Archive for September 2012
Cutting it Close
The Friday File: For men using a razor, the average shave takes 2.5 minutes and 200 strokes. 55% of men find shaving the neck the most difficult, followed by the chin (26%), the mustache (17%) and the cheeks (3%). Global sales of razors and blades will hit $13 billion in ’12, with $4 billion more…
Read MoreAn Apple a Day
Analysts expect iPhone 5 sales to reach 30 million by 12/31/12. At $600/phone (less $200 in imported parts), that’s $12 billion in net sales during the last four months of 2012, or $36 billion annualized, a 2% boost to GDP! That estimate presumes these are all cell phones that would not have been bought otherwise,…
Read MoreDaring Draghi
Last week the ECB, finally, agreed to make unlimited purchases of Spanish and Italian short-term bonds if the countries ask for help and agree to make “changes” to their economies. While this will buy time for politicians, it does nothing to solve the deep structural problems including the persistently low productivity of the Southern European…
Read MoreInflation to the Rescue
Rather than more quantitative easing, the Fed should stop targeting inflation and instead aim for a consistent level of nominal (unadjusted for inflation) GDP (NGDP) growth over the cycle. With this approach, the Fed would goose NGDP growth when times are bad (like now), by allowing more inflation, but restrain inflation when times are good.…
Read MoreRetraction Subtraction
The economy added just 96,000 jobs in August. Worse, the DOL lowered the June and July estimates by 41,000! While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1%, it did so only because 368,000 Americans left the labor force, reducing the participation rate to 63.5% from 63.7%, its lowest level since 9/81. Factory employment fell by 15,000,…
Read MoreCuspid Collector
The Friday file: In a sign the economy may be recovering, the tooth fairy has upped the average payment to $3.00 this year from $2.60 in ’11. 3% of children received less than a dollar, 30% received exactly a dollar and 8% received more than $5! In ’11 tooth fairies were stingiest in the East,…
Read MoreGas Tax Gap
The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents/gallon, and 24.4 cents on diesel, was last raised in ’93. Since then, it’s lost considerable buying power due to inflation and increases in fuel efficiency. As a result, paying for federal road construction and repair primarily through the gas tax will soon be a thing of the past.…
Read MoreGovernments Galore
The number of governments in the US (from the federal government to special utility districts) fell to 89,055 in ’12 from 89,527 in ‘07, a decline of 0.5% and the first decline since ’72 when the number stood at 78,269. The number of governments was as high as 155,116 in ’42. Illinois has always had…
Read MoreBond Bonanza
With the US public debt fast approaching $11 trillion, and Treasury yields at record lows (10-yr bonds @ 1.58%, 30-yr bonds @ 2.69%), the Treasury should refinance all our debt and lock in these low rates for a generation or two, minimizing interest payments for our kids and grandkids. They should even issue 50-year and…
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