How much does the Internet contribute to our economic life? A lot, yes. But what if we tried to put a number on it?
We love numbers, right? We imagine that we can slice and dice the world and look at everything on a spreadsheet, click a button and make it a pie chart, and click another button and put the results in colorful bars.
Well, that works for a single sector of the economy, like butter or shoes. We can add that up and compare it to other sectors. But what ab... (more)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went back to the classroom to educate young minds at George Washington University about the history and role of central banks and the Federal Reserve in particular.
On the topic of financial panics, Bernanke asks the students if they’ve seen the movie “A Wonderful Life.” Not as many students had seen the movie as he had hoped. Bank panics are a serious problem Bernanke explains. Banks borrow short and ... (more)
The Supreme Court is going to consider the constitutionality of ObamaCare in the coming weeks, but the government takeover of healthcare didn’t start with the current president, but with Harry Truman decades ago.
We’re told the nation’s health care needs fixed: That the free market isn’t providing for this vital service adequately. However, America’s healthcare hasn’t been left to the free market since World War II. The president has promised that more government will make heal... (more)
Earlier this month the Labor Department reported that 227,000 new jobs were added to the economy in February, marking the third consecutive month of positive jobs growth. Many observers took the news as evidence that the recovery has taken hold in earnest, helping send the S&P 500 index to the highest level in nearly five years. However the very same day the Commerce Department reported that, after surging for much of the last year, the U.S. trade deficit increased to $52.6 billion for January, ... (more)
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke returned to his roots as a university professor today, seeking to explain and justify the existence of the central bank ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding next year.
Bernanke told 30 students at George Washington University that central banks play a key role in the modern monetary system as guardians of economic and financial stability.
His hour-long lecture, followed by questions from the students, is the first o... (more)
US Chamber of Commerce building Recently, the US Chamber of Commerce claimed through its spokesman that it supports candidates who support "free enterprise policies that will fuel America's economic recovery." The US Chamber of Commerce has a rather idiosyncratic definition of free-enterprise policies.
The chamber was a major supporter of SOPA, which gives governments the ability to seize private property without a... (more)
The "Billionaire Hedge Fund Index" tracks which stocks are owned by the most billionaires, number eight on the list is GLD, that's the SPDR Gold Trust's ETF, it is owned by 9 out of 39 billionaires tracked.
Number one is Apple, number two Google, and interestingly number three is a natural gas company, El Paso Corporation.
I came up with an ultra-perfect top-secret method for beating the stock market. I saw it right there on the screen after thirty straight hours of computer programming. My heart was beating fast. I was sweating when I went to sleep. I could only sleep for about two or three hours and I had to get up and check my work. I added up all the money I was going to make. I would never work again!
It didn't work.
Every day I get a message that sounds something like this. "Ca... (more)
On Thursday (March 15), CNNMoney reports, "the long-awaited free-trade agreement between the United States and South Korea … went into effect," representing "the biggest U.S. trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement began in 1994." One might assume that a libertarian, promoting individual rights and free markets, would (or should) favor such a deal as the practical implementation of libertari... (more)
Marc Faber: The Perils of Money Printing's Unintended Consequences
Marc Faber does not mince words. He believes the money printing policies of the Federal Reserve and its sister central banks around the globe have put the world's currencies on an inexorable, accelerating inflationary down slope.
The dangers of money printing are many in his eyes. But in particular, he worries about the unintended consequences it subjects the populace to. Beyond curr... (more)
The Justice Department on Thursday issued a 60-day stay of execution for hundreds of thousands of public pools which had been required to install ramps and wheelchair lifts by today or else face lawsuits over violating disability laws.
President Obama in 2010 dramatically expanded the rules for access under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the new regulations mean that every publicly accessible pool — from municipal facilities to hotels — must have two "accessible means of... (more)
Few things in life are as satisfying as a transformative and implausible reversal of history that carries with it stern justice for wrongdoing and sweet victory for the side of truth and human well-being. When it happens, the period in which the wrong persisted without correction fades into memory as a mere parenthesis in the forward trajectory of time — and this is true whether the period of error lasted a year or 10 or a hundred.
A beautiful case in point: the re-emergence of la... (more)
At over a million digital listens, “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” is This American Life’s most popular episode. That’s no small feat for one of the world’s most well-known radio shows. When it aired, it set off yet another firestorm of controversy regarding the ethics of Apple (and other large tech companies) using cheap Chinese labor through major manufacturers like Foxconn. Mr Daisey, who has been touring for years with a monologue about his visit to the factories there and the moral i... (more)
The story from The Daily swept through the Internet with blazing speed. The report: Criminals around the country are stealing an inordinate number of bottles of Tide laundry detergent. This is not because the criminals plan to go into the laundry business. There is not a "grime wave." It seems that these Tide bottles are functioning as a store of value, even a form of money, within many black markets.
As the story memorably puts it, on the street, Tide is known as "liquid gold." H... (more)
"If it was my contractual obligation, to do everything possible to wreck this economy, what I would do is go back and do everything Ben Bernanke did in the last three years."
The New York Times reports of more financial woes for municipalities. Suffolk County will run $530 million into the red over the next three years and has declared a financial emergency. The New York state oversight board already seized financial control of Suffolk’s Long Island neighbor, Nassau County.
The Federal Reserve ran another "stress test" on major financial institutions and has determined that 15 of the 19 tested are safe, even in the most extreme circumstances: an unemployment rate of 13%, a 50% decline in stock prices, and a further 21% decline in housing prices. The problem is that the most important factor that will determine these banks' long-term viability was purposefully overlooked - interest rates.
In the wake of the Credit Crunch, the Fed solved the problem o... (more)
A company whose value is dependent on the continued success of two key products, now has a larger market capitalization (at $542 billion), than the entire US retail sector (as defined by the S&P 500). Little to add here.
