Submitted by EconWeekly
The GDP estimate for the first quarter is out, so it’s time to update my ranking of the Wall Street Journal forecasters. (Remember: to pit forecasters against each other I use the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and the most accurate forecaster is the one with the lowest RMSE, among all who have […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Yesterday I posed the question of why the mortgage mess happened, and why at the time that it did.  There were two fundamental building blocks of the crisis: the Great Moderation and Securitization.  The aftermath of the 2001 recession provided the trigger for the mortgage mess.  In this post, I explain the […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Globe and Mail (Canada’s “Newspaper of record”)–More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year – in what a doctors’ group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.
The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Judging by recent financial results, the big villains in the ethanol story—the American companies that are responding to government mandates by buying about 20% of the U.S. corn harvest and processing it into fuel—aren’t exactly thriving. In fact, their bottom lines and stock prices are suffering pretty badly.
What gives? In theory, business […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
From WSJ, Henry Pulizzi and John D. McKinnon write:

“The data are pretty clear that we are not in a recession,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear told a meeting of editors and reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.
…
“I would be very surprised if the NBER, looking back at […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

VOANews–The U.S. program subsidizing the use of corn for the production of fuel ethanol came under sharp criticism at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Economists told the panel the program leads to higher food prices.
Twenty percent of the U.S. corn crop goes into ethanol production, and corn prices worldwide have increased by 50% […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Through today, May 7, the broad dollar index from the Fed (data available here and here) reached 96.32, the highest level in more than 10 weeks, since February 26. Over the last 11 trading days since April 22, the dollar index increased by 1.55%, the biggest 11-day gain in almost two years, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Chinese businessman Liu Keil spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg, S.C. — less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three printing-plate plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
At “A Dash” we let the big guys do the marketing research for us.  Television ads for online brokers indicate that “leading investors” are thinking for themselves instead of relying upon help from their former investment advisors.  Not wanting to be completely alone, however, investors want some help and comfort.  […]

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