Failed economy & oranges

Fiscal cliff

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:56:04 +0200

Fiscal cliff

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/28/the-economics-of-video-games/

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:13:00 +0300

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/28/the-economics-of-video-games/

The Truth About Gold

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:59:44 +0300

The Truth About Gold

a good job was a ticket to the middle class.

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:55:03 +0300

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/files/downloads_and_links/07_milken_greenstone_looney.pdf

Hitched to the locomotive of rapid economic growth, the wages of the typical worker
seemed to go in only one direction: up. From 1950 to 1970, the average earnings of
male workers increased by about 25 percent each decade. And these gains were not
concentrated among some lucky few. Rather, earnings rose for most workers, and almost
every prime-aged male (ages 25-64) worked.

A Giant Among Giants - By Ken Silverstein | Foreign Policy

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:01:05 +0300

A Giant Among Giants - By Ken Silverstein | Foreign Policy:

When Glencore, the world’s biggest commodities brokerage firm, went public in May 2011, the initial public offering (IPO) on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges made headlines for weeks in the Financial Times and the trade-industry press, which devoted endless columns to the company’s astonishing valuation of nearly $60 billion — higher than Boeing or Ford Motor Co. The massive new wealth turned nearly 500 employees into overnight multimillionaires and made billionaires of at least five senior executives, including CEO Ivan Glasenberg. “We are not going to change the way we operate,” vowed Glasenberg, who had started as a lowly coal trader for the Swiss firm nearly three decades earlier and, with the IPO, immediately became one of Europe’s richest men. “Being public will have absolutely no effect on the business.”

Patagonia's Founder Is America's Most Unlikely Business Guru

Sun, 27 May 2012 21:48:14 +0300

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this unexpected role. “I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from those pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline-magazine ads,” he writes in his 2005 autobiography, “Let My People Go Surfing.” “If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.”

Those terms include adhering to what he calls his “MBA” management approach—”management by absence”—which sees him far away from Ventura, sometimes for months at a time, “wear testing” the company’s outdoor gear while climbing or fishing. When he does clock in at the office, his daily uniform is jeans and a Patagonia button-front shirt. He has no computer at his desk, just an Etch A Sketch on which co-workers can leave friendly messages. When he greets employees in the hallways, he inquires about their recent climbing feats and invites them to surf at his house the next time the waves are rolling.

How Much Money You Need To Realistically Recreate The Scrooge...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:34:02 +0300

How Much Money You Need To Realistically Recreate The Scrooge McDuck ‘Gold Coin Swim’
by Matt Powers April 20th, 2012

http://thebillfold.com/2012/04/how-much-money-you-need-to-realistically-recreate-the-scrooge-mcduck-gold-coin-swim/

After executing smart mortgage derivatives and diversifying high yield stocks, cash should start flowing freely, leaving the smart investor with even more questions, like “how do I protect my municipal bonds?” and, “should I invest in a C-Share or blend fund?” and, “how much money do I need to create giant floes of gold in a private vault and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck?”

Barack Obama, Jimmy Fallon & The Roots: Slow Jam The News

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:12:31 +0300

Barack Obama, Jimmy Fallon & The Roots: Slow Jam The News

The 2012 Forbes Fictional 15

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:43:20 +0300

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/04/20/2012-forbes-fictional-15/

It’s a great time to be imaginary. The characters that make up this year’s edition of the Forbes Fictional 15, our annual listing of fiction’s richest, boast an aggregate net worth of $209.5 billion. That’s up a stunning 59% from last year — and it’s enough cash to give $30 to every (real) person on the planet.

Which Megacorps Pay Megataxes? (The Results Will Surprise You)

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:20:51 +0300

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/04/16/which-megacorps-pay-megataxes/

No wonder President Obama loves to bash Big Oil. Thanks to high crude prices, America’s big three oil companies are raking in the profits. Last year ExxonMobil churned out net income of $41 billion, while Chevron netted$27 billion and ConocoPhillips $12.4 billion. With profits like that, these guys couldn’t possibly be paying enough taxes, right? So says the president, who in late March urged Congress to take away their tax breaks, insisting that doing so could bring in $25 billion in additional tax revenue over 10 years. “They can stand with big oil companies, or they can stand with the American people,” the president said.

More Blow for Your Dough

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:43:08 +0300

How did cocaine get so cheap?
By Brian Palmer

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/04/cheap_cocaine_why_are_coke_prices_going_down_.html

In laying out an argument for drug legalization in his Washington Post column Tuesday, George Will notes that the price of cocaine has dropped between 80 and 90 percent over the last three decades. Why has coke gotten so cheap?

Economies of scale. Cocaine prices are indeed much lower than they were in the early 1980s, but that’s mostly because of a precipitous change in the drug market during the Reagan era. Until then, cocaine was a small-time business, with coca leaves’ being processed in the basements of rickety houses in Colombian suburbs. Trafficking was a usually one- or two-man operation. In their early days, even legendary drug kingpins like Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers had to smuggle their cocaine out of the country in their own suitcases. With the surge in demand that began at the end of the 1970s, however, the kingpins built out their empires, modernizing processing, transport, and retail networks, and managed to lower prices by more than 60 percent over the next 10 years.

It took traffickers a little while to ramp up production at first. Within two or three years, many owned small planes that could transport a metric ton of cocaine in a single shipment. (You can’t fit much more than 50 kilograms of cocaine in a suitcase.) By the end of the 1980s, cocaine was traveling on submarines and cargo ships, too. Kingpins owned sprawling processing complexes that employed hundreds of workers and could churn out several tons of cocaine per week. They concocted clever risk-spreading mechanisms. Multiple producers broke their shipment into segments and pooled them together, so that a single interdiction couldn’t deliver a devastating economic blow to any one of them. Escobar offered insurance to smaller traffickers: For a 10 percent fee, he would replace any seized drug shipments. All of these moves drove down the cost of delivering drugs to the market, and the drug lords passed those savings on to the consumer.

Since then, the price has dropped more slowly, down to approximately $140 for a gram of pure cocaine in 2007. (That’s almost 80 percent less than it cost in 1982.) Some of the continued decline is attributable to increased production and softening demand, but a large component likely has to do with changes on the retail end. According to figures compiled by Jonathan P. Caulkins of Carnegie Mellon University and Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, around 33 percent of the price of cocaine went toward compensating smugglers and dealers for the risk of violence in 1990. Gun violence is way down since that time, so dealers likely aren’t demanding the same risk premium. (The recent surge in violence in Mexico, however, may have partially offset this trend on the smuggling side.) Technology has also contributed to the labor savings. Dealers used to have to stand on street corners hoping to make a deal. Today, they arrange their transactions in advance using cellphones. That innovation enables them to make more sales per day, and reduces their exposure to violence and arrest. Another factor is that people who have been arrested a few times for dealing have a hard time finding other work. After 30 years of widespread arrests, incarcerations, and releases, there may be a surplus of labor in the drug industry.

It should be noted that enforcement of drug laws has added substantially to the cost of street drugs, but those increases haven’t been enough to outpace efficiency gains in the industry.

50 Amazing Numbers About Today's Economy

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:52:00 +0300

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/04/05/50-amazing-numbers-about-todays-economy-.aspx

By Morgan Housel | More Articles
April 5, 2012 | Comments (50)

In no particular order, here are 50 things about our economy that blow my mind:

50. The S&P 500 is down 3% from 2000. But a version of the index that holds all 500 companies in equal amounts (rather than skewed by market cap) is up nearly 90%.

49. According to economist Tyler Cowen, “Thirty years ago, college graduates made 40 percent more than high school graduates, but now the gap is about 83 percent.”

48. Of all non-farm jobs created since June 2009, 88% have gone to men. “The share of men saying the economy was improving jumped to 41 percent in March, compared with 26 percent of women,” reports Bloomberg.

47. A record $6 billion will be spent on the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Adjusted for inflation, that’s 60% more than the 2000 elections.

46. In 2010, nearly half of Americans lived in a household that received direct government benefits. That’s up from 37.7% in 1998.

45. Adjusted for inflation, federal tax revenue was the same in 2009 as it was 1997, even though the U.S. population grew by 37 million during that period.

44. In November 2009, the nationwide unemployment was around 10%. But dig into demographics, and the rates are incredibly skewed. The unemployment rate for young, uneducated African-American males was 48.5%. For Caucasian females over age 45 with a college degree, it was 3.7%.

43. About the same number of people was awarded bachelor’s degrees in 2010 as filed for personal bankruptcy (1.6 million).

42. According to The Wall Street Journal, “U.S. refineries are producing more gasoline and diesel than ever. And Americans’ gasoline consumption is at an 11-year-low.”

41. Americans spend an average of 1.8% of their income on alcohol and tobacco. In the U.K., it’s 4.8%.

40. In 2009, 5% of Americans accounted for 50% of all health care costs.

39. As the market was “flat” from 2000 to 2010, S&P 500 companies paid out more than $2 trillion in dividends.

38. The Census Bureau now classifies nearly 1 in 6 Americans as living in poverty.

37. The number of Americans who don’t have health insurance: 49.9 million.

36. The share of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare going to the bottom fifth of households (based on income) has fallen from 54% in 1979 to 36% in 2007, according to Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times.

35. According to Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill, China’s growth creates the equivalent of a new Greece every 90 days.

34. With a drop in jobs came a surge in grad-school aspirations. The number of people taking the LSAT (law school entrance) exam surged 20% from 2008 to 2009.

33. From 2007 to 2009, Sheldon Adelson’s personal net worth fell by $24 billion. That’s about equal to what the federal government spends on agriculture every year. (He’s since made most of it back.)

32. The entire town of Pray, Mont., was listed for sale last month. The asking price is $1.4 million (or what Sheldon Adelson lost every 30 minutes in 2008).

31. A full 17 years after college graduation, Yale economist Lisa Kahn found those who began their careers in tough economic times earned less than those who started their careers when the economy was strong.

30. Americans age 60 and older owe $36 billion in student loans.

29. The average vehicle on the road today is 10.8 years old — an all-time high, and two years older than in 2000.

28. Just five companies, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) , Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) , Cisco, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG ) , and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE ) , now hold nearly one-quarter of all corporate cash, equal to more than a quarter-trillion dollars.

27. In 2011, the federal government took in $2.3 trillion in tax revenue, and spent the exact same amount on military, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone.

26. Auto sales in regions where debt accumulation was highest during the bubble years are down some 40% since 2005. In regions where debt accumulation was the lowest, sales are actually up 30%.

25. According to Pew, for every dollar newspapers make in new digital advertising, they’ve lost $7 from traditional print media.

24. In the S&P 500, 334 companies earned more profit in 2011 than in 2007, when the economy peaked. The median gain is 38%.

23. According to economist Michael Spence, sectors of the economy that have no direct foreign competition added more than 27 million jobs from 1990 to 2008. Those that do added almost none.

22. Capital expenditures among S&P 500 companies set a record in the fourth quarter of 2011.

21. Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX ) is now responsible for about one-third of all Internet bandwidth.

20. The average salary for a Silicon Valley tech worker surpassed $100,000 in 2011.

19. In 2009 and 2010, 93% of the nation’s income growth went to 1% of wage earners, according to economist Emmanuel Saez; 15,600 households captured 37% of all national growth.

18. Growth in health care spending in 2010 was the lowest in half a century.

17. In 2010, President Barack Obama set what looked like an unrealistic goal of doubling U.S. exports by 2015. After growing an average of 16% a year since, the goal is on track to be met ahead of schedule.

16. Good news: 400,000 manufacturing jobs have been added since 2009. Bad news: Manufacturing employment is still down almost 6 million since 2000.

15. Total government employment has shrunk by almost 700,000 since 2009.

14. According to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, the number of prescription drugs issued fell by 1.1% last year, and doctor visits fell 4.7%.

13. We imported 60.3% of our oil in 2005. In 2010, that figure was 49.2%, and will likely drop further as domestic production rises.

12. For the first time since 1949, the U.S. is now a net exporter of fuel products like gasoline and diesel.

11. The period from March 2009 to March 2012 was one of the strongest three-year market rallies in history — stronger, in fact, than the 1996-1999 bull market.

10. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, 30% of companies in 2011 had job openings for six months or longer, but couldn’t find the right person to hire.

9. Adjusted for inflation, the bursting of the housing bubble destroyed wealth equal to half a 1950s America.

8. At 66.9%, the homeownership rate in America is down considerably from the 2004 peak, but is still above the long-term average of 66%.

7. U.S. apartment vacancies are now at a decade low.

6. A 2008 Swedish study found that unemployed people gradually lose the ability to read.

5. Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, ran the numbers and found that as unemployment goes up, the divorce rate goes down.

4. According to the Airline Quality Rating, 2011 was the best year ever for airline industry performance (lost baggage, on-time departures, etc.).

3. The combined assets of Wal-Mart’s (NYSE: WMT ) Walton family is equal to that of the bottom 150 million Americans.

2. As the economy tanked in 2009, the top 25 hedge fund managers collectively earned $25.3 billion. On average, that works out to about $2,000 a minute for each manager.

1. Household debt payments as a percent of income are now the lowest since 1994.

For more on the recession’s effect on the economy, check out my latest ebook, 50 Years in the Making: The Great Recession and Its Aftermath for your iPad, Kindle, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It’s short, packed with information, and costs less than a buck.

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:13:55 +0200

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

— George E. P. Box, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, 1987

http://flowingdata.com/2012/03/22/incorrect/

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France There are...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:05:07 +0200

Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France

There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we’re sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, “it’s the prices, stupid.”

As it’s difficult to get good data on prices, that paper blamed prices largely by eliminating the other possible culprits. They authors considered, for instance, the idea that Americans were simply using more health-care services, but on close inspection, found that Americans don’t see the doctor more often or stay longer in the hospital than residents of other countries. Quite the opposite, actually. We spend less time in the hospital than Germans and see the doctor less often than the Canadians.

“The United States spends more on health care than any of the other OECD countries spend, without providing more services than the other countries do,” they concluded. “This suggests that the difference in spending is mostly attributable to higher prices of goods and services.”

The $1 Billion Girl

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:48:23 +0200

Jessica Simpson is laughing all the way to the fashion bank.

The sun sets extra early one sloppy winter afternoon on the clutch of paparazzi huddled on a midtown sidewalk beside an idling SUV. Big, wet flakes of snow are landing on cameras, heads, shoulders, but the photographers are still there, bouncing up and down against the chill. They’ll keep on bouncing all night if they have to, because inside is Jessica Simpson, and at a certain point, she’s going to have to come out.

But on the fifteenth-floor showroom of the Jessica Simpson Collection, it is warm and bright and Simpson is in no hurry. Everywhere are mannequins in denim cutoffs, platform sandals, crochet tops, as if dressed for some sort of outdoor-music festival in Nashville or Dallas or Baton Rouge. Eight women (including Simpson; her mother, Tina; and her mother’s best friend, Beth, who was Jessica’s first dance teacher back in Richardson, Texas) are clustered around a big square table covered with hats—all sorts of hats. There are beret-style hats and fedora-style hats, and lots of versions of brimmed, military hats in patterns ranging from camouflage to houndstooth to what looks like a felted patchwork quilt. Every single hat is examined as it fits over Simpson’s flossy, long blonde hair, its details scrutinized: Too much brim? Too little? How about this but in mustard yellow here and olive green there? Notes are taken, style numbers read aloud and entered into a laptop computer. And then, every so often, Simpson, her voice still guttural and Texan: “Approved!”

Photo

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:39:59 +0200

itfeelsfeynman: slaytanica: If more company leaders followed...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:18:07 +0200

itfeelsfeynman:

slaytanica:

If more company leaders followed this example of selflessness instead of being so fucking greedy the economy wouldn’t be so shitty. I mean really, just how much money do you really need to have.

I appraud this man. Really.

Video

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:38:00 +0200

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Americaâs Next TARP Model A Bloomberg report reveals that the U.S. government loaned banks $7.7 trillion in secret bailout funds at no interest and then borrowed the money back at interest.

Jeff Miron on Capitalism

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:19:33 +0300

Jeff Miron on Capitalism

The real secret behind Texas' economic boom: Drug trafficking

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:17:33 +0300

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/07/real-secret-behind-texas-economic-boom.html

Brilliant observation, and true: What’s the secret ingredient to Texas’ much-ballyhooed job creation boom that you’ll never hear from Rick Perry on the presidential campaign stump? Drug Trafficking, says Joe Tone at the Dallas Observer’s Unfair Park blog, offering this quote first reported by Tina Rosenberg in New York magazine:

Jack Schumacher, a recently retired Texas-based DEA agent, says that at least half the drug shipments coming from Mexico stop and offload in Texas. The product is repackaged in small units and resold at a considerable markup, with a share of the gross staying in the state. Even some of the money that gets expatriated to Mexico winds up back in Texas, laundered through Mexican currency exchanges. The state’s relative security is the draw. “If you have a few million,” says Schumacher, “would you invest in a war zone or a bank in San Antonio?” The DEA warns that traffickers are cleaning up their proceeds by buying businesses in South Texas. They also spend on guns, warehouses, security guards—and on luxury cars and houses. “In San Antonio, a high-dollar trafficker can buy a $2 million or $3 million place and exist for a long time,” he adds.

Further, adds Rosenberg:

Mexicans in Texas are hardly new, but in recent years it’s middle- and upper-class families in Mexico’s north who have also made the exodus, bringing their savings and businesses with them. While most seem to be fleeing the kidnapping and extortion back home, one observer has a different take: “Some people, including me, suspect that some of these people come with funds from the drug trade,” says Michael Lauderdale, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas.