Posts Tagged ‘funniest economist’
Costly Cattle
After years of drought, the US cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in decades. To that add an unexpected drop in feed prices resulting in farmers holding on to females to breed animals and rebuild herds, and you have bullish prices. Cattle futures are up 10% this year, retail beef hit a record $5.01/pound…
Read MoreTrivial Tax Talk
While many praise Representative Camp (R-MI) for proposing a pro-growth yet DOA overhaul of the nation’s tax system, the fact that he is termed out as Chairman of the tax writing Ways and Means (W&M) Committee in 1/15 and that his partner, former Senator Max Baucus, is now the powerless Ambassador to China, suggests Camp…
Read MoreBox Office Oscar
The Friday File: Academy Awards boost ticket sales two ways; the “nomination effect” and the “winner effect”. While Ocsar winners sell more tickets than movies that are only nominated, most of the difference occurs before the awards ceremonies. Thus ticket sales between the nominations and the awards can be used to predict winners. That said,…
Read MorePayrolls & Exports
In 2011, monthly payroll growth averaged 174,000 in 2012 it averaged 186,000 and 194,000 last year. This year I expect employment to be at least as strong as in 2013. Moreover, I’m only mildly concerned about weakness in emerging markets because US exports to all developing economies equal 4.5% of GDP. Thus, if exports to…
Read MoreIncome Inequality
To understand why income and wealth are becoming increasingly unequal in America, look no further than Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp for $19 billion! That’s 40% more than the value of the median firm in the S%P 500. If shared equally across all 55 WhatsApp employees it works out to $350 million each! While creating vast…
Read MoreHousing Hurting
Recent housing data has been weak. It’s because the weather has been harsh, there’s a lack of developable lots and skilled workers, limited inventory, reduced investor buying, higher mortgage rates, fewer low-priced distressed sales and higher house prices. Despite these headwinds, new sales were up 16% and starts were up 18% in 2013. In 2014,…
Read MoreDeclining Dollars
While raising the minimum wage to $10.10 from the current $7.25 is estimated to eliminate 500,000 jobs and raise 900,000 workers out of poverty, that’s not the end of the story. Those numbers will steadily decline as inflation eats away at the value of the minimum wage increase. Assuming inflation of 2%/year, by 2021 the…
Read MoreOlympic Outcome
With the Olympics almost over, among winter powerhouse countries the one that most positively surprised was Netherlands with 22 medals, double what was expected. Conversely, Austria, Germany, Norway and South Korea all won about 40% fewer medals than expected. Most amazing, Netherlands brought just 41 athletes and won 22 medals, a ridiculous half a medal/participant!…
Read MoreDelicate China
Should China suffer a hard economic landing, trade with its neighbors would fall along with commodity prices, hurting Australia, Brazil, Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Singapore and Hong Kong would also suffer due to relatively large financial links with China, but no other countries would be materially affected as China controls capital flows carefully.…
Read MoreDelightful Debt
After steadily declining for 19 straight quarters, total consumer debt increased in the past two quarters for the first time since 2008! Household debt grew by $130 billion in Q3 and by $241 billion in Q4. However, overall consumer debt remains 9.1% below its all-time high of $12.68 trillion in Q3 2008. Household deleveraging is…
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