Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Total Number of publicly traded U.S. companies on the NYSE (2,764), NASDAQ (3,200) and AMEX (883): 6,847
Number of U.S. equity mutual funds: 12,833
Number of U.S. hybrid funds: 1,340
Total number of mutual funds holding equities: 14,173
Ratio of mutual funds with equity holdings to publicly traded companies: 2 to 1

Bottom Line: There are about […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Washington, DC — Americans held $17.6 trillion in retirement assets at the end of 2007, up $1.1 trillion from year-end 2006 (see chart above), according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI). In the first comprehensive look at the scope of the nation’s retirement market for the full year, ICI found that strong […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
“Lowering prices is easy. Being able to afford to lower prices is hard.”

~Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Time to develop and market a new drug: 10-15 years
Average Cost to develop a new drug (2006): $1.318 billion
Total R&D spending on drugs in 2007: $58.8 billion

Generic share of market in 2007: 67%
Percent of marketed drugs that cover R&D costs: Only 20%
Total number of drugs approved in 2007: 23

R&D as a percent […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
“The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”

~P. J. O’Rourke
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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

Washington – Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms.

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The latest news of Michigan’s deepening budget woe is a national warning of what happens when you raise taxes in a weak economy (see chart above, Michigan’s jobless rate vs. national).

Officials in Lansing reported this month that the state faces a revenue shortfall between $350 million and $550 million next budget […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Companies increased their orders for durable equipment last month, a very nice sign.

Surveys of business confidence have shown a lot of gloom, both among Fortune 500 CEOs as well as small business owners.  The actual placement of orders, though, says more than surveys of attitudes.  Especially strong is communication equipment.
In my economic […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Leave it to the Democratic majority in Congress to fight rising gas prices and growing dependence on foreign oil by imposing a windfall-profits tax on U.S. petroleum companies, while refusing to let them tap America’s vast oil and gas reserves in the Alaskan wilderness and offshore.

From my editorial in yesterday’s Investor’s Business […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
At “A Dash” we are interested in how current commentators make a facile link between micro and macro-economics.
The problem is that they think micro, and speak macro.
Micro helps with the supply curve.  And the demand curve.  Where do they intersect?
Honeymoon in Vegas:  Inventory?
Getting away from traditional thinking is difficult.  Sometimes […]

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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Chris Anderson argues in Wired: “Free!  Why $0.00 is the Future of Business.”  (Hat tip: Club for Growth)  Take a look at the short video if you don’t feel like reading the entire article.  Anderson makes the point that when things become digital, they eventually become free.  Email, search, storage, content.  Free, […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above shows inflationary expectations from January 2004 to April 2008, calcuated as the spread between: a) the yield on regular 10-Year Treasury notes (constant maturity, data here) and b) the yield on 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed Securities (data here). The data suggest that a) inflationary expectations are going down, not […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Why hasn’t the United States adopted the same healthcare system as Europe, Canada, and nearly all the rest of the developed world? While the United States is portrayed as the outlier, the truth is that another developed nation has eschewed the European government-payer model—with a great deal of success. That nation is […]

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