Submitted by CARPE DIEM
“You can’t create a job without a business. And unless an investor finances a business, you ain’t gonna have any jobs, you’re not going to have a middle class, and you’re not going to have a middle class. Therefore, this faux populism is a lot of crap.”
Larry Kudlow on tonight’s CNBC […]

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Submitted by EconWeekly
Every month the University of Michigan and the Conference Board conduct a survey of households’ confidence on the state of the economy. Each pollster asks several questions and summarizes the results with an index, which is closely watched for signs of consumer distress. Last November, the Michigan index fell by 4.8 points from […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

(HT: Newmark’s Door)
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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
Homo economicus likes to imagine himself as a clever being. And in some respects, he’s right. But when it comes to investing, even the most intelligent minds in the universe can be hornswoggled. Mr. Market, someone once told us, is a tricky nemesis.
With a new year standing before us, and an […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discuss the outlook for financing the deficit, going forward, in a new Current Issues. From the introduction:

To finance its large current account deficit, the United States must attract the equivalent amount of surplus foreign savings. In recent years, the U.S. […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Yesterday we described the market reaction to the ISM report, showing that the result was quite consistent with the pattern of GDP growth below 2%. We noted that “…many traders still do not realize that the break point for an economic decline is a reading below 42. There […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Today’s market decline came after the Institute for Supply Management monthly index was reported. The ISM reading for December was 47.7, the lowest level since a couple of months in the Spring of 2003. Since economists had expected a reading above 50 the report was worse than expectations. […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
Kris Welch interviewed me last week on KPFA. I don’t come in until the last 25 minutes or so. She is a great interviewer and always makes cconversation lively — well, as lively as I can be.
http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=24012
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Using foreign exchange data from FT.com, the chart above shows the one-year forward discount or premium of the USD vs. the euro from January 2006 to January 2008. (Mid-month rates were used for the months between January 2006 and December 2007, and yesterday’s quote was used for January 2008.) After trading at […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
It’s a land where things are often not what they seem — at least to outsiders. They are, in fact, the opposite of what they seem. In his new book, “Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government,” Dana Milbank describes this place as Potomac Land, also known as […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The credits of the Coen brothers feature film “No Country for Old Men” state that the film’s production was “carbon neutral,” thanks to carbon-offset credits purchased through Native Energy.
From the September 2007 LA Times article “Can You Buy a Greener Conscience?“:
The race to save the planet from global warming has spawned […]

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