The Friday File: In 1952, James was the most popular boys name given to 4.4% of all boys, while Linda was name number one for girls with 3.5% receiving it. By 2012, Jacob was tops but claimed only 0.94% of…
While Q3 GDP was revised up from 2.8% to 3.6%, hold the applause. Inventory growth was raised by 0.85%, essentially responsible for the entire increase. Worse, household spending was revised down from a growth rate of 1.5% to 1.4%, and…
By combining reliability, anonymity, file-sharing technology and peer-to-peer consensus to confirm transactions, Bitcoin is an amazing technology that fulfills a market need. I fully expect other copycat institutions with deeper pockets and more credibility to eventually follow. While Bitcoin has…
A large chunk of the credit for our improving economy belongs to multifamily construction. Since hitting a trough of 111,000 multifamily permits in October 2009, multifamily activity has quickly recovered. This past October there were 418,000 multifamily permits pulled, an…
When the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 16,220, it will hit a new inflation-adjusted all-time high. While the Dow is up 37% since its tech bubble high of 11,722.98 of 1/14/00, the CPI is up 38%. Of course, back in…
While the cost of Thanksgiving dinner has increased by 12.81% since 2010, excluding the turkey the cost has risen by just 5.7% because the cost of the bird alone has risen by 23% and it represents almost half of the…
In a sign that household deleveraging may be over, outstanding household debt grew by $127 billion in Q3 and now stands at $11.28 trillion. While down 11% from the peak of $12.7 trillion set in 2008, after essentially 20 straight…
Senate Democrats’ decision to remove the filibuster for executive-branch nominees works. They only stay as long as the administration does. But doing away with the filibuster for all judgeships (with the exception of Supreme Court nominees) was a mistake. Their…
The Friday File: In a moment of economic madness, the US government recently destroyed six tons of ivory, equivalent to the ivory from 2,000 elephants, and worth $16.3 million, or $8,200/elephant. With only 200,000 elephants left and a record 25,000…
A problem with solar and wind energy is that it’s intermittent. Since renewables generally have grid priority over other sources, when renewables surge other sources must rapidly decline to compensate. But since nuclear and coal plants are designed to run…