Written by Michael Vass
Well now that everyone has finished the turkey (minus a few leftover sandwiches), let it digest, and worked off the extra weight running around shopping at every store with a discount sale it’s time of me to get back to work. There has been a lot worth writing about, but let me […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
“Dr Nguyen Phuoc Huy said his hospital could never afford to buy one as the endoscope costs around $30,000. Instead he spent two years developing a DIY endoscope to peer inside the bodies of patients without the need for surgery.”
“The adaptor costs almost nothing because it is simply a system of […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Reader CoRev, in commenting on this post, advises me to look at the actual data for October (instead of the CBO estimate) before declaring a trend deterioration in the budget balance. Well, the data are out.
Here’s what the deficit looks like, using Treasury’s Monthly Treasury Statement data for October, and historical data.

Figure 1: […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Rising oil prices, measured in dollars, get all of the media attention, largely because oil is priced and sold in dollars in world oil markets. What has gotten much less attention is the price of oil in other currencies like British pounds and Euros, which have both appreciated vs. the USD by […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
NY Times: Transparency International, an organization that tracks corruption, ranks countries from least to most corrupt, and in its 2007 index Venezuela was at 162 out of 179 countries.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The charts above are based on Federal Reserve commercial banking data released on Monday and available here, with updated data on a) loan charge-off rates and b) loan delinquency rates through the third quarter 2007 for all U.S. commercial banks.
As the charts show, despite all of the recent bad news and “gloom […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Ethanol: Fails a Cost-Benefit Test
Ethanol production in the United States has been steadily growing and is expected to continue growing. Many politicians see increased ethanol use as a way to promote environmental goals, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and energy security goals. This paper provides the first thorough benefit-cost analysis of […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s retailers had a robust start to the holiday shopping season, according to results announced today by a national research group that tracks sales at retail outlets across the country. According to ShopperTrak RCT, which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3% […]

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