The Bowtie Economist's Daily Dose of 70-Word Wisdom


Unintented Consequences

05/15/2013

Forcing Congress to obtain health insurance through exchanges is bad policy. Because they get excellent coverage, Congress would push for top-flight exchange healthcare. This would encourage employers to drop their plans because their employees could get great congressional quality subsidized…

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Scared Debtless

05/14/2013

In Q1 2013, total household indebtedness fell to $11.23 trillion, 1% lower than in Q4 2012 and way down from the peak of $12.68 trillion in Q3 2008. Mortgage debt now stands at $7.93 trillion, HELOCs are at $522 billion,…

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Gassing Up

05/13/2013

Retail sales jumped 0.1% in April and while not great, it beats the 0.5% decline in March! Moreover, it shows that consumers are spending despite the sequester and the payroll tax increase. And a key reason was the huge 3.5%…

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Economic Models

05/10/2013

The Friday File: Female models like Heidi Klum and Bar Rafaeli make millions annually, yet there isn’t even one famous male model. I think this is this because women spend much more on fashion and cosmetics than men. Moreover, they…

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House Work

05/09/2013

Part of the reason employment growth is so weak is that despite sizable increases in residential construction spending, increases in construction employment have been MIA. From April 2012 to April 2013, residential construction put-in-place increased from $249 billion to $295…

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Where’s Daddy?

05/08/2013

In 2011, 4.1 million women gave birth, 36% of which were unmarried, up from 31% in 2005. 57% of women without a high-school degree, 49% of women with a high-school diploma, 40% of women with some college and 8.8% of…

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Dangerous Debt

05/07/2013

The take-away message from the Reinhart-Rogoff error is that research mistakes happen, that higher debt levels are correlated with slower GDP growth, and that there is no debt threshold, 90% or otherwise, above which growth dramatically collapses. Rather, as the…

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Economic Gamble

05/06/2013

In a hopeful sign for the economy, gross gaming revenues rose 4.8% in 2012 to $37.34 billion, and are now (not accounting for inflation or Native American casinos) just $180 million below the all-time high of $37.52 billion set in…

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Pool Anyone?

05/03/2013

The Friday File: In August, houses with pools sell for about 0.2% more than homes without pools while in May, June and July pools add just 0.1%, half as much. Conversely, from November through March, swimming pools reduce house prices…

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Poor Peso

05/02/2013

Running low on foreign reserves, Argentina is making it increasingly difficult for Argentines to purchase US dollars, which has widened the gap between the official exchange-rate and the black-market rate. And that has caused Argentines to make offshore purchases with…

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