Recession Odds Fall On Intrade
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Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
TORONTO, April 28 (UPI) -- The number of strippers and strip clubs in Toronto is declining, with former dancers blaming the Internet for putting them out of work.
Inflation: Food
NPR: In this broadcast we talk to a bunch of American-born Indians and their local friends who discuss what it's like to come "home" and what it's like to be invaded by Americans who want to rediscover their "Indian-ness". The locals have a nickname for these Americans —they call them "ABCDs." That's an acronym for American-Born Confused Desis. Desi is slang for an Indian guy or gal, and the term basically means kids from America who return a little mixed-up about who they are.
"Freer Trade Could Fill the World’s Rice Bowl," by Tyler Cowen in The NY Times
The government takes over 40 cents a gallon in taxes for gasoline, far more than the profit per gallon made by oil refiners like Exxon. And the government doesn’t make any gas for you.
Two big, very noticeable differences between Russia and the USA:
John McCain sure sounds like a tax rate-cutting fiscal conservative. His tax proposals, detailed in this speech last week, seem to extend the Reagan-Bush legacy of lower marginal rates across the board, and special emphasis on supply-side incentives (see various tax breaks below). But this article contrasts McCain the candidate with McCain the Senator.
The problem is that the campaign has been far, far more detailed about its tax cuts, which would worsen the deficit, than its spending cuts, which would reduce it. Mr. McCain has proposed the elimination of the alternative minimum tax (at a cost of $60 billion a year), new child tax deductions ($65 billion), a corporate tax cut ($100 billion) and faster write-offs for corporate investments in new equipment ($50 billion to $75 billion).But in academia, Mr. Holtz-Eakin is known for empirical work that questions the productivity of government expenditures. Here is an ungated example.
Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet.
Against the 2003 tax cuts? Think it's a good idea for income taxes to be higher? Well, you don't need to wait for some new tax legislation, or the expiration of the 2003 tax cuts. You, or Hillary, or Obama, can pay higher taxes right now. Jeff Lord explains how here.
RUSSIA TODAY--Works by Russian artists have fetched more than $17 million at Christie's auction house in New York, $5 million more than organizers had been expecting.
The number of Russian billionaires has almost doubled in a year to reach 110, Forbes magazine reported, bolstering the country's reputation for conspicuous wealth.
MP: Bling, bling, it's the new "blingshoviks!" A post from the heart of Russia, in Togliatti, on the Volga River, behind the old "Iron Curtain."
Checking in from the Atlanta airport, on my way to Togliatti, Russia. I will post as I get a chance over the next 10 days during my travels to Russia!!
Bloomberg--International Business Machines, the largest computer-services company in the world, said Wednesday that profit in the first quarter had jumped 26% on strong orders overseas, far exceeding analysts' expectations. IBM has cut its dependence on U.S. clients by expanding in faster-growing countries such as Brazil, Russia and China, where sales climbed 26% last year.
Entrepreneur.com--While income, capital gains, and estate taxes are key concerns, watch out for state taxes. New York State is considering a millionaire's tax—something tried in New Jersey with mixed results.
Media hysteria over the mortgage crisis is almost certainly misleading countless people about prospects for the real economy.
The focus of the gloomy economic news is on a "credit crisis" or "financial crisis." Yet postwar US financial crises have never resulted in economic disaster. Think of the savings & loan (S&L) crisis of 1986-1995 — a period that also saw Black Monday (Oct. 19, 1987), when Dow stocks fell 22.6%. The S&L crisis lasted from 1986 to 1995, and was undoubtedly the worst US financial crisis since World War II (see chart above of bank failures). Yet the real economy grew by 2.9% a year over that period.
Some papers can't get anything right. An April 6 New York Times piece ("Almost as if The Sky Were Falling," on stock prices) claimed that the "focal point for the stock market's difficulties" is that "banks have been reluctant to lend money to one another, or to anyone else."
Investor's Business Daily.
That's the biggest lesson I've learned in 35 years of consumer reporting: The market performs miracles so routinely that we take it for granted. Supermarkets provide 30,000 choices at rock-bottom prices. We take it for granted that when we stick a piece of plastic in a wall, cash will come out; that when we give the same plastic to a stranger, he will rent us a car, and the next month, VISA will have the accounting correct to the penny. By contrast, "experts" in government can't even count the vote accurately.
From the CIA, ranked by country, from #1 China with a $363.3 billion surplus, to #164 U.S. with a -$747.1 billion deficit.
The real issues here are clear. One is having a shrinking minority of citizens pay most of Washington's bills. Social cohesion falls apart. The majority who pay nothing resent those with higher incomes; the minority who pay heavily resent those who don't pay.
~Geoff Colvin, Fortune Senior Editor
(HT: NCPA)
According to a comment on this earlier CD post about Krugman and Don Boudreaux's response, Krugman was referring to the top chart above in the April 12 NY Times article by Floyd Norris "Many More Are Jobless Than Are Unemployed," which claims that "Men in the prime of their working lives are now less likely to have jobs than they were during all but one recession of the last 60 years. Most of them do not qualify as unemployed, but they are nonetheless without jobs."
Norris uses a "jobless rate," or "proportion of people without jobs," which can be calculated as: 1 - Male Employment Ages 25-54/Population. Using employment/population data for men, women and all workers aged 25-54 from the BLS (via Economagic), the "jobless rates" are calculated and displayed in the bottom chart above. The middle chart above shows this calculation for males aged 25-54, which matches the Norris graph at the top.
If Krugman did refer to that article as his source, there are a few problems:
1. Krugman says "the percentage of prime-working-age Americans without jobs is historically high," which is clearly not accurate. It would be more accurate to say that it is close to being historically low (see middle brown line above for "All Workers"). Krugman may have used Norris' data, but then mistakenly discussed the jobless rate for all workers aged 25-54 being high, when he should have been discussing men only aged 25-54.
2. When the data are displayed over a range from 0% to 70% (bottom graph) instead of a more narrow range from 2-16%, it's much clearer that the jobless rate for men aged 25-54 has been relatively stable at about 12% for the last 25 years. Further, the jobless rate for all workers aged 25-54 has been relatively stable at about 20% for the last 25 years, and jobless rate for women has been stable at about 28% for the last 20 years, and is close to an historical low.
Update: After exchanging emails with Norris, he calculated his "jobless rate" by first finding the number of men with jobs aged 25-54 in the household employment survey, and he then compared it to the civilian noninstitutional population for the same age group. Then he subtracted the employment/population ratio from 1 to calculate the "jobless rate." That calculation can be replicated by using the Employment/Population ratio from the BLS, and then subtracting that ratio from 1, see the middle chart above - it replicates Norris' top chart exactly.