Posts Tagged ‘Graphsandlaughs.net’
Shift to Capital Goods
According to the Dept. of Comm. since the recovery began business spending on employees has increased 2%, while spending on equipment and software (E&S) has risen 26%. A spending rebound that divergent has only occurred once–after the ’82 recession. This is happening because E&S prices are down 2.4% since the recovery began while labor costs…
Read MoreStupid Senator Shelby
In April ’10 Obama nominated MIT economist Peter Diamond, to be a Fed governor. Sen Shelby questioned his experience. Moreover, he got all the R’s on the Sen Banking Comm. to vote against confirmation. In Oct ’10 Diamond won the Nobel Prize in economics! In Jan ’11 Obama rightly renominated him yet Shelby prevailed and…
Read MoreCome Fly Away
Ever wonder why airfare from Pittsburgh (Pitt) to Las Vegas (LV) is less than from LV to Pitt? If you fly from Pitt to LV you are going on vacation and you have lots of choices. But if you are going from LV to Pitt you likely have inflexible business or family reasons for travelling…
Read MoreWell Chilled Champagne?
A Singaporean investor set a new record for the world’s most expensive champagne by paying $44,000 for a bottle of 1841 Veuve Cliquot. It was salvaged from a shipwreck 165 feet deep off the Aland Islands located between Sweden and Finland. Experts say the Baltic seabed proved to be an ideal wine cellar with low…
Read MoreNo Jobs, Weak Productivity
Jobs, where are they? The Labor Dept. employment tally came in at 54K well off the 232K in April and 194K in March. While our economy may be entering another “soft patch” the thing is you don’t get 2 of them in the first 2 years of a normal economic recovery! The silver lining, labor…
Read MoreEconomy is Not Fun
The Institute of Supply Management’s Manufacturing Activity Index fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4. This shows the pace of manufacturing activity moderating since the index reached a 7 year high of 61.2 in March. Add to it a decline in Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index from 66 in April to a 6 month low…
Read MoreEducation Revolution
The cost of education is so high, student achievement so dismal and technology and computerized pedagogy sufficiently developed and ubiquitous that the long awaited education revolution is about to begin. If ed moves to an online teaching model students could learn on exercises and evaluations created by the best educators in the world; results would…
Read MoreFood is Expensive
In poor countries people spend much more on food than we do. In the Philippines 47% of income is spent on food. The amount is 45% in India, 40% in Vietnam, 36% in Indonesia, 33% in Thailand, 30% in China, 22% in Singapore, 14% in S. Korea. Here it’s just 8%. Because it’s so high…
Read MoreEconomics of the Indy 500
The Indy 500 is more than a huge financial Memorial Day event. Via trickledown technology it has vastly improved our lives. Turbochargers were 1st used in ’52, rearview mirrors in ’11 and seatbelts after WWII. Wide low-profile tires now used were also perfected there. When Indy cars were 1st outfitted with crash test recorders in…
Read MoreWinners and Losers
Because Quantitative Easing Two (QE2), which is soon ending, forced interest rates down to record lows, stocks and commodities soared as investors’ searched for better returns than those available on Treasuries. US exporters also enjoyed the lift they received from the weak dollar. But, seniors were pounded as their savings have been earning virtually nothing.…
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