Posts Tagged ‘funniest economist’
Kiev-Kremlin Conundrum
The Ukrainians want to economically escape from Russia and without controlling Ukraine, Russia is no empire. Thus keeping Ukraine from Russia must be a strategic western objective. Making it easy, Ukrainian finances are a shambles and a balance-of-payments crisis will soon hit absent billions in loans to repay foreign-currency-denominated bondscoming due. Rather than haggling over…
Read MoreYield of Dreams
The recent budget deal which reduces fiscal drag, along with improving employment numbers, the likelihood of faster growth in 2014 and the fact that long-term rates have adjusted to the idea that tapering will soon start, makes me peg the probability of a December taper at 25%, up from zero last month. The Fed will…
Read MoreCongressional Compromise
The budget deal Senator Murray (D-WA) and Representative Ryan (R-WI) have crafted will reduce sequestration effects by 37% and allow agencies to determine how to implement the remaining 63%. The new policies are evenly split between fees and spending cuts and keep government running through fall 2015. The overall $45 billion rise in government spending…
Read MoreLabor Pains
With GDP growth at 2% for the past several years and expected through Q1/14, the recent employment rise from about 150,000 net new jobs/month in summer to about 200,000/month since seems odd. It’s because firms are finally hiring because labor productivity growth has been close to zero for the past 15 months, down from 3.3%…
Read MoreName Game
The Friday File: In 1952, James was the most popular boys name given to 4.4% of all boys, while Linda was name number one for girls with 3.5% receiving it. By 2012, Jacob was tops but claimed only 0.94% of boys, while Sophia was most popular with just 1.2% of newborn girls. I think a…
Read MoreRocky Revision
While Q3 GDP was revised up from 2.8% to 3.6%, hold the applause. Inventory growth was raised by 0.85%, essentially responsible for the entire increase. Worse, household spending was revised down from a growth rate of 1.5% to 1.4%, and net exports were revised down by 0.24%. Despite the great headline, this was a weak…
Read MoreBitcoin Bonanza
By combining reliability, anonymity, file-sharing technology and peer-to-peer consensus to confirm transactions, Bitcoin is an amazing technology that fulfills a market need. I fully expect other copycat institutions with deeper pockets and more credibility to eventually follow. While Bitcoin has a nefarious side, that’s no reason for it to be stopped. As for investing in…
Read MoreMulitfamily Mojo
A large chunk of the credit for our improving economy belongs to multifamily construction. Since hitting a trough of 111,000 multifamily permits in October 2009, multifamily activity has quickly recovered. This past October there were 418,000 multifamily permits pulled, an amazing 73% of the permits pulled in March 2006, the single best month since the…
Read MoreProfit Perspective
When the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 16,220, it will hit a new inflation-adjusted all-time high. While the Dow is up 37% since its tech bubble high of 11,722.98 of 1/14/00, the CPI is up 38%. Of course, back in 2000 corporate profits were $482 billion while in 2012 corporate profits were almost $1.8 trillion.…
Read MoreBudget Busting Bird
While the cost of Thanksgiving dinner has increased by 12.81% since 2010, excluding the turkey the cost has risen by just 5.7% because the cost of the bird alone has risen by 23% and it represents almost half of the cost of Thanksgiving dinner. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, hopefully graced by the presence of the…
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