Here’s Andrew Mason’s refreshing and funny note to Groupon employees after the board dismissed him as CEO: (This is for Groupon employees, but I’m posting it publicly since it will leak anyway) People of Groupon, After four and a half…
From the S&P/Case-Shiller press release for home prices through December, Home Prices Closed Out a Strong 2012 According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices: Data through December 2012, released today by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price…
More on a theme I’ve been writing about regularly. While Americans say that they want to cut government spending generally, Americans — by considerable margins — oppose cuts to specific programs. From the Pew Research Center for the People and…
As more data is becoming available, it’s now clear that Georgia’s economy will be particularly hurt by the sequester.
USA Today’s Services lay out sweeping state-by-state spending cuts suggests that defense cuts will cost Georgia 17,163 jobs, the 5th worst among the states.
In the ongoing debate about the federal budget, there are frequent demands for cuts in entitlements. Ironically, most of those demands come from politicians on the right, while the biggest objections to cuts in Social Security and Medicare typically come…
I’m sure a lot of readers of this blog have been following the strange saga of Maker’s Mark and its “overlords” at Beam Inc. and their decision — followed by a reversal of that decision — to slightly reduce the…
I’ll make a prediction. On March 1, the relatively harsh cuts of the sequester will automatically go into effect. That will spark a huge outcry from citizens across the country who are most immediately affected: folks who live near major…
From one of Calculated Risk’s post last night: I’d like to mention a few key economic themes that I will write more about soon: • Residential investment (RI) has bottomed and is now contributing to economic growth. Since RI is…
From the AJC’s Economy better, but we still drive less by Ariel Hart: A national report released last week adds to a growing body of evidence of something nearly inconceivable to car-bound Atlantans. Not only has driving failed to increase…
Elected officials from the South generally and Georgia specifically have been among the most intractable in compromising on issues regarding the federal budget. If they’re unwilling to compromise this time to limit the impact of the looming defense cuts, it’s largely their own region that will suffer the most.
President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday will be about economic inequality and the struggles of the middle class, but this week’s most important speech about the American middle class was almost certainly an address given today by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen: A Painfully Slow Recovery for America’s Workers: Causes, Implications, and the Federal Reserve’s Response.
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised from +161,000 to
+247,000, and the change for December was revised from +155,000 to +196,000. Monthly revisions
result from additional reports received from businesses since the last published estimates and the
monthly recalculation of seasonal factors. The annual benchmark process also contributed to these
revisions.
The answer: Pretty effective. Apparently better than many economists expected. The data seems to show that payroll tax cuts are more effective than cuts that effectively come as lump sums. From the WSJ’s Workers Spent More of Payroll Tax Cut…
I expected house prices to bottom at some point in late 2012 or early 2013, but they bottomed last spring. Even with the usual seasonal declines this winter, it is exceedingly unlikely that prices will fall below their lows of the winter of 2011/2012.
