Econ70

College tuition is insanely high, but things are changing. While online learning helps, the biggest impact will be better informed buyers. Until recently, students and parents had little awareness of the financial benefits of different majors or the “value added”…

While the US Government has strongly reiterated its policy of not negotiating with kidnappers of American citizens so as to appropriately discourage the activity, it’s now inexplicably allowing families of the kidnapped to directly negotiate with the kidnappers. While some…

The US corporate tax rate of 35% is the highest in the world. In Germany it’s 16%, Canada 15% and Ireland 12.5%. Worse, it raises little money. In 2014, US pre-tax corporate profits were $2 trillion. 35% of that would…

Last month the median existing home sales price was $228,700, way up from the cyclical low of $154,600 in 1/12, and less than one-percent below the all-time high of $230,400 set in 7/06, almost nine years ago. While there’s a…

The Friday File: The percentage of employees testing positive for drug use in 2014 was 3.9%, up from 3.7% in 2013. Prior to 2013, drug use had declined nearly every year from a high of 13.6% in 1988 to a…

Producer prices jumped 0.5% last month, due mainly to rising gasoline prices, but the 56.4% rise in chicken egg prices, the largest increase since at least 1937, helped. To date, 47 million chickens have been killed due to Avian Bird…

At today’s news conference following a meeting of the interest rate setting FOMC, Chairwoman Yellen was clear about three things. Rates will start rising later this year (my bet remains 9/17/15), rates will rise by one percentage point every 12…

With Anthem trying to buy CIGNA, UnitedHealth wanting to takeover Aetna, while Aetna looks to buy Humana, frenzied healthcare consolidation has arrived. Insures are bulking up to battle increasingly large hospital chains who want to renegotiate discounts to offset lower…

Today is the 800-year anniversary of the Magna Carta. It is a document which inspired the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and other than English, is Great Britain’s greatest export. The Magna Carta didn’t create democracy,…

The Friday File: The lowest grossing movie in history is Zyzzyz Road, which grossed a total of $30, followed closely by Storage 24, which grossed $72. The biggest box office bomb ever: 47 Ronin, which lost a cool $150 million…