Econ70
Obama’s latest effort to help underwater homeowners, who are current, refinance at lower rates will help, but, it’s no panacea. Estimates are that a million households will take advantage of this plan and will, on average, save $2,500/year. If all…
Read MoreThe Friday File: The US economy has lost manufacturing jobs as foreigners can often make things more cheaply than we can. What manufacturing remains is increasingly high end; it’s less easily outsourced. But, there are exceptions. In Americus, GA 50…
Read MoreEarlier this week, the Congress passed free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea. Passage may be hailed as a political achievement for promoting principals of free trade and for shoring up allies. Unfortunately, it will not do much…
Read MoreBig bank stocks are all down but shares of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley especially so. Regulatory changes like the Volcker Rule prohibiting proprietary trading hurt all big banks but especially GS and MS as they rely more heavily on…
Read MoreBecause Sprint now sells iphones (as of 10/1/11), its bottom line will take a hit. The extra subsidy cost of selling an iphone to an existing Sprint customer (rather than a Droid phone) is $100. Based on data from Verizon…
Read MoreThe Friday File: Baseball’s 3 teams with the highest payrolls are watching the playoffs on TV. The Yankees ($202.6 million) were upset by the Detroit Tigers ($105.7 million), while the Philadelphia Phillies ($172.9 million) were upset by the St Louis…
Read MoreFirms frequently buyback their own shares when they think they are undervalued. Problem is, firms often get it wrong! So far this year HP has spent $7.6 billion to buy 200 million shares at about $38/share. In ’10 HP spent…
Read MoreThe Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to Tom Sargent at NYU and Chris Sims at Princeton. Sargent’s work has helped us understand the impact of permanent changes in economic policy. Sim’s research has helped us measure the effect of…
Read MoreLast year about 2 trillion text messages were sent in the US generating more that $20 billion in revenue for cell phone companies. Experts estimate that it costs cell phone companies about a third of a cent to send a…
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