Posted in Economy on May 18th, 2012
The most popular post on the Wall Street Journal today is, “Wiping Out $90,000 in Student Loans in 7 Months”. Mihalic’s methods for reducing his costs are creative. He shows a gazelle like fear of debt that is emotionally necessary to paying debt down early and most importantly he is on the road to being [...]
Posted in Economy on May 16th, 2012
Here is a percentage chart I did of Non-Farm Payroll Job Growth since 2010 using FRED data. This is seasonally adjusted data they get from the BLS. The idea of this chart is to see the job creation performance in Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana compared to the US. Ohio and Indiana led the pack [...]
Posted in Economy on May 15th, 2012
Everyone seems to be talking about state budgets and governors performance. I guess Menzie started things out with this post. Joe Wiesenthal followed up with this post. Although the job creation performance of Governor Walker in Wisconsin and Governor Kasich in Ohio are not resounding successes they are not complete failures either. In a recent [...]
Posted in Economy on May 14th, 2012
Here are the two highlights from this post, A Tale of Two States, or: If They’re Going to Recall Walker, What’ll They Do to Brown?. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s budget deficit has swelled to a projected $16 billion — much larger than had been predicted just months ago — and will force severe cuts [...]
Posted in Economy on May 10th, 2012
Veronique de Rugy started the uproar when she wrote this article, Fiscal Austerity in Europe Doesn’t Mean Large Spending Cuts. The graph everyone is linking to is: This article evidently rubbed the folks at The Economist the wrong way and they piped in with this analysis. Progress through last year is quite striking, given that [...]
Posted in Economy on May 9th, 2012
I was reading this morning about the never ending financial problems in Spain, Greece, and Portugal. These problems along with all of the countries and states who are following down the same path have left everyone in a general state of malaise and Greece’s election of neo-Nazis to their parliament aggravated it. This is an [...]
Posted in Economy, Things that make me go hmm... on May 8th, 2012
I was reading a Buckeye Institute paper advocating “right to work” laws in Ohio and came up with this question. Does a government preference to contract for services at the prevailing union wages necessarily make the government pay more for government services than they would in a “right to work” state? If you believe that [...]
Posted in Economy on May 4th, 2012
I was looking at the recent annual survey of business leaders on ChiefExecutive.net and wondered how the recently elected governors stacked up. The report had one year and five year performance but I was interested in the performance since the most recent election. So I combined the two most recent surveys and got this table. [...]
Posted in Economy on May 1st, 2012
Business Insider is highlighting a paper just published by economists Ken Rogoff, Carmen Reinhart and Vincent Reinhart, called Debt Overhangs: Past and Present. This paper builds upon the research published in the book, This Time It’s Different, which I read and reviewed in January. In this article the authors are saying that countries debt levels [...]
Posted in Constitution 101, Economy on Apr 12th, 2012
The problem I have with the demise of Solyndra is not that our government invested in a company that failed but that the failure is emblematic of a failed decision making process that transcends this investment. Unfortunately for everyone according to the Post politics played a key role the decision making process both in the [...]
On this day, the Virginia Tech community reflects on the vibrant lives of the 32 students and faculty who were tragically taken from us a year ago. Through light, art, and music we pay tribute to each and every person we lost. We gather to honor our friends, colleagues, and family members. We will never forget.