Archive for August 3rd, 2008
Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The rise and fall of Hillary Clinton’s: a) search volume in the U.S. (top line above), and b) news reference volume (bottom line), according to Google Trends (click to enlarge), over the last 12 months.
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by unsettling economics
espite the large number of people who lack adequate housing and rents that make decent housing unaffordable, the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins suggests housing demolition as a way to eliminate the excess supply of “homes going rancid on the shelf.” As discussed in
www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/papers/20perelman.pdf
New York, inspired by Roger Starr, engaged in the […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by Econbrowser
It’s instructive to compare what’s currently happening to the auto sector and the U.S. economy with what we saw in the wake of the 1990 oil shock.
Sales of light trucks manufactured in North America, which category includes the once almighty SUV, remain deeply depressed, with July sales down 26% compared with last year.
Domestic […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by Econbrowser
The 1.9% SAAR growth rate in 2008Q2 [BEA] is widely viewed as a positive [0]; and the fact that GDP growth remained, in this advance release, above zero is a positive. However, when taken with the annual revision, one sees some interesting aspects. Not only was growth in 2007Q4 negative, albeit slightly; the […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by A Dash of Insight
One benefit from using advanced trading techniques — both systems and screening methods — is finding ideas you would otherwise miss. Expect to be surprised sometimes as we were this week with the rise of the homebuilders in our rankings. This is a significant improvement for a group that spent […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by A Dash of Insight
One of the benefits of writing a blog is the feedback from readers. Here at “A Dash” we certainly do not have a “boo-yah” society. Readers feel free to swing freely and offer arguments and links. Great! And thanks!
Sometimes we write an article with a mission related to our book, […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
Also web design and (maybe) economic research.
sorry I don’t recall where I saw this first; maybe Sailing Anarchy.
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
In graduate school I was taught to distrust surveys of consumer behavior. “Look at what they do, not what they say,” was the lesson. The Wall Street Journal reinforces that training with an eye-opening article about people lying to poll-takers. One striking example is the discrepancy between answers to a live person […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by Businomics Blog
The headlines will go to the rising unemployment, but there’s other interesting labor market news.
Not a surprise, but the number of workers voluntarily quitting is down. Folks are sticking with the devil they know (or at least the boss they know).
The slack labor market is reflected in modest wage gains:
Business Planning Implications: […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
McCain’s odds on Intrade.com (click chart to enlarge).
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
BusinessWeek has an interesting slide show and article about the “Real Estate Boom and Bust in the Same Metro Areas” (article here) which looks at the best- and worst-performing zip codes in the 20 largest metro areas. EconomicPicData blog summarizes the BusinessWeek data in the chart above.
For example, in Dallas’ Preston Hollow […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Americans are not suffering from weak or negative economic growth. They have suffered a loss of wealth, a very different ailment, from two major factors. The first is high oil prices, the equivalent of a huge tax increase. The second is the housing bust, which has vaporized more than a trillion dollars […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Available from Despair.com as a lithograph or desktopper.
HT: Andrew Cannon (click to enlarge)
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Update: The chart above is from the Joint Economic Committe (based on 2006 IRS data), showing the percentages of federal personal income tax paid by different groups of taxpayers: The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all income taxes, the top 10% pay 71%, and the top 50% pay 97% […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
With all of the media and Congressional focus on Exxon’s record profits in the second quarter, what gets neglected (along with Exxon’s record income tax payments) is the record amount of spending by Exxon on “capital and exploration,” coming in at $7 billion in the second quarter 2008 (data here), the highest […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Most Americans recognize that while gas is expensive and our grocery money doesn’t go as far as it did last year, we are still an enormously prosperous and fortunate nation.
In some countries, a depressed economic climate means mass unemployment, political instability and large-scale deprivation. In America this decade, we have reached the […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
In a comment, Bob Wright asks “Why does the Democratic Party insist on OUTSOURCING oil industry jobs to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Nigeria?” - see chart above showing rising imports and declining domestic production since 1985, EIA data here.
Bob links to today’s WSJ editorial “Pelosi’s Energy Stonewall,” here is […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Exxon has already paid $19.828 billion in income taxes for 2008 (data here), and will probably pay almost $40 billion in income taxes this year (see graph above, income tax data for 1999-2007 taken from Exxon’s annual reports).
To put $40 billion of income taxes in perspective, it can be reasonably estimated […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Does Nancy Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?
The net environmental effect of Pelosi’s no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. […]
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Google news search, “Exxon” and “record profits“: 511 hits
Google news search of “Exxon” and “record taxes“: 0 hits
Google search of “Exxon” and “record profits“: 127,000 hits
Google search of “Exxon” and “record taxes“: 1,210 hits
Ratio for the last two: 105 to 1
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Posted in August 3rd, 2008
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
A long list (about 100) of University of Chicago faculty members (mostly from liberal arts fields like political science, gender studies, sociology, history, philosophy, English, etc., and not a single economics professor) signed this letter to the UC President and Provost, objecting to the establishment of the Milton Friedman Institute on their […]
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