Posts Tagged ‘Graphsandlaughs’
Of Interest
The interest rate setting Federal Reserve Open Market Committee always includes the seven Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the President of the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) NY. The remaining four members rotate among the Presidents of the other 11 FRBs. For policy purposes, the rotating members don’t matter. Moreover, Governors Fisher, Lacker and…
Read MoreUnintented Consequences
Forcing Congress to obtain health insurance through exchanges is bad policy. Because they get excellent coverage, Congress would push for top-flight exchange healthcare. This would encourage employers to drop their plans because their employees could get great congressional quality subsidized coverage. And, that would raise the cost of the subsidy! Worse, if exchange plans are…
Read MoreScared Debtless
In Q1 2013, total household indebtedness fell to $11.23 trillion, 1% lower than in Q4 2012 and way down from the peak of $12.68 trillion in Q3 2008. Mortgage debt now stands at $7.93 trillion, HELOCs are at $522 billion, student loans are at $986 billion (yikes) and auto, credit card and consumer loans total…
Read MoreGassing Up
Retail sales jumped 0.1% in April and while not great, it beats the 0.5% decline in March! Moreover, it shows that consumers are spending despite the sequester and the payroll tax increase. And a key reason was the huge 3.5% decline in gasoline prices, the largest monthly drop in a decade. If sustained for a…
Read MoreEconomic Models
The Friday File: Female models like Heidi Klum and Bar Rafaeli make millions annually, yet there isn’t even one famous male model. I think this is this because women spend much more on fashion and cosmetics than men. Moreover, they get their purchase ideas from fashion magazines which are full of beautiful women. Thus, the…
Read MoreHouse Work
Part of the reason employment growth is so weak is that despite sizable increases in residential construction spending, increases in construction employment have been MIA. From April 2012 to April 2013, residential construction put-in-place increased from $249 billion to $295 billion, an 18% rise. However, during the same period, the number of residential building employees…
Read MoreWhere’s Daddy?
In 2011, 4.1 million women gave birth, 36% of which were unmarried, up from 31% in 2005. 57% of women without a high-school degree, 49% of women with a high-school diploma, 40% of women with some college and 8.8% of women with a bachelor’s who gave birth were unmarried. States with the highest percentages of…
Read MoreDangerous Debt
The take-away message from the Reinhart-Rogoff error is that research mistakes happen, that higher debt levels are correlated with slower GDP growth, and that there is no debt threshold, 90% or otherwise, above which growth dramatically collapses. Rather, as the debt/GDP ratio rises, growth rates systematically decline. The key unanswered question of the research is…
Read MoreEconomic Gamble
In a hopeful sign for the economy, gross gaming revenues rose 4.8% in 2012 to $37.34 billion, and are now (not accounting for inflation or Native American casinos) just $180 million below the all-time high of $37.52 billion set in 2007. NV led the pack with $10.70 billion spent, NJ was next at $3.32 billion,…
Read MorePool Anyone?
The Friday File: In August, houses with pools sell for about 0.2% more than homes without pools while in May, June and July pools add just 0.1%, half as much. Conversely, from November through March, swimming pools reduce house prices by about 0.15% while in April, September and October pools have no impact. Even at…
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