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


Sticky Situation

09/21/2012

The Friday File: 10 million pounds of Quebec maple syrup, street value $40 million, and about 10% of Quebec’s ’12 harvest, has been stolen! Luckily, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, suppliers of 77% of the world’s maple syrup,…

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Banksters

09/20/2012

What makes the LIBOR scandal so troubling is that the banks involved deliberately prevented us from understanding how serious the banking and liquidity crisis of ‘08 was. Had we known how high LIBOR rates were, things could have been done…

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Could be Worse!

09/19/2012

Greece has been in recession since Q3 ‘08. During that time, new car registrations have fallen 82%, back to where they were in the late ‘80s, and GDP has fallen 18%. Here, at their worst, car sales were down 56%…

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Boy-O-Boy!

09/18/2012

104.5 boys are born for every 100 girls to offset boys’ greater probability of dying in infancy. Due to falling fertility, cheap ultrasounds, and son preference, baby girls are, in many parts of the world, rare. In India, the rate…

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Checked Out

09/17/2012

Last Saturday, NHL owners locked out players (who knew?) following expiration of their contract. The last strike, in 2004, wiped out an entire season and players ultimately agreed to a 24% rollback, reducing their take to 57% of revenues. Owners…

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Cutting it Close

09/14/2012

The Friday File: For men using a razor, the average shave takes 2.5 minutes and 200 strokes. 55% of men find shaving the neck the most difficult, followed by the chin (26%), the mustache (17%) and the cheeks (3%). Global…

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An Apple a Day

09/13/2012

Analysts expect iPhone 5 sales to reach 30 million by 12/31/12. At $600/phone (less $200 in imported parts), that’s $12 billion in net sales during the last four months of 2012, or $36 billion annualized, a 2% boost to GDP!…

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Daring Draghi

09/12/2012

Last week the ECB, finally, agreed to make unlimited purchases of Spanish and Italian short-term bonds if the countries ask for help and agree to make “changes” to their economies. While this will buy time for politicians, it does nothing…

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Inflation to the Rescue

09/11/2012

Rather than more quantitative easing, the Fed should stop targeting inflation and instead aim for a consistent level of nominal (unadjusted for inflation) GDP (NGDP) growth over the cycle. With this approach, the Fed would goose NGDP growth when times…

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Retraction Subtraction

09/10/2012

The economy added just 96,000 jobs in August. Worse, the DOL lowered the June and July estimates by 41,000! While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1%, it did so only because 368,000 Americans left the labor force, reducing the participation…

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