    Jeff Matthews
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:45 am
    There are a lot of ways to describe a stock that goes down a lot in a brief period of time. These include “tanked,” “dived,” “collapsed,” “got crushed,” “got smoked,” “got murdered,” and many others—including some unprintable adjectives we’ll leave to the imagination. Yesterday, shares of CVS Caremark did all of those things and more, after the company disclosed bad news in the form of contract losses in its not-long-ago-acquired Caremark pharmacy benefit management business. What made matters worse was the way in which CVS management announced its problems. In a…

  • What Jim Himes is Thinking Right Now

    Jeff Matthews
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:42 am
    Democrats Confront Coalition StrainsElections this week left Democrats scrambling to renew the coalition that elected President Barack Obama after independent voters, whose power to determine U.S. elections is rising with their numbers, broke heavily toward Republicans.—The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2009First, who is Jim Himes, and why does he matter?Himes is a freshman Congressman from the 4th Connecticut district, who defeated a moderate Republican incumbent in last year’s Obama sweep.He is also an ex-Goldman banker—hey, who in Washington isn’t an ex-Goldman banker?—and he…

  • Freedom’s Just Another Word For “Thinks Like Us”

    Jeff Matthews
    2 Nov 2009 | 5:14 am
    Easily the weakest link in the Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed page is Thomas Frank, who also happens to be the Journal’s token liberal.To be sure, at least one of Frank’s political opposites at the Journal writes about as much nonsense as Frank—particularly on the subject of fiscal responsibility. That would be Karl Rove, who encouraged his Presidential boss to ignore fiscal responsibility for eight long years, and yet now has the nerve to complain about what those eight years are bringing us.But Rove is at least intelligent and writes well, even if you spit out your coffee reading his…

  • How to Solve Insider Trading: Let the Criminals Decide what’s a Crime!

    Jeff Matthews
    25 Oct 2009 | 5:30 pm
    Learning to Love Insider TradingHere's a hot tip: Want to keep companies honest, make the markets work more efficiently and encourage investors to diversify? Let insiders buy and sell, argues Donald J. Boudreaux.So reads the deliberately eye-catching headline on the front page of the “Life & Style” section in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal.And while we’re as contrarian as the next stock market follower, and weren't much surprised that the government finally cracked down on the practice of gaming quarterly earnings through relentless pursuit of “The Call”—complete with…

  • The Least Helpful Call You Will See Today

    Jeff Matthews
    21 Oct 2009 | 6:41 am
    The least helpful call you will see today—and there are a number of contestants for that honor, not the least being Leerink Swann’s reduction in price target for fallen angel Boston Scientific from $15 a share to $12 a share now that the stock has already collapsed (last trade, $8.57)—must be the following bit of Analyst-Speak from the research team at Deutsche Bank. It concerns Yahoo!, about whose business prospects we here at NotMakingThisUp express no opinion at all—although we will point out that CEO Carol Bartz may be to technology management what Warren Buffett is to investing.
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    Marginal Revolution

  • How to run a successful blog

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:57 am
    ...They understand that public opinion matters...they understand that it’s a little harder to criticize someone after you’ve met him and he’s given you free cookies...they couldn't possibly have expected to change anybody’s mind, they understand that it’s better to talk to your critics than to avoid them. Waldman talks about some of the techniques used to make the attendees [readers] feel like they were being treated as special guests. Whoops!  That's not advice for running a successful blog.  Those are James Kwak's comments on how Treasury tries to trick…

  • Assorted links

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:49 am
    1. More lessons from the VHA. 2. Net use does not lead to social isolation. 3. IQ predicts portfolio diversification, at least in Finland. 4. Finish time variation in marathons, across time and across Boston and New York. 5. What your phone might do for you two years from now. 6. John Cassidy on the health care bill.

  • Talks at TEDx Midatlantic

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:05 am
    The talks are here, including one by yours truly on the limits of story-based thinking.  I was happy to meet Sonja Sohn.  One thing I learned from this experience is that if you follow professional entertainers, the "status rub-off" effect dominates the "suffer by comparison" effect.  The audience is primed to be sympathetic to you and many of them do not actually know which of the speakers are truly the high status people.  Perhaps the talk has to meet some minimum quality standard, or involve some minimum level of self-confidence, for the rub-off…

  • Impressions from Treasury

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:57 am
    I will enumerate a few (you can trace other accounts here):1. Tim Geithner is very smart and he was conceptually stronger than one might have expected.2. I believe that the long, L-shaped hallways encourage "visits to offices" rather than hallway conversations; this is a speculation and perhaps some reader can confirm or deny it.3. The quality of the painted portraits of Treasury Secretaries declines as time passes.4. The free cookies were good and fresh, with a warm, fluid chocolate interior.  There was water to drink, but no mineral water.5. For all their talk about…

  • *You Are What You Choose*

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:17 am
    Scott DeMarchi and James T. Hamilton have a new book out and the subtitle is The Habits of Mind That Really Determine How We Make Decisions.  I take this to be the key paragraph: It's called fast food, but your decision-making process in ordering a chicken sandwich can be incredibly complex.  In the following section, we describe six core habits of mind that affect how you make decisions in all areas of your life.  We call these TRAITS: Time, Risk, Altruism, Information, meToo, and Stickiness. Here is a review and explication of the book.
 
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    Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

  • Bloggers' Right to Free Speech and Use Anonymous Sources Questioned in New Hampshire Supreme Court

    6 Nov 2009 | 11:16 am
    The case of Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter vs. Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI) has reached the New Hampshire Supreme Court. MSI has demanded Implode-O-Meter reveal the identity of one of its sources in a defamation case and Implode-O-Meter refuses.Please consider New Hampshire Suit Challenges Mortgage Blogger's Use of Anonymous SourcesThe New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that calls into question the legal protections available to independent Web sites that cover news.The case involves mortgage lender Implode-Explode, a Las Vegas-based site launched in…

  • Jobs Contract 22nd Straight Month; Unemployment Rate Hits 10.2%

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:34 am
    This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Odctober Employment Report.The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade..Establishment Dataclick on chart for sharper imageHighlights 190,000 jobs were lost in total vs. 263,000 jobs last month. 62,000 construction jobs were lost vs. 64,000 last month. 61,000 manufacturing jobs were lost vs. 51,000 last…

  • A Canadian Says "Short Canada"

    5 Nov 2009 | 11:34 pm
    Although I have mentioned the enormous property bubble in Canada on numerous occasions, I have also stated a belief that Canada as a whole was better off than the US. Not so fast says Jonathan Tonge of the America Canada Blog.Jonathan pinged me with the following email:Mish,Observing the attached August 2009 GDP report you’ll note that Canada’s economy is still receding and it has not escaped recession. Furthermore, the only sectors that are growing are from the result of one of two things: stimulus and a massively inflationary credit environment.Canadian Real Estate:Canada’s home…

  • "Wells Fargo Madness" a Reader Reply to Fear and Shame Tactics

    5 Nov 2009 | 12:17 pm
    I have received a couple more replies to Government and Lender Policies of Fear and Shame Help Keep Homeowners Debt Slaves that are worth sharing.This one is from "Wells Fargo Madness" who writes:What a timely and spot-on post....I can personally attest to the truth of the situation described in your latest missive:"Given these economic incentives for the lender, a seriously underwater homeowner with good credit and solid mortgage payment history who responsibly calls his lender to work out a loan modification is likely to be told by his lender that it will not discuss a loan modification…

  • $45 Billion Boondoggle of Which $33 Billion Goes To Homebuilders

    5 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am
    The Senate approved yet another plan to stimulate the economy. It's called throwing $33 billion at homebuilders. This is of course doing nothing but giving money to the greedy pigs that helped create this mess. However, that is the way Washington works.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid even had the gall to brag about it. Please consider Senate Approves Extended U.S. Homebuyer Tax Credit.The U.S. Senate approved a $45 billion plan to expand a tax credit for first-time homebuyers, extend jobless benefits and provide tax refunds to money-losing companies.Lawmakers voted 98-0 for the measure,…
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    Oddhead Blog

  • Notes from Yahoo! Open Hack Day NYC

    David Pennock
    21 Oct 2009 | 1:39 pm
    Here are my notes from Yahoo! Open Hack Day NYC. For other perspectives read New York Times open sourcerer Nick Thuesen or the Yahoo! devel blog. You can watch videos of some of the talks or browse pictures. First off, I cheated. I went to sleep in a hotel room rather than hack all through the night. (Even in college I woke up at 4am rather than pull an all nighter.) Still, I made decent progress on some pet projects including combinatorial betting. Daniel, Sharad, and Winter from Yahoo! Research New York participated for real, working through the night. Returning in the morning showered and…

  • Yahoo! Open Hack Day NYC, Oct 9-10, 2009

    David Pennock
    2 Oct 2009 | 12:49 pm
    Join us on October 9, 2009 at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City for Yahoo! Open Hack Day NYC. Come to listen, learn, and meet, but mainly come to make. Your goal: in 24 hours hackmash something together for bragging rights and prizes. Speakers include Clay Shirky (NYU), Carrie Cronkey (Mint.com), Dennis Crowley (foursquare), and Rasmus Lerdorf (inventor PHP). Register here. It’s free. The 24-Hour Hackathon begins Friday afternoon. We encourage you to play around with Yahoo!’s Open Platforms and APIs like YAP, YQL, YUI, TVWidgets, our Social APIs, and more. And of course,…

  • Upcoming CS-econ events: New York Computer Science and Economics Day and ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce

    David Pennock
    2 Oct 2009 | 7:27 am
    1. New York Computer Science and Economics Day (NYCE Day) Monday, November 9, 2009 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM The New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY, USA NYCE 2009 is the Second Annual New York Computer Science and Economics Day. The goal of the meeting is to bring together researchers in the larger New York metropolitan area with interests in Computer Science, Economics, Marketing and Business and a common focus in understanding and developing the economics of internet activity. Examples of topics of interest include theoretical, modeling, algorithmic and empirical work on advertising…

  • The key to understanding net neutrality: Anonymity=good, egalitarianism=bad

    David Pennock
    6 Aug 2009 | 1:06 pm
    For a long time I was terribly confused and conflicted about net neutrality (and embarrassed about being uncommitted on such a core issue in my industry). On the one hand, paying more for higher quality of service is only natural and leads to better provisioning of resources and less waste. HD movie watchers can pay for low latency streaming while email users need not. Treating their packets the same is madness, even worse legislating it so. On the other hand, many people I respect including economically literate ones vociferously argue for net neutrality. And Comcast “shaping”…

  • A must read for computer scientists: Lance is right: Time to grow up

    David Pennock
    4 Aug 2009 | 6:21 am
    Lance Fortnow wrote a terrific op ed in the current issue of Communications of the ACM, arguing that the field of computer science should operate like most other academic disciplines and use journal publications as the primary measure of research contributions, freeing up conferences to serve a community role. I agree (nearly) completely. The conference publication system is broken. Computer science papers are by and large not scholarly documents: many are sloppily written in deadline-driven haste with poor literature reviews, often blamed on page limits. Many reviews are rushed or cursory…
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    A Dash of Insight

  • October Employment Report Preview

    Jeff Miller
    4 Nov 2009 | 10:05 pm
    The monthly employment situation report is the most watched economic release.  The attention has never been greater. Everyone is interested in the unemployment rate, especially when it is approaching 10%.  It is a natural topic for the media. Partisan politics has a jobs focus.  While the Obama Administration may be claiming jobs "created or saved," this is of little interest to most.  The bottom line for most voters will be whether the net job change turns positive and the unemployment rate declines.  Few care about hypothetical results. Investors and traders question the economic…

  • Has the Market Already Made the High for the Year?

    Jeff Miller
    3 Nov 2009 | 8:22 pm
    Market followers love to make timing predictions.  They come in all time frames and flavors: The market has made the high for the day, and will now trade down.  Or the opposite. This is the bottom.  Or the top. We have seen the highs (or lows) for the year. Or when the Dow was at 9500, would we see 10000 before 9000? Bold PredictionsDoug Kass, on August 26th, called the high.  He was off by a few weeks and a few percentage points, but he has continued to argue for this viewpoint in columns at TheStreet.com and in appearances on CNBC.His colleague Jim Cramer has now agreed, and recommends…

  • ETF Position Update

    Jeff Miller
    2 Nov 2009 | 7:21 pm
    Each week we publish the ratings from our TCA-ETF model.  Regular readers know that we use sector information to take a market perspective, but also choose individual ETF's.I also choose a sector to highlight each week, providing fundamental information, a chart, our reasoning, and comments from other experts.As we always note, this is not intended as investment advice.  A sector rotation program is not suitable for all investors.  Our time frame may be different from the reader's.  It is news information, intended to be an additional source of information -- only a part of your own due…

  • ETF Update: A Glimmer of Hope for Growth Stocks?

    Jeff Miller
    1 Nov 2009 | 6:23 pm
    After last week, traders may wonder if there is a glimmer of hope anywhere.  The market correction expected by many pundits for months finally had a serious impact.  Sentiment and expectations have shifted despite a solid earnings season.  The market debate continues to focus on the economy, with each data point the subject of both careful analysis and also plenty of spin.While we participate in the analysis of economic data, we also have a reality check.  Our model-driven approach is based upon market data.Our Approach We stick to the system, studying sectors…

  • Understanding Market Volatility

    Jeff Miller
    30 Oct 2009 | 7:31 pm
    Investors and traders alike need to understand market volatility.  Many market observers use volatility as a euphemism for price declines.  This is completely wrong.The astute options analyst Adam Warner (one of our featured sources), does a great job with this concept.  Writing about the Market Vectors Gold Miners (GDX), he makes this important point:Volatility is about fear of the unknown, and so long as gold and currencies get out of range a bit, there's apparently a bit of fear around of either missing another leg up or missing an about face down. (emphasis added)A Natural Human…
 
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    PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

  • Weekend Reading: Unemployment Edition

    Brian Hoyt
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:42 pm
    Can development workers win wars? Is transport infrastructure the most important aspect of urban evolution? The Treasury's courtship of the blogosphere. Is China's changing worldview bad for business? America's largest retailer: it's not Wal-Mart. Why are some marathons more volatile than others? The EU's role in reducing state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thoughts on migration: Kosovo edition. Unemployment What America can learn from Europe about unemployment. Other difficulties that arise from high unemployment. Plus, unemployment charts galore from Calculated…

  • Rethinking the brain drain

    Ryan Hahn
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:43 am
    An article in Foreign Policy last month asks us to rethink the brain drain. Authors Michael Clemens and David McKenzie (the latter an employee of the World Bank) argue that the movement of skilled labor is a boon to both developed and developing countries. They decry the term "brain drain" as a serious mischaracterization of the phenomenon. Perhaps they need an alternative catchy phrase to supplant the term—how about brain train? While most of their argument is convincing, I think they may be overstating their case in one spot. The authors argue that…

  • The theory of industrial policy meets reality

    Ryan Hahn
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:40 am
    The idea of industrial policy has been seeing a bit of a resurgence since the financial crisis. It's good to be reminded of the reality of what these policies end up looking like in practice. It seems that Ethiopia's private sector coffee exporters are not too sympathetic to the idea. (H/t African Agriculture)  

  • Does GATS require network neutrality?

    Ryan Hahn
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:09 am
    A new paper argues that permanent blocks by WTO members on internet services like search engines, photo sharing, etc. run afoul of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The International Economic Law and Policy blog has the details.

  • Small businesses and the case for safe savings

    Brian Hoyt
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:25 pm
    Writing in this blog last July, Anushka Thewarapperuma penned a favorable review of a new book by Daryl Collins and Jonathan Morduch on how people living on less than $2/day manage their financial lives. The authors discovered that the world's poor are quite good at managing their finances: The poorest people on earth engage in the sort of sophisticated money management that would make Chuck Schwab proud. Thewarapperuma ended her post by noting that Collins "will be coming out soon with a pilot study using the same methodology of financial diaries, this time…
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    Seeking Alpha

  • Hansen Natural Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

    6 Nov 2009 | 9:54 pm
    Hansen Natural Corporation (HANS) Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript November 5, 2009 5:00 pm ETComplete Story »

  • TELUS Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:30 pm
    TELUS Corporation (TU) Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript November 6, 2009 11:00 am ETComplete Story »

  • Quest for the Droid Crowds: Not So Epic

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:24 pm
    Jason Kincaid submits: Today is Droid day — an event that I, like many tech bloggers, have been looking forward to for quite some time. Unlike some people, I wasn’t graced with a test Droid last week, so I was forced to go out and get one the old fashioned way: by getting to the store as early as possible, before the precious devices sold out. And while I was concerned about falling prey to a supply shortage, a part of me still hoped there would be many others like me, helping justify my early morning rise. These are my notes as I searched for the unexpectedly elusive Verizon…

  • Europe's Biggest Newspaper Forcing Purchase of Its iPhone App

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm
    TechCrunch submits: By Markus Goebel So much for the coming mobile nirvana of free mobile content – at least for iPhone users in Germany. Today Europe’s biggest newspaper, BILD-Zeitung, intends to use, in effect, brute force to compel users buy its new iPhone app. The paper tabloid is to block anyone using an iPhone browser from accessing its website.Complete Story »

  • Positioning for a Bond Rally

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:04 pm
    optionMONSTER submits: By David RussellOne big investor is using options and an exchange-traded fund to bet on a rally in Treasury bonds.Complete Story »
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    Slate: Moneybox

  • The Greatest Trade Ever: A podcast with author Gregory Zuckerman.

    4 Nov 2009 | 11:42 am
    The Big Money presents Every Day I Read the Book, featuring Daniel Gross. Dan's guest is Gregory Zuckerman, author of the book The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History.[more ...]

  • If the economy's stagnant, why are stocks up? The answer is disturbing.

    3 Nov 2009 | 10:09 am
    Here's a puzzle: The stock markets are doing very well, yet the performance of the underlying economy doesn't seem to justify optimism. The buoyant S&P 500 has risen 53 percent since the March bottom. And while the economy expanded at a 3.5 percent rate in the third quarter, unemployment is high, incomes are stagnant, and consumers are shaky.[more ...]

  • The vitamin business thrived through the recession. Why?

    29 Oct 2009 | 4:10 pm
    On Thursday, the government declared the recession over, which means it's time to figure out who won. During the past several months, I've been identifying companies that thrived during the downturn, such as McDonald's and the guns-and-ammo manufacturer Freedom Group.[more ...]

  • Newspapers aren't doing as badly as you think.

    28 Oct 2009 | 4:58 pm
    Recent data provided newspaper lovers with fodder for despair and newspaper haters with fodder for glee. As Reuters reported, citing Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, "Average weekday circulation at 379 daily newspapers fell 10.6 percent to about 30.4 million copies for the six months that ended on Sept. 30, 2009 from the same period last year." "Those numbers take my breath away," said Josh Marshall. "A ten percent decline year over year is the rate of a mode of distribution going out of existence." Kevin Drum of Mother Jones reaffirmed his view that newspapers would be gone by 2025.

  • The Chamber of Commerce pursued failed policies during the Bush years, so why should Obama listen to it?

    26 Oct 2009 | 3:43 pm
    This has been a rough period for the Chamber of Commerce, the Washington, D.C., organization that claims to be the voice of American business. Its doubts about climate change and the desirability of capping emissions have led prominent members to quit the organization. Its knee-jerk opposition to many parts of President Obama's agenda led my Slate colleague Eliot Spitzer to call for it to be stopped. With Democrats controlling both Congress and the White House, it doesn't have natural allies. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett referred to the chamber as "somewhat old school." It was recently…
 
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    Statistical Modeling

  • In the Applied Statistics Blog this week

    Andrew Gelman
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:15 pm
    1. Understanding the 'Russian Mortality Paradox' in Central Asia: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan Short answer: alcohol and suicide. 2. Lumberjacks as a counterexample to the idea of a "risk premium" They take lots of risks and don't get paid well for it. 3. Cell size and scale This is a visualization you won't want to miss. 4. Three guys named Matt 5. The political philosophy of the private eye A genre that was rendered obsolete in 1961 (but nobody realizes it).

  • The two blogs

    Andrew Gelman
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:44 am
    Tyler Cowen writes: Andrew Gelman will have a second blog. I don't yet understand the forthcoming principle of individuation across the two blogs. I have to admit I haven't thought this through at any level of detail. When the Science Blogs people asked me if I wanted to blog there, I canvassed my co-bloggers, and most of them thought it was a good idea. The Science Blog would reach a new audience, but I didn't want to abandon the blog here. (This blog is an extension of my research persona, which seems about right to me. On Science Blogs, I'm just one of seventy bloggers, which is fine--I…

  • Slipperiness of the term "risk aversion"

    Andrew Gelman
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:57 am
    I don't like the term "risk aversion" (see here and here). For a long time I've been meaning to write something longer and more systematic on the topic, but every once in awhile I see something that reminds me of the slipperiness of the topic. For example, Alex Tabarrok asks, "Why are Americans more risk averse about medicine than Europeans?" It's a good question, and it's something I've wondered about myself. But I don't know what he's talking about when he says that "the stereotype is that Americans are more risk-loving" than Europeans. Huh? Americans are notorious for worrying about risks,…

  • Computing power, n, and multilevel models

    Andrew Gelman
    5 Nov 2009 | 6:37 am
    Asa writes: I took your class on multilevel models last year and have since found myself applying them in several different contexts. I am about to start a new project with a dataset in the tens of millions of observations. In my experience, multilevel modeling has been most important when the number of observations in at least one subgroup of interest is small. Getting started on this project, I have two questions: 1) Do multilevel models still have the potential to add much accuracy to predictions when n is very large in all subgroups of interest? 2) Do you find SAS, STATA, or R to be more…

  • Jewish Marriage Tied to Israel Trip

    Andrew Gelman
    5 Nov 2009 | 2:06 am
    Aleks sends along this amusing news article by Jennifer Levitz: A new study found that rates of marriage outside the faith were sharply curbed among young Jews who have taken "birthright" trips to Israel . . . Over the past decade, Taglit-Birthright Israel, a U.S. nonprofit founded by Jewish businessmen, has sponsored nearly 225,000 young Jewish adults for free 10-day educational tours of Israel as a way to foster Jewish identity. . . . A study [by Brandeis University researcher Leonard Saxe and partly funded by Taglit-Birthright] showed that 72% of those who went on the trip married within…
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    Streetsblog New York City

  • Safer, More Livable Streets for the East Side — The Campaign Heats Up

    Ben Fried
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm
    Advocates and volunteers working for protected bike paths on the East Side, flush from last month's highly encouraging Community Board 8 vote, delivered more than a thousand handwritten letters yesterday to City Hall, supporting protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues. Keep an eye on this story. It's a big one. East Side residents sign on for safer, greener streets.As DOT and the MTA flesh out plans for Bus Rapid Transit along the M15 route, dedicated space for both buses and cyclists on First and Second is within reach. Rarely does the opportunity present itself to make such huge…

  • How About a Climate Plan That Reduces Car Dependence?

    Lily Bernheimer
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:58 am
    Last week PA Walks and Bikes alerted Pennsylvania residents to an opportunity to give input on the state's new Climate Change Action Plan. The state has produced a report identifying specific actions that would reduce emissions by a target date of 2020. Recent and projected GHG emissions from the Land Use and Transportation sector, as shown in Pennsylvania's Climate Change Action Plan In his critique, LSC member John Boyle points to some notable omissions in Chapter 6, which focuses on transportation and land use: There is no mention of bicycling and walking in the plan. There is a desire but…

  • The Weekly Carnage

    Brad Aaron
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:25 am
    The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle mayhem across the metro region. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage. Damon Padmore, driving this SUV, hit and killed 38-year-old Dorothea Wallace as she made her way to work in Downtown Brooklyn. Padmore, a corrections officer at Sing Sing, was arrested for driving with a suspended license, but was not charged for killing Wallace. Photo: 1010 WINSFatal Crashes (10 Killed This Week, 242 This Year*, 25 Drivers Charged**) Bronx: NYPD Detective Hits, Kills 67-Year-Old; Charged With DWI,…

  • Tish James: We Need to Improve NYC’s Most Unreliable Bus, But…

    Ben Fried
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:01 am
    Yesterday the Straphangers Campaign awarded Brooklyn's B44 the Schleppie Award in recognition of its status as the most unreliable bus route in the city. Over 20 percent of B44 buses, which run on the Nostrand Avenue corridor, arrive either bunched together or very far apart. About 42,000 people endure the route's maddening inconsistency every weekday. The Schleppie came five days after several prominent New York City Democrats lent their support to the Nostrand Avenue Merchants Association at a small press event protesting plans to upgrade B44 service. Brooklyn's first Select Bus Service…

  • LA Kids Tell City Hall How to Improve Biking — Via YouTube

    Sarah Goodyear
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:35 am
    Today on the Streetsblog Network, a story about some kids in Los Angeles who did their research and came up with several good ideas about improving conditions for bicycle commuters. Then they ran up against the reality that the public forums on the city's bike plan weren't so public. But they didn't let that stop them. Stephen Box at SoapBox LA reports: These kids from the West Side of LA were determined to let the city know what they think about bike commuting. The FIRSTteamWestside (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a group of kids who prepared a presentation…
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    The Becker-Posner Blog

  • Fiscal Imprudence, Distributive Injustice: the $250 per Social Security Annuitant Plan--Posner

    Richard Posner
    1 Nov 2009 | 3:53 pm
    In October, the President announced that $13 billion (some commentators believe a more accurate estimate is $14 billion) of the $787 billion stimulus package enacted this past February would be used to pay every social security annuitant $250 in 2010, ostensibly to "compensate" for the fact that there will no cost of living (inflation) increase in social security benefits. The social security COLA for year t is based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index between the end of the third quarter of t - 1 and the end of the third quarter of t -2. (t is 2010, t - 1 2009, and t - 2 2008.) There…

  • Fiscal Imprudence and Fiscal Stimulus-Becker

    Gary Becker
    1 Nov 2009 | 3:05 pm
    The government's preliminary estimate of the growth in American GDP during the third quarter of 2009 is an impressive annual rate of 3.5%. This figure may be revised downward (or upward) as more data on the third quarter become available, but it surely definitely signals that the US recession is over. In my post on August 9th of this year I already expressed my belief that the recession in the US and the world would end during the third quarter. The end of a recession does not mean that an economy is back to where it would have been without the recession-the US economy is certainly not…

  • Notice

    Richard Posner
    28 Oct 2009 | 8:55 am
    Longtime readers of this blog will be pleased to learn that this month sees its migration into book form. Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism, which collects what we believe are the best, most interesting, and most lasting posts from this blog. The posts selected for the book are representative of the wide range of topics we cover here, and, where appropriate, they've been updated to take account of subsequent events. The book is available at all good bookstores, on- and offline, as well as directly from the University of Chicago Press:…

  • Pay Controls Once Again-Becker

    Gary Becker
    25 Oct 2009 | 2:36 pm
    I sympathize with all the people who are upset by the very large bonuses, stock options, and other compensation received by heads of some financial institutions that ran their companies into the ground through bad investments. However, I also believe it is a big mistake to have a pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, impose sharp cuts over the salaries and other compensation of the seven financial institutions, like Citibank, that received the most government bailout money. The Fed has made matters even worse by proposing to implement pay controls over thousands of banks as part of its regular review…

  • Pay Caps for Financial Executives--Posner

    Richard Posner
    25 Oct 2009 | 12:14 pm
    Limiting the compensation of a handful of employees at a handful of firms can't have any effect except to benefit the firms' competitors by making them more attractive places to work. The limitations are a form of scapegoating designed to appease public anger over the high incomes of financiers who precipitated an economic collapse that has caused widespread suffering, much of it to people who, unlike financiers, bumbling or inattentive government regulators, macroeconomists, members of Congress, and improvident homebuyers and home-equity borrowers, bear no share of blame for the collapse.
 
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    The Big Picture

  • God Hates the Hadron Collider

    Barry Ritholtz
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:30 pm
    Apparently, forces of nature and supernature do not like the collider: “The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation. The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating…

  • Smart People, Big Ideas, Wild Experiences

    Barry Ritholtz
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pm
    This has been a helluva week of travel — NY to Dallas to Austin to Detroit. This post is set to launch after I takeoff for San Francisco. I will return home early next week. My mind is brimming with ideas — About asset management, travel, investing, politics, speaking engagements, food. I had many stimulating conversations this week with some intriguing people. Perhaps I will address these interesting ideas in the near future. I have seen some really cool stuff, met some clever folks. Its all fodder for the mental machinery that requires a steady diet of intellectual input. I like…

  • Consumer Credit continues downward trend

    Peter Boockvar
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:50 pm
    Consumer Credit outstanding fell $14.8b in Sept seasonally adjusted, almost $5b more than expected and marks the 11th month in the past 12 of declines. At $2.456T outstanding, it is 4.9% below the record high in July ‘08. After a flat reading in Aug, (didn’t fall b/c of the CARS program), non revolving debt outstanding fell by $4.9B. Revolving (mostly credit cards) balances outstanding fell by $9.9B. To fully put into perspective today’s data, look at the current level of consumer credit (doesn’t include mortgages, the biggest chunk of consumer credit) relative to GDP.

  • Some Quick Thoughts about Jobs

    Barry Ritholtz
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:35 pm
    While I am waiting for my delayed flight (crew is late arriving form orlando), I have some quik thoughts on NFP. The data today was pretty ugly — 10.2% Unemployment rate, 17.5% under employed, the highest on record. The recession that began in December 2007 has now shed over 7.3 million jobs. Out of the total numbers, 5.6 million are out of work six months or longer — 35.6% of the unemployed. That is a record. The labor continues to shrink. This might be a major demographic realignment of the work force in the US.  Just 58.5% of adults are working, the lowest since 1983 (down…

  • Richard Koo: Great Recessions: Lessons Learned from Japan

    Barry Ritholtz
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am
    click for audio Download (Right-Click and Save) CSIS hosted Richard C. Koo, the world renowned chief economist of Nomura Research Institute, for a speech titled “Great Recessions- Lessons Learned from Japan.”
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    The Epicurean Dealmaker

  • Character Study

    2 Nov 2009 | 7:41 pm
    Alfred Pennyworth: "A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never found anyone who traded with him. One day I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away." Bruce Wayne: "Then why steal them?" Alfred Pennyworth: "Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men…

  • Shock and Awe

    29 Oct 2009 | 9:11 pm
    What the hell did I ever do to piss Steve Randy Waldman off? I tell you honestly, Dear Readers, my afternoon conversation with this genial and intelligent gentleman started unremarkably enough, with a little playful banter in the Twitterverse on this and that. (I called myself a squirrel; he revealed himself to be a slime mold.) But then, something went horribly wrong. After trying to out me with an hurtful photograph of me wearing a hat I haven't owned in years (and an extra 20 pounds I have subsequently shed), he upped his attack on Your Peaceable and Equable Correspondent by trying to pick…

  • Never Send a Boy to Do a Man's Job

    27 Oct 2009 | 8:37 pm
    Interesting article over at Bloomberg.com this morning. Did you see it? Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — In the months leading up to the September 2008 collapse of giant insurer American International Group Inc., Elias Habayeb and his colleagues worked nights and weekends negotiating with banks that had bought $62 billion of credit-default swaps from AIG, according to a person who has worked with Habayeb. Habayeb, 37, was chief financial officer for the AIG division that oversaw AIG Financial Products, the unit that had sold the swaps to the banks. One of his goals was to persuade the banks to accept…

  • Primus inter Pares

    16 Oct 2009 | 12:31 pm
    No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—Almost, at times, the Fool.— T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockBruce, you sneaky bastard.By now, most of you in the hermetic little world of finance have discovered that Bruce Wasserstein passed away Wednesday. He snuck out of the theatre early, making some excuse or…

  • Wherein I Go Mosquito Hunting with a Howitzer

    12 Oct 2009 | 8:30 pm
    I guess James Kwak ate a bad oyster or two at the Yale Law School cafeteria this evening. He rants:Further Proof That Nothing Has ChangedOverheard on the streets of New Haven, just ten minutes ago:Two young women, almost certainly Yale undergraduates, are walking down York Street, discussing their efforts to get jobs as bankers.Student #1: “Why does everyone want to go into banking?” [Note: When an Ivy League undergrad says "banking," he or she invariably means "investment banking," meaning underwriting or trading.]Student #2: “We should advertise – ‘Being a lawyer is so much better…
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    The price of everything

  • Indestructible

    timprice
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:42 am
    “Alternative 1: on average there is more than one ownership claim on each gold bar conforming to London Good Delivery.. Essentially, the market operates on a fractional reserve basis.. If it is true, the next phase in the gold bull market will be a religious experience for anyone unfortunate enough to be short of gold.”   -       Paul Mylchreest, ‘Thunder Road Report’, 15th October 2009.   “Expect other nations, including those in the Middle East, to follow the lead of Hong Kong in bullion repatriation. This is a slow-release…

  • The merits of a slowdown

    timprice
    29 Oct 2009 | 11:33 am
    “Cheaper toys ‘are Christmas hits’ ”   -       BBC News website, 28 October 2009.   Stop all the clocks, wrote W.H. Auden once, and he had the right idea. One of the irritations of modern western society is an always-on consumption culture that lives not so much in the here-and-now but in the tomorrow-reported-as-yesterday. Or perhaps, in remembrance of George Orwell, we should allude to his definition of advertising: the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. Consumer time, in any case, now moves at an accelerated rate, especially…

  • Rage against the machine

    timprice
    23 Oct 2009 | 10:34 am
      “John Meriwether.. is in the process of setting up a new hedge fund – his third.”   -       The Financial Times.   “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”   -       Popular saying, though probably not in Greenwich, Connecticut.     A recent posting on the consistently excellent Naked Capitalism weblog (“Mainstream Media Reporting as Propaganda”) touches on one of the more frustrating aspects of the financial crisis – why have the media been so supine…

  • Show me the (real) money

    timprice
    16 Oct 2009 | 1:44 pm
      “And you thought you had broken even. If investors had bought gold when the Dow first closed above 10,000 in March 1999, they’d be up almost 280%. Put another way, Dow 10,000 a decade ago “cost” 36 ounces of gold, treating each Dow point as $1. When the Dow revisited that level Wednesday, it was worth only 9.276 ounces of gold. In oil terms, the Dow has gone from 609 barrels to 133.”   -       The Wall Street Journal on ‘Dow 10,000’.     There were somewhat half-hearted celebrations last week when an antediluvian…

  • Here is Wisdom

    timprice
    12 Oct 2009 | 10:59 am
      “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”   -       Kurt Vonnegut.     The revelation came sometime during early 2000. It was in the form of Peter L. Bernstein’s “Against the Gods: the remarkable story of risk” (John Wiley, 1998). Sadly, Mr. Bernstein is no longer with us – he died during the summer – but his legacy is likely to outlive most of the financial institutions who never woke up to his message. Hidden within the pages of this outstanding book…
 
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    Financial Times: Undercover Economist

  • How a celebrity chef turned into a social scientist

    Tim Harford
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:21 pm
    I do not count myself as one of Jamie Oliver’s army of fans, but after looking at the chirpy chef’s antics through the eyes of an economist, I am starting to acquire a grudging respect for him. Yes, the recipe books are all but unreadable, but his “school dinners” campaign has been surprisingly successful. Oliver’s mission [...]

  • Dear Economist: Why a ‘pointless’ tax cut really counted

    Tim Harford
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:17 pm
    When the Chancellor of the Exchequer reduced value-added tax from 17.5 per cent to 15 per cent as an incentive for consumers to spend, there was a widespread view that the reduction was too small to be of use. Now that we are approaching the time when VAT returns to 17.5 per cent, some retailers say [...]

  • My big decision

    Tim Harford
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am
    Grant Thornton did a photo-shoot and audio interview with me a few months ago about “My Big Decision”. I told them I don’t believe in big decisions, but for all three die-hard Tim Harford fans out there, here’s the interview.

  • A “Dear Undercover Economist” video

    Tim Harford
    2 Nov 2009 | 5:55 am
    Marketplace worked with me to produce this video about the economics of signalling in the workplace. They did a fantastic job, and you even get to hear my David Attenborough impression. The video is loosely based on one of the Dear Economist letters. Enjoy!

  • Scroogenomics

    Tim Harford
    2 Nov 2009 | 12:48 am
    Joel Waldfogel, author of “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas”, has a book on the subject, “Scroogenomics“. Appropriately, it is a quintessential gift: beautifully presented but under the glorious exterior there’s not that much there: it’s about the size of a pocket diary. I’d guess it’s 20,000 words, tops… I like it, though, having read the first [...]
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    Vox (EU)

  • Decoupling and the future of emerging economies’ growth

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Eduardo Levy-Yeyati, 7 November 2009Most evidence says that emerging economies remain coupled to global growth. Does that threaten their economic resilience? This column says that emerging economies’ growth is more linked to Chinese growth than that of G7 economies, suggesting that their performance is rooted in well-founded, long-term economic trends.Full Article: Decoupling and the future of emerging economies’ growth

  • Liquidity risk charges as a macro-prudential tool

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Enrico Perotti, Javier Suarez, 7 November 2009There is a post-crisis consensus on the need to address systemic liquidity risk and its role in propagating turmoil. This column, which accompanies the release of a new CEPR Policy Insight, refines the implementation details of a new macro-prudential tool – liquidity risk charges – to discourage systemic risk creation by banks.Full Article: Liquidity risk charges as a macro-prudential tool

  • How to share the burden of combating climate change

    5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Vijay R. Joshi, 6 November 2009Governments are bitterly divided about how advanced and developing economies should share the burdens of aggressive climate change mitigation. This column suggests a “do no harm” principle by which developing countries would be enabled to reduce their cost of mitigation to zero until they have eliminated abject poverty. Full Article: How to share the burden of combating climate change

  • Lessons for the foreign exchange market from the global financial crisis

    5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Michael Melvin, Mark P. Taylor, 6 November 2009The timing of the subprime crisis that became the global crisis is well known. Its impact on the foreign exchange markets has been much less discussed. This column fills that void. Its findings suggest that foreign exchange portfolio managers could have protected their portfolio by an appropriate risk control strategy using market stress indicators.Full Article: Lessons for the foreign exchange market from the global financial crisis

  • The EU’s role in reducing state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa

    4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Giorgia Giovannetti, 5 November 2009The crisis is putting downward pressure on development assistance. This column, which presents the 2009 European Report on Development, says that now is precisely the time that EU support to fragile states is most crucial, so that such countries can respond to the crisis without abandoning necessary long-term reforms and improvements. Full Article: The EU’s role in reducing state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa
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    Oxford University Press USA

  • $250 Checks to Seniors: Just Say No

    Rebecca
    2 Nov 2009 | 7:33 am
    By Edward Zelinsky Because the rate of inflation for 2009 has effectively been zero, the Social Security Administration has announced that Social Security payments will stay flat for 2010. In response, the Obama Administration has asked Congress to send every Social Security recipient an additional $250 in 2010. This is a bad idea. The Administration’s proposal is both unfair and misfocused. Many Americans would be delighted to have the same deal as Social Security recipients, namely, the identical cash income in 2010 that they received in 2009. To millions of newly unemployed Americans,…

  • Divide and Conquer? Splitting the Roles of Chair and CEO

    Kirsty
    21 Oct 2009 | 12:12 am
    Chris Mallin is Professor of Corporate Governance and Finance & Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance Research at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Corporate Governance and she blogs with fellow OUP author Bob Tricker at Corporate Governance. The below post is an adapted version of one found on that blog, and is about whether companies should split the roles of Chair and CEO. Her previous OUP posts can be found here, here and here. It is widely recognised that corporate scandals and collapses often occur when there is a single powerful individual in control of a…

  • Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market

    Rebecca
    15 Oct 2009 | 12:01 pm
    Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia.  Her new biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, follows Rand through her meteoric rise from struggling Hollywood screenwriter to best-selling novelist.   Burns highlights two facets of Rand’s work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government.  In honor of Jennifer Burns’s The Daily Show appearance (be sure to tune in 11 tonight!) we have posted an excerpt below. “I am coming back to…

  • Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson

    Rebecca
    13 Oct 2009 | 8:06 am
    Purdy, Publicity Director Bob Geldof said it best back in 1979 with the hit “I Don’t Like Mondays.” My staff know better than to approach me too early on Mondays. My crankiness can sometimes last well into the afternoon. Yesterday, however, was an exception to the rule. I love it each year when the Nobel Prizes are announced. And yesterday two Oxford authors were recognized by the Nobel committee for their work in Economics. Congratulations go out to Elinor Ostrom, co-author of The Samaritan’s Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid (OUP, 2005) and Oliver Williamson,…

  • Three Cheers for the IRS – Really

    Rebecca
    5 Oct 2009 | 5:40 am
    By Edward Zelinsky Few governmental agencies are as widely criticized as the IRS. Some of this criticism is inevitable resentment towards the tax collector. It is, Edmund Burke famously observed, as impossible “to tax and to please” as it is “to love and be wise.” The IRS rarely pleases and is never loved. Moreover, the IRS has become a particularly tempting target for opportunistic politicians. Rather than engage in the difficult work of controlling public expenditures and rationalizing the tax law, it is easier for elected officials to engage in faux populist bashing of the IRS for…
 
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    Cafe Hayek

  • Simonizing

    Don Boudreaux
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:01 am
    Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post: Brian Czech repeats one of today’s most frequently heard mantras – namely, that continued economic and population growth spell disaster for the planet and humanity (Letters, Nov. 5). Virtually all available evidence contradicts this doomsday claim.  For example, the earth’s population today is seven times larger than it was in 1800, and yet most people today live lives that are far more sanitary, healthy, long, and rich in experiences than were those of all but the most privileged potentates and pooh-bahs…

  • Liberty, Power, and Principles

    Don Boudreaux
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:17 am
    Here’s a letter that I sent this moring to the Washington Post: Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, and Eugene Robinson speculate today about Tuesday’s election results.  What do these results signal about the Republican and Democratic parties?  About Pres. Obama?  About Michael Steele?  Sarah Palin?  Glenn Beck? Speculations centered on party struggles are tiresome. The real struggle is between persons who love liberty and persons enthralled with power.  A liberty lover refuses to exercise power over others and, therefore, has solid principles upon which he can stand when…

  • I Didn’t Vote!

    Don Boudreaux
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:24 am
    Commenting on this post, Nathaniel asks me to re-post this essay (entitled “I Won’t Vote!”) — or, I think that this is the essay he’s asking about.  Then again, perhaps it’s not, because a (confessedly very) quick look turns up no evidence that I posted it earlier. Or maybe the link at this post contains the essay Nathaniel has in mind.

  • George Selgin Reviews Steil and Hinds

    Don Boudreaux
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:45 am
    There are only very few scholars — and even fewer economists — whose every word is worthwhile to read.  George Selgin is in that elite group. Here’s Selgin’s review of Benn Steil’s and Manuel Hinds’s wonderful, if flawed, book, Money, Markets & Sovereignty.  The opening paragraphs of the review set the tone well: Economists generally take for granted, if only tacitly, a teleological view of money’s historical development, according to which it first takes the “primitive” form of mundane commodities such as cowrie shells and cacao seeds, and then…

  • Unemployment

    Russ Roberts
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:36 am
    It’s up to 10.2%. Trouble ahead. Trouble behind. The politics is going to be very tough. More pressure to “fix” the economy. The possibility that we are in the mess we are in because of past attempts to fix the economy is very alien to most politicians and most economists. Remember your Hayek: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
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    Dollars & Sense blog

  • Santa Needs Extended Benefits, Too

    Dollars and Sense
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:26 am
    The October employment reports were released today, and the unemployment rate zoomed above 10%, to 10.2%, to be exact, earlier than most economists expected. The number of jobs lost in October also surprised on the negative side, at 190,000 (v. the projected 175,000). The unemployment rate is the highest it's been since the dreadful winter of 1982-83, when it hit 10.8% for two months running. The so-called "underemployment rate," which covers part-time workers looking for full-time work and suchlike, rose at an even higher clip, to 17.5% from 17.0%. The average workweek was unchanged at 33.0…

  • Brad DeLong on Productivity Growth and Kalecki

    Dollars and Sense
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:24 pm
    Here's a post from Brad DeLong's blog, with DeLong using lots of all-caps and some abbreviations I can't figure out (what's "Z" for? Zounds? Zowie?--but I get the gist), and revising his view of the great Polish Marxist economist Michal Kalecki (he revised the spelling of Kalecki's first name, too, I noticed). I am not quite sure why he's so surprised--productivity has to do with output per worker, and lots of people have been fired, and the ones who haven't are worried about losing their jobs. So--stands to reason. I guess it's that the growth is *so* large. Hat-tip to Larry P.ZOMFG WTF!!!!!

  • U2 Fans to MTV: "Tear Down This Wall!"

    Dollars and Sense
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pm
    A funny one from the Associated Press; hat-tip to Bryan S.Outrage over wall blocking free U2 Berlin concertBy KIRSTEN GRIESHABER | November 5th, 2009BERLIN (AP) -- Fans hoping to glimpse U2's free concert celebrating 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell were outraged Thursday to find that a nearly 6-1/2-foot (2-meter) high metal barrier was installed to block the view for those without tickets.Both Berliners and tourists alike saw the irony in building a wall around a concert dedicated to the wall that already has come down."It's completely ridiculous that they are blocking the view," said…

  • Sit-in for Single-Payer in Pelosi's Office

    Dollars and Sense
    3 Nov 2009 | 2:30 pm
    Breaking news from the folks at the Mobilization for Health Care for All:CALL PELOSI NOW! (415) 556-4862 and (202) 225-0100There are 8 people sitting in RIGHT NOW in Nancy Pelosi's Office in San Francisco! They are not leaving until they get an answer to their demands! Their demands are that the Kucinich amendment MUST be in the health care bill that the House votes on, and that the House MUST vote on the Weiner amendment. Pelosi PROMISED the American people that she would ensure BOTH of the above would happen, and she has betrayed us by reneging on those promises! YOU can HELP! Call her…

  • Bird and Fortune on Bonuses and Bailouts

    Dollars and Sense
    2 Nov 2009 | 10:14 am
    An amusing video of Brit satirists John Bird and John Fortune giving their take on the financial crisis, from the Financial Times. Hat-tip to KH. D&S collective member Ben Greenberg posted a video of Bird and Fortune's Subprime Primer almost two years ago.
 
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    Japan Economy Watch

  • A scenario for Japan’s public finances

    Scott
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:16 pm
    A few days back there were rumblings of dissatisfaction from the market about Ministry of Finance projected issuance:Japan’s Bonds Drop a 4th Day After 20-Year Auction Demand Cools – Bloomberg.comIt’s possible that the new government will have to limit its borrowing for “stimulus” spending, as the demand for additional JGB’s is limited.It seems to me the scenario would work like this:Ministry of

  • The Performance of Japanese Companies - A Growing Connection with External Demand

    CV
    1 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pm
    By Claus Vistesen: Copenhagen(click on pictures for better viewing) Last week, we learned that industrial production rose yet again in Japan clocking in at 1.4% month-on-month in September after having increased by 1.6% in August. Companies said they planned to increase production in October and November as well, indicating the recovery from a record export collapse in the first quarter is

  • Japan - In the Eye off the Beholder

    CV
    18 Oct 2009 | 2:36 pm
    By Claus Vistesen: Copenhagen(click on pictures for better viewing) After a nice and entertaining week in Barcelona where I had the privilege not only to hold a seminar at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, but also to meet a host of interesting people, I thought that it would be about time that I finished my piece on the latest data from Japan which admittedly will be a bit backward

  • Japan's US Treasury holdings through August

    Scott
    16 Oct 2009 | 10:33 am
    Note yet another increase in spite of continued yen strength.Source

  • Japan's recent quantitative easing relative to other G-8 countries

    Scott
    15 Oct 2009 | 3:41 pm
    Source: Danske Bank
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    Roland Manarin's Blog

  • Thoughts and Impressions from Spain

    Last week I returned from the Von Mises Institute's Birthplace of Economic Theory Summit held in Salamanca, Spain.  Here is a brief overview of what I observed: - The genesis of free market economics wasn't really Adam Smith.  He merely brought to the Anglo-Saxon world that which the Jesuit scholars in the 1500's brought to ...

  • Economic Recovery, Government Stimulus, and the Conservatives’ Mistake

    GDP for the third quarter was released.  Real gross domestic product was up 3.5% at an annualized rate.  Let's compare that to the first quarter when it was falling at a 6.4% annualized rate.  So in other words, from the trough to where we are today, we have a 9.9% ...

  • Encouraging Words for Nebraska’s Economic Recovery

    If I were a betting man, I would bet that Omaha will be among the first to emerge [from the recession]. - The Brookings Institute's Alan Berube in the North Platte Telegraph  Related posts:Omaha Weathering the Economic StormNebraska Had the Third Lowest January Jobless RateEconomic Recovery, Government Stimulus, and the Conservatives’ Mistake

  • Sketch of the Day: The Model for Investment Success

    Image Credit:  BehaviorGap.com Related posts:The Secret To Investment SuccessKeynesianism Is The Wrong Model To Make Investment and Economic DecisionsMaking Sound Financial Decisions in Today’s Difficult Environment

  • Pay Cash for Health Care

    Charles Hugh Smith - The expansion of health insurance and government entitlements created "free money" and thus the explosion of healthcare costs.  The solution is simple and "impossible": we all pay cash. Here's why healthcare (a.k.a. sick-care) costs cannot be reduced; the entire system is based on vast pools of "free ...
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    Block's Indicator of Sustainable Growth

  • Think Big:Why not nuclear in Australia?

    by Ray Block   Australians have always looked on themselves as the lucky country. First,  it was a case of riding on the sheep's back. Now, it is the same with abundant minerals and natural gas in great demand by Asia. With coal, the largest export earner,  which in turn provides approximately  75 per cent of the ...

  • Think Big (2) solar power from outer space

    by Ray Block Think Big (1) was about the Desertec concept, where concentrating solar thermal power arrays in the Sahara regions of Algeria and Morocco would supply potentially 15 per cent of Europe's energy needs by 2050. The Sahara was the first of the Desertec plans. But equally it could apply to other deserts in the tropical zone between the ...

  • Think big projects(1):Powering up the Sahara

    by Ray Block For over 30 years, visionaries in the Club of Rome have thought and dreamed of powering up the Sahara, the world's biggest non-polar desert to supply renewable  energy to Europe, Middle East and North Africa. This is the Desertec initiative, which has the support of both the German Chancellor,  the President ...

  • France takes the initiative on electric cars

    by Ray Block A study of electric vehicles- hybrids and all-electric by the consultancy Lux Research says that even if crude oil prices hit US$200 a barrel in 2020, hybrids and all- electrics would still make up only about 4 per of vehicles world wide.  The report "Unplugging the hype around electric vehicles" says that ...

  • Wireless Electricity:Tesla and Soljacic

    by Ray Block You may have heard of a new technology called WITricity, also the name of the company developing the MIT technology of wireless electricity. At first sight, it would seem a game of magic, where you can transmit power through the air. The reality is that you will soon be ...
 
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    Economy Watch

  • The Big Money

    17 Dec 2018 | 5:38 pm
    Party Poopers Did Wells Fargo save any money by canceling its lavish event? The Way We Beg Depression Diary, Part 5

  • Stat header

    18 Sep 2018 | 9:53 am
    1.0% Q2 GDP   |   4.98% avg. 30-year mortgage  |   10.2%Unemployment

  • Truer U.S. unemployment rate hits recent high of 17.5%

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:03 am
    Each month, as regular readers know, I like to unpack the new unemployment number and get behind the data. The news this month continues to be grim. Indeed, it is climbing rapidly toward record-grim territory. The official U.S. unemployment rate in October rose to 10.2 percent from 9.8 percent in September, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But the truer measure of unemployment -- a total count of everyone who should be working full time but is not -- hit 17.5 percent in October, the highest level in modern times. The official unemployment number -- 10.2…

  • Stocks mixed at opening following unemployment news

    6 Nov 2009 | 6:55 am
    Wall Street opened mixed this morning following the Labor Department's announcement that the official U.S. unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983. In the first 15 minutes of trading, the Dow is slightly below even. The broader S&P 500 is just above water and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up three-tenths of 1 percent. Meanwhile, gold has popped above $1,100 per ounce. Today, I'm going to be unpacking the October unemployment number, diving into the data and talking more about what it means. So check back. -- Frank Ahrens Sign up to get The Ticker on Twitter

  • Cracking the 10% unemployment barrier

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:01 am
    At 8:30 a.m. today, the Labor Department will release the October unemployment figure. Most forecasters expect the rate to rise from 9.8 percent in September to 9.9 percent in October. But they've been wrong on the downside before during this recession, so 10 percent is a solid possibility. Last month, the economy cracked a positive psychological barrier -- the Dow rose back through 10,000, the first time it had touched the five-digit number since it was falling down through it a year earlier. Dow 10,000 was hailed as a sign of recovery from this long downturn, though it passed back down…
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    Credit Slips

  • Subprime, Exotic or "Crap?" Mortgage Industry Lingo

    Katie Porter
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am
    Former Credit Slips guestblogger Max Gardner is always trying to understand the real mechanics and economics of mortgage servicing. At one of his infamous bootcamps, he had an employee at a now-deceased mortgage servicer share an insider’s perspective on default mortgage servicing. The employee used some terms of art that are pretty revealing of the serious problems in the mortgage industry. For example, servicing technicians who have to load a new set of subprime or Alt-A loans into the system call those loans “Crap of the Crop,” because even on arrival at the servicer all or almost…

  • Evans and Wright on the CFPA: Round 2

    Adam Levitin
    3 Nov 2009 | 8:34 pm
    A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short critique of one piece of a long study written by David Evans and Joshua Wright about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and funded by the American Bankers Association.  The related blog post is here.  Evans and Wright have responded.   There's a lot that I thought was objectionable or questionable in Evans and Wrights study, but most of it was well within the bounds of reasonable argument.  I have no problem intellectually with arguments that any particular regulation could impose costs that outweigh its…

  • October Bankruptcy Filings Set New Post-2005 Record

    Bob Lawless
    3 Nov 2009 | 11:16 am
    The daily bankruptcy filing rate in October hit 6,200, setting a new record since the 2005 changes to the U.S. bankruptcy law. There were about 130,200 total filings spread over the 21 business days in October. The October filing rate is a 3.7% increase from September and a year-over-year increase of 25.3%. As always, these data are courtesy of Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER) There are two ways to receive this news, both of which have some validity.First is the "glass is all the way empty" approach, that the rise in the bankruptcy rate reflects the poor health…

  • Looking Forward in the Supreme Court

    Bob Lawless
    2 Nov 2009 | 9:56 am
    This just in from our Washington, DC, bureau: the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Hamilton v. Lanning, No. 08-3009 (10th Cir. Nov. 13, 2008), where the Tenth Circuit adopted the "forward-looking test" for how much a chapter 13 debtor has to pay creditors. The alternative is the "mechanical test" adopted by the Ninth Circuit in an often-discussed and often-criticized decision called Kagenveama.The forward-looking test allows for a more flexible consideration of the debtor's circumstances in the future. The mechanical test, as the name implies, requires only the…

  • How to Fail My Secured Credit Exam Two Different Ways

    Bob Lawless
    2 Nov 2009 | 8:43 am
    By way of Underbelly comes this story from the Seattle Times chronicling the many failures at the now defunct WaMu. Among the stories was that a WaMu banker gave O.J. Simpson a second mortgage on his Florida home despite the existence of a huge judgment lien against Simpson arising out of his civil trial for killing his wife and her friend. Why did WaMu think it could collect the second mortgage? According to the news story, Simpson had put a note in the file saying he did not do it, and therefore the judgment was "no good." OK, that's pretty dumb and, for my students who read…
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    Megan McArdle

  • Worst. Talking Point. Ever.

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:23 pm
    If this is the best the Democrats can come up with, they are in deep, deep trouble:Republicans argue that an unemployment rate higher than it has been in more than a quarter of a century is evidence that the Democratic agenda isn't putting Americans back to work. They say the situation will be made worse if Congress and President Obama enact a health care overhaul that will require $1 trillion in tax hikes and entitlement cuts to expand insurance coverage. "Ten-point-two now makes it hard for the majority to sell their agenda," said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the…

  • The Evil That Men Do

    6 Nov 2009 | 10:34 am
    Kevin Drum has a powerful letter from someone who witnessed the carnage at Fort Hood:This was premeditated.  This wasn't VBC again.  That guy snapped, not this one.  He was so damn calm when he was shooting.  Methodical.  And he was moving tactically.  The Army really is diverse and we really do love all our own.  We signed up to be shot at but not at home.  Not unarmed.  No one should ever see what the inside of that medical SRP building looked like.  I suppose that's what VA Tech looked like.  Except they didn't have soldiers…

  • America and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Jobs Numbers

    6 Nov 2009 | 7:06 am
    So headline unemployment now stands at 10.2%, higher than forecast.  Another 10 million or so workers are working "part time for economic reasons", meaning they want to work more hours, but can't get them.  And 2.4 million are "marginally attached to the labor force"--they have looked for work in the past 12 months, and say they want a job, but have stopped looking too hard because there doesn't seem to be anything out there.This figure is likely to get worse before it gets better.  Corporations tend to want some evidence of sustainable recovery before they start hiring workers…

  • Department of Awful Statistics

    5 Nov 2009 | 11:45 am
    Incidentally, while reading the Longman article, I came across this passage:Worse, even when strong scientific consensus emerges about appropriate protocols and treatments, the health-care industry is extremely slow to implement them. For example, there is little controversy over the best way to treat diabetes; it starts with keeping close track of a patient's blood sugar levels. Yet if you have diabetes, your chances are only one-out-four that your health care system will actually monitor your blood sugar levels or teach you how to do it. According to a recent RAND Corp. study, this…

  • Revisiting the Achievements of the Veterans Health Administration

    5 Nov 2009 | 11:20 am
    Back in 2005, Phillip Longman wrote an article in the Washington Monthly, touting the strides the Veterans Administration had made in improving quality.  Since then, it has become the model for a fair number of reformers, who frequently cite its ability to control costs and coordinate care as proof that we should move towards such a system nationwide.I was thus interested to learn that the Congressional Budget Office had issued a report on the VA's quality initiatives.  I've been meaning to get around to reading it for weeks, but I've been sidetracked by other things.  (To…
 
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    InvestorCentric

  • When Academics And Investors Disagree

    NuWire Investor
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
    Academics and investors don't always see eye to eye. New York University professor Nouriel Roubini who warned of the financial crisis in 2006, is predicting a bubble in gold and stocks while successful investor Jim Rogers strongly disagrees and argues that the real bubble is in US bonds. See the following post from Expected ReturnsFrom Bloomberg, Rogers says Roubini wrong on bubbles as gold, stocks rally: Jim Rogers, the investor who predicted the start of the commodities rally in 1999, said that Nouriel Roubini is wrong about the threat of bubbles in gold and emerging-market stocks. Many…

  • US Is Not The Only Country With Rapidly Growing Money Supply

    The Mess That Greenspan Made
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:47 am
    In an attempt to improve economic conditions in the United Kingdom, the Monetary Policy Committee has increased the rate of money printing. The growth of the money supply is heavily criticized in the UK, which has not yet achieved any degree of economic growth. See the following from The Mess That Greenspan MadeIt's probably fair to say that they're making a much bigger deal about "quantitative easing" (better known as "money printing") in the U.K. than in the U.S. and for good reason. As a percent of GDP, the amount of money "created out of thin air" in an effort to aid the economy is…

  • Why More Stimulus Spending Is A Flawed Argument

    NuWire Investor
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:59 am
    Despite an improved economic output in the third quarter, decreased consumer spending and a high unemployment appear to be the end outcome of the government's enormous spending. While some economic advisors are calling for more government spending, Moses Kim from Expected Returns explains why this would be a very bad idea.The 4th Branch of the American Government has spoken. Paul Krugman, in his latest piece of propaganda, demands more stimulus for our economy, which essentially means bigger government. From the New York Times, Too Little of a Good Thing: The good news is that the American…

  • Taxes And Economic Growth

    Economist's View
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am
    An examination of presidential policy over the last 30 years indicates that tax cuts may not be the most effective means of stimulating economic growth in the United States. The data suggests that the tax increases signed by President Reagan and President Clinton did more to promote economic growth and recovery than any of the tax cuts signed since 1980. See the following post from Economist's ViewDo tax cuts spur economic growth? Tax Cuts and Recoveries, by David Leonhardt, Economix: One big question about the 1983-84 economic boom (a boom I mention in my Wednesday column) is: Was it the tax…

  • Is Government Spending Too Much On Pensions?

    The Mess That Greenspan Made
    4 Nov 2009 | 5:51 am
    Pension and retirement benefits for public sector employees exceed the benefits received by their private sector counterparts, costing taxpayers millions every year. It is no surprise that California, Illinois and Pennsylvania -- all states that experienced big problems balancing their budgets this past year -- also have large numbers of public sector retirees receiving $100,000 or more a year in pension benefits. See the following post from The Mess That Greenspan MadeCombine a burst housing bubble (and all the attendant vanishing tax revenues) with poor investment returns and a system that…
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    The Aleph Blog

  • My Visit to the US Treasury, Part 4

    David Merkel
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:44 am
    So, who did I recommend for the next meeting at the Treasury? (I think there will be one.) Economists View http://economistsview.typepad.com/ Cafe Americain http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ Market-Ticker http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ Econbrowser http://www.econbrowser.com/ Greg Mankiw’s Blog http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/ Carpe Diem http://mjperry.blogspot.com/ Credit Writedowns http://www.creditwritedowns.com/ Gregor Macdonald http://gregor.us/ Jeff Miller http://oldprof.typepad.com/ Floyd Norris — NYT http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/ Market Beat — WSJ and their…

  • My Visit to the US Treasury, Part 3

    David Merkel
    5 Nov 2009 | 8:54 am
    Going back to bank stress-testing for a moment, one interesting thing that a Treasury official said at the meeting was that unemployment did not have a big effect on foreclosures.  Unemployment has a big effect on credit card defaults, but not foreclosures.  I disagree. As a multi-purpose quant, I have learned over the years that it is impossible to estimate an option curve/function when the variable in question has only been “in the money” or “out of the money.”  (As an example, one can’t estimate the withdrawal function on deferred annuities because…

  • November 2009 Redacted FOMC Statement

    David Merkel
    4 Nov 2009 | 12:04 pm
    September 2009 November 2009 Comments Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August suggests that economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn. Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up. Little change; they see the rebound as continuing. Conditions in financial markets have improved further, and activity in the housing sector has increased. Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period. Activity in the…

  • My Visit to the US Treasury, Part 2

    David Merkel
    3 Nov 2009 | 11:19 pm
    Before I start this evening, to all my fellow bloggers out there, if you were invited to the gathering at the US Treasury and did not come, I have a request and a question: If you were invited, send me an e-mail. Tell me why you decided not to come, if you would. If present trends continue, I can tell you that bloggers are not pushovers for the US Treasury, but neither are they deaf or heartless.  Since my last post, here are the responses to the gathering: Curious Meeting at Treasury Department A Few Observations of My Own Financial Regulation: How would you have it work? Bond Market…

  • My Visit to the US Treasury, Part 1

    David Merkel
    3 Nov 2009 | 12:48 am
    This will have to be brief, because I am tired.  I have had to deal with family and work issues today, and only now have time to blog. You might have seen my fanciful post, Fallowhaven, Part 1.  I wrote that because I thought I could reveal almost nothing of my visit to the US Treasury today.  As it is, I can talk about it, but not quote any officials there, nor say who was there from the Treasury. My surprise was that only bloggers were there.  I expected reporters from major papers, but that was not the target audience.  The closest to mainstream media would have been Megan McArdle,…
 
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    Energy & Society

  • On Discount Rates

    A.V. Elias Suni
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pm
    RFF has published an article by Cameron Hepburn who confuses pure rate of time preference with consumption discount rate. It's troubling that this confusion still keeps popping up among academics. Hepburn says:In contrast to Stern’s prescriptive approach, previous research tended to be “descriptive” in assumptions about discounting, focusing on what we actually do, rather than what we ought to do from an ethical point of view. The focus was on market interest rates, which reflect the sum of many individual choices. Historic market interest rates (ignoring past and present financial…

  • Self-fulfilling Prophecies

    A.V. Elias Suni
    2 Nov 2009 | 4:08 am
    Angela Merkel on Friday:It is realistic to say that in Copenhagen we will not be able to conclude a treatyGuardian, yesterday:"Nobody thinks we will get a full treaty," said a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK)...Lars Løkke Rasmussen, prime minister of Denmark, said: "We do not think it will be possible to decide all the finer details for a legally binding regime." Hanne Bjurstroem, Norwegian cabinet minister and chief climate negotiator, told Reuters: "I don't believe we will get a full, ratifiable, legally binding agreement from Copenhagen."Our climate…

  • While waiting for the results from the vote on Waxman-Markey

    A.V. Elias Suni
    26 Jun 2009 | 2:07 pm
    Read this posting by the Earth Institute's blog on turning CO2 into a solid carbonate. Having the first large-scale demonstration facility come online in September is a huge thing. Let's hope it works.Who wants some limestone?

  • Message from Detroit to Capitol Hill

    A.V. Elias Suni
    8 Jun 2009 | 12:52 pm
    Jim Oberstar, the chairman of US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has proposed a higher fuel tax, making many Democrats nervous about what is "too much" in these difficult times. Obama also opposes the tax hike. I'm inclined to question the logic behind the opposition, whether it's populism or domestic realpolitik.Dave McCurdy, President of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers was on EETV today talking about Detroit's challenges on the path to lower car emissions. He said one thing the Obama administration should take heed of:But I think there has to be price signals,…

  • People who get us into trouble

    A.V. Elias Suni
    29 Apr 2009 | 3:41 pm
    I found this latest piece by Robert J. Samuelson via Paul Krugman, who nails some of the most disturbing fallacies in the column:I don’t think there’s a single thing there that’s right. What on earth do business cycles have to do with it? The models may assume growth based on past trends, but they DO ask whether emissions policy would greatly slow growth — and the answer is no. Consumers aren’t assumed to “quickly” use less — the time frame in these models is decades long. And new supplies don’t “magically” appear — they respond to price incentives, which is what…
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    Quoting the Crisis

  • "A market where everything is rising is not an efficient market: it’s a market which is failing to do..."

    7 Nov 2009 | 12:01 am
    “A market where everything is rising is not an efficient market: it’s a market which is failing to do its job of allocating capital efficiently to where it can be put to best use, and away from areas where it can cause big problems.” - Felix Salmon » Blog Archive » The roots of the coming crash | Blogs | (via nonolet)

  • Michael Milken On The Five Biggest Systemic Threats

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:06 pm
    Michael Milken On The Five Biggest Systemic Threats: crazynutjob: I applauded QtC for a series of posts that had great content from extremely dubious sources. This is in the same vein. Michael Milken, of certain dubious junk bond endeavors, on systemic risk (I should also point out that Milken has done quite a bit to rebuild his reputation, unlike certain other people).

  • "Now maybe I am just hopelessly out of touch, or perhaps more accurately, the Fed has created such a..."

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pm
    “Now maybe I am just hopelessly out of touch, or perhaps more accurately, the Fed has created such a ridiculously favorable environment for banks and traders that if you are moderately competent, making money is like shooting fish in a barrel. But a winning streak this consistent looks like a rigged game. Is this just, ahem, “information advantages”? Greater ease in pushing markets around that have fewer players? Just a function of those monstrously wide bid-asked spreads? I’m curious for a sanity check from people closer to the action.” - Yves Smith in Mirabile Dictu! Goldman Lost…

  • "And an indication of just how much of a hedge fund Goldman has become instead of a client servicer,..."

    6 Nov 2009 | 10:06 am
    “And an indication of just how much of a hedge fund Goldman has become instead of a client servicer, the firm’s Equities Commissions revenue for the quarter dropped to $930 million from $1.2 billion YoY, while prop Equities Trading skyrocketed from $354 million to $1.8 billion YoY! And just in case you were wondering someone, somewhere was motivated to destroy Fixed Income powerhouse Lehman and Bear, look no further than Goldman’s Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities which did a gentle jump from $1.6 billion in Q3 2008 to $6 billion last quarter. And that explains all you need to…

  • "Goldman lost money on just one trading day in Q3, making money on all the other 64. As a reminder,..."

    6 Nov 2009 | 8:05 am
    “Goldman lost money on just one trading day in Q3, making money on all the other 64. As a reminder, even in Q2 Goldman lost money on two trading days. The statistical probability distribution of 1 out of 65 is something that not the SEC, but Richard Feynman should be looking into, as Goldman Sachs, after rewriting the lass of risk/return, is now set to redefine normal distributions and other Statistics 101 concepts.” - Absolute Perfection: Goldman Loses Money On Just One Trading Day In Q3 | zero hedge
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    IMF Survey Magazine

  • IMF Loan Helps Sri Lankan Reconstruction Drive

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:02 pm
    A loan from the IMF is helping rebuild confidence in Sri Lanka’s economy as it recovers from conflict and paves the way for donor assistance in its reconstruction effort.

  • IMF Urges Ukraine To Stick With Recovery Policies

    4 Nov 2009 | 7:32 am
    The IMF urges Ukrainian policymakers to try to forge a consensus to support economic recovery and avoid measures that would fuel inflation and unemployment. IMF Mission Chief Ceyla Pazarbasioglu discusses the status of the Ukrainian economic program and the way forward.

  • Asia Recovering Rapidly, but Faces Challenges, says IMF

    28 Oct 2009 | 11:30 pm
    After being hit hard by the global economic crisis, Asia is now rebounding fast, according to the IMF. The region is outpacing other parts of the world, with the “green shoots” of recovery appearing earlier and taking firmer root than elsewhere.

  • Agreement with Banks Limits Crisis in Emerging Europe

    28 Oct 2009 | 1:13 pm
    In an interview, Erik Berglöf (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and Anne-Marie Gulde (IMF) discuss the impact of the European Bank Coordination Initiative, which has played a key role in helping emerging Europe avert systemic crisis.

  • Health, Social Spending Vital in IMF-Supported Programs

    27 Oct 2009 | 10:06 am
    Several organizations and researchers have studied the effects that IMF programs may have on health in individual countries, and the IMF itself is also monitoring its role in this regard as part of its assessment of programs in member countries.
 
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    SPG Trend Blog

  • The Government Stimulates the Third Quarter but Doubts Remain

    Morris Segall
    3 Nov 2009 | 5:02 am
    GDP for the third quarter comes in strong stimulated by the government but the details and other consumer economic data create doubts on sustainability and make the capital markets nervous. Continue reading this premium article at spgtrend.com. Related reading: Economic and Capital Market Update The September Employment Report: More Unsettling News The Economy, Capital Markets, Healthcare and Geopolitical Events

  • Dow 10,000; the Dollar and Commodities

    Morris Segall
    22 Oct 2009 | 5:06 am
    After reaching the 10,000 level last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stalled reflecting an overextended condition. Over the same period the U.S. Dollar and commodity prices, led by oil, moved to new lows and new highs, respectively, for this year. These trends are inconsistent with a rising stock market and something had to correct. Either commodities, driven recently by speculation, reversed course or the stock market would retreat under the downward pressure from a falling dollar and rising commodity prices. We have expected a correction in the stock market as it became overextended…

  • The September Employment Report: More Unsettling News

    Morris Segall
    5 Oct 2009 | 5:52 am
    Friday’s monthly employment report for September was bad. September job losses, per the Business Establishment series, was a -263,000, worse than analysts projected. Job losses were widespread between manufacturing, construction and a huge 147,000 loss in service sector jobs. The stated unemployment rate increased to 9.8%, another record level. The unofficial unemployment rate that includes underemployed and discouraged workers rose to 17%. The average workweek declined to a record low 33 hours and the employment to population ratio declined to a record low of 58.8%. That means less…

  • The Economy, Capital Markets, Healthcare and Geopolitical Events

    Morris Segall
    1 Oct 2009 | 5:23 am
    Today the government released its third and final revision to the second quarter GDP numbers and shaved the 1% contraction to .7%. There were no major shifts in trends from the previous report but the positive direction of business fixed investment and consumer spending was aided by a surge in government spending, as expected. As we have stated previously, it appears the recession ended in the second quarter. Led by rising home and auto sales, positive trends in industrial production and retail sales continued through July. The expectation was for these trends to continue through August and…

  • Economic and Capital Market Update

    Morris Segall
    24 Aug 2009 | 9:29 am
    It looks like it is all falling into place. Improved housing sales, increased factory orders and shipments, the “Cash for Clunkers” program moving autos off of dealer lots and stimulating increased automobile factory production and the best news of all, stock markets around the world are hitting 12 month highs. World central bankers, including our own Ben Bernanke, pronounce the recession over as GDP for the June quarters show positive growth in France, Germany, Japan and most of Asia. The capital markets buying the rumor are soaring fed by huge amounts of liquidity added to monetary…
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    247 Wall Street

  • United Security Of Sparta Georgia Is 116th Bank Failure Of 2009

    247wallst
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:35 pm
    United Security Bank, Sparta, Georgia, was closed by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. The two branches of United Security Bank will reopen during their normal business hours as branches of Ameris Bank. According to the FDIC as of September 14, 2009, United Security Bank had total assets of $157 [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Home For The Holidays: Consumer Credit Falls Apart

    247wallst
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:21 pm
    It looks more and more like people will not be traveling or shopping this holiday season. The Federal Reserve released its monthly consumer credit report which showed activity decrease at an annual rate of 6 percent in the third quarter of 2009. Total US consumer credit fell $14.8 billlion in September. Of that, revolving credit fell $9.9 billion. The survey [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Buffett & Berkshire Earn Dough (BRK-A, BRK-B, BNI, MCO)

    247wallst
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:10 pm
    Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) has just reported its Q3-2009 earnings ahead of the formal expectations.  This will be perhaps one of the last similar earnings reports with a relative comparisons because of its recent acquisition of Burlington Norther Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI).  The ongoing selling of Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO) will be [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Motorola (MOT) Droid Visits Manhattan

    247wallst
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:32 am
    By Douglas A. McIntyre Some pieces of news are worth mentioning only in passing because they are interesting, but may not mean a thing. CNET says that over 100 people lined up at midnight to be early buyers of the new Motorola (NYSE:MOT) Droid handset at a Verizon (NYSE:VZ) store in Manhattan. The store in Herald [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

  • Is Citi’s Primerica IPO For You (C, MS)

    247wallst
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:36 am
    It has been some time in the making and won’t be the last IPO or divestiture out of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C).  The company is proceeding to divest its Primerica Inc. via an initial public offering. Some fail to see a strategic fit in the supermarket model as this company sell term-life insurance and other investment [...] [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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    Wallet Pop: Recession

  • Recession tales: Entrepreneurs shoot up when economy dives

    Madhusmita Bora
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm
    Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Recession, Recession Diaries, Special ReportsAll your life you wanted to do something outlandish for a living. But that cushy corporate gig and the frills attached to it stopped you from turning your passion into a profession. Enter recession, pink slips and voila your ticket to be your own boss. Unemployed folks are taking the leap of faith and investing their time, energy and resources into entrepreneurial ventures. Yes, believe it or not, new entrepreneurs are on the upswing in this downward spiraling economy. While some took that layoff as an excuse, many…

  • Recession tales: Frugal becomes fashion

    Sarah Gilbert
    6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am
    Filed under: Budgets, Shopping, RecessionThe term "frugalista" may be trademarked, but frugality is so hip the practice deserves a new, rights-free term. Let's call ourselves the "frugalite," as in, "frugal" and "elite." Or call it "thrift store chic." We may be doing this because of the recession, but baby? Frugal is the new awesome. The frugal run the gamut from the truly extreme (counting toilet paper squares, re-using plastic wrap, making your own laundry detergent) to the practical environmentalist (biking instead of driving, fixing old appliances and furniture instead of buying,…

  • Low holiday spending due to economic worries

    Martha C. White
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm
    Filed under: Budgets, RecessionAmericans won't be spending as much this holiday season due to continued worry about their finances, according to new research. The Discover Spending Monitor found that 56% of Americans rated the economy as "poor" in October, a 4% increase over September. In addition, 46% said the economy is getting worse, a 3% increase over September. Overall, women are more worried about the economy than men. In October, the percentage of women who rated the economy as "poor" shot up by nine points to 58%, while the number of men calling the economy poor actually dropped from…

  • Recession tales: Bartering exchanges 'lame' for 'hip'

    Sarah Gilbert
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm
    Filed under: Simplification, RecessionI was helping my second-grader with his homework; he was reluctant to read a the little copy-printed book on bartering, saying, with full eye-rolls, that he'd already read it. So we read it together, and worked through the questions at the end. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "You and dad barter!" he said. Exactly. Here in Portland, Ore., I am such a regular user of the barter economy that the book's historical viewpoint (first came bartering, and finally came malls) seems passé. The grocery co-op where we are member-owners holds an annual holiday barter…

  • Dems finally extend unemployment benefits despite GOP filibusters

    Bob Cesca
    5 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am
    Filed under: Career, RecessionIf you're wondering why it takes Congress so long to move forward with even the most popular legislation, look no further than the extension of unemployment benefits that passed the Senate yesterday. It passed with 98 votes but the popularity of the final vote doesn't reflect the shenanigans that the measure had to endure in order to get there. According to Huffington Post's Ryan Grim, first the Republicans tried to festoon the extension with unrelated amendments -- some of which having to do with further sanctioning ACORN, which, let's face it, isn't worth…
 
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    The Baseline Scenario

  • Accounting at B of A and Fannie

    James Kwak
    6 Nov 2009 | 8:24 am
    Via Yves Smith, John Hempton analyzes the quarterly results of Bank of America (so-so) and Fannie Mae (terrible). The underlying issue is that bank quarter-to-quarter results are largely driven by the amount of provisions they take against future loan losses. You can think of this as a very rough approximation to marking-to-market — instead of waiting for the loans to default, you estimate how many loans will default in the future (that estimate should change as the economic situation changes) and put that amount of money into reserves. Then when the defaults actually happen, you take…

  • Treasury and the Blogs

    James Kwak
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:38 am
    On Monday the Treasury Department (various officials, including Geithner, in shifts) had an informal meeting with eight prominent finance or economics bloggers. I’ve only read the accounts by Tyler Cowen, Steve Waldman, and Yves Smith; Waldman names all of them and links to other accounts. This is Smith’s sum-up: “[T]hese guys are very smooth, very smart, and seemed quite sincere, which made it difficult to discern how much they really did believe and how much of what they said they had to say because they need to defend official policy and maintain confidence. Let’s face…

  • Obama In China: Breaking The Exchange Rate Deadlock

    Simon Johnson
    5 Nov 2009 | 4:31 am
    President Obama leaves next week for a high profile trip that includes meetings with other “Asia-Pacific” countries (in the APEC forum) and a visit to China.  The President has had considerable diplomatic success on the economic front to date, including at the G20 summit in April and – to a lesser degree – at the follow-up September summit in Pittsburgh. But the issues facing him now in Asia are particularly difficult, primarily because of China’s exchange rate policy.  China essentially pegs its currency (known as the yuan or renminbi) against the US dollar, which means that it…

  • Free Markets and H1N1

    James Kwak
    4 Nov 2009 | 6:25 am
    In a free market, companies should be allowed to decide whether or not to offer paid sick leave to employees. At the margin, employees who value paid sick leave will flow to companies that offer it and employees that don’t won’t; also at the margin, companies that offer paid sick leave will be able to pay their employees a little less in other forms of compensation. Everything works out for the best. Unfortunately, not offering paid sick leave creates a classic externality: People go to work even when they’re sick, infecting their co-workers (or customers); employers…

  • Same-Sex Marriage and Time

    James Kwak
    4 Nov 2009 | 5:52 am
    Yesterday Maine voted to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples. It’s a sad day for people who believe that all couples who love each other should be allowed to marry, full stop. But the chart below may cushion the blow a tiny bit. It’s from a paper by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips, “Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness,” recently published in the American Political Science Review (via The Monkey Cage). What you are seeing is support for same-sex marriage in 1994-96, 2003-04, and 2008-09; solid dots indicate that same-sex marriage is…
 
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    Minyanville

  • Market Strong Despite Bad Macro News

    6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm
    As the week comes to a close bad macro news is seemingly everywhere with the unemployment numbers particularly troubling.  But the market is still performing well.Join Jeff as he takes a look at how big retailers like Gap (GPS) and Aeropostale (ARO) are performing what's going on with Ford (F) and what's in store for the week ahead.

  • Buzz of the Street: Gold 1100?

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:40 pm
    All day and every day some of the stock market's best and brightest traders and money managers share their ideas insights and analysis in real-time on Minyanville's Buzz & Banter. Check out some of the best of the buzz and for those minyans not currently subscribed click here for a free two-week trial. Note: Some links may require Buzz subscriptions.Monday November 2nd 2009Household CreationBy James AndersonOne of the things that has amused me during the Cash for Clunkers and the First Time Home Buyer tax credit programs is the unintended consequences of the programs. It…

  • Strange Days

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:25 pm
    Not much has changed since we last spoke. I'm just sitting tight vacationing in the US with my assets in dollars. Everyone is negative on the dollar for good reason but that fact alone could and I think will propel the dollar higher at some point in nasty fashion.Just look what happened to the yen. Everyone was negative on it for the same reasons and everyone was borrowing in yen to buy risky assets. Of course they took huge currency risk in doing so and thus paid the price. They're still counting their losses.So now in my opinion it’s ...

  • Dear Mr. Bernanke, A Note to Say Thanks

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:05 pm
    Editor's Note: See Ron Coby's first "letter" to Ben Bernanke here. Dear Mr. Bernanke As a follow-up to my most recent letter I once again want to say thanks. I was so relieved on Wednesday when you announced your decision to keep short-term rates low for an “extended period of time." How kind of you to not take the market's punch bowl away. I also want to congratulate you for doing such a great job of pumping up and propping up the stock and bond markets. Your bubble-blowing actions have allowed Wall Street insiders to make tremendous gains selling ...

  • Trading Radar: Walmart Gets in Holiday Spirit

    6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm
    Next week will be light as earnings season is starting to come to a close and there isn’t a lot of economic data due to Wednesday's Veterans Day holiday (the bond market is closed but the stock market is not).Walmart (WMT) will be the company to watch next week when it reports earnings on Thursday. Analysts are expecting the company to report EPS of $0.81 on revenues of $99.821 bln. Pay close attention what the retailer says about the holiday seasons its currently locked in a heating price war with Amazon (AMZN)Monday November 9Economics Earnings Before: AMRI WEL BPZ ...
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    Howard Lindzon

  • The Cisco Conference Call or a Peek Outside…Which is More Valuable

    Howard Lindzon
    5 Nov 2009 | 6:26 am
    Cisco is a great Company. John Cambers is a good CEO. Sure, he looks a little like ‘the Blond Fuhrer’, but that’s just on the surface and a bad barber. I am hearing he called a bottom for the Company last night. I don’t know because I don’t follow the stock, but I hear things on this newfangled Twitter thingy. Before Twitter when there was Television, I do I know that John Chambers NEVER called the top in 2000 and oversaw a bazillion in fake sales during their rise. Today, Cisco is an economy…and because US is a part of that economy, it is a slow grower.

  • We ALL Need a Kickstart…

    Howard Lindzon
    4 Nov 2009 | 10:48 pm
    My pal Brent Rose has been cranking out hilarious characters in web video since Lindsay Campbell brought him in to be ‘Flash’ on our Adobe episode of Wallstrip. He also was ‘The Fly’ when we needed him for ‘Asshat of The Year’: He is looking to make more videos and is using Kickstart to organize the process . If you have an idea for a web video and need a pro to bring it to reality, Kickstart it with Brent Rose by making a pledge to help him Kickstart his.

  • According to Inc. Magazine…I am a Somebody!

    Howard Lindzon
    3 Nov 2009 | 4:45 pm
    Any ‘Best Of’ or Twitter List is flawed if I am on it. You know the old club joke from the great Rodney Dangerfield (please correct me if I am crediting improperly). I wanted Twitter to have lists for discovery purposes, but seeing myself on other people’s lists is just weird. I was alerted via Twitter to an Inc. magazine story listing me as a top business blogger ( I love that they use Disqus as their commenting system). The joke is of course on me because next to me on the list for all of time is the mug of Jason Calacanis. To you funny…to me… grotesque. I…

  • The Top Ten Reasons You Sold Stocks on March 9th, 2009

    Howard Lindzon
    2 Nov 2009 | 10:37 pm
    It’s a busllshit headline and I won’t really list top 10 reasons. They are a weak tool. David Letterman owns it and they should only be allowed for comedy and sarcasm. WorldWide Pants should sue every blogger using my headline. But I digress… I was checking out some price charts tonight after seeing that Black and Decker bdk was purchased by Stanley Works swk for a large premium. Black and ‘Freaking’ Decker was $70 in October 2008 and under $20 by march 2009. It will be near $60 on the open tomorrow. That’s a big swing for a bazillion dollar, boring tool…

  • Twitter Lists…What do YOU Think?

    Howard Lindzon
    31 Oct 2009 | 7:59 pm
    We all navel gaze in the era of the social web. I remember I used to check my stats when I started blogging and obviously that happened on Twitter for a while as well. I don’t check my personal Twitter stats anymore, but I do want to know everything about Stocktwits and companies I have invested money with. When asked, I always tell people that you must be willing to be UNfollowed and UNread when you blog and tweet. In the stock market it is called ‘backing and filling’. It’s a healthy thing. In fact, I lost two followers from my last tweet and it feels great: I just…
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    Information Arbitrage

  • Barking Up the Wrong Tree

    Roger Ehrenberg
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:20 pm
    After reading the news, participating in key industry conferences and doing some thinking, I've come to the following conclusion: the regulators - and Congress - are barking up the wrong tree. They would have you believe that the equity markets are rigged, retail investors are screwed and that the market structure is flawed. They would further argue that the equity markets are in need of dramatic new regulation, flash orders and high frequency trading are the root of all evil and that "dark pools" are something promulgated by Darth Vader. I have only two words to say to Congress, the SEC and…

  • Golden Opportunity - I Need a Technical VC Investment Associate

    Roger Ehrenberg
    30 Sep 2009 | 5:46 pm
    I am currently spending a lot of time evaluating companies targeting "big-data," predictive analytics, anomaly detection, machine learning, high-performance computing, data visualization and related fields, and am seeking an Associate to be involved in all stages of the early-stage venture investment process.The successful candidate will be a key member of a small team of highly successful investors and entrepreneurs. This individual will be a highly analytical, innovative and driven self-starter with deep technical experience combined with business judgment. Responsibilities: Create and…

  • Fixing Wall Street? The Feds Blew It.

    Roger Ehrenberg
    2 Aug 2009 | 8:04 pm
    Today's press is constantly filled with bluster about "new" regulatory regimes, Executive Pay Czars and other gripping topics stemming from 20/20 hindsight and populist zeal. Sadly, they all miss the point. Wall Street's weakest link, it's super-leveraged capital structure and reliance on overnight funding, was laid bare in the depths of the financial crisis last fall. If not for the wide-open purse strings of the US Government, institutions ranging from Citigroup to Goldman Sachs would have gone down. No doubt. This was the moment in history when smart minds could have gotten together and…

  • Re-designing the Wall Street Trader Compensation Model

    Roger Ehrenberg
    26 Jul 2009 | 12:33 pm
    The recent flap over Phibro's Andrew Hall and his $100 million+ compensation package makes for good headlines, but fails to get at the essence of the real problem: the manner in which Wall Street trader compensation is calculated and disbursed. But even more importantly, the talk of nullifying or modifying his contract simply because neither Citigroup nor the US Government like it brings with it dark and threatening implications. If contracts entered into legally and without prejudice are all of a sudden cast into doubt, the entire foundation of free and fair commerce is in jeopardy. Say what…

  • Why I'm Not Blogging

    Roger Ehrenberg
    14 Jun 2009 | 7:44 pm
    I've been at this since July 2006, doing my thing. Writing when I've felt inspired, irked, righteously indignant, touched, happy and sad. Blogging has become a significant and meaningful part of my life, one where I am able to express myself on my terms, write about issues rattling around in my head, and to connect with people across the world and from different walks of life. Discovering blogging has truly been a gift. It is hard to imagine living without my blog.Then why am I less interested in blogging than I've been in nearly three years? While I'm certainly not the most prolific blogger,…
 
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    Franconomics

  • 11 October, 2009 - Irregular Podcast from FRANCONOMICS.COM

    Sam Mishra
    11 Oct 2009 | 4:45 am
    In this irregular podcast dated October 11th, 2009, we introduce new Congressional hearings and other relevant sound bites (including the barely audible TARP COP report for the month of October by Elizabeth Warren), interspersed with the FRANCONOMICS.COM analysis: 1. US has gone from being the largest Creditor to become the largest Debtor Nation, with National Debt well over of $11 trillion --- part of it is of course in TARP / TALF / pPiP which bailed out a few thousand Wall Street bankers at the cost of 300 million Americans. Do we need SIGNIFICANT CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM? 2. Federal…

  • FRANCONOMICS.COM Irregular Podcast - 23rd September, 2009

    Sam Mishra
    23 Sep 2009 | 2:00 pm
    In this irregular podcast dated September 23rd, 2009, we introduce and analyze the following sound bites / dialogues: 1. Secretary Geithner defending ex-Goldman CEOs / employees working for the US Treasury as deeply honorable men. He also claims that the jobs all these ex-Goldman employees did was complex, for it required complex negotiations with banks etc. However, it is common sense (and also there is great public mistrust) that these folks would not (and did not) take the side of Main Street. Certainly, from our prior podcasts where we have quoted Congressmen ripping Hank Paulson apart on…

  • Podcast - 18th Sep 2009 - FRANCONOMICS.COM

    Sam Mishra
    18 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am
    In this irregular podcast dated September 18th, 2009, we introduce and analyze the following sound bites / dialogues: 1. A lady asking Larry Summers about regulating these banks who have returned the money fast so that they could escape the comp czar, and Summers' response. 2. TARP COP (Congress Oversight Panel) Chairwoman quizzing Secretary Geithner about the conversations between the AIG counterparties (like Goldman Sachs, though the name is not explicitly mentioned in her questioning) and the US Treasury prior to the AIG bailout...Geithner responds that it was more complex than just…

  • Insight - Mortgage Rates have dropped by 1% in the last 2.5 years

    Sam Mishra
    13 Sep 2009 | 6:58 pm
    When we started publishing our in-depth articles in early 2007 on the sub-prime mortgage related real-estate bubbles, we also started tracking mortgage rates for the 30-year fixed, the 15-year fixed, and the 1-year ARM (Adjustible Rate Mortgage) mortgages, based on data from MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association). The 30 year fixed mortgage rate now stands at 5.15%, compared with 6.24% on 2/20/2007. At the same time, the one-year ARM has gone UP by 1% (5.8% to 6.7%). Read more...

  • Podcast from Franconomics.com - 26th Aug 2009

    Sam Mishra
    26 Aug 2009 | 8:00 am
    In this regular podcast dated August 26th, 2009, we begin by touching the sad news that Senator Ted Kennedy passed away here in Boston. The podcast covers the the following news items, analyses, and axioms 1.Ben Bernanke renewed for the 2nd time. Dr. Ben is a scholar of the great depression. However, the corruptions in Wall Street have reached the same epic proportions as they were to be during the great depression … so, we need a Pecora like investigation. So who was Ferdinand Pecora? 2. AXIOM: Fire does not need to say: I am hot, I am hot, I am hot. If you come near fire, we feel the…
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    The investment blog on Post

  • Busy Season Credit Policy | Advantage zyaada

    27 Oct 2009 | 12:10 am
    I hate writing influencing stuff for these 'namakool' government people..a true laissez faire capitalist as bollywood would say today - but much as I like to disappoint wooden leg intelligentia (sorry Saugata, not you) and unfortunate colleagues who cannot see the depth and incisiveness of my decisions ( only some times, as most of my followers and poachers would attest from the last 15-20 years, i have quite some intellectual property when it comes to establishing the kingdom's fine traits and setting up the next wins.  Well, this introduction is probably embedded into my names and…

  • 20 Tweets from Friday - Part Deux | zyakaira

    18 Sep 2009 | 9:49 am
    Rural Distrbn: Current FDI limits / Foreign Investment limits of 20% / 49% in DTH may go up to allow foreign media investors to catch upabout 6 hours ago from HootSuiteUnitech Telenor has revised capital participation terms putting responsibility on Telenor to fund all expansion, ready with 8500 towers..about 6 hours ago from HootSuiteNew Islamic Bank Al Baraka to take off in Kerala based on Shariat principle of Bai al salam, distribution of profit and est of a social fundabout 7 hours ago from HootSuiteChina's bear trend unlikely to be braked but may recover…

  • 20 Tweets from Friday | zyaada

    18 Sep 2009 | 9:34 am
      From Marketwatch.com Dow up more than 50 points as U.S. stocks open Frida.. http://bit.ly/C53J4 :ask us to analyse7 minutes ago from twitterfeed Valuations too high http://post.ly/5WrLabout 1 hour ago from Posterous Indian PE deals, lousy skype fights ..just bad weather everywhere Valuations! Valuations! | The investment blog http://bit.ly/Tq2Ipabout 1 hour ago from Splitweet And to end the day of tweets, from the Sun Tsu of War ( from Gekko) when your enemy is stronger than you, don't be afraid..to run awayabout 6 hours…

  • Valuations too high

    18 Sep 2009 | 7:58 am
    Three sales canceled, carried over, increased stakes and quick QIPs instead of IPOs, no one’s playing to the basement anymore..Wanted to sell, couldn’t get my price so bought some more. Whacky, emulating personal shopping habits of people more than corporate board tussles of the 1990s. KKR now owns 80% of Aricent (79), WNS will still have Warburg and Axis bank is happy with $720 million where it could have easily absorbed another tranche of the same amount. And this is in the faster growing market of India that we have these white elephants. In fact the 2007 majority view of these…

  • Airtel MTN sign deal agreement

    9 Sep 2009 | 10:49 pm
    While leading media analysts were continuing discussion on the various touchy edges of the deal, Bharti and MTN finalised the first phase of the deal yesterday, avoiding control issues and closing well before the deadline. Airtel upped the offer to $14 billion for MTN for 49% while MTN is now likely to acquire 33% of Airtel for $10 billion. The MTN take includes added cash in return for lesser discussions on control issues. Being adequately funded the cash rich Airtel still walks away with a great deal combining Singtl, Airtel and the kingdom of South AfricaAs Prahalad Santigram of…
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    Economic Principals

  • What The Woman Lived

    admin
    1 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm
    Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize raised an interesting question. Who’s the most famous female economist in the profession today? Ostrom’s influence, via her field work on informal governing coalitions, had been greatest among political scientists. She was not among the worthies (Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Oliver Williamson) who founded the International Society for New Institutional Economics. Indeed, most economists had never heard of her before last month. So who is the most widely read woman in the profession? Susan Athey, of Harvard University, the first woman to win the Clark Medal?

  • How Can We Miss It When It Never Went Away?

    admin
    25 Oct 2009 | 4:14 pm
    When the World Trade Organization negotiations broke down in July 2008, the global financial crisis was so quickly upon us – October panic, bailout, US election, stimulus package – that it’s easy to forget that the Doha Round didn’t end after seven years, it simply took a break. It’s still out there, zombie-like, waiting to be recalled to life, to resume generating attention-numbing headlines. Now US-China relations are beginning to dominate the news: China powering out of its slump, China celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of its revolution with military displays, China investing…

  • The Student of Working Together

    admin
    18 Oct 2009 | 1:59 pm
    Who owns the Nobel Prize in economics? A basis for an answer to that question appeared last week, when the Nobel Committee opened the door to a capacious new wing of economic research, citing political scientist Elinor Ostrom, of Indiana University, for her investigations of how ordinary citizens solve problems that arise when sharing common resources (and sometimes fail to solve them). Over a forty-year research career, Ostrom, 76, has studied everything from the harvest of fish in the seaand grazing rights in alpine meadows, to patterns of police law enforcement and the creation of private…

  • Get a Grip on It

    admin
    11 Oct 2009 | 3:02 pm
    The Nobel Prize is among the world’s most successful brands.Since 1901, the program has enabled Scandinavians to have a resonant voice in world affairs despite their relative isolation in northern latitudes.They’ve done it by taking great pains to be convincing. The science prizes created a master narrative for one of the great stories of the age. The prizes for literature and peace, while more controversial, carry considerable cultural and moral weight. The problem with giving this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama is obvious, at least when viewed from the perspective…

  • In Which a Spear-Carrier Vents a Little

    admin
    4 Oct 2009 | 6:18 pm
    When Economic Principals moved to the Web from The Boston Globe nearly eight years ago, its inspirations were Esther Dyson and Edward Tufte. But its guide was Ira Stoll. Dyson and I had worked down the hall from one another at Forbes in the mid-1970s.She was as fearless and indefatigable as any journalist I’ve ever known. Editor Jim Michaels blocked her path, so she quit the magazine and joined Wall Street securities analyst Ben Rosen. When he moved on to doing venture capital, she bought his electronics newsletter, renamed it Release 1.0, and began covering the emerging personal computer…
 
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    Marginal Revolution

  • How to run a successful blog

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:57 am
    ...They understand that public opinion matters...they understand that it’s a little harder to criticize someone after you’ve met him and he’s given you free cookies...they couldn't possibly have expected to change anybody’s mind, they understand that it’s better to talk to your critics than to avoid them. Waldman talks about some of the techniques used to make the attendees [readers] feel like they were being treated as special guests. Whoops!  That's not advice for running a successful blog.  Those are James Kwak's comments on how Treasury tries to trick…

  • Assorted links

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 7:49 am
    1. More lessons from the VHA. 2. Net use does not lead to social isolation. 3. IQ predicts portfolio diversification, at least in Finland. 4. Finish time variation in marathons, across time and across Boston and New York. 5. What your phone might do for you two years from now. 6. John Cassidy on the health care bill.

  • Talks at TEDx Midatlantic

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 4:05 am
    The talks are here, including one by yours truly on the limits of story-based thinking.  I was happy to meet Sonja Sohn.  One thing I learned from this experience is that if you follow professional entertainers, the "status rub-off" effect dominates the "suffer by comparison" effect.  The audience is primed to be sympathetic to you and many of them do not actually know which of the speakers are truly the high status people.  Perhaps the talk has to meet some minimum quality standard, or involve some minimum level of self-confidence, for the rub-off…

  • Impressions from Treasury

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:57 am
    I will enumerate a few (you can trace other accounts here):1. Tim Geithner is very smart and he was conceptually stronger than one might have expected.2. I believe that the long, L-shaped hallways encourage "visits to offices" rather than hallway conversations; this is a speculation and perhaps some reader can confirm or deny it.3. The quality of the painted portraits of Treasury Secretaries declines as time passes.4. The free cookies were good and fresh, with a warm, fluid chocolate interior.  There was water to drink, but no mineral water.5. For all their talk about…

  • *You Are What You Choose*

    Tyler Cowen
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:17 am
    Scott DeMarchi and James T. Hamilton have a new book out and the subtitle is The Habits of Mind That Really Determine How We Make Decisions.  I take this to be the key paragraph: It's called fast food, but your decision-making process in ordering a chicken sandwich can be incredibly complex.  In the following section, we describe six core habits of mind that affect how you make decisions in all areas of your life.  We call these TRAITS: Time, Risk, Altruism, Information, meToo, and Stickiness. Here is a review and explication of the book.
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    EconomyStory

  • An economic glimpse of the South

    Laura Hertzfeld
    6 Nov 2009 | 11:23 am
    With the highest unemployment rate nationally since 1983, it’s hard to believe the economists when they talk about the recession being over. This week’s station roundup takes a look at a program in Mississippi that’s targeting new opportunities across the state, a homelessness relief project in Florida, and a job plan from an unlikely industry in Alabama. State officials in Mississippi are hoping that a new Economic Tour of various towns will help identify where jobs and other opportunities are needed most, The Clarion-Ledger reported this week. Some areas of the state are…

  • We’ve got the beat

    Laura Hertzfeld
    5 Nov 2009 | 10:59 am
    From stock market charts to music parodies, the economy definitely has some rhythm, and maybe that’s why a few new projects that are taking music as an inspiration, both literally and figuratively, as public media covers the economy. A big “ewww!” was my first reaction to this week’s PRX EconomyBeat podcast, which takes us dumpster diving behind an organic grocery store in Detroit, Michigan. But hearing from a woman who says she’s only spent $50 in the past five years on food? Priceless. At The American Prospect, the Beat the Press blog is taking a critical look at how various media…

  • Watch and learn

    Laura Hertzfeld
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:44 pm
    PBS has just launched a new economy video widget, featuring full episodes of NewsHour, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal and more. Curated by PBS editors to find the best economy-related content from across public media, the player also includes historical pieces, like the American Experience series on the 1930s. You can embed the code below and add the player to your own site or Facebook page (like we’ve done over on the EconomyStory fan site).

  • Election Day 2009

    Laura Hertzfeld
    3 Nov 2009 | 3:34 pm
    Polling place/Credit: Flickr user Steve Rhodes While this year’s election night hardly has the country as riveted as 2008, that’s no reason not to pay attention. There are several races that could have significant local impact in key areas of the country, As the results start to roll in tonight, PBS’ NewsHour has listed the races to watch, including the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, a same-sex marriage bill in Maine, and a congressional race in New York. Speaking of New York City, the winner of the mayoral race winner is almost a given thanks to popular Mayor Michael…

  • It’s all in your head

    Laura Hertzfeld
    2 Nov 2009 | 3:31 pm
    Why do we make the decisions we do about how to manage our money? The psychology behind financial matters provides insight on everything from how good and bad money decisions are made — from mean-spirited scams to smart savings plans and everything in between. Just like there are people who can play blackjack all night at the casino and others who will only risk a few quarters in the slots, there are people who play the stock market, or trust others to play it for them on both sides of the coin. As part of a new series called “Your Mind, Your Money”, Nightly Business Report examines…
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    Bank-O-meter

  • Strategic Default: Fear and Loathing in Foreclosure

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:51 pm
    Millions of Americans are drowning in mortgage debt; they are underwater, but for strange reasons they refuse to get out of the pool. Roughly one-quarter of all homeowners have negative equity exceeding 10% of the outstanding mortgage. Within the next 18 months, it is expected that 48% of all homeowners will be underwater. We have already seen the tsunami wave hit the real estate market in Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and California. Las Vegas finds 81% of homeowners underwater. Home prices have dropped 48% in Miami. Prices are down 54% in Phoenix. Only 15% of homeowners in Merced, California…

  • Bank Failure #119 – Gateway

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:24 pm
    Gateway Bank of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, was closed Friday, November 06, 2009 by the Missouri Division of Finance, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. Central Bank of Kansas City will assume all of the deposits of Gateway Bank of St. Louis.

  • Bank Failure # 118 – Prosperan

    6 Nov 2009 | 4:22 pm
    Prosperan Bank, Oakdale, Minnesota, was closed Friday, November 06, 2009 by the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. Alerus Financial, National Association, Grand Forks, North Dakota will assume all of the deposits of Prosperan Bank.

  • 117th Bank Failure - Home Federal Savings Bank

    6 Nov 2009 | 3:22 pm
    Home Federal Savings Bank, Detroit, Michigan, was closed Friday, November 06, 2009 by the Office of Thrift Supervision, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. Liberty Bank and Trust Company, New Orleans, Louisiana will assume all of the deposits of Home Federal Savings Bank.

  • Bank Failure # 116

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pm
    The Friday night menu features banks. The first course is southern style toast. Once again the FDIC targets a Georgia bank. The over/under for The Friday Eat the Bankers Special is 4. United Security Bank, Sparta, Georgia, was closed Friday, November 6, 2009 by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. Ameris Bank, Moultrie, Georgia will assume all of the deposits of United Security Bank.
 
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    About.com: US Economy

  • Unemployment Over 10%

    6 Nov 2009 | 2:28 pm
    The October employment report shows there are 5.8 million fewer jobs than last year. This trend is a tad better than September, when the economy was down 6 million jobs. These year-over-year stats show the trend is improving. In the 2001 recession, the economy did not regain health until this number trended up. Although that recession only lasted 8 months, it led to 29 months of job losses. (See Google Spreadsheet Employment) Read more...Unemployment Over 10% originally appeared on About.com US Economy on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 22:28:39.Permalink | Comment | Email this

  • $3.2 Billion Well Spent to Help Vets

    4 Nov 2009 | 10:14 am
    Sometimes you just gotta do the right thing. Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Eric K. Shinseki announced the Federal government will spend $3.2 billion to rehabilitate 154,000 homeless veterans. This includes $2.7 billion on medical services to treat the debilitating depression and PTSD often caused by war. The remaining $500 million will be spent on homeless programs. Will this help the economy get back on its feet, create jobs or increase GDP growth? We will never know. The results may never be measured. As discussed by Riane Eisler in her book The Real Wealth of Nations, GDP doesn't…

  • How High Will Gold Climb?

    3 Nov 2009 | 6:36 am
    Gold hit another all-time record of $1,081.70 an ounce, thanks to India's purchase of 200 metric tons from the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Read more...How High Will Gold Climb? originally appeared on About.com US Economy on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 14:36:08.Permalink | Comment | Email this

  • What Is the Real Cost of Medicare Fraud?

    2 Nov 2009 | 2:14 pm
    One of the key arguments in Obama's healthcare reform proposal is that the government can lower healthcare costs by 1.5% a year, by negotiating lower prices and reducing other inefficiencies. The annual healthcare bill is $2 trillion, so this would save $30 billion a year. A recent "60 Minutes" show, repeated by many sources, says Medicare fraud costs $60 billion a year, which would negate the savings in the Obama plan. However, my About.com colleague and professional journalist Pierre Tristam reports the true cost is closer to $19 billion at most. My own estimates put fraud costs between…

  • Recession Is Over, Thanks to Stimulus

    29 Oct 2009 | 7:03 am
    The economy grew 3.5% in the third quarter this year, the first time it has been positive since the recession started in 2007. Recessions are usually defined by negative GDP growth. The BEA report means the recession is technically over. However, much of the growth was driven by the Economic Stimulus Program and the Cash for Clunkers incentive. Government spending contributed 2.3% to GDP growth, while motor vehicle sales contributed 1.66%. Without the spending, GDP would have still been negative. With a Federal debt level hovering around $12 trillion, how long can government spending drive…
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    Economix

  • Wages: A Comparison With Past Recessions

    By David Leonhardt
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:02 pm
    Since the recession began, inflation-adjusted weekly pay has risen 1 percent. It fell in the downturns of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

  • Who's Hurting the Most?

    By Catherine Rampell
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:41 pm
    The job market is bad for almost everyone. But it is especially bad for those who are young, less educated, male or black.

  • Still Getting Better, but Slowly

    By David Leonhardt
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:32 am
    Job losses have continued to slow in recent months, though not at the pace they had been slowing this summer.

  • EconoQuiz

    By R.M. Schneiderman and Catherine Rampell
    6 Nov 2009 | 10:30 am
    A quiz on economic issues in the news.

  • Explaining the Big Jump in Unemployment

    By Catherine Rampell
    6 Nov 2009 | 9:49 am
    How could a smaller decrease in employment be accompanied by a bigger increase in unemployment?
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    iMFdirect

  • Aristotle as an IMF Economist: Asia’s Difficult Balancing Act

    iMFdirect
    4 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pm
    By Anoop Singh It was Aristotle who said “one swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day.” Perhaps if Aristotle had been an IMF economist living in current times, he might have said “a few green shoots do not a recovery make.”  Despite budding green shoots in Asia, policymakers in the region will need to be cautious about how they sustain this fragile recovery. In the coming year, they will need to pull off a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, they need to continue providing extensive macroeconomic support to their economies until it is clear that the recoveries are…

  • The Puzzle of Asia’s Rapid Rebound

    iMFdirect
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm
    By Anoop Singh Now here’s the puzzle: how is it that Asia has rebounded sooner and more strongly than the rest of the globe from the economic slump when the region is so heavily dependent on exports for its growth? This, and the future prospects for the region, are two of the key issues we analyzed in the latest Regional Economic Outlook (REO) for Asia and the Pacific, recently launched in Seoul and Tokyo. There are three pieces to the puzzle of Asia’s rebound:  Exports (in value added terms) account on average for about one-third of GDP in emerging Asian countries, while many of the…

  • Sudden Financial Arrest and Much More: IMF’s Annual Research Conference Gets Under Way

    iMFdirect
    29 Oct 2009 | 10:33 am
    By Olivier J. Blanchard  With the global economic crisis as a backdrop, some of the world’s leading economists will soon join us here in Washington, D.C. for two days of intense, scholarly debate. Not surprisingly, the papers submitted for the IMF’s Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference are colored by the events of the past two years. To give you an idea, Ricardo Caballero of MIT, our keynote speaker this year, plans to tell us about the striking and terrifying similarities between a sudden cardiac arrest and a financial crisis. The IMF’s research conference, slated to take place on…

  • Latin America and the Caribbean: Finding Space for Countercyclical Fiscal Policy

    iMFdirect
    27 Oct 2009 | 11:53 am
    By Nicolás Eyzaguirre (Version en español) In this year of global recession, fiscal policy has been able to play a supportive role in some countries of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region.  Even as the downturn caused fiscal revenues to fall, many governments were able to avoid cutting expenditure, and some were able to provide a sizable positive fiscal impulse, actively raising expenditure to provide a boost to domestic demand and GDP.   This is especially clear among the group we call “commodity exporting, financially integrated countries” (see Figure). Fiscal policy is…

  • The Commodity Connection: Rising Commodity Prices and the Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean

    iMFdirect
    23 Oct 2009 | 5:33 am
    By Nicolás Eyzaguirre (Version en español) As the world economy emerges from recession, it’s worth thinking about how the composition of this recovery, in terms of which countries expand faster, will affect commodity prices—and how those prices influence the outlook for economies of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. Commodity prices usually follow a pattern of sizable declines in episodes of world recession, followed by some degree of recovery—and the current episode is no exception (Figure 1). But within that pattern, what is notable is that this time the recovery of…
 
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    EconomicPolicyJournal.com

  • Investment Bank Scammers Try Out the God Angle

    Robert Wenzel
    6 Nov 2009 | 3:51 pm
    After giving free markets a bad name, investment banks are turning to religion. These guys really have no shame.They pose as free marketeers when every penny they make is propped up by government, and now they want to invoke the good words in the Bible to justify their scamming. IB's are now hitting the churches of London, before they divvy up this year's loot. It is an attempt to do what they do

  • "Did You Even Read the Bill?"

    Robert Wenzel
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:42 pm
    This ad is hitting the airwaves next week:

  • The Things You Have to Say (and do) to Get Elected

    Robert Wenzel
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:19 pm
    Rand Paul Explains His PlatformBy Adam S. Sulfridge / Staff Writer for the TimesTribune.comDr. Rand Paul, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, explained his position on taxes, government spending, the drug abuse epidemic, welfare and other government benefits during an exclusive interview with the Times-Tribune, just hours before his appearance at the University of the Cumberlands in

  • Schiff Site Came Under Cyber Attack

    Robert Wenzel
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:03 pm
    The Peter Schiff campaign writes:As you may have heard, the newly updated schiffforsenate.com site was brought down temporarily by a cyber-attack that occurred yesterday during our money bomb. It is not the first time the campaign site has been been targeted by these kind of attacks, but the authorities have been notified and the site is up and running again.Schiff, a Ron Paul Republican running

  • Did Goldman CFO Viniar Call in the Lawyers on a Beauty with Brains?

    Robert Wenzel
    6 Nov 2009 | 12:54 pm
    What is it with these supposed big dicks when they run into women with beauty and brains? First we had the Patrick Byrne/Lila Rajiva incident. Now, I'm guessing, Goldman CFO David Viniar called in the lawyers when another beauty with brains called him a liar, or maybe the Goldman lawyers jumped in on their own, hoping to earn a bigger cut of those Goldman bonuses that are soon to be decided.I am
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    CapitalistMarks

  • The Senate greases their re-election with unemployment!

    scott
    5 Nov 2009 | 5:38 pm
    Of course you have heard that this week the Senate (asleep at the wheel again)  passed a bill providing for extension of unemployment compensation.  No one should be surprised.  Billions of $$ down the drain . . . that is how I feel about it.  And, of course, yet another reason for term limits. The details aren’t all that important to most of us — including the 15,000,000 unemployed — because while the bill shows some elements of ’sensitivity’ to the problem it isn’t for charity’s sake but rather to keep the Senators who are running for office…

  • Stock market volatility is increasing. Huh?

    scott
    2 Nov 2009 | 6:27 pm
    Lately the volatility of  markets is increasing.  This includes the equities markets as well as the primary energy markets (oil and gas).  Sadly we have become so used to hearing about this that is just goes in one ear and out the other. I think we need to make sense of of this most recent trend in volatility and I will try to help you with this. First of all what does volatility mean?  The easiest answer is that it refers to the wild (big) swings, both up and down, of the markets on a daily basis.  As an example, it is clear that in the last few days the DOW has been quite volatile. …

  • GDP at 3.5%!

    scott
    29 Oct 2009 | 8:44 am
    Aha!  GDP was reported up 3.5% for the third quarter, even better than then 3.3% that economists had expected.  Sounds pretty awesome. It is too.  But, you would expect the markets to be up 3.5% as well.  Yet, they are reacting with a rather muted rally right now of about 1%. I am watching a ‘lively’ debate on CNBC right now and while larry Ludlow is effusive with his optimism the ’smartest’ guy on the show, Rick Santelli,  is more reserved in his estimate of the positive influence this news might bring.  Their economist, Steve Liesman (often a voice of reason)…

  • The DOW blows past 10,000! Now what?

    scott
    28 Oct 2009 | 1:12 pm
    All I have heard lately is about how strong the stock market is and why it will keep on making new highs (some contrarians disagree but they are a minority). Everyone wants to know where it will go from here with the great earnings reports of the last few weeks. The real question is what do reports from companies that are subject to consumer whims tell us.  Not what the net income is but what gross revenues and future forecasts tell us. The answer to these questions provide a good map of the market’s direction in the next month or so and those answers are not good.  Forecasts are…

  • Obama’s Salary Ghuru shoots shareholders in the foot!

    scott
    26 Oct 2009 | 9:45 am
    I am sad! Disappointed too.  Though I am all for limitations and restrictions on obscene pay at all levels of society (see here),  Obama’s appointee to monitor and supervise pay at companies funded by the government and American taxpayers has got it all wrong. Kenneth Feinberg, the President’s compensation Czar has proposed pay cuts of 50-90% for the top executives of such companies as AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, GM and the likes.  This is a huge mistake right now. These companies need the best management possible in order to return the taxpayers investment (if you can…
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    Free Market Mojo

  • United States: Top destination for adults who seek to relocate

    Ariel Goldring
    6 Nov 2009 | 5:56 am
    According to Gallup, seven hundred million people would love to permanently move to another country. The United States ranked first as the top destination where adults wanted to relocate permanently: Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence. With an additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada, Northern America is one of the two most desired regions. The remaining top desired destination companies are predominantly European. Forty-five million…

  • Trade-off: Environmentalism vs Homeownership

    Ariel Goldring
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:57 am
    Edward L. Glaeser writes: Environmentalists who are worried about global warming should pay attention to the congressional debate about extending the home buyers tax credit. Federal tax policies toward housing have long encouraged Americans to emit more carbon. President Obama could do the country, and the planet, a service by either refusing to sign the extension of the $8,000 credit or by insisting that it be accompanied by offsetting reductions in the home mortgage interest deduction. According to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, per person energy use in owner-occupied housing is…

  • The decline of trade unions around the world

    Ariel Goldring
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:53 am
    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) yesterda released updated numbers on what percentage of employees in each member country belong to a trade union. Click below to view an interactive chart that illustrates the changes in trade union density around the world.

  • Quote of the Day

    Ariel Goldring
    6 Nov 2009 | 1:48 am
    “Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences. Politics deals with the same problem by making promises that cannot be kept, or which can be kept only by creating other problems that cannot be…

  • Is green U.S. mass transit a big myth?

    Ariel Goldring
    5 Nov 2009 | 12:07 pm
    By “pulling out various numbers on the energy used per passenger mile of various forms of transportation,” Brad Templeton shows that U.S. mass transit may not always be the green choice: So how can this be? Templeton explains: A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light or heavy) holds 22. If that…
 
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    Beyond the Cave

  • One Piece at a Time

    5 Nov 2009 | 8:23 pm
    I had the privilege of going to WD-50 tonight. It is an extremely wonderful restaurant in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The whole concept behind the menu focuses on the deconstruction of popular meals - like scrambled eggs - and using the basic ingredients to create brand new adventures. We could all use this approach from time to time. The scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, and hamachi.

  • The Blue Shirt Problem

    4 Nov 2009 | 8:05 pm
    I went to Macy's today with the goal of purchasing a blue dress shirt. Blue is a standard, widely accepted color for young professionals such as myself. Because of this fact, there were at least 30 different types of purely blue shirts. They were all quite similar but also somewhat different - with slightly different patterns, textures, shades, shapes, etc.By now, most marketers know that too much choice can be counterproductive - that the customer gets overwhelmed and may choose nothing. I definitely felt this phenomenon begin to affect my decision-making process - since the energy needed to…

  • Late Night Letdown

    3 Nov 2009 | 8:18 pm
    In the late 1980s/early 1990s, late night television was exciting. It was unpredictable, innovative, and buzz-worthy. Today, late night TV (Leno, Conan, Fallon, Letterman, etc.) has lost its charm. I'm not sure when it happened, but I am sure that this form of entertainment has lost most of its significance as an important cultural movement.The expanded variety of entertainment that comes from cable television and the Internet has probably diluted the reach of late night. But I believe the main cause for the decline in relevance stems from a decline in the taboo-factor. No longer is network…

  • The Facebook Generation

    2 Nov 2009 | 8:03 pm
    I have an awesome one-year-old cousin. He is a very cool child that already knows how to hold a mobile phone, look into a web cam, and speak into a microphone. He is also part of a generation that will never know a world without Internet-enabled social networking - e.g. Facebook, Skype, Twitter, etc.What does this mean for the little guy? He will have every important moment of his life permanently documentedHe will have the concepts of networking and social portfolios ingrained in his psyche from his earliest points of consciousnessHe will expect a high level of openness and sharing from…

  • A Glimpse is Worth a Thousand Words

    1 Nov 2009 | 7:48 pm
    When it comes to visual design, no amount of planning, discussing, estimating, describing, segmenting, tracking, assuming, or conceptualizing can replace seeing. It doesn't matter what is viewed - it could be a rough doodle on a napkin - but that first glimpse of something tangible will anchor all future visual development.Much like in a negotiation, the first real image is like the the first offer. It is the launch pad for future discussion and redirectioning. The earlier that first visual is shared, the earlier that a real negotiation can begin.
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    American Madness

  • Movie Review: Whatever Works

    Jason Ihle
    6 Nov 2009 | 2:08 pm
    Woody Allen has worked tirelessly in the last 30 some odd years turning out a new film every year like clockwork. His great period was from the late 70’s into the mid 80’s when he made such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Radio Days. Through the 90’s he managed to maintain a steady stream [...]

  • Fame!

    Joel Friedlander
    5 Nov 2009 | 3:08 pm
    The Yankees are the Champions of the Baseball World today.  Everyone who follows baseball is excited.  I’m excited for them but they should remember what George C. Scott said at the end of the movie Patton: Patton: [voiceover] For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph – [...]

  • Should we reinstate the Draft?

    Joel Friedlander
    2 Nov 2009 | 1:43 pm
    A few nights ago Bill Moyers suggested in his verbal essay at the end of his program, “Bill Moyers Journal,” that the real way to bring sanity to foreign war policy would be to reinstate the draft.  That way, he reasoned, the general population of the United States would have a genuine interest in whether [...]

  • Our Honored Dead!

    Joel Friedlander
    1 Nov 2009 | 6:33 am
    Any president can pay his, and soon perhaps, her respects to those killed in foreign wars, but after the end of the day that president goes home and attends to their own business. For the families of the dead there is a permanent hole in their lives. When I was still in my teens I had [...]

  • How will we ever get rid of the bloodsuckers and thieves?

    Joel Friedlander
    25 Oct 2009 | 11:10 am
    Son of a Bitch, take a look at that, Dracula is on the front lawn across the street. True, he is very small, about 7 years old, actually, but I suppose that he’ll grow to full size once he has drained the blood out of some of his neighbors. Vampire bloodsuckers are the [...]
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