Archive for November, 2008
« Previous EntriesHappy 7th Birthday for the Economic Expansion?
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
We’re very likely in a recession now, but since it hasn’t yet been offically announced by the NBER, let me wish the current U.S. economic expansion a “Happy Seventh Birthday”!
According to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, “a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. [...]
Great Depression II, But Everything Looks the Same
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
One of the weirdest, most perceptually jarring things about the economic crisis is that everything looks the same. We are told every day and in every news venue that we are in Great Depression II, that we are in a crisis, a cataclysm, a meltdown, the credit crunch from hell, that we [...]
Loan Delinquency Data Suggest Commercial Banks Are Doing OK, Nowhere Close to Great Depression II
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above shows delinquency rates for business and agricultural loans at all U.S. commercial banks from 1987:Q1 to 2008:Q3 using recently released Federal Reserve banking data through the third quarter. In both cases, delinquency rates for agricultural and business loans are close to all-time historical lows, and especially for business loans [...]
Retail Sales Up +3%: What Happened to The Worst Economy Since the Great Depression?
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Waco, Texas – “Shoppers out in droves for Black Friday despite weakening economy.” Waco shoppers Friday gave Scrooge the boot and thumbed their noses at a bad economy as they filled parking lots and even did some good-natured shoving as they entered stores en masse.
Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) — U.S. holiday retail sales [...]
Gas in St. Louis Falls Below All-Time Historical Low
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above shows the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas purchased at the retail price from January 1980 to November 2008, measured as a percent of monthly per-capita disposable income using income data and population data from the BEA, and gas price data from the EIA and Gas Buddy.
At the [...]
The Top Ten Worst Currencies in the World
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
According to Fox News, see the full list here also on one page. The #1 worst currency in the world? That’s easy, you should know that one. #7 worst is the Irania rial ($1 = 10,179 Rial), pictured above.
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Krugman’s Recipe for Another Depression: Spend
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
What kept the picture so dark so long during the 1930s (see chart above)? Deflation for one, but also the notion that government could engineer economic recovery by favoring the public sector at the expense of the private sector. New Dealers raised taxes again and again to fund spending. The New Dealers [...]
Low-Cost Medical Tourism vs. The High Prices of the Two Cartels: Big Insurance and Big Medicine
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Medical Tourism is a spontaneous order or sorts that has grown steadily to escape the increasingly high prices of the cartelized U.S. health care system. A cartelized system is one where price discovery is prevented or impeded, and I can’t think of a better example of than the U.S. health care system, [...]
William Kristol on Economic Theory and Practice
Submitted by Econbrowser
I don’t usually read Bill Kristol’s column, but once in a while, my eyes get caught by a headline (that’s the difference between reading online and “on paper”), and I’ll check out what he has to say. The other day, I read his column “Admit we don’t know” on the current economic crisis [...]
The more the merrier
Submitted by Econbrowser
How many economic-advice-giving organizations does it take to run a White House?
MarketWatch reports:
President-elect Barack Obama tapped former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to run a new White House advisory board tasked with offering independent advice about how to stage an economic recovery. Obama named the 81-year-old Volcker to head the President’s Economic Recovery [...]
A better stimulus plan
Submitted by unsettling economics
From a quarter millennium ago:
“that they deceived every man into his own ruin; and ruined the nation, to enrich the directors and themselves: They sold their own stock, and that of the directors, under false and fictitious names, contrary to the obligation of their bond to the City, which obliges them to [...]
Matter and Antimatter: How to Create a Crisis: A Thanksgiving Rant
Submitted by unsettling economics
Skilled physicists do not know how to take nothing and turn it into matter and antimatter, but finance behaves as if it had the capacity to do something similar. Imagine a simple market economy about to create a bubble. I want to tell the story of this bubble, only to put the [...]
The Absurdity of the Stimulus Package
Submitted by unsettling economics
Here is a graphic from the Wall Street Journal regarding the size of the stimulus package.
I hope to comment on it more tomorrow.
stimulus package
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Comparisons to the 1930s: Nonsense and Nitwittery
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — To those who lived through the Great Depression — people now in their 80s and 90s — today’s economic conditions don’t come close to rivaling the distress of the Great Depression.
“When I see that on the TV, I say to myself, ‘You don’t know a thing,’” said Flint [...]
No Real Estate Bubble in Central U.S.A.
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The top chart above (click to enlarge) shows the OFHEO House Price Indexes for Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and North Dakota, just recently updated through the third quarter 2008.
The bottom chart above shows the regional OFHEO House Price Indexes for the Pacific Census region (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington), the [...]
Uncorking CDOs: Financial Crisis Explained
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch gives a bubbly explanation of the intricacies of collateralized debt obligations those financial instruments that got us into this financial mess.
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2002-08: 60% Growth in World Per-Capita Real GDP
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
In his book “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,” Gregg Easterbrook, senior editor at the New Republic and contributing editor to The Atlantic, castigates the media for dwelling on minor problems without celebrating the broader, more upbeat context in which they exist. One of the broader, more [...]
IMF: Only One Year of Below-Average Growth in a Decade-Long Strong Global Economic Expansion?
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
According to the International Monetary Fund’s most recent economic outlook, world real GDP growth is projected to slow from 5% in 2007 to 3.75% percent in 2008 and then to 2.2% in 2009 (see chart above), with the downturn led by advanced economies.
Looking forward, the IMF predicts that world real GDP [...]
Real Gas Prices Lowest Since January 2004
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The cheapest gas in the country can be found in Kansas City and St. Louis for as low as $1.33 per gallon, and the national average retail price for gas is now down to $1.83 per gallon. Without the high-priced states of Alaska ($2.68) and Hawaii ($2.73), the national average for the [...]
People and Businesses Trade, Not Countries
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
There’s a growing anti-trade sentiment in our country. Much of the dialogue is grossly misinformed. Let’s try to untangle it a bit with a few questions and observations.
Does the U.S. trade with Japan and England? Put another way, is it members of the U.S. Congress trading with their counterparts in the Japanese [...]
Professor Morici: “Big 3 Bankruptcy Now, Not Later”
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
From Maryland Professor Peter Morici’s Senate testimony on the Big Three bailout (click arrow above to watch video):
Circumstances are dramatically different today than in 1979 when Chrysler received assistance from the federal government. In those days, the challenge at Chrysler was to become competitive with Ford and GM, and Lee Iacocca had [...]
The New Political Economy
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
In the old days if you wanted to get rich, you did it the Warren Buffett way: You learned to read balance sheets. Today you learn to read political tea leaves. You don’t anticipate Intel’s third-quarter earnings; instead, you guess what side of the bed Henry Paulson will wake up on tomorrow. [...]
Outsourcing Santa
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Santa’s been Bangalored (click to enlarge).
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My Dream: Governor Issues Predatory Pricing Order To Protect Gas Station Owners From Low Gas Prices
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
A post titled “Price Gouging: The Latest Victim” from Peter Klein has been circulating on the blogs, I found it on Coyote Blog, and it inspired the following post, based on the Georgia Governor’s Executive Order Activating Georgia’s Price Gouging Statute:
ATLANTA – In response to falling gas prices, Governor Sonny Perdue signed [...]
Big 3 Are Profitable Around the World, But Not U.S.
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
GM CEO Rick Wagoner told Congress last week that GM’s China operations are profitable. They actually help to underwrite the massive losses in the U.S. The brainpans on the Hill might have asked why Ford and GM managed to build viable auto businesses all over the world but not in North America.
You [...]
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