Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) — McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant company, said October sales rose 6.9%, beating analysts’ estimates on sales of cinnamon rolls and coffee in the U.S. and chicken snack wraps in Europe.
Sales in U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months advanced 5.4%, while Europe’s comparable sales increased 6.4%, the […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Those seeking financial information online have important choices to make. Many are shifting from financial newspapers and magazines to the online versions. This is still mainstream media (MSM) but in a different form. Some are also finding the rich diversity of opinion available through financial blogs.
An Interesting […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
As the dollar continues its decline, I think it’s useful to step away from the high frequency analysis [1] [2], to consider what the currents in academic thinking on the enterprise of predicting exchange rates are.
Continue reading “Modeling Exchange Rates: What Does Current Academic Thinking Have to Say about the Dollar’s Future?”
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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Part of the story behind today’s market decline was the continuing weakness of the dollar. While this has not been a major theme at “A Dash,” it does illustrate an important point.
This is a subject that most people do not understand. Many of the sources offering information have […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
Can a recent history of the U.S. economy read a bit like a crime story? Yes, in the hands of Michael Perelman, an author and economics professor at CSU Chico.
His new book, The Confiscation of American Prosperity, is a timely arrival this fall. The housing bubble is shrinking and harming many, and […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
The scent of recession may be in the air, but it’s not yet creating a stink in jobless claims.
New filings for jobless benefits fell last week to 317,000, the lowest in a month, the Labor Department reported. As you can see from the chart below, the trend doesn’t look particularly […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka plans to press charges against a 72-year-old woman for holding a garage sale in her mother’s old house.
Read about it here. What would Thomas Jefferson think?
(HT: FEE)
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
I came across an interesting 2005 New Yorker article titled “Net Worth,” here are some excerpts:
In the traditional struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled. Toyota owes […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
On September 17, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield ended the trading session at 4.47%, or nearly 80 basis points below the target Fed funds rate, which was 5.25% at the time. The yield curve, in short, was inverted and by more than a little. The next day, the Fed cut rates […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
…then a balanced budget is far off.
The CBO released its November budget review yesterday. In this figure, the red dashed line (receipts) is slowing its ascent. Expenditures are falling, but to the extent that transfers rise in slowdowns, one knows the likely trajectory of the blue line.
Continue reading “If this is what Federal […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to futures trading for crude oil on the NYMEX, we can expect falling oil prices over the next three years, to $82 per barrel by late 2009 (see chart above).
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

I blogged before about why “The Energy Efficient Economy Can Handle $100 Oil,” and Greg Mankiw linked to that CD post on his blog asking “Where have all the oil shocks gone?” As Mankiw summarized, “The economy is far more energy-efficient today than it was in the past, in part because […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to the BLS’s report today, productivity in the nonfarm business sector grew by 4.9% in the third quarter, the largest gain in four years - since the third quarter of 2003. The 4.9% productivity growth was well above Wall Street’s expectation of 3.4% growth, was also more than twice the average […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Remember the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s? Does it offer any lessons about how the U.S. economy and financial system will absorb the current “subprime mortgage crisis” (a phrase so common and popular now that you’ll find 349,000 Google hits).
The top chart above shows the annual number of bank failures […]

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