Archive for January 2012
Motor Money
One reason car sales hit an annualized rate of 13.5 million units in December, the best showing in years, is lenders are chasing borrowers who are behind on their mortgages! From Q1 throughQ3 ’11 205K loans were made to buyers who were late on their mortgage or experienced a foreclosure, up from 60K during the…
Read MoreRegime Change
Starting today, my emails posts are being sent using new technology. To that end, above this email is a “button” that allows you to opt out of receiving my posts. I hope you elect not to click it! For those of who respond my emails, please continue to do so as you have in the…
Read MoreGender Chores
The Friday File: According to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics study, married full-time working childless women work 8 minutes more a day than their full-time working spouses if you include both office and housework. For similar couples with children under 18, the gap grows to 20 minutes a day. Turns out men do less…
Read MoreQuantitative Uneasy
While Bernanke undoubtedly wanted to do more in the way of monetary stimulus than he did, yesterday’s Fed’s decision to explicitly commit to keeping rates low through late ’14, was the best he could do in place of another round of quantitative easing. Recall that bond purchases (QE1 and QE2) have become increasingly unpopular with…
Read MoreSluggish Economy
The IMF sees global growth in ’12 slowing to 3.25% from 4% in ’11. It’s because the 17 nation Euro-zone will contract by 0.5% and China’s growth will slow from 9% to 8.2%. Growth here is expected to be 2%; better than ’11 but not enough to really dent unemployment. By suggesting, earlier today, that…
Read MoreUnintended Consequences
Since the first of the year, planes landing in or departing from Europe must pay a carbon tax based on the length of the flight, even if the flight does not originate or terminate in Europe. To reduce the tax, UPS is considering flying from Hong Kong to Cologne, Germany via Mumbai! This would increase…
Read MoreHave a Heart
Many individuals needing organ transplants die waiting for a donor. Therefore, nlarging the pool of donors would save lives. But, paying people to donate organs is distasteful as it encourages the poor to sell organs for money. The solution, grant priority on organ waiting lists to those who agree to be organ donors upon death.…
Read MoreQuarterbacks Make Winners
The Friday File: With the Packers losing last Sunday, they are the 8th straight team with the best regular season record not to win the Super Bowl. Moreover, wildcard teams have won 3 of the last 6 Super Bowls. Why? There are tons of good quarterbacks (QBs). 30 years ago 8 QBs had a passer…
Read MoreChilling at Google
Server farms need lots of energy to cool servers. In ’10 cooling server farms consumed 1.5% of global electricity, and may jump to as much as 5% by ’17 as internet traffic continues to explode. With this in mind, Google just opened a data center in Hamina Finland where the average temperature is 35 degrees,…
Read MoreWrong at the Reserve
If you didn’t predict the housing bust, don’t feel bad, the Fed totally blew it too. Reading just released minutes from the ’06 meetings, is hysterically funny were it not so tragically sad. Bernanke was confident of a soft landing (really?) and most of the others were sure that any problems in the housing sector…
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