Posts Tagged ‘Graphsandlaughs.net’
Icelandic Luck
The gov’t of Iceland wasn’t smart. It just couldn’t afford to bail out its banks, so they failed and foreign creditors including the UK and the Netherlands got badly burned, to the tune of $6 billion. While Iceland has suffered, their economic performance has been fabulous compared to Greece, Ireland or Portugal. The lesson, bailing…
Read MoreWeak Growth, Low Rates
The output gap, the difference between what GDP is and what it could be, at 5.2% has never been this large this late in an economic recovery. Usually the gap has completely disappeared by the 2nd anniversary of the expansion which is why interest rates usually rise at that point. And, this is precisely why…
Read MoreDemocracy and Perishability
Trade predates agriculture. The advent of ag sped up the trend towards specialization in temperate zones, but not in the tropics. Why, perishability. If you can store what you make (cereals) you trade it. And trade leads to cities, stable gov’t, and a tilt towards democracy. But tropical produce (bananas) was traditionally hard to store…
Read MoreBogus Budget Cut
Remember the $39 billion spending cut pushed by Republicans in April that averted a gov’t shutdown? It was all smoke and mirrors! Instead of cutting outlays the CBO now figures it will actually increase spending by $3.2 billion. The cuts were mostly phony like cancelling budget authorization for programs that weren’t actually going to get…
Read MoreAggregate Demand MIA
Major averages have hit post-recovery highs aided and abetted by fattening margins provide by massive excess labor and the decline in unit labor costs that go along with that as well as the torque from a vibrant overseas economy and the currency translation effects of the ever weakening dollar. But, it really has nothing to…
Read MoreConsumer Sediment
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 73.9 that we see in RECESSIONS and light years away from the 90 avg during…
Read MoreBulls and Bears Battle
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 of any pass-through inflation from the crude stage to the final product which means core…
Read MoreExpensive “Lady Blunt”
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 tsunami. The instrument is so valued because so few have played it. The original varnish…
Read MoreStudent Defaults Rising
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% for private schools. For-profit colleges have the highest default rate at a whopping 25%! Can…
Read MoreReturn to Drachma
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 on its foreign debt. The economy shank a bit but has been great since. In…
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