Econ70
In ‘58 Cong banned the trading of futures contracts on onions! Growers lobbied a MI Congressman named Gerald Ford to push the law hoping it would reduce volatility. Since then onion price volatility has made swings in oil and corn…
The default rate for all federal student loans rose to 13.8% from 11.8% for students beginning repayment in FY ‘08 compared with ‘07 according to the DOE. For public schools, the default rate is 10.8% while it is only 7.6%…
Greece must leave the Euro! Argentina (Arg) shows why. From ’98 through ’01 Arg was in a bad recession; the Peso was pegged to the USD. Arg borrowed from the IMF cut spending and the economy tanked. Then Arg defaulted…
The Greek 10-yr gov’t bond yield is 14.7%, 11.5% above comparable German bonds. The 2-yr Greek note is trading at 22.2%, 20.45 % above the German 2-yr note. The cost of insuring Greek sovereign bonds jumped to 1,422 basis points…
Hallelujah! The economy gained 244K jobs in April! Payroll data for Feb and March were also revised up by a combined 46K! Hiring in the private sector posted the largest increase in 5 years and was broad based! Ignore the…
Like the Dow Jones, the art market is also hitting new postcrash highs. Sales peaked in ’07 when Christie’s and Sotheby’s sold $11.3 billion of art. That total fell to $4.8 in ’09 but jumped to $9.8 in ’10. And…
Economists, those killjoys, are busy adding up the cost of the UK royal wedding, and all associated matrimonial festivities. At one end an economist thinks it will knock 1.5% or $15 billion off UK GDP as that equals one day’s…
UPS released its earnings last week. Volume fell here but grew overseas. Pricing power in the US was good and revenue surged despite weak volume because big investments in technology resulted in worker hours falling 2%. UPS mgt also had…
The death of bin Laden is a non-event in the markets. Had there been a rally, the US dollar, precious metals and commodities should all have weakened and stocks should have rallied as investors moved from safe havens to riskier…
The perception is that small business creates most new jobs. NO! The best predictor of job creation is age of firm. Younger firms create more jobs regardless of size. New firms operate in a volatile “up or out” environment. After…