News like this makes me shake my head in bewilderment. Or maybe not… maybe it just confirms my presumption that market participants are not always particularly rational. SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Shares of Google Inc. dropped sharply Tuesday but recovered some of the earlier losses prompted by the chief financial officer’s comment that the company’s […]
Warning: This post is probably more for my own benefit than for anyone else’s edification. If you’re tired of arguing about trade, then skip this post. And if you’re not interested in reading about some rather technical economic research, then skip this post. On the other hand, if you’ve always wanted to see examples of […]
This morning the BEA released its second estimate of fourth quarter GDP. The estimate for GDP growth was revised up substantially, but the level was still very low, and the upward revision was no more than most observers had hoped for. Comparing to the BEA’s first estimate: The preliminary estimate of the fourth-quarter increase in […]
The Census Bureau report released this morning showed January New Home Sale were still strong. In fact, on a Not Seasonally Adjusted basis, January 2006 was the strongest January on record. Following is a graph of NSA January New Home Sales showing 2006 is a new record. Click on graph for larger image. The strong […]
Via CalculatedRisk comes Reassessing Hard Landing Risks written by David A. Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch. I’m calling David a bear as he is not buying all the Pollyanna stories as to how great the U.S. economy is doing. There is a lot of material here but I especially liked his comments about the labor market: […]
William Buckley says It Didn’t Work: One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what […]
Bill Polley responds to my critique of Michael Darda: China made a decision over a decade ago to fix its currency to the dollar. This was before the massive explosion of growth and before the Asian financial crisis. They have managed one of the most successful hard pegs in the region, and it probably saved […]
There is wee bit in Michael Darda’s latest that I might agree with – but given the following, I have two questions for him and the rest of NRO Financial: If Congress doesn’t act to extend the 2003 tax cuts, tax rates on capital will rise, which would depress after-tax rates of return to capital […]
Perhaps you may recall the greymail tactics of Scooter Libby’s defense team. When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald called the defense team on these tactics, the defense attorneys accused Mr. Fitzgerald of lying and were insulted by the allegation – even though the allegation is clearly true. The latest tactic from the defense team seems to […]
I just came across an interesting paper by David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald entitled “Happiness and the Human Development Index: The Paradox of Australia“. The paper raises a question of crucial importance to economists who think about development and growth issues: what measures should we use to gauge whether any particular group of people are […]