Month: January 2016

Excellent Endowments

01/29/2016

The Friday File: US colleges raised $40.31 billion last year, up 7.6% from 2014. Stanford raised the most; $1.63 billion, followed by Harvard at $1.05 billion, USC at $650 million, UCSF at $610 million and Cornell at $590 million. The…

Read More

Realing Rio

01/28/2016

In 2015, Brazil’s economy shrunk by 4% and it will contract 3.5% more in 2016. Moreover, inflation is 10.7% and rising quickly. Yet the central bank didn’t raise rates. This may be because debt service already consumes a whopping 8%…

Read More

Fed Fudge

01/27/2016

In today’s post-meeting statement, the Fed is trying to keep their options open and separate signal from noise. If employment and inflation continue to improve, they will raise rates in March. But given the strengthening dollar, widening credit spreads, weakening…

Read More

Less License

01/26/2016

While auto sales hit 17.5 million in 2015, slightly surpassing the prior record set in 2000, the US population is now 12.7% larger! Per capita sales are falling because the percentage of persons with driver’s licenses are declining. The percentage…

Read More

Poor Proposal

01/25/2016

Senator Sanders’ proposal of a 1% roundtrip tax on stock trades will raise less revenue than expected, as some trading will migrate to areas with no tax. Moreover, because it increases transaction costs, it will reduce trading and liquidity and…

Read More

More Marijuana

01/22/2016

The Friday File: 5.9% of college students reported smoking marijuana on a daily or near daily (DND) basis, up from 3.7% in 2007. By contrast, only 5.2% of college students smoke cigarettes DND, compared to 19% in 1999, and 4.3%…

Read More

Solid Services

01/21/2016

Wage and productivity growth are scant, exports, energy, agriculture and mining are weak, the manufacturing sector is in recession and unsurprisingly GDP growth is sluggish. At the same time job growth is good, unemployment is low, and the service sector…

Read More

Interesting Index

01/20/2016

January’s NAHB/Wells Fargo builder confidence index was 60, unchanged from December but down from the recent peak of 65 in October. Moreover, after hitting 57 for the first time since the housing bust in 12/13, the index has moved sideways…

Read More

Powerless Pricing

01/19/2016

Import prices fell 1.2% in December, led by a 10% decline in petroleum prices. Excluding energy, import prices still fell 0.3%. During CY2015, import prices fell 8.2%; non-fuel imports declined 3.4%. These deflationary numbers, along with the continuing decline in…

Read More

Airline Activity

01/15/2016

The Friday File: Measured by passenger miles, American was the #1 US airline in 2015 with 223 billion revenue-miles, followed by Delta at 210 and United at 209. Ranked by passengers, American carried 201.2 million, Delta 179.4 and Southwest 144.6…

Read More

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives