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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…
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…
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…
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…
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%…
Greece must leave the Euro! Argentina (Arg) shows why. From ’98 through ’01 Arg was in a bad recession; the Peso was pegged to the USD. Arg borrowed from the IMF cut spending and the economy tanked. Then Arg defaulted…
The Greek 10-yr gov’t bond yield is 14.7%, 11.5% above comparable German bonds. The 2-yr Greek note is trading at 22.2%, 20.45 % above the German 2-yr note. The cost of insuring Greek sovereign bonds jumped to 1,422 basis points…
Hallelujah! The economy gained 244K jobs in April! Payroll data for Feb and March were also revised up by a combined 46K! Hiring in the private sector posted the largest increase in 5 years and was broad based! Ignore the…
Like the Dow Jones, the art market is also hitting new postcrash highs. Sales peaked in ’07 when Christie’s and Sotheby’s sold $11.3 billion of art. That total fell to $4.8 in ’09 but jumped to $9.8 in ’10. And…
Economists, those killjoys, are busy adding up the cost of the UK royal wedding, and all associated matrimonial festivities. At one end an economist thinks it will knock 1.5% or $15 billion off UK GDP as that equals one day’s…