Submitted by EconWeekly
Millions of homeowners won’t be able to make their mortgage payments in the next five years, leading to a surge in defaults and foreclosures. It all started with the home-buying frenzy of 2003-2006. Many borrowers didn’t understand the contracts they were signing and got loans they couldn’t afford. Many others did know what […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
“More than 70% of U.S. consumers believe a national housing bubble will burst and home prices will collapse within the next year, although 56% believe it’s unlikely to happen in the area where they live, according a new survey.”
Morrissey, Janet. 2006. “Consumers Expect Housing Bubble to Burst.” Wall Street Journal (20 April): […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
One of the most outrageous consequences of the war on drugs is the federal crackdown on medical marijuana, which is used by patients to help treat the effects of cancer, glaucoma, HIV-AIDS, chronic pain and nausea, and other severe symptoms associated with serious illnesses. Medical marijuana prescribed by a physician is legal […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

In some “Black Friday bargain hunting,” the broader stock market indexes rebounded today by about 1.4% (see chart above, SP=red line, DJ=black and NASDAQ=green), and bank stocks rebounded at almost twice that rate (about 2.5%) as measured by the NASDAQ Bank Index (blue line above).
Maybe there’s hope.
(P.S. I’ll probably retire from […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Returning to Iceland After Shopping Bender
at the Mall of America

MINNEAPOLIS — Andrea Guðjónsdóttir arrived in Minnesota from Iceland last week with nothing but the clothes on her back. Oh, and two empty suitcases, which she promptly filled to near-bursting with clothes, toys and other gifts during a five-day shopping spree in the […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
There are wild cards that need to be kept in mind when you hear income statistics thrown around. One of these wild cards is that most Americans do not stay in the same income brackets throughout their lives. Millions of people move from one bracket to another in just a few years.
What […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

World Corruption Map

From Transparency International: The 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) looks at perceptions of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories - the greatest country coverage of any CPI to date – and is a composite index that draws on 14 expert opinion surveys. It scores countries on a scale […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

If John Bogle is the high priest of the Bogleheads, stock-picking fanatic Jim Cramer would have to be Lucifer.
Meet the Bogleheads, devotees of Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, long-time advocate of the passive, low-cost, index approach to investing where you try to “meet, not beat the market.”
Bogleheads adhere to the “boring […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

There are some important, but often overlooked economic lessons about our celebration today of Thanksgiving: private property rights, the tragedy of the commons, the failure of communal farming, socialism vs. capitalism, and the triumph of the free enterprise system. Read about it here.
(HT: Greg Mankiw)
Visit 1800blogger to see all of our […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

CD Penetrates Cuba’s Digital Iron Curtain
Finally, the first visit to Carpe Diem from the heart of Cuba (see ClustrMap above), maybe from the city of Camaguey?!! As recently as Nov. 1, there hadn’t been a single visit to CD, see my post here.
From this Miami Herald article, “A meager 9 out of […]

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