Submitted by CARPE DIEM
But you’ll hear it here, from P.J. O’Rourke:

1. Go out and make a bunch of money! Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, “Go […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Over the last eight trading days, from April 22 to May 2, the U.S. Dollar increased by 2.57% (from 69.7218 to 71.5147), as measured by the Federal Reserve’s Trade Weighted Dollar Index for Major Currencies, data available here.

This is the largest 8-day percentage increase in the dollar in more than 3 […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Related to the post below on taco trucks in LA:

Latinos experienced a large increase in the entrepreneurial activity rate in 2007. The entrepreneurial activity rate increased from 0.33% in 2006 to 0.40% in 2007. Non-Latino whites and African-Americans experienced slight increases in entrepreneurial activity rates, and Asians experienced a decline in rates […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
I’m back from vacation, surveying the news of the past week and a half.  (I had planned on blogging throughout the vacation, but instead … just vacationed.)  Here’s my take on the data:  not so bad.
Gross domestic product is our broadest measure of the economy, and it’s growth rate was certainly anemic, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

HAVANA (AP) — Cubans are getting wired. The island’s communist government put desktop computers on sale to the public for the first time Friday, ending a ban on PC sales as another despised restriction on daily life fell away under new President Raul Castro.
A tower-style QTECH PC and monitor costs nearly US$780 […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
BENTONVILLE, Ark. – May 5, 2008 – While health care costs continue to be a top concern for consumers, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is furthering its efforts to help customers save money by driving down prescription medication costs and providing ongoing savings through its pharmacy offerings.
Expected to save Wal-Mart customers millions […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Peru has been experiencing fast growth – better than 6% annually – for almost seven years (see chart above of real GDP growth).

High growth rates – averaging 11% a year from 1990-2002 – have occurred in sectors that make china, porcelain, knitted fabrics, plastic products and basic chemicals, to mention a few.
The […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
They still have penmanship contests? Actually I wasn’t ever aware of this competition. But a small private school in my hometown of St. Paul, MN with only 157 students, has had nine state champions in the past three years — more than double the number of any other school — and 21 […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
The newest version of the Chinn-Ito financial openness index (earlier discussed here), extending up to 2006, has just been posted. Here’s the series for Argentina and for Venezuela.

Figure 1: Chinn-Ito financial openness index for Argentina (blue) and Venezuela (red). Higher values indicate greater openness. Source: Chinn-Ito index (2008) (Excel).The index is available here […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Pulitzer-prize winning restaurant critic Jonathan Gold gets paid to eat wherever he wants. And yet, several times a week he chooses to pull over to the side of the road and eat food served on a paper plate — out of a truck. “I’ve probably been to 3,000 trucks in my life,” […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Interesting graphic above from yesterday’s NYTimes (click to enlarge), showing the percentage breakdown of consumer spending in 2008 (15% on food and beverages [vs. 46.4% in 1901!], 18% on transportation, 42% on housing, etc.), and the percentage change in the components of the CPI over the last year from March 2007 to […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Having a good trading method is only part of the problem.  One must also find the right trading “universe.”
The original Turtle Traders learned this, and so should we.
We have been getting some good questions about our TCA-ETF system and why we chose the IShares universe that we have reported each […]

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