Archive for March, 2008
« Previous EntriesNCAA basketball: Round 4
Submitted by Econbrowser
Sixteen entries in the 2008 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge correctly picked all of the Final Four teams in the NCAA basketball tournament, including our two leaders who also correctly picked all of the Elite Eight finalists.
Team Rankings seems still to favor Kansas, though I must say North Carolina has been looking pretty good.
Team
Finals
Champ
Kansas
54.5%
31.61%
UCLA
45.5%
18.93%
Here’s [...]
Cash for Keys in Vegas, Foreign Buyers in Detroit
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
few interesting real estate stories:
1. Wall Street Journal–These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the time they get the keys back from foreclosed homes, embittered homeowners have stripped out appliances, punched holes in walls, dumped paint on carpets and, as a parting gift, locked their pets inside to [...]
Forget Ethanol, What About Canada’s Oil-Sands?
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity. Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a [...]
Prospects for Banks and Financials
Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Readers of “A Dash” know that for the last year we have been contributing to RealMoney, a subscription service from TheStreet.com (free trial available). Before contributing, we subscribed for many years, finding the site to be a useful source of ideas and discussion.
One of the most helpful contributors is Bob [...]
Alien arguments
Submitted by EconWeekly
It’s again that time of the year when some people fill out a lot of forms and everyone gets mad at the government. No, it’s not taxes; it’s the visa program for skilled workers.
April 1st marks the beginning of the annual application period. The government sets a general quota of 65,000 H-1B visas, [...]
“Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World”
Submitted by Econbrowser
From Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World, March 25.
Satellite imagery from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica.
Source: [...]
NCAA basketball: Round 3
Submitted by Econbrowser
And after Round 3 of the 2008 NCAA Bracket Econbrowser Challenge we have not one but two entries (from N. Klingenstein and H. Parsley) that correctly picked all of the Elite Eight finalists. How they knew Davidson would get there is beyond me.
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Piger’s Recession Probability Index for Jan. = 0.04
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above shows University of Oregon economics professor Jeremy Piger’s “Recession Probability Index” from 2000 to January 2008, based on the 4 monthly variables used by the NBER to determine U.S. recessions: non-farm payroll employment, the index of industrial production, real personal income excluding transfer payments, and real manufacturing and trade [...]
Dark Ages: Earth Hour Here, Earth Decade N. Korea
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Dear Mr. Roberts, President of World Wildlife Fund:
You and members of your organization worry that industrialization and economic growth are harming the earth’s environment. I worry that the intensifying hysteria about the state of the environment - and that the resulting hostility to economic growth - might harm humankind’s prospects for comfortable, [...]
Forget Canadian Healthcare, Let’s Go to Mexico
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Mexico Builds Hospitals to Lure Medical Tourists From America
Grupo Empresarial Los Angeles, Mexico’s largest private hospital chain, is spending $700 million to build 15 hospitals over the next three years. Oca Hospital, a family-owned company in Monterrey, is building a 200-bed facility there.
“In diverse cities that are attractive to Americans, [...]
Conventional Wisdom: Ethanol Is A Complete Scam
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Time Magazine now joins the Christian Science Monitor, NYTimes, WSJ, IBD, Reason, and Rollingstone Magazine, in coming out against ethanol and biofuels in its most recent issue:
Several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in [...]
Medical Tourism: 92% Savings in India
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
NEW DELHI–The number of Americans heading abroad for medical procedures is surging as the country’s 46 million people without health insurance look for treatment they can afford and cash-strapped U.S. companies struggle to find cheaper ways to provide high-quality medical care to their employees.
India is fast becoming the destination of choice for [...]
Sticky Home Prices Finally Start to Get Less Sticky
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Houses are almost perfectly engineered to trick owners into overvaluing them. For both economic and psychological reasons, there is no asset more conducive to hopeful overvaluation. That means real estate slumps tend to grind on for years, until sellers submit to reality and reduce their prices.
This week’s batch of economic reports suggest [...]
Cell Phones for Cubans, But On $10-20 Per Month?
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
HAVANA–Raul Castro is revolutionizing his brother’s island in small but significant ways — the latest in a decree Friday allowing ordinary Cubans to have cell phone service, a luxury previously reserved for the select few.
Many Cubans hope cell phones and new appliances are only the beginning for a post-Fidel Castro government that [...]
Boating Industry IS Sensitive to the Economy
Submitted by Businomics Blog
In Businomics, I used the boat building industry as a case study for estimating an industry’s vulnerability to recession, and also for an example of an early warning system. (You can view the vulnerability study or the early warning system example.
Today the AP ran a story about boat sales being down, companies [...]
THE CAKE IS BAKED
Submitted by The Capital Spectator
It’s been tempting to think that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. could avoid recession. Perhaps some divine financial power might intervene and pull the economic coals out of the fire. But such hope, however remote in the first place, should now be packaged away in the file cabinet that holds all [...]
My New Ambition
Submitted by unsettling economics
I have been teaching for almost 40 years at a modest, but comfortable salary. I have been thinking that I should figure out a way to lose a few billion dollars so that I can get rewarded with a few million for my efforts.
If anybody wants to contribute to my [...]
Recessions at the state level
Submitted by Econbrowser
I’ve been invited to give the keynote lecture at the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics Annual Symposium next week at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. I plan on presenting results of some ongoing research with Mike Owyang of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on regional propagation of business [...]
Recession Watch: Not In Texas, Jobless Rate Hits Record Low, Even Construction Sector is Booming
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
DALLAS–The Texas jobless rate dropped to 4.1% in February – a low not seen since the mid-1970s, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Thursday (see chart above).
“Texas has once again reached a prominent benchmark – a more than 30-year record low for unemployment,” newly appointed Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken [...]
It Won’t Be Much of a Stimulus
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
According to the CNN poll above (click to enlarge), only 21% of the rebate will actually be spent, reducing the potential effectiveness of the fiscal stimulus by almost 80%.
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Housing Affordabilty Index Reaches 4-Year High
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Update: The chart above shows the National Association of Realtors’ Housing Affordability Index (HAI) from 2005 to Feburary 2008 (annual averages for 2005 and 2006, monthly in 2007 and 2008), based on the national median-priced home, median family income, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate.
The HAI has gone from 103.6 in July [...]
More on “The Lost Decade”
Submitted by A Dash of Insight
There was quite a bit of commentary on yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on The Lost Decade for stocks.
Our view is that readers of this article should give it a careful and critical look, examining the evidence and the conclusions. We think that many investors will uncritically accept the basic [...]
Europe Shows Resilience in Face of U.S. Downturn
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
FRANKFURT: Europe is shrugging off the thunderclouds in the United States, with new surveys Wednesday showing rising business confidence in Germany, France, and Belgium. The president of the European Central Bank even dampened hopes for a cut in interest rates soon.
Taken together, these developments seemed to turn an old adage about trans-Atlantic [...]
What Tata Tells Us About Insourcing and FDI
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Yesterday Ford Motor Company announced it will sell its Jaguar and Land Rover divisions to India’s Tata Group. Upon the closing of this transaction, the many Ford associates currently working in these divisions in the United States will join the ranks of Americans who work at insourcing companies — i.e., at U.S. [...]
Brief announcement
Submitted by EconWeekly
This week’s post will come out particularly late (some time late Saturday)–I have an important deadline this Friday. Sorry, folks.
I’ll leave you with a couple of great comics from phdcomics.com:
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