Econ70
The Friday File: The 53% of men who celebrate Valentine’s Day spend an average of $173, while the 54% of women who celebrate spend $97. By age, 25-34 year olds spend the most averaging $218, followed by 18-24 year olds…
Read MoreWhile December’s job growth number of 75,000 and January’s of 113,000 were disappointing and probably underestimate the health of the economy, we won’t get confirmation of that in February! That’s because the monthly employment survey is administered during the week…
Read MoreThe latest survey of bank senior loan officers doesn’t suggest a thaw in consumer lending. 93% of loan officers reported lending standards for issuing credit cards and consumer loans were unchanged, while 83% reported no change in their willingness to…
Read MoreWith the unemployment rate at 6.6%, dangerously close to the 6.5% level at which the Fed has repeatedly suggested they will start raising short term rates, expect some quick Fed backpedalling. With wages stagnant, labor force growth weak and tapering…
Read MoreBy 2024, 2.5 million fewer Americans will work due to Obamacare. Because Obamacare healthcare subsidies decline as incomes rise, some workers will deliberately not work to increase their government benefits. The structure of the subsidy is a tax on work.…
Read MoreThe Friday File: Since the first Winter Olympic games in 1924 through the Vancouver games of 2010, Norway, with a population of five million, has won more gold and total medals (303) than any other nation. The U.S. is second…
Read MoreBased on a Norwegian study that controls for all socio-economic variables, when parents are awarded Disability Insurance, the likelihood that one of their adult children will receive DI rises by six percentage points over the next five years and by…
Read MoreThe CBO projects that the FY2014 budget deficit will be $514 billion, 3% of GDP, and will be just $478 billion or 2.6% of GDP in FY2015. The deficit then begins to rise as a percentage of GDP. A key…
Read MoreWith $6.2 billion in gambling revenues, Las Vegas is the top casino market in the US, Atlantic City with $3.1 billion is second. Chicagoland is third at $2.2 billion, Detroit is fourth with $1.4 billion and Connecticut is number five…
Read MoreThe US economy is 3.5 times bigger the than of Japan. Yet at current exchange rates, the Bank of Japan is injecting $53 billion/month into its banking system, equivalent to the Fed injecting $187 billion/month into ours rather than the…
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