70 Words

Oil is OK

03/13/2012

West Texas Intermediate crude sells for $106/barrel while North Sea Brent sells for $125. Normally, they are similarly priced. The current gap exists because of a lack of pipeline capacity out of Cushing, OK. (where physical delivery of oil occurs).…

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Helping Can Hurt

03/12/2012

The share of the unemployed out of work six months or longer has been stuck above 40% for two years. Therefore, some states are considering legislation making it illegal for firms to discriminate against the unemployed. This well-intended approach will…

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Bad Seeds

03/09/2012

The Friday File: Opium production in Afghanistan jumped 61% in ’11 to 5,800 metric tons. The farm value is $1.4 billion, 9% of GDP! The street value, which includes profits for the Taliban, refiners, warlords, politicians and cartels, is much…

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Unemployment is not the Story!

03/08/2012

The unemployment rate is falling fast, but for the wrong reasons. In 1/12 the labor force participation rate was 63.7%, the lowest level since ’82 and way below the 66% when the recession began. Had the LFPR rate not fallen,…

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Romney Gets Republican Nod

03/07/2012

Romney will win the Republican nomination. So far, 582 delegates (25% of the 2,286 total) have been awarded. Romney has won 331, or 57%, while Santorum has picked up 139, or 24%. With 1,704 delegates left to award, Santorum must…

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Olympic Stupidity

03/06/2012

The ’12 London Summer Olympics will bring little if any net benefits. Sure, 40K athletes and coaches will come, but regular tourists will stay away, bookings are already down, and 20% of locals plan to be out of town to…

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Inject Some Sanity

03/05/2012

Vaccine shortages; This industry has very high fixed costs to develop a vaccine (labs are costly), high fixed costs to produce a batch (it takes about a year), trivial marginal costs to make an extra dose within a batch (increasing…

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Pig Pen

03/02/2012

The Friday File: McDonald’s is pushing its pork suppliers to stop confining breeding sows, of which there are 5.7 million, in gestation stalls, and instead place them in large pens. While this sounds great, it costs money and studies show…

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Money for Nothing

03/01/2012

In Europe, Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, is flooding banks with a $1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) at 1% in an effort to recapitalize them and maintain liquidity. Many banks are using this money to buy sovereign debt…

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Greek Gamble

02/29/2012

The latest Greek bailout is shaping up as a race between a fast shrinking economy and better access to credit and lower interest payments that hopefully encourage private sector growth. The problem is absent rapid growth in exports and tourism,…

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