Submitted by The Capital Spectator
At long last, some good news from a pair of front-line economic reports.
Housing starts and new housing permits popped higher last month, the Census Bureau advises. After more than two years of nearly nonstop declines, robust increases in April in these two critical housing surveys lend fresh reason to think that […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Chicago Tribune–The University of Chicago, in a move officials said will build on the school’s longtime strength in economics, said it plans to spend $200 million to create the Milton Friedman Institute.

(HT: Jeff Perry)
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The map above (click to enlgarge) shows gas taxes by state, from the API as of January 2008. The map above helps explain the map below of gas prices by state.

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
VW will sell a 230-mpg car (above) in 2010, here’s the story.
The 300 m.p.g. Aptera (pictured above) will sell for $27,000-$30,000, and you can reserve one now for $500, they should be available within 12 months.
(Thanks to an anonymous commentor on a previous post for these links.)
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
On a recent CD post “As Share of Disposable Income, Food Is Still Cheap,” Machiavelli999 left a comment about the falling price of wheat. The graph above confirms his observation - spot wheat prices have actually fallen by 41% in the last three months from $9.36 per bushel in February to […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
American gasoline is also dirt-cheap compared with gas in other countries. British motorists are currently paying about $8.38 per gallon for gasoline. In Norway, a major oil exporter, drivers are paying $8.73.
In 2007, out of the 32 industrialized countries surveyed by the International Energy Agency (see p. 42 of the report) […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Housing starts rebounded last month, according to the headlines.  However, you need to look at the data to put this “rebound” in context.

The housing starts rebound is that little blue uptick at the end of the chart.  This is not the beginning of the upturn, nor even the end of the downturn.  […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Plants do it. Why not you?

In principle it would be possible to combine carbon dioxide from the air with water to create hydrocarbons that could be used to power motor vehicles. Of course it takes energy to do this, so in effect you’re just taking another energy source (such as nuclear) and converting […]

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Submitted by EconWeekly
Recession talk decreased slightly again in April. According to an index which includes eight newspapers, each publication included an average of 1.96 articles per day using the word “recession,” down from 2.16 in March and significantly below the level of 3.70 in January (see chart 1). The decrease occurred in spite of the […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Developments in housing remain crucial for the economy and for stocks.  Nearly any account of the housing situation includes reports of the number of foreclosures, the inventory of empty homes, and the potential ARM re-sets that may stimulate even more foreclosure activity.
Any help for distressed homeowners would help to shift […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
From Macroeconomic Advisers, May 14:
Monthly GDP Index: March 2008
Monthly GDP rose 0.3% in March. This followed a 1.0% decline in February that was revised up from a 1.2% decline in last month’s report. The moderate increase in monthly GDP in March can largely be accounted for by positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
The Survey of Professional Forecasters compiled by the Philadelphia Fed (more details here) shows another downward revision to the forecast.

The survey occurs quarterly, so we’re looking at early May forecasts compared to early February forecasts.
I like looking at the consensus economic forecast.  It tends to be more accurate than the projections of […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
The Wall Street Journal ran an ad headlined “Recession Proof.”  The ad was for franchising tax preparation services.  Seems reasonable, right?  Everyone has to file a tax return, even during a recession.  Well, it turns out that they don’t have to pay someone else to do it.  In the average recession, consumer […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
The latest CPI release provided some much needed relief on the inflation front. What caught my eye was some of the discussion regarding the seasonal adjustment. This inspired me to wonder what seasonal adjustment was doing.

From Reuters, by Emily Kaiser:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - High gasoline prices got you down? Come to the land of […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Chain stores have been disliked for decades, at both local and national levels. Taking advantage of economies of scale that lower their costs of doing business, chain stores are able to charge lower prices than smaller independent stores, and therefore attract customers away from their higher-cost competitors.

The economics of this is certainly […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
What a difference a century makes:

1888: America excites an admiration which must be felt upon the spot to be understood. The hopefulness of her people communicates itself to one who moves among them, and makes him perceive that the graver faults of politics may be far less dangerous there than they would […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Just like with gas prices, we hear a lot about food prices being at record levels, but we don’t hear as much about disposable income also being at record high levels. How do food prices compare to disposable personal income?

According to data available from the USDA, expenditures on food as a […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Special Carpe Diem Welcome to the Finance Students at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania, and UM-Flint Professor and Fulbright Scholar Dr. Seyed Mehdian.
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above (click to enlarge) shows the growth rates (from a year ago) for the monetary base and M1 money supply since 2005. M1 has been flat with zero growth for more than 2 years, and the growth in the monetary base has been declining and is now approaching 0% […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
The investment universe is filled with surprises, and perhaps the biggest shocker of all is the idea that the value strategies of Ben Graham and his disciples are in general agreement with modern portfolio theory (MPT).
Granted, it sounds absurd. MPT, after all, is the suite of financial theories that spawned index […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Via West Virginia Rebel, the Telegraph reports:

Sir Paul McCartney is said to be “horrified” that his new eco-friendly car was flown 7,000 miles from Japan.
The Lexus LS600H, which costs £ 84,000, was a gift from Lexus to the 65-year-old former Beatle, who helped promote the hybrid vehicle. But instead of arriving by boat […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke on Tuesday offered his perspective on the appropriate response of the Fed to the ongoing turmoil in financial markets. I still think he’s overlooking a key element of what’s been happening.

Bernanke observed:
Meeting creditors’ demands for payment requires holding liquidity– cash, essentially, or close equivalents. But neither individual institutions, nor […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

WASHINGTON – U.S. consumer prices were under wraps last month, a government report showed, especially when food and energy prices were stripped out, further evidence that the economic slowdown is easing some of the inflationary effect of recent sharp gains in food and energy prices.
Consumer prices rose 3.9% on a year-over-year basis, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
WSJ–We can’t wait to hear how Members of Congress explain their vote this week for the new $300 billion farm bill. At a time when Americans are squeezed at the grocery store, they will now see more of their taxes flow to the very farmers profiting from these high food prices.
Nearly every […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
With all the commotion in the media and in politics about the high price of gasoline, is there really some terribly complex explanation?
Is there anything complex about the fact that with two countries– India and China– having rapid economic growth, and with combined populations 8 times that of the United States, they […]

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