Tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics will announce the unemployment rate for September. While economists’ projections ahead of the announcement suggest it’s going up, the bigger story is how government intervention in the private economy drives what should be a naturally low number much higher.
For background, in his 1978 classic, The Way The World Works, the late Jude Wanniski addressed per capita income within countries. While income per individual in the U.S. dwarfed that within India, Wanniski argued that India’s low number was almost certainly unreliable given the…
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WASHINGTON–Congressional Democratic leaders assert that several major pieces of pending legislation will create jobs. In fact, the bills are more likely to increase unemployment, already close to 10% and probably heading up. Tomorrow’s Labor Department report on employment in September may tell us more. The “Big Three,” touchstones of a Democratic agenda rooted in the belief that more government equals progress, are the “cap and trade” bill to reduce greenhouse gases, the House and Senate health-care reform bills, and the Employee Free Choice Act. All would, if…
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Because of the recession, almost all of America’s richest citizens are less wealthy this year, Forbes’ annual report finds.
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Mary Spio has been a server at McDonald’s and an aerospace engineer at Boeing. She holds one of the patents that make it possible to send movies to theaters digitally (no. 7,065,355, relating to “very high data rate satellite transmission”). She also founded a successful singles magazine called One2One Living and currently runs Gen2Media, an Internet-oriented video production and distribution company.
Now Spio is bringing her talents to Xbox Live. About 17 million people subscribe to Microsoft’s online entertainment service, and a new one signs up every five seconds. But they still come mainly for gaming; the media offerings are mostly network fare—not exactly in the strike zone for Xbox users. “They’re not watching American Idol or America’s Got Talent,” Spio says. “They’re playing Rock Band.” What these kids need, she says, is customized content.
So she’s planning a show called The Verge, a cross between—of course—America’s Got Talent and Rock Band. Independent artists will produce their own music and submit it via e360live.com. Viewers and a panel of industry professionals will then pick 20 entrants to be featured on Xbox Live, and subscribers can vote on their favorites. Spio’s production team will shoot footage and gather backstories on the 20 finalists, to be woven into weekly programs leading up to the finale this winter. “This is the Guitar Hero generation,” Spio says. “We want to make shows that match their taste.” Sure, it’s harder than selling Big Macs—but probably easier than building rockets.
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It’s old news that news consumers shield themselves from pesky dissenting viewpoints by patronizing only those outlets that present a comfortably conforming world view. The web and iPhone service “Newsy” hopes to help remedy the situation by creating short, original video clips with their own reporters highlighting how various sources reported the same news item.
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Arguments for a ‘V’-shaped recovery for the economy and the stock market are flawed, says David Levy, President of the Levy Forecasting Center. The economy “can’t support asset values at anywhere near where they used to be, even with these zero inter
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“The deeper the slump, the zippier the recovery,” Jim Grant declared in a recent WSJ op-ed, stunning many on Wall Street as the longtime bear joined the growing crowd forecasting a V-shaped recovery.But the optimists are wrong, says David Levy,
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Bulls are beside themselves about the recent performance of the Case Shiller
house-price index: Prices have risen for three straight months! This
happy (if short) string of data has given rise to the widespread belief that the
housing bust is
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From The Business Insider, Sept. 30, 2009: Houses prices, like everything else, are a function of supply and demand.
The inventory (supply) of houses on the market has dropped
significantly in recent months, fueling hope that the housing bust is
over a
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The stock market’s crash has revealed the US retirement system’s holes with painful clarity — and middle-class Americans may be forced to make some big adjustments.
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Close your wallet — your money’s no good here. Check out these 30 valuable goods and services that won’t cost you a penny.
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Benjamin Franklin observed that lending money to a man of good character could pay dividends for society if the borrower found success in life, because then he was more apt to help others the way Franklin had helped him, thus creating a virtuous chain of future lending.
But the opposite is also true, that the influence of money lent unwisely to the undeserving can reverberate for years. During the housing bubble, for instance, many borrowers eager to cash in on the real estate boom obtained mortgages under dubious circumstances. Some lied about their income levels, past credit history or…
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It pays to listen to Liz Ann Sonders. The chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab has been on the right side of the economy and market since the autumn of 2006, when she warned about the ripple effects of a housing collapse. She followed this prescient call up a year later when she warned about an imminent recession. As history shows, most people were caught flat-footed by the severity of the downturn. Then, earlier this year, she parted ways once again with the consensus crowd and became increasingly optimistic about the economy and the market.
Sonders currently chairs Schwab’s…
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Sony announces a partnership with Smashwords and Author Solutions which will allow any author to upload a book to their eBook Store, giving self-published writers unprecedented access to the ubiquitous point-of-sale marketplace that is the e-reader.
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Buoyed by a resurgent market, the once dormant M&A market is alive and well. The new week ushered in more than $30 billion in announced deals. That brings the total value of deals announced this month to nearly $200 billion, up from $125 b
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