Archive for January 24th, 2008
Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by unsettling economics
Gates just gave a speech advocating a kindler, gentler capitalism, posing a good brother to the poor. At the same time, Microsoft is embarking on the most far reaching monitoring of workers ever contrived in which wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
China’s economic growth continues to be strong–and weird. GDP grew by over 11 percent last year (more details here). We can’t trust the statistics to have great precision, but we do know that China’s growth was strong and greater than it’s non-inflationary growth rate. We know the latter because […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
China’s economy had another rip-roaring year, growing 11.4 percent for the year average. (More details here.) Experts on China had been saying that their long-run sustainable growth rate was about nine percent. You have to take all of their numbers with a grain of salt; maybe GDP growth was […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff Christine Beatty (pictured above) probably thought so when they both lied under oath about their romantic relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Detroit Free Press. […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
WASHINGTON — Existing-home sales resumed tumbling in December and the median price dropped. Home resales fell to a 4.89 million annual rate, a 2.2% decrease from November’s unrevised 5.00 million annual pace, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. For 2007, existing home sales tumbled 13% to 5.652 million.
Inventories of homes fell […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by Econbrowser
There was also some interesting action on the Intrade betting exchange this week.
The Intrade recession contract pays $10 if the U.S. goes into recession during 2008, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. The price (quoted as a multiple of 100) has been edging up as the unfavorable economic indicators […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
This picture is NOT consisent with an economy in recession:
WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly last week for a fourth-straight week, suggesting that a resilient labor market at the start of the year might keep the U.S. economy from sliding into recession.
Initial claims […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — With all the large writedowns and losses announced for the fourth quarter, hardly any attention is being paid to just how profitable U.S. banks really are.
That inattention has raised unnecessary concerns that the banks may be so crippled by losses that they will cut lending to the […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp is testing $1 coffee and free refills in its Seattle outlets as the global gourmet coffee chain grapples with slower consumer spending and rising competition from fast-food rivals.
Starbucks is experimenting with a smaller, “short” $1 cup as well as free refills for brewed coffee. Starbucks charges […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek says that his students typically think that about 20% of the American labor force is employed at the minimum wage, when the actual percentage of minimum wage workers (1.7 million) was only 2.2% of all hourly-paid workers (76.5 million) in 2006, according to the BLS.
However, hourly-paid […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by unsettling economics
The Ken Griffin interview got me to think about some earlier contributions about his thinking.
A Pennsylvania businessman wrote a book with a revealing title.
Farquhar, A. B. in collaboration with Samuel Crowther. 1922. The First Million is the Hardest: An Autobiography (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday): p. 19.
Andrew Carnegie’s rumination throw light on this […]
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
Let’s get some perspective on the stock markets around the world:
thanks to Dae Beck of the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis for passing these to me.
Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.
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Posted in January 24th, 2008
Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Today’s dramatic market turnaround was due largely to the leaks, rumors, and eventual news stories about a meeting convened by New York Insurance Department Superintendent Eric Dinallo. Wisconsin, which has a very active insurance industry, was also represented by Commissioner Sean Dilweg.
Some vague early stories dribbled out from hard […]
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