Submitted by unsettling economics
The David H. Brooks story hits on all the high notes of capitalist excess: taking advantage of investors, selling the Pentagon defective goods, an ostentatious life style, and perhaps even more.
Kessler, Robert E. 2007. “Former LI military Contractor Is Busted for Living Lavishly with Cash from Investors and Company, Feds Say.” Newsday […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Each month the market reacts to the employment situation report, consisting of a survey of establishments and a survey of individuals. There is a lot of information and the methodology is complex. This creates a great opportunity for “spinning” the data.
Why Spin?
Frankly, we do not know the […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
From Political Calculations blog:
The Sweden-based free-market advocacy group Timbro compared the relative wealth of the nations of Western Europe against individual U.S. states. The key finding in Timbro’s report was that:
“If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
1. Sunday NY Times: When you consider that farm income is at record levels (thanks to the ethanol boom, itself fueled by another set of federal subsidies); that the World Trade Organization has ruled that several of these subsidies are illegal; that the federal government is broke and the president is threatening […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The chart above (click to enlarge) is from a study by Robert Ohsfeldt (Texas A&M Health Science Center) and John Schneider (Department of Health Management & Policy, University of Iowa) that supports Greg Mankiw’s statement in today’s NYTimes that:
“The Census Bureau reports that 18 million of the uninsured have annual household […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Greg Mankiw has an article in today’s NYTimes “Beyond Those Health Care Numbers,” where he addresses the statement: “The United States has lower life expectancy than Canada, which has national health insurance.” Mankiw points to a study by economists June and Dave O’Neill, and writes:
Americans are more likely than Canadians to die […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

See previous CD post The Energy-Efficient Economy Can Handle $100 Oil.
See Greg Mankiw’s post Where Have All the Oil Shocks Gone.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Magistrate Judge Franklin L. Noel, in his ruling against the Minneapolis taxi cartel that led to an increase in the number of new taxi licenses by 45, “The established taxi vehicle license holders do not have a constitutionally protected freedom from competition.”
Nice choice of words. We have a lot of freedoms, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The new “designer” cauliflower comes in bright neon colors. I saw all of these colors at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market 2 weeks ago.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

More data above in the chart (click to enlarge) from Swedish think tank Timbro to support economist Walter Williams’ claim that:
“Poverty in the United States, in an absolute sense, has virtually disappeared. Today, there’s nothing remotely resembling poverty of yesteryear. However, if poverty is defined in the relative sense, the lowest fifth […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

There is some lively discussion in the comments section of this recent post about poverty, Sweden, income inequality, etc. One issue is about the unemployment rates in Sweden vs. the USA, which are displayed in the graph above. Over the last 15 years, the average jobless rate in Sweden was 7.3%, more […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

NEW YORK — The priciest piece of aluminum in NYC, a taxi medallion to operate a single cab (pictured above - you’ll see them on the hood of every NYC taxi), just sold for as high as $385,000 when the Taxi and Limousine Commission staff unsealed 155 bids yesterday. The lowest winning […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
This week’s GDP and employment numbers were a pleasant surprise. Should this cause the Fed to change its warning in Wednesday’s FOMC minutes that

the pace of economic expansion will likely slow in the near term.
Continue reading “Are the employment numbers as good as they sound?”
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