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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