Month: June 2014

Increasing Interest

06/16/2014

While expecting Q1 GDP growth to be revised down to an annualized rate of -2% from the current -1%, expect the Fed to keep tapering on autopilot and reduce it by another $10 billion to $35 billion/month at the conclusion…

Read More

Super Soccer

06/13/2014

The Friday File: While 32 teams compete in the World Cup, only a handful have a chance at winning and Team USA isn’t one of them. Brazil, Argentina and Germany are clear favorites with Columbia, Netherlands, Portugal and Uruguay as…

Read More

Similar Schools

06/12/2014

The LA County judge that struck down California’s teacher tenure laws as unconstitutional is following in the footsteps of Brown V. Board of Education. In Brown, the Supreme Court forced all schools in a district to have demographically similar student…

Read More

Mediocre Monetary Meddling

06/11/2014

Rather than using a cannon, last week the ECB used a popgun. By reducing the rate it charges banks on loans and by charging banks on deposits held at the central bank, the ECB hopes to spur lending. It won’t…

Read More

Idiotic Incentives

06/10/2014

President Obama’s decision to give student loan borrowers the option of limiting loan payments to 10% of their income and to forgive all balances after 20 years — 10 years if the borrower works for government — is harmful. It…

Read More

Junky Jobs

06/09/2014

While the total number of working Americans now finally exceeds the number that were working before the recession began, the quality of the new jobs is not great. While food service, social assistance and home healthcare have seen the largest…

Read More

Poor Poppy Planning

06/06/2014

The Friday file: Since invading Afghanistan, the US has spent about $10 billion trying to eradicate poppy production. The result: in 2013 500,000 acres of poppies, a new record amount, were planted. Worse, the poppy planting that was eliminated occurred…

Read More

Developing Data

06/05/2014

The most important pieces of monthly economic data at present are net job creation, change in total employment compensation, and the change in the amount of revolving credit outstanding. Job data tells us how quickly things are improving (slowly), compensation…

Read More

Terrible Tobacco

06/04/2014

The proposed merger between cigarette makers Reynolds American and Lorillard would create a behemoth with 40% of the US cigarette market, behind Altria’s 50% market share! The government is now concerned about antitrust issues given two firms with 90% of…

Read More

Sterling Sale

06/03/2014

Having bought the LA Clippers for $12.5 million in 1981, embattled owner Donald Sterling appears set to sell the club for $2 billion. That’s the second most ever paid for a team and a spectacular compound annual growth rate (CAGR)…

Read More

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives