Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to the Federal Reserve’s report today, total industrial production in November 2007 was 2.1% above its level in November of last year (see chart above). This was also the highest output growth since the first quarter of 2007 (March), and marks the 51st consecutive increase in year-to-year growth in Industrial Production […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
The crowd expects an economic slowdown. Even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan has hopped on the bandwagon, warning yesterday that the risk of recession is “clearly rising.”
And so it is by a number of statistical measures. But even if we all think we know what’s coming, there’s still plenty of risk […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
As the U.S. economy goes into a downturn, we are going to be reminded that extrapolating trends is a hazardous enterprise. For instance, linear extrapolation of tax receipts (expressed as a share of GDP) is probably something that one should be wary of doing. And yet, as shown in some comments on previous […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Slate Magazine had an interesting article several years ago after the March 2005 Congressional hearings about steroid use in baseball, where Mark McGwire and others were required to testify. The article posed an interesting question, now relevant again with the recent MLB report on steroids: If steroids are cheating, why isn’t LASIK […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Sometimes the investor or trader — who must have a disciplined method — may be surprised by the results of that system. What is the appropriate reaction?
In developing methods with our systems guru, Vince Castelli, we came up with a useful analogy. In the movie, The Right Stuff, […]

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