Submitted by EconWeekly
Chart 1 (click to enlarge)
It’s been hard for news readers to avoid the word “recession” this January. The number of newspaper stories mentioning it has certainly been overwhelming (see Chart 1). Weak economic data might seem to justify the gloom. Growth has slowed down and the labor market has weakened. Still, we […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
The Wall Street Journal has a very perceptive article about the class nature of Jerome Kerviel, a striving person from a modest background, who was trying to compete with and win approval from his more fortunate colleagues. Kerviel’s story is obviously self-serving, but much of it rings true — especially his […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
The NFL has a rule to limit TV screens to 55 inches at public viewings. The league makes an exception for venues like bars and restaurants that regularly broadcast sporting events. But churches that dare to let their parishioners watch the mayhem on the big screen are coming under fire. […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Detroit continues its slow bleed.
U.S. sales of cars manufactured in North America were actually up 0.4% in January 2008 compared with January 2007.

Data source: Wardsauto.com
But this was not enough to make up for the 6.0% drop in the separate light truck category, which includes the SUVs, and whose sales continue to outnumber […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Some good news, some bad, in the economic data released yesterday.
First, the good news. Each of the three indicators that initially turned our Little EconWatcher’s face blue last month all took a favorable turn in the numbers just reported. The first of these is the Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing PMI reading. This […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
The rise of ETF’s has caused a major change in trading, particularly in sector rotation strategies. There are several good current articles on this subject.
The Float, which does a nice job of covering developments in ETF’s, cites an article by Michael Sesit on how ETF’s threaten actively managed funds. This […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
One of the valuable things for us in writing a blog about a book, what we are doing at “A Dash”, is that we can see what is working and what is not. By “working” we mean helping readers to understand something important that will be profitable in […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Superbowl tickets sold for as high as $40,000 on Ebay, for two tickets on the 45-yard line.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The political importance of corn-growing, ethanol-making Iowa is one reason that biofuel mandates flow from Washington the way oil would flow from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) if it had nominating caucuses.
ANWR’s 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet’s saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Today’s Americans, their pain threshold lowered by the successful modulation of business cycles, now regard recessions as not mere misfortunes but as violations of an entitlement to perpetual economic serenity. In the 50 years prior to 1945, contractions were frequent and ferocious enough to fray the social fabric. There were three contractions […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
WSJ Editorial: Remember when Microsoft was going to leverage its dominance of the operating-system market into control of the Internet? By a quirk of fate, at almost the exact moment that Justice filed suit against Microsoft in 1998, a couple of graduate students in Silicon Valley were seeking money for a little […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

WSJ: It’s 200 times hotter than the jalapeño. Workers handle it with goggles and face masks. And spicy-food lovers can’t wait to get their hands on it.
The bhut jolokia pepper, which is farmed in the northeast part of India, was plucked from obscurity last year when the Guinness Book of World […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Gongol.com’s new Traffic Rankings for Business and Economics Websites are listed above (click to enlarge) for January traffic. Based on “average daily page views,” Carpe Diem ranks #22 (out of 138), up one place from #23 last month. Of the top 22 Business and Economics websites, 8 are academic blogs (Marginal Revolution, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. That’s $27,000,000,000 per year, a number so large it’s hard to comprehend. Here’s one way to put Exxon’s taxes into perspective.
According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available:
Total number of tax […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
In his ongoing tax rebate smackdown with Jason Furman in the LA Times, Economist Steven Landsburg poses this interesting question: “Why weren’t last year’s unemployed worth helping?”
People lose their jobs all the time. An above-average number might have lost their jobs in December, but plenty of others lost their jobs in November, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

The chart above from this CD post was featured last night on CNBC’s “Kudlow and Company,” it was discussed right at the beginning of this segment.
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