Submitted by The Capital Spectator
In the wake of today’s 25-basis-point cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, the not-so-subtle message is that the economy will weaken. But the cut comes just hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that economic growth was higher than expected in the third quarter at a respectable […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Fret as we all might, the U.S. economy just keeps on growing.
Continue reading “GDP up, recession probability down”
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

It was first reported in the Indian press that “A record-breaking performance by India’s stock markets has put the industrialist Mukesh Ambani at the top of a list of the world’s richest people.
Buoyed by unprecedented inflows from U.S. and European investors, the benchmark Mumbai Sensex stock index topped 20,000 for the first […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Pete DuPont in today’s WSJ:
Tax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Today’s GDP report gives us reason to feel more comfortable, but there is a little discomfort in the details.
The economy had slowed last winter. Now we see that several key factors in the slowdown have recovered, like inventories,

capital spending,

and exports.

Our biggest fear of late is that the subprime crisis will spill over […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip has a great article today, “Bernanke, in First Crisis, Rewrites Fed Playbook.” (Subscription required, and well worth the price.) The story is written in a narrative that reads almost like a thriller. Almost, because it is Federal Reserve policy, after all. Ip […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
Now that the Confiscation of American Prosperity has been published, I have a new book that is fairly well advanced. I expect that , The Manacles of Capitalism: How Market Control Undermines Productivity, I will have the manuscript ready to send to Stanford University Press in a few months.
Here is my […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
There’s an idea floating around that asserts that the high price of oil is — at least in part — due to the weak dollar. Does this make sense?
Continue reading “Does Dollar Weakness ‘Cause’ High Oil Prices?”

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
NY Times Editorial Sugar’s Sweetheart Deal:
Of all the government’s farm-support programs, there are few as egregious as the tangle of loans, quotas and import tariffs set up to protect the well-connected club of American sugar producers at the expense of American consumers and farmers in the developing world. This year’s farm bill […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

WASHINGTON/WSJ — The U.S. economy sped up last summer despite a much heavier drag by the housing sector as surging exports and stronger consumer spending helped turn growth surprisingly faster.
Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 3.9% annual rate July through September, the Commerce Department said Wednesday in the first estimate […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

NPR: A former top narcotics officer, credited with over 800 arrests in eight years, is now selling a DVD (”Never Get Busted Again“) that shows marijuana users how to avoid arrest when traveling with a stash.
Cooper plans to make a second DVD called “Never Get Raided Again.”

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer, says George Mason economist Walter Williams:
In 1971, only about 32 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning in their homes. By 2001, 76 percent of poor people had air conditioning. In 1971, only 43 percent of Americans owned a color television; […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The New York Times has an interesting article today in its World Business section about “person-to-person offshoring,” (see previous posts on PPO here and here:
The Bangalore butler is the latest development in offshore outsourcing.
The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Get ready, it’s coming soon. Read about it here at Forbes.

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

A version (top graph) of a Carpe Diem graph based on this post (bottom graph) was featured tonight on CNBC’s “Kudlow and Company,” the second time in two days that a CD graph was featured on Kudlow’s program!
Larry Kudlow: “Let’s run this graph of the global stock market boom; I may run […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
Actually, beta never died, as many have proclaimed over the years. In fact, beta’s never been more influential.
As yours truly detailed in the November issue of Wealth Manager, beta’s very much alive and kicking. What’s more, beta’s at the heart of a number of cutting-edge of a number of portfolio applications […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
For Halloween I could perhaps write something about what’s spooking the Fed as they contemplate tomorrow’s fed funds rate decision. But I decided instead to write about the Salem witch trials.
Continue reading “The Salem witch trial of Elizabeth Jackson Howe”

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
I’ve been profiled on the Money-RX Blog, including a recent comment on the risk of recession.

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

CNBC featured the CD chart above on Larry Kudlow’s show last night, based on this CD post.

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Fortune has an excellent article about subprime mortgages, with a detailed analysis of a specific $494 million mortgage-backed security (MBS) issued by Goldman Sachs (GSAMP Trust 2006-S3) in 2006 backed by second-mortgages, probably typical of many other MBSs issued by Goldman Sachs, Merrill-Lynch, and other investment banks. Here are some details of […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
From economist Thomas Sowell’s op-ed Political “Solutions“:
It is remarkable how many political “solutions” today are dealing with problems created by previous political “solutions.” Three examples that come to mind immediately are the housing market crisis, the wildfires in southern California, and the water shortages in the west.
Sowell outlines a dangerous pattern:
1. […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
From the WSJ’s editorial today Wall Street Reckoning: A CEO gets “marked to market”:
Washington is the one place where no one is being held accountable for the subprime boom and bust. That includes in particular the Federal Reserve, whose far too easy monetary policy created a subsidy for debt that fueled the […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — When the housing market slows, some home sellers drop their asking price. Others give buyers allowances to cover the cost of upgrades or offer help with financing.
A Pittsburgh couple came up with a more creative twist: Whoever buys their four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home would get their money back after […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

FOXNEWS — Presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama, Rep. Ron Paul, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinch and Mr. John Cox have all embraced the concept of “Google government” by signing the Oath of Presidential Transparency — which is sponsored by a non-partisan coalition led by the Reason Foundation.
By signing […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

From the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune:
Year after year, the federal government sends farm subsidy checks to homes nestled in some of the most expensive neighborhoods in Minneapolis, far from any corn or soybean field.
The urban payments total millions of dollars out of the nearly $1 billion sent to Minnesota farmers in 2005, […]

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