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


Icelandic Luck

05/24/2011

The gov’t of Iceland wasn’t smart. It just couldn’t afford to bail out its banks, so they failed and foreign creditors including the UK and the Netherlands got badly burned, to the tune of $6 billion. While Iceland has suffered,…

Read More

Weak Growth, Low Rates

05/23/2011

The output gap, the difference between what GDP is and what it could be, at 5.2% has never been this large this late in an economic recovery. Usually the gap has completely disappeared by the 2nd anniversary of the expansion…

Read More

Democracy and Perishability

05/22/2011

Trade predates agriculture. The advent of ag sped up the trend towards specialization in temperate zones, but not in the tropics. Why, perishability. If you can store what you make (cereals) you trade it. And trade leads to cities, stable…

Read More

Bogus Budget Cut

05/19/2011

Remember the $39 billion spending cut pushed by Republicans in April that averted a gov’t shutdown? It was all smoke and mirrors! Instead of cutting outlays the CBO now figures it will actually increase spending by $3.2 billion. The cuts…

Read More

Aggregate Demand MIA

05/18/2011

Major averages have hit post-recovery highs aided and abetted by fattening margins provide by massive excess labor and the decline in unit labor costs that go along with that as well as the torque from a vibrant overseas economy and…

Read More

Consumer Sediment

05/17/2011

The good: University of Michigan consumer sentiment index (a nat’l index) improved more than forecast in May. It’s at 72.4 up from 69.8 in April. The Bad: Economist had predicted 70. The Ugly: This reading is below the avg of…

Read More

Bulls and Bears Battle

05/16/2011

Week of 5/9/11 data recap: Retail sales were weak beneath the surface with 60% of the strength in April sales coming from higher prices for gasoline and food; looking closely at the Producer Price Index there is still minimal evidence…

Read More

Expensive “Lady Blunt”

05/13/2011

The “Lady Blunt” a 1721 violin built by Stradivari sold at auction for 200K in ‘71. Nippon Music paid $10 million for it in ’08 and is auctioning it off on 6/20 with proceeds benefiting victims of Japan’s quake and…

Read More

High Finance Onions?

05/12/2011

In ‘58 Cong banned the trading of futures contracts on onions! Growers lobbied a MI Congressman named Gerald Ford to push the law hoping it would reduce volatility. Since then onion price volatility has made swings in oil and corn…

Read More

Student Defaults Rising

05/11/2011

The default rate for all federal student loans rose to 13.8% from 11.8% for students beginning repayment in FY ‘08 compared with ‘07 according to the DOE. For public schools, the default rate is 10.8% while it is only 7.6%…

Read More

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives