Submitted by CARPE DIEM

A month ago, a CD post reported the real estate boom in Detroit, with a 45.5% increase in January sales compared to the same month a year ago.
February 2008 home sales were up again, this time by 49.4% in the city of Detroit, compared to February 2007. For the larger Metro Detroit […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

It’s a little slow today for new posts, so until I find something more interesting, watch the full upright piano pictured above get shredded (click twice on the arrow above).
(HT: Grant Leonard)
Watch the shreding of a large copier, or an entire Dodge Daytona car, or pick many other items from this list.
Visit […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
This graphic shows that health care accounts for nearly half the increase in private sector jobs from March 01 to December 07. Questions: Does this increase translate into better health care or more bureaucratic bloat? Is wasteful health care the new jobs program?

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

From Greg Mankiw’s article in today’s NY Times:
No issue divides economists and mere Muggles more than the debate over globalization and international trade. Where the high priests of the dismal science see opportunity through the magic of the market’s invisible hand, Joe Sixpack sees a threat to his livelihood. This gap […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Wedding-dress makers in Putignano, Italy (pictured above) were supposed to be globalization’s first victims. Most of the factories make only a few thousand dresses a year, luxurious creations that sell for around €5,000 apiece (about $7,500). The seamstresses who stitch garments by hand enjoy traditional Italian perks such as two-hour lunch breaks […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Faten Saad knew she wasn’t in a typical Wal-Mart when she saw an end-of-the-aisle display featuring Mamool.
Boxes of the date-filled, whole wheat cookie from the Middle East welcomed the 21-year-old Lebanon native into the international aisle of the new Wal-Mart store in this Detroit suburb known as […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
We still don’t have conclusive evidence that we’re in a recession, and we might avoid one altogether. A credible case could be made that we’re facing just one quarter of negative growth, and that GDP growth will be back in positive territory during the remaining three quarters of 2008.
“Are We In (Or […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
LOS ANGELES–In its first quarterly report of 2008, released March 11, the UCLA Anderson Forecast remains confident that the national economy was not in a recession through January 2008 and continues to forecast weak growth but no official recession in 2008.
In his national report, UCLA Anderson Forecast director Edward Leamer holds […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

THE ECONOMIST–The better a government upholds the rule of law, the more likely its people are to be richer: every rich country, with the exception of Italy and Greece, scores well on rule-of-law measures (see chart above). Most poor countries do not.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Both series (jobs and output) in the above chart are indexes equal to 100 in 1960. With roughly the same number of U.S. employees in manufacturing as in 1960, the U.S. economy produced almost 4.5 times as much manufacturing output in 2007 as in 1960! It’s an often unappreciated, but amazing record […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
In the U.S. doctors are cutting the price of medicine by reducing the doses that they offer patients. This tactic is understandable because some medicines cost several hundred thousand dollars per year.
In Thailand, the health ministry is recommending that the government ignore patents.

Zamiska, Nicholas. 2008. “Thai Ministry to Recommend Ignoring Patents on […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
Michael Mandel, (very) late of Dollars and Sense, may have returned to his roots, questioning the role of the multinationals, although suggesting that they have the potential to contribute to an economic recovery. He notes that the 150 U.S.-based nonfinancial multinationals cut more than 2 million jobs between 2000 and 2005, while […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Last week the Fed announced yet another new measure to deal with the ongoing problems in credit markets in the form of a just-created Term Securities Lending Facility, which we’re apparently invited to refer to affectionately as a TSLF.

Hear the word of the Fed:
Under this new Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), the Federal […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
That’s the title of an article in today’s Bloomberg. I think it highlights an interesting counterpoint between the statements coming out from the Administration, on one hand, and from academic and financial sector economists, on the other. From Bloomberg:
By Matthew Leising and Steve Matthews
March 14 (Bloomberg) — Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
The McKinsey Quarterly reported on a very interesting survey, applicable to many business though the survey focused on car dealers.  In the survey, car dealers were sorted by profitability, and the most profitable dealers compared to the average dealer.  The top performers were three times more profitable than the average performers.
The results […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Everyone needs some time away, but those of us in the investment world never really get it.  Managing money carries with it the responsibility of monitoring information and staying in touch, no matter how talented the team on the front line.
We are talking with a lot of individual investors.  The […]

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