Posts Tagged ‘eisenberg and economics’
Changing Faces
By 2018, non-Hispanic whites under 18 will be less than 50% of the population under 18, with Hispanics, Asians and blacks collectively being the majority. By 2043, more than half the entire US population will be Hispanic, Asian or black and by 2060, more than half of the population over 65 will be Hispanic, Asian…
Read MoreFurlough Farce
With federal workers averaging $108,500/year in salary and benefits, if all 820,000 furloughed federal workers never came back, the total savings to the Treasury would be $90 billion/year. In a budget of roughly $3.5 trillion, that’s just 2.6% of all spending. Even as a percentage of the $642 billion FY13 deficit, a reduction of $90…
Read MoreLower Limits
While Capitol Hill talks about housing finance reform, Fannie and Freddie’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is doing something. They have already repeatedly raised the guarantee fee borrowers pay to insure their mortgages are paid off should they default. Moreover, come 1/14 conforming loan limits for Fannie and Freddie mortgages may be reduced. These…
Read MorePetroleum Pricing
In a sign domestic oil prices are expected to fall in the future, the price of futures contracts on West Texas Intermediate oil are cheaper the further into the future the settlement date. Futures prices are usually higher than current prices because futures prices must include storage, carrying costs and more. Reasons for this inversion…
Read MoreLoathsome Lawmakers
After excluding 590,000 postal employees and 1.4 million active military personnel, that leaves 2.15 million civilian non-defense federal workers. Should the government close, 40% of them, or 860,000, would stay home as they are non-essential. A one month shutdown would probably knock 1% off GDP and a two month shutdown would probably put us back…
Read MorePolitical Pay
The Friday File: To focus Congress on GDP growth, give members incentive pay. Pay them a base of $60,000 (median income) and incentive pay that rises with GDP. No bonus is paid until GDP growth hits 2%. Between 2%-3% they get a 30% bonus, from 3%-4% a 75% bonus, from 4%-5% a 200% bonus and…
Read MoreBig Bucks
In 2012, the top 10% (those with incomes above $114,000) collected 50.4% of all pre-tax income, the highest on record and up from 33% in 1977. Most of the gain was because the top 1%, those with incomes above $394,000, saw their income share rise from 8.5% in 1977 to 22.5% today. The share of…
Read MoreFed Head Fiasco
The biggest loser in the current Fed Chairman Sweepstakes is the Fed. Simply considering Summers for the head Fed job politicizes a job that should be non-partisan. Arthur Burns, appointed by Nixon in 1970, was the last Chairman that was closely identified with one political party and he was a disaster. All evidence overwhelmingly shows…
Read MoreOily Business
Crude oil prices are up 6% since Syria took center stage on 8/21/13. They had already risen 15% in the prior four months due to rising demand and a 2.7 million barrels/day (bbl/d) reduction in supply in August. But traditionally, demand falls by 2.4 million bbl/d in Sept/Oct, reducing world demand to 75.9 million bbl/d.…
Read MoreLots of Labor
The best news from the August employment report was that private payroll hours jumped 0.3%. While that seems small, had employers kept hours worked unchanged and hired more workers to do the added work, payrolls would have risen by 572,000 not 172,000. Moreover, average manufacturing worker overtime is 4.4 hours/week. The last time it was…
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