Full Disclosure

At this website (WHOIS Search database), you can look up the real name of the owner of any website on the Internet.

Via Reason.

Carpe Diem on Kudlow and Company

Carpe Diem got mentioned on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company" for the third night in a row, here is the link to a 9:37 segment from tonight's show; Carpe Diem is mentioned at about 4:30!

FYI, Larry Kudlow's show has recently gone to a prime time slot at 7 p.m. on CNBC, where he "puts the capital back into capitalism" five nights a week, delivering the message that "free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity."

When it comes to a daily discussion, summary and analysis of the most important business, economic and financial news, it doesn't get any better than "Kudlow and Company."

BTW, the entire CNBC schedule, including "Kudlow and Company," is available on Sirius Satellite radio, I listen to Larry's show in my car, since I am never home by 7 p.m.

Indian Stock Market Sets 38 Record Closes in 2007

It was first reported in the Indian press that "A record-breaking performance by India's stock markets has put the industrialist Mukesh Ambani at the top of a list of the world's richest people.

Buoyed by unprecedented inflows from U.S. and European investors, the benchmark Mumbai Sensex stock index topped 20,000 for the first time yesterday – having almost doubled in value in the last two years.

One of the results of the surge in share prices has been a boost for Mr. Ambani's Reliance Industries, a powerhouse of the country's industrial strength and its most valuable firm. Its excellent performance, along with that of two other of the group's companies, saw the net worth of its chairman and managing director rise to $63.2bn yesterday."

Well, they made a small mistake, "The correct figure was more like $50 billion, Reliance said, because it had erroneously included the group’s petrol subsidiary in which Mr Ambani does not have a direct holding."

What is not in dispute is that the Indian stock market has set 38 record closes this year, the BSE Index has surpassed 20,000 in recent trading, and is up by 62% YTD (in USD) and 44% YTD (in rupees). It is also true that Mr. Ambani's personal wealth has increased from $20 billion in February of this year to $50 billion today. Not a bad year at all for Mukesh.

The Economics of Tax Cuts

Pete DuPont in today's WSJ:

Tax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush's 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history (see top chart above). In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006 (see bottom chart above).

These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

Harvesting Cash: A Billion Dollars for Big Sugar

NY Times Editorial Sugar’s Sweetheart Deal:

Of all the government’s farm-support programs, there are few as egregious as the tangle of loans, quotas and import tariffs set up to protect the well-connected club of American sugar producers at the expense of American consumers and farmers in the developing world. This year’s farm bill will add American taxpayers to the list of casualties.

According to estimates from the CBO, supports for sugar in the House bill could cost taxpayers from $750 million to $850 million over the next five years. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn’t have to pay the price.

MP: According to futures trading on the NY Board of Trade (now ICE), the current world price of sugar is about 10 cents per pound, and the price of sugar in the U.S. is about 21 cents per pound or double the world price, due to U.S. government price supports, tariffs and quotas against foreign sugar.

Two-Quarter Economic Growth Strongest in 4 Years

WASHINGTON/WSJ -- The U.S. economy sped up last summer despite a much heavier drag by the housing sector as surging exports and stronger consumer spending helped turn growth surprisingly faster.

Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 3.9% annual rate July through September, the Commerce Department said Wednesday in the first estimate of third-quarter GDP. Second-quarter GDP climbed 3.8% and GDP rose only 0.6% in the first three months of 2007.

Wall Street expected a solid but smaller GDP growth rate. The median estimate of 24 economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires was 3.2% GDP growth during the third quarter.

MP: The solid 3.9% growth in third quarter GDP shows that the U.S. economy remains healthy and continues on a solid expansionary path, as the U.S. economic expansion approaches its 6th anniversary on December 1, 2007.

Consider also that on a two-consecutive-quarter basis, the economic growth hasn't been this strong since 2003 (see shaded areas on the graph above), and growth in the last two quarters is a full percentage point above the average growth of 2.8% during this economic expansion (started December 2001).

Never Get Busted Again: Advice from An Ex-Narc

NPR: A former top narcotics officer, credited with over 800 arrests in eight years, is now selling a DVD ("Never Get Busted Again") that shows marijuana users how to avoid arrest when traveling with a stash.

Cooper plans to make a second DVD called "Never Get Raided Again."

Our Poor Are the Envy of the World's Poor

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer, says George Mason economist Walter Williams:

In 1971, only about 32 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning in their homes. By 2001, 76 percent of poor people had air conditioning. In 1971, only 43 percent of Americans owned a color television; in 2001, 97 percent of poor people owned at least one. In 1971, 1 percent of American homes had a microwave oven; in 2001, 73 percent of poor people had one. Forty-six percent of poor households own their homes. Only about 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities.

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars. Seventy-eight percent of the poor have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception; and one-third have an automatic dishwasher.

Poverty in the United States, in an absolute sense, has virtually disappeared. Today, there's nothing remotely resembling poverty of yesteryear. However, if poverty is defined in the relative sense, the lowest fifth of income-earners, "poverty" will always be with us.

Bangalore Butlers: Person-to-Person Offshoring

The New York Times has an interesting article today in its World Business section about “person-to-person offshoring," (see previous posts on PPO here and here):

The Bangalore butler is the latest development in offshore outsourcing.

The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. Computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs like accounting and billing have to some degree migrated abroad, mainly to India. The Internet, of course, makes it possible, while lower wages in developing nations make outsourcing attractive to corporate America.

The second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services (pictured above is a tutor in Chennai who tutors students in the U.S. for TutorVista).

$60 Oil?

Get ready, it's coming soon. Read about it here at Forbes.

The Global Stock Market Boom: CD on CNBC

A version (top graph) of a Carpe Diem graph based on this post (bottom graph) was featured tonight on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company," the second time in two days that a CD graph was featured on Kudlow's program!

Larry Kudlow: "Let's run this graph of the global stock market boom; I may run this graph every day for the rest of the week - we've set a new record for the world stock market. We had a $14 trillion dollar increase in the last year, and we are up to $60 trillion of capitalization in the global stock market boom. It's because of the global spread of free market capitalism."

Carpe Diem!

Carpe Diem On CNBC's Kudlow and Company

CNBC featured the CD chart above on Larry Kudlow's show last night, based on this CD post.

Close-up of One Subprime Mortgage Deal Gone Bad

Fortune has an excellent article about subprime mortgages, with a detailed analysis of a specific $494 million mortgage-backed security (MBS) issued by Goldman Sachs (GSAMP Trust 2006-S3) in 2006 backed by second-mortgages, probably typical of many other MBSs issued by Goldman Sachs, Merrill-Lynch, and other investment banks. Here are some details of the GSAMP Trust-2006 S3 MBS:

Number of individual second-mortgages in Goldman Sachs' GSAMP Trust 2006-S3 MBS: 8,274

Average equity that the second-mortgage borrowers had in their homes: 0.71%

Average loan-to-value of the issue's borrowers: 99.29%

Percentage of loans originated in California: More than 33%

Percent of loans that were no-documentation or low-documentation: 58%

Number of tranches created in the MBS: 13

Number of tranches that were originally investment-grade: 10 (see chart above)

Percent of the MBS originally rated investment-grade: 68%

Number of tranches currently investment-grade: 3

Number of tranches currently in default: 6

Moody's projection of Moody's projection of loans that would default: 10%

Actual number of loans in default in September 2007: 18%

Read the article for more details, it's fascinating.

Bottom Line: Given that most of the original borrowers had no equity in their homes, the only way this story could have turned out positive is if home prices had continued to appreciate. It's also amazing and surprising that Moody's and and S&P could have rated 68% of the issue investment grade.

Political "Solutions": Socialism on Installment Plan?

From economist Thomas Sowell's op-ed Political "Solutions":

It is remarkable how many political "solutions" today are dealing with problems created by previous political "solutions." Three examples that come to mind immediately are the housing market crisis, the wildfires in southern California, and the water shortages in the west.

Sowell outlines a dangerous pattern:

1. Based on some perceived market failure, a political solution (regulation, subsidies, legislation, tariffs, price controls, property rights restrictions, below-market insurance programs, zoning laws, real estate regulations, etc.) is implemented to solve the "problem."

2. The political solution is inherently distortionary, introduces inefficiencies, and makes the original situation even worse.

3. Additional politcal solutions are then proposed to addresss the growing problems created by the previous political solutions.

Steps 1-3 continue to repeat, leading to the possibility of "socialism on the installment plan," or Hayek's concept of "The Road to Serfdom," because of the "fatal conceit" of policymakers.

What's The Difference Between Wall St. and D.C.?

From the WSJ's editorial today Wall Street Reckoning: A CEO gets "marked to market":

Washington is the one place where no one is being held accountable for the subprime boom and bust. That includes in particular the Federal Reserve, whose far too easy monetary policy created a subsidy for debt that fueled the housing and subprime mortgage excesses. One difference between Wall Street and Washington is that in the latter no one ever admits a mistake, much less suffers for it.

Creative Housing Offer: You Get Your Money Back

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- When the housing market slows, some home sellers drop their asking price. Others give buyers allowances to cover the cost of upgrades or offer help with financing.

A Pittsburgh couple came up with a more creative twist: Whoever buys their four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home would get their money back after the couple dies.

Google Government

FOXNEWS -- Presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama, Rep. Ron Paul, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinch and Mr. John Cox have all embraced the concept of "Google government" by signing the Oath of Presidential Transparency — which is sponsored by a non-partisan coalition led by the Reason Foundation.

By signing the oath they are promising, should they win the presidency in 2008, that they will issue an executive order during their first month in office instructing the entire executive branch to put into practice the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, a Google-like search tool that will allow taxpayers to hop online and see exactly how their tax dollars are being spent on federal contracts, grants and earmarks.

"Every American has the right to know how the government spends their tax dollars, but for too long that information has been largely hidden from public view," notes Sen. Obama. Rep. Paul explains, "When government spends the people’s money, it must be done with utmost possible transparency."

Since these comments reflect such a basic principle of accountability, one is left wondering what Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have against providing taxpayers with details on how well their money is spent.

Via Adam Smith Institute blog.

Harvesting Cash: Urban Farming in Mpls.-St. Paul

From the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune:

Year after year, the federal government sends farm subsidy checks to homes nestled in some of the most expensive neighborhoods in Minneapolis, far from any corn or soybean field.

The urban payments total millions of dollars out of the nearly $1 billion sent to Minnesota farmers in 2005, according to federal records sent to the Star Tribune under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The flow of federal largesse comes thanks to rules that allow landowners -- including some 2,000 in the Twin Cities metro area -- to collect subsidies without farming the land themselves, a legal and increasingly common practice as farm ownership has consolidated over the past few decades.

See map above of urban "farmers" in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area receving farm subsidies.

(HT: JJ Howe)

Global Stock Market Capitalization Sets New Record

Carpe Diem Exclusive!

According to global stock market statistics from the World Federation of Exchanges, the world stock market capitalization reached an all-time record of $59.74 trillion in September 2007 (see graph above, click to enlarge). Comared to last September, world stock markets have increased in value by 31% over the last year, adding $14 trillion of new stock market wealth to the world economy in just the last 12 months.

Over the last five years, almost $40 trillion of stock market wealth has been created, as the global market capitalization rose from about $20 trillion in September of 2002 to almost $60 trillion in September 2007.

In other words, more global wealth (measured by stock market value) was created in the last 5 years ($40 trillion total, or almost $6,000 for every person on the planet) than was created during the thousands of years it took to create the first $35 trillion of stock market value, a level reached in 2000.

Not a bad record for globalization and the significant amount of wealth created in its wake.

Historic Milestone:Indian-American Elected as Gov.

Hindustan Times: The Indian-American community passed another milestone with the election on Saturday of Bobby Jindal to the governorship of Louisiana, the highest US political post any Indian community member has won.

Jindal, 36, will also be the youngest governor in the US and the first non-white to rule Louisiana since the end of the US civil war.

Washington -- Bobby Jindal made history on October 20 when Louisiana voters chose him, the son of Indian immigrants, as their next governor. He is the first Indian American to be elected as a state’s chief executive.

(HT: Sanil Kori)

Carpe Diem Milestone

This CD post was cited on Greg Mankiw's blog over the weekend.

Trading Places: Computers Now Rule in Chicago

Open-outcry pit trading (pictured above) traces its roots to 1848, when the Chicago Board of Trade was founded to trade agricultural futures contracts. But computers and electronic trading are rapidly replacing the 159 year-old tradition.

CHICAGO -- With the consolidation of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the pork belly pit, formerly emblematic of Chicago's open-outcry commodity trading, will close and begin operating exclusively by computer.

The open-outcry pits of other low-volume markets, including cash dairy products and South American bean futures, are also closing. Many traders believe that all commodity markets will inevitably follow suit.

Since 2000, open-outcry has declined from about 90 percent of the trades at the exchanges to roughly 22 percent.

Why Income Inequality Has Increased and Why It Really Doesn't Matter

From "Making Sense of Income Inequality" by Diana Furchtgott-Roth:

1. Percent of bottom quintile households who own their homes free of debt: 30%

2. Percent of top quintile households who own their homes free of debt: 17%

3. Percent of top quintile households who have two or more earners: 75%

4. Percent of bottom quintile households who have multiple earners: 2.6%

5. Average age of those in the lowest income quintile: 54 years

Conclusion #1: One reason that the top quintile of households collects more income is that these households tend to have more full-time earners. Census data show that the top quintile has two income earners per household, whereas the bottom quintile has about one earner for every two households. This means there are more than four times as many full-time workers in the top fifth of the income distribution as there are in the bottom fifth.

Women now earn well over half of all B.A. and M.A. degrees, plus half of all medical and law degrees. With higher numbers of well-educated women in the workforce, marriage often combines two medium-earning single-person households into one high-earning two-person household. Such demographic changes have increased both the number and relative wealth of two-earner couples.

Conclusion #2: The average age of the bottom 20% by income (54 years) suggests that the bottom quintile is actually a mix of: a) very young low-income earners and b) many older retirees who are probably in one the top quintiles by wealth (they own their homes free of debt at almost twice the rate as the top 20% by income) even though they might be quite wealthy and living off accumulated savings and investments.

Conclusion #3: In a dynamic economy like the U.S., people typically move among income groups as they grow older and advance in their careers, so a snapshot view of income statistics does not reflect Americans’ true well-being. Given the reality of income mobility, some low-income households arguably are not poor. They may be students who have yet to enter the workforce and whose earnings will rise, or wealth retirees.

Most people, even Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, Oprah and Howard Stern, start in the lowest income quintile early in their lives and careers, advance into one of the higher qunitiles as they become successful, and drop back to one of the lower quintiles by income later in life, even though they might be in one of the top quintiles by wealth.

Private School Tuition: 1/3 to 1/2 Less Than Publics

Using data from this U.S. 2006 Department of Education report, the graph above (click to enlarge) shows average tuition at private schools (elementary and secondary) vs. average per pupil spending for public schools (elementary and secondary) for the 2003-2004 school year.

Average private school tuition ($6,600) was about 1/3 less than the spending per pupil in public schools ($9,620) in 2003-2004 (the most recent year available), and average Catholic school tuition ($4,254) was less than half of public school spending per student.

Not only was the average private school tuition between 1/3 and 1/2 less than the cost per public school student, the private schools had on average 18% more teachers per 1000 students (72.25 in private schools vs. 61 in public schools) in 2003-2004.

Bottom Line: Private schools can educate students at a lower cost, with more teachers per 1000 students, than the public schools. Reason: Private schools must have significantly fewer non-instructional administrative employees, and therefore significantly lower administrative expenses than their public counterparts.

Bloated, Costly Public School Administrations

A previous post documented the 10X increase in the real cost per public school student from 1929-2007. Why has the cost of public education increased so much in real terms?

One important factor is the increase in the number of public school employees in relation to student enrollment. From the Cato Institute report "Saving Money and Improving Education":

"As shown in the graph above (click to enlarge), student enrollment in public schools grew by 13% between 1979 and 2000. During the same period the total number of school employees grew by 61%, and the number of teachers grew by 35%. Nationally, public schools now have about 1 employee for every 8.1 students, and teachers make up only 40% of total school employees."

From my article "The Educational Octopus":

Consider the following cases of bloated, costly public school administration.

1. The Chicago Board of Education, which has 3,300 employees, is larger than the entire Japanese Ministry of Education.

2. The New York City public schools system has 250 times as many administrators as the New York Catholic school system (6,000 administrators in public school system versus 24 in Catholic school system), even though New York public schools have only four times as many students as the Catholic schools.

3. Administrative costs have exploded since World War II as the number of school districts has declined, from over 100,000 districts in 1945 to fewer than 16,000 in 1980. As school districts have consolidated and grown in size, they have become increasingly bloated--more top-heavy, more bureaucratic, more centralized, less efficient--and more costly to administer.

The Energy-Efficient Economy Can Handle $100 Oil

Oil prices hit a record high of $92 a barrel on Friday and some analysts say oil could climb pass $100 soon. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson said yesterday that the continued rise in oil prices was "not a positive" for the economy, but downplayed its impact, noting both employment and the economy were still growing.

Not long ago, the general consensus would have probably been that $100 oil would certainly cause the economy to go into a recession, and yet we're almost at that point now, and the economy continues on its expansionary path, as Paulson suggests, with output and employment growing at a fairly health pace. What gives?

Perhaps one explanation is that the economy is getting so much more energy efficient all the time, see the graph above of our energy consumption (thousand Btus) per real dollar of GDP from 1949-2006, using these data from the EIA.

Compared to the early 1980s when the real price of oil was about the same as today, we are now about twice as energy efficient, requiring only about 1/2 of the energy consumption per dollar of real GDP in 2006 (8.75 Btus per dollar of real GDP) as in 1980 (15.13 Btus per dollar of real GDP).

Bottom Line: The energy-efficient economy of today is much better able to absorb higher energy prices than in the past. Although high oil prices crippled the economy in the 1970s and early 1980s, and contributed to three serious recessions between 1973-1982, the energy-efficient Energizer Bunny Economy of the 21st Century just keeps humming along.

And You Thought Oil Prices Were High?

(Note: Graph and post have been updated.)

Using these data from the U.S. Department of Education and oil prices from Global Financial Data, the graph above (click to enlarge) shows expenditures per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools from 1929-2007, adjusted for inflation, and oil prices during the same period, also adjusted for inflation. Both series are price indexes set to equal 100 in 1929.

The data for public school spending are only available through the 2001-2002 school year from the Department of Education, and I was unable to find a comparable series through 2007, but I extended the series from 2002 through 2007 by assuming that the trend in spending for education would continue (about a 3% per year real growth rate).

Conclusion #1: Oil prices in real dollars have increased 2.4X since 1929 (the inflation-adjusted price index in the graph above goes from 100 to 240).

Conclusion #2: On the other hand, the average cost of educating a student in U.S. public schools today is about 10X the cost in 1929, measured in real dollars (the inflation-adjusted price index in the graph goes from 100 to 1000).

Conclusion #3: Consider also that the quality of a barrel of oil has probably remained the same since 1929, and we probably can't say that about the quality of public school education over the last 78 years. For example, see this 8th grade exam from 1895; how many high school students could pass this today?

Nissan To Export Low-Cost India-Made Cars to U.S.

(Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co., Japan's third-largest automaker, eventually may export low-cost, Indian-built cars to the U.S. to tap demand in the world's biggest vehicle market.

The autos may sell for less than $5,000, even after modifications to meet U.S. safety and emissions standards, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn told reporters yesterday at the Tokyo Motor Show. The models probably will cost about $3,000 in India and would go on the market there in 2010, Ghosn said.

At a fraction of the $25,000 average for new passenger vehicles in the U.S., the cars may win customers as higher gasoline prices boost sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient models. Nissan is studying plans to build the car with Bajaj Auto Ltd., India's second-biggest motorcycle maker.

Now that's globalization for you: A Japanese car company, headed by a CEO who was born in Brazil, grew up in Lebanon and educated in France, teaming up with an Indian motorcycle company to produce vehicles in India, for sale in the U.S.!

(HT: Sanil Kori)

Meet the New Russian Price Controls, Same As....

Financial Times: Russia is introducing Soviet-style price controls on some basic foods in an effort to prevent spiralling prices from denting the Putin administration’s popularity ahead of parliamentary polls in December.

The country’s biggest food retailers and producers have reached an agreement, expected to be signed with the Russian government on Wednesday, to freeze prices at October 15 levels on selected types of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil until the end of the year.

Drearily predictable consequences of price controls, according to the Streetwise Professor:

Shortages, empty shelves, lines in stores, black markets in foodstuffs. I expect that these developments will lead, in turn, as day follows night, to publicity/propaganda campaigns against “speculators” and “hoarders,” likely accompanied in today’s increasingly shrill and paranoid political environment by some physical attacks on enterprising black marketeers (most likely ethnic minorities.)

In other words, it's "deja vu" all over again in Russia, or "meet the new Soviet-style price controls, same as the old Soviet-style price controls."

Does Learning Economics Make You Happy?

The answer is Yes, according to this economist at the Blue Matter blog, via Marginal Revolution.

Rodrick Flip-Flop, But Econ-Blogs Are Here to Stay

Dani Rodrick on why the best economics blogs might be on their way out.

Dani Rodrick the next day on why the econ-blogosphere is healthy and will keep on going.

Competition and "Capitalized Medicine" Work

Lo and behold, competition works -- even in health care.

The Labor Department recently reported that the inflation rate for prescription drugs dropped to 1% over the past year. That's a 30-year low, well below inflation, and a salve for consumers used to price increases.

It's also no accident. Two big things changed in prescription drugs last year. One is a surge in the use of generics. The other is a fierce retail war among Wal-Mart, Publix and other retail-pharmacy giants, each seeking a bigger share of the market.

The decline in drug prices shows that when things go right in health care -- when competitive markets are allowed to function -- prices respond favorably for consumers, just as they do in other sectors of the economy. So while politicians and pundits in Washington dream up the next grandiose health care reform, smart consumers know that the most effective health care solutions may be right around the corner at their local retailer.

~By Robert Goldberg in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer

MP: More government control and additional regulations won't solve the health care problems nearly as effectively as more competition and less regulation. "Capitalized medicine" is much better than "socialized medicine," and results in lower drug prices and greater access, as this example illustrate.

World's Top 10 Most Liveable Cities

Click here to see Internaional Herald Tribune's list and slide show. There is only one city in the U.S., can you guess which one?

The Economy in Recession? Not in 2007

From columnist David Wessel's column in yesterday's WSJ: "Three-Ingredient Recipe for Recession":

"When we look back next year at this time, it will be clear what caused the recession of 2007-08.

It was basically a triple whammy: Housing prices kept falling, oil prices kept rising and both lenders and borrowers grew more cautious after five years of incaution. The combination was simply too much even for the impressively resilient U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve saw it coming, but couldn't move swiftly enough."

According to the NBER, the national authority on business cycles:

A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in: a) industrial production, b) employment, c) real personal income, and d)wholesale-retail trade sales. A recession involves a substantial decline in output and employment. In the past 6 recessions, industrial production fell by an average of 4.6 percent and employment by 1.1 percent.

Those four monthly economic variables identified by the NBER as the most important recessionary indicators are graphed above (click to enlarge), from 2002- Fall 2007, and would provide no support for the notion that the U.S. economy is headed for recession, at least not yet.

Industrial production, real sales and real income are all growing at a healthy annual rate of 2.5% over the last 5 years, with no sign of slowing down, and employment has been growing about 1.50% over the last 4 years, the average rate for the last 50 years. So the most current economic indicators suggest a healthy economy, expanding at the average rate of an expansionary economy. (I'll update the graph above in another month or two.)

Trading on Intrade.com places odds of a recession this year at 4.5%, rising to 36% in 2008. But for the variables that are most important to the NBER, there is no recession in sight yet. Unless falling housing prices, rising oil prices, and credit tightening start producing adverse effects on employment, output, personal income and retail-wholesale trade, the economic expansion that started in December 2001 will continue uninterrupted into 2008.

Economics of Outsourcing: MN Goes Global

BANGALORE, INDIA -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's trade trip took a welcome turn today, as the governor learned that Indian firm Essar Global has officially closed on its acquisition of Minnesota Steel Industries and will proceed with plans to build a $1.6 billion taconite-to-steel mill on the Iron Range.

News of the historic deal filtered to the trade mission staffers as they toured the massive campus of the software firm Wipro here, in an area known as Electronic City.

Wipro is "considering increasing the number of jobs in Minnesota and perhaps putting a production development or a training center in Minnesota. So we are going to continue to have dialogue with them about that," Pawlenty said. Wipro currently has 1,600 workers in Minnesota, generating about $100 million in annual revenues from work done in the state.

Wipro does sizeable business with several of the companies represented on the trade mission, including 3M, IBM, and Best Buy, as well as Northwest Airlines and Target Corp, Banerjee told the trade delegates.

Bottom Line: Trade works both ways. Outsourcing from the U.S. TO India provides Indian companies with the dollars and resources to invest IN the U.S., like this deal.

"This will be one of the largest investments in the state. If you look at a $1.6 billion investment in Northern Minnesota, this is certainly one of the largest investments in a very long time," Pawlenty said.

It's very likely that without outsourcing TO India over the last decade, this investment of $1.6 billion in MN would have never happened. Lou Dobbs, listen up.

(HT: JJ Howe)

DEA Failed, But Weak $ Raises Price of Cocaine?

REUTERS (May 8, 2007) -- Billions of dollars in aid to Colombia have failed to drive up the price of cocaine on American streets, according to the head of the top U.S. anti-narcotics agency.

Officials in Washington have said crop spraying and military pressure on drug-smuggling guerrillas and paramilitaries would make cocaine more expensive in the United States following a U.S.-backed offensive launched in 2000.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief said that a higher price -- a key indicator of success in the war on drugs -- had failed to sustain itself for long.

According to this report by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), wholesale cocaine prices increased 11% in the U.S. between January and June 2007 from from $20.85 to $23.04 per gram, and retail prices increased 15% from $145.42 to $166.90 per gram of pure cocaine during the same period.

The DEA concludes "Cocaine availability in the United States has fallen significantly, as indicated by an increase in the price per pure gram since December 2006."

Before the DEA takes too much credit for "winning the War on Drugs," and making cocaine less available, it might also consider that the significant decline in the value of the dollar vs. the Colobmian peso might be playing a role in rising dollar prices for cocaine. For example, the graph above indicates that the dollar fell by 27% from the fall of 2006 to the summer of 2007, and by 13% during the first half of 2007, the exact period that the DEA reported a 11-15% decrease in the dollar price of cocaine in the U.S.

Apparently the weak dollar might have done more to raise cocaine prices than the billions of dollars spent by the DEA.

And for an analysis of why rising cocaine prices might actually make the drug problem worse (increased violence, users switching from powder to crack cocaine, or from cocaine to cheaper meth, increased drug trafficking because of higher prices, etc.), not better, read this.

The U.S. Middle-Class is Alive and Well

From "The Myth of Middle-Class Job Loss" in today's WSJ:

The assertion that the American middle-class is disappearing along with manufacturing jobs is, put simply, based on an outdated view of how the economy operates, and is empirically wrong.

Here's the bottom line: For three-quarters of the workforce (women and the top half of male earners), economic growth (since 1979) translated into earnings gains. But for male workers in the bottom half of the earnings distribution, the decline of unionized manufacturing employment has led to the drying up of some middle-class jobs for those with no post-secondary education.

For the clear majority of the workforce, then, the job market has become more welcoming, not less so.

MN Governor Goes Global, Columnist Doesn't Get It

1. NEW DELHI - Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (pictured above) made history today by signing India's first sister-state agreement, tying Minnesota to the Indian state of Haryana, the most prosperous section of the country.

The Minnesota delegation is on the way to Bangalore and will meet with Minnesota companies already doing business in India, such as General Mills, ADC Telecommunications, IBM and 3M.

2. Meanwhile, back in Minnesota, popular StarTribune columnist Nick Coleman isn't quite so global-minded about Minnesota's participation in the global economy, and is actually fretting over 15 new Ford F-150 trucks that were "imported" to Minneapolis from Colorado by Flatiron Constructors, the company building the new I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis. And I'm not making it up, he actually uses the term "imported" in his column today "I-35W Bridge is Local, But New Flatiron Trucks Are Imported."

MP: Actually, Ford F-150 pickup trucks are built in Kansas City, Norfolk, Detroit and Louisville, and would have therefore been "imported" from Missouri, Virginia, Michigan or Kentucky to Colorado, before being "imported" to Minnesota from Colorado.

CSM: Halt the Gold Rush to Corn Fuel

The Christian Science Monitor joins the NYTimes, WSJ, IBD and Rollingstone Magazine and comes out today against corn ethanol, the "state religion":

Corn. There's nothing like eating it right off the cob at a picnic. It's also great as flakes, fritters, or a muffin. And it's feed for livestock. But there's one thing corn should not be: A solution for global warming or a way to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil. To take corn out of cereal bowls and put it into our gas tanks isn't an answer to global warming.

Quote of the Day: Prestige Versus Education

Of the CEOs of the 50 largest American corporations surveyed in 2006, only four had Ivy League degrees. Some -- including Michael Dell of Dell computers and Bill Gates of Microsoft -- had no degree at all.

~Economist Thomas Sowell in today's column "Prestige Versus Education"

India's Global Reach; Its "Carpe Diem" Moment

From Fortune Magazine's article "India's Global Reach":

Once sheltered from overseas competition by a government fearful of foreign domination, Indian companies now are building global empires with impressive speed, ramping up exports, striking cross-border corporate alliances, snapping up firms in the U.S., Europe, and emerging markets, and attracting billions in foreign portfolio capital to India.

India's largest IT-services companies, which count on foreign customers for more than 90% of sales, remain at the vanguard of India's outward expansion. In little more than a decade, firms like Wipro, Infosys Technologies, and Tata Consultancy Services have evolved from niche players handling basic debugging projects for foreign multinationals into giants in their own right, with operations in every major foreign market, tens of thousands of employees, and equity valuations in the tens of billions of dollars.

From the same issue of Fortune, an article "Google Goes To India":

Google's experiment in replicating its Silicon Valley workplace indulgences and luring back the Indian talent that helped fuel the dot-com boom in the U.S. is a deliberate strategy. This is not outsourcing in the usual sense of seeking cheaper labor. Rather, it's a brain drain in reverse.

Google chose Bangalore in 2004 as the site of its first R&D center outside the U.S., says Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who heads Google's Asia operations from the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, in part "because so many Googlers who are Indian want to move back to India and participate in India's growth."

There may be no Chinese or Russians in these offices. But there is a wide range of diversity nonetheless. These Googlers aren't just Indians. They're Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and Jains. As the cream of India's talent crop, they speak English, but they also speak Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, and several more of India's 22 officially recognized languages. "In the U.S., because you live in a fairly segregated society, you have to do something explicit to build diversity," Ram says. "We don't."

MP: It's "Carpe Diem" time in India.

The "Silver Tsunami" of Retiring Baby Boomers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Retired school teacher Kathleen Casey-Kirschling on October 15 became the first ripple in a "silver tsunami" of retiring baby boomers applying for pension benefits that threatens to overwhelm U.S. government finances.

Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on January 1, 1946, and will receive her first Social Security check in February 2008 as the first wave of baby boomers turns 62 next year and becomes eligible for early retirement benefits.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said the agency is bracing for some 80 million Americans to apply for retirement benefits over the next two decades.

The unsustainable pyramid/Ponzi scheme is starting to crumble...

A Lesson in Lower Healthcare Costs from the UK?

Here's something the U.S. can learn from the U.K. about lowering healthcare costs, improving efficiency and increasing access:

Allow pharmacists to dispense certain drugs without a prescription from a physician? The Food and Drug Administration is inviting comment on just such a proposal. The idea is to add a new class of "behind the counter" drugs that consumers could buy after consultation with a pharmacist.

Other countries, including Britain, already use this system to dispense drugs that do not require sophisticated diagnosis and prescription.

Continue reading here.

Inconvenient Truth: Global Warming Saves Lives

Global warming was blamed for 35,000 deaths in Europe's August 2003 heat wave. Cold, however, has caused 25,000 deaths a year recently in England and Wales--47,000 in each winter from 1998 to 2000. In Europe, cold kills more than seven times as many as heat does. Worldwide, moderate warming will, on balance, save more lives than it will cost--by a 9-to-1 ratio in China and India. So, if substantially cutting carbon dioxide reverses warming, that will mean a large net loss of life globally.

~From George Will's Column "An Inconvenient Price"

George Will applies some common sense, solid economic thinking, and cost-benefit analysis to global warming, and concludes that efforts to battle global warming by reducing human greenhouse gas emissions, such as those endorsed by Al Gore, could probably be accomplished, but at what price? Probably at a very costly and inconvenient price far greater than any benefits.

Will concludes "If nations concert to impose antiwarming measures commensurate with the hyperbole about the danger, the damage to global economic growth could cause in this century more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Nobel Peace Prize, indeed."

Masonomics: "Markets Fail. Use Markets."

Arnold Kling describes "Masonomics" (the economic approach of the George Mason University Department of Economics) this way:

At the University of Chicago, economists lean to the right of the economics profession. They are known for saying, in effect, "Markets work well. Use the market."

At MIT and other bastions of mainstream economics, most economists are to the left of center but to the right of the academic community as a whole. These economists are known for saying, in effect, "Markets fail. Use government."

Masonomics says, "Markets fail. Use markets."

I'm down with that.

Meet The New Farm Bill, Same As the Old Farm Bill

From today's Washington Post: "This was the year the antiquated and expensive farm subsidy program was to be reformed. A growing chorus has turned against the $16 billion annual subsidy, and yet the 2007 farm bill is pretty much the same as previous versions."

What's wrong with farm subsidies and who's against them? Here's a list from the Post article:

1.Most of the farm subsidies go to 150,000 big corporate farms rather than the small farmers for whom the program was designed during the Depression, further hastening the death of the small family farm.

2. Major business lobbies, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, have attacked the farm bill because it is blocking a multibillion-dollar global trade deal.

3. International charities oppose farm subsidies in the U.S. because they undermine poor foreign farmers, who can't compete against subsidized American crops.

4. Environmentalists want the program changed because it rewards farmers who are among the nation's biggest water polluters.

5. Parents worried about obese children, and the growing cult of foodies -- from celebrity chefs to urbanites newly addicted to full-flavored tomatoes -- made impassioned pleas for the money to go toward local and organic produce.

6. Surging prices for corn, milk and other commodities have raised farmers' incomes and undercut arguments about the need for this expensive income transfer.

In other words, just about everybody is against farm subsidies in general and the 2007 farm bill in particular.

So who's in favor of farm subsidies? The "Iron Triangle" of: a) rich corporate farmers harvesting cash subsidies and addicted to the lucrative D.C.-style pork, b) the pork-pushing politicians catering to a well-organized special interest group in return for votes and contributions, and c) the bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture whose jobs depend on distibuting the pork to the pork addicts.

And why doesn't this change? It's a perfect example of the "tyranny of the status quo."

Masonomics would explain it this way: "Governments do not face competitive pressure. They are immune from the "creative destruction" of entrepreneurial innovation. In the market, ineffective firms go out of business. In government, ineffective programs develop powerful constituent groups with a stake in their perpetuation."