Archive for September 2014

With new cars sales hitting an annualized rate of 17.4 million last month, the best since 2006, there’s not much room for improvement. Boomers are driving less, half of all drivers are now women, income growth is flat, Millenials are not big car enthusiasts, suburban life is not as attractive as it was, population growth…

With the league’s highest payroll at $239 million, it isn’t surprising the Dodgers made the playoffs and won 94 games. However, they spent $2.5 million/win! Conversely, Oakland with a payroll of $75 million won 88 games but only spent $850,000/win, and Pittsburgh with 88 wins and a payroll of $78 million spent $860,000/win are both…

The Friday File: In 1991, the average American bought 40 garments/year. Imports then began flooding the market, prices fell and the number of garments purchased/year steadily rose, peaking at 69 in 2005 with average spending/person reaching $860. With imports now accounting for 97.5% of all garment sales, prices are once again rising. In 2013, garment…

While existing home sales are down 5.3% year-over-year, recent sales numbers are really pretty good. Inventory is up 4.5% year-over-year and cash sales are at their lowest level since 12/09. More importantly, non-distressed sales are almost exactly the same as they were 12 months ago because distressed sales fell from 12% to 8%. Lastly, median…

Short-term rates will remain at zero until mid-June when the Fed will start raising them. By the end of 2015, expect short-term rates to be between 1.25% and 1.5%. Expect them to rise to between 2.5% and 3% by the end 2016 and be about 3.75% by the end of 2017. For the remainder of…

On 10/5/14 Brazilians go to the polls in a presidential election. While Dilma Rousseff is the incumbent, surprise opposition candidate Marina Silva has my vote. Not only will it be impossible for her to utterly mismanage the Brazilian economy as badly as Rousseff has, but she’s come out in favor of a completely independent Brazilian…

In one of the dumbest economic announcements ever, the G-20 group of industrialized and developing nations has agreed to boost global growth by two percentage points over the next five years; from 3.4% to 5.4%. What puzzles me is if these narcissists really think they can do it why did they wait? They could have…

The Friday File: It costs the US Mint 1.7 cents to produce a penny, 9.4 cents to mint a nickel. As the Mint makes about five billion pennies/year and one billion nickels/year, those overages sum up to a loss of $110 million/year. Being a penny pincher, I say stop pushing pennies, or at least make…

Congress’ decision to extend the prohibition on states taxing Internet access through early 2015, stinks. Taxing the Internet is great tax policy because few households will reduce their demand for the Internet because it’s taxed. Inability to avoid taxation is part of what makes a tax good, because as quantity demanded falls, which it doesn’t…