Pew's Political Party Quiz

Do your views align more with Republicans, Democrats or Independents? Answer 12 questions in a new Pew Research Center quiz to learn where you fit on the political spectrum. Explore how you compare to other Americans by age, gender, race and religion.Update: If you don't like the Pew quiz, try the World's Smallest Political Quiz....

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Friday Afternoon Links

1. Detroit metro area home sales increased 13.2% in July vs. last year, and the median sale price increased 17%. 2. Natural gas spot prices fell this week to $2.64 per million BTUs, the lowest since mid-June more than two months ago.   3. Rates for 30-year mortgages fell 7 basis points this week to 3.59%.4. Data Quick: National home sales over the last 30 days increased 9.7% above last year.5. Real personal consumption expenditures increased 2% in July YoY and reached a new all-time monthly record high of $9.62 billion. The July increase was...

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Energy Prosperity: Oil Production in Lower 48 Hits 23-yr. High in July, Oil/Gas Jobs Reach 24-yr. High

Buried in this week’s 213-page August Monthly Energy Review from the EIA (full report here) is the fact that U.S. crude oil production for the lower 48 states is estimated to have reached a 23-year high in July of 5.865 million barrels per day (see top chart above, data here).  If so, that would be the highest monthly production of crude oil in the lower 48 states in more than 23 years, since April of 1989 when 5.88 million daily barrels...

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Great Moments in Government Regulation: Thou Shall Not Change Signs More than Twice per Day

1. Washington Post -- "If the Church of the Good Shepherd in Vienna, VA wanted to post the Ten Commandments on its sign on Hunter Mill Road, it would take five days to broadcast them all. That’s because Fairfax County has a commandment of its own: Thou shall not change electronic signs more than twice a day.""So, after the Vienna United Methodist church posted three messages one day last month — offering refuge from the heat, then promoting its Web site and finally listing the time of a group prayer meeting — a zoning inspector called it...

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Gas Prices Around the World: Relative to Income, U.S. Has Some of the Cheapest Gas in the World

A few weeks ago Bloomberg featured the "Highest & Cheapest Gas Prices by Country, where they ranked 60 countries by the average retail gas price at the pump and by the "pain at the pump," which is measured by the percentage of average daily income needed to buy a gallon of gas.  Here are some of the findings: 1. Based on both the retail price of gas and "pain at the pump," Venezuela has the cheapest gas in the world at $0.09 cents per gallon, cheaper even than bottled water.  2. The world's highest retail gas price is found...

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Shifting Demographics Explain the "Hollowing Out"

In a post earlier this week, I featured a recent Pew Research Center report that presented data on the changing distribution of income in the U.S. between 1971 and 2011.  In 1971, Pew calculated that 25% of U.S. adults were in the “lower income” category, but by 2011 the share of “lower income” Americans had increased to 29% (see chart above).  During that period, the percentage of “middle income” Americans decreased from 61% to 51%,...

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Baltimore Orioles Practice Market-Based Pricing

Click to enlarge.The Baltimore Orioles are using a market-based ticket pricing strategy by charging about a  50% premium for tickets to "prime games," which are only those games against the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox (see pricing chart above, and full ticket schedule here).  Guess that confirms the economic reality that "face value" isn't the same as "market value," and/or that "face value" increases when demand is high. ...

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Political Nitwitery in Michigan

As I mentioned previously, a Michigan state representative wants to cap ticket prices sold on the secondary market for concerts and sporting events to a legally-mandated maximum of 10% above face value. I've argued before on CD that if the 10% price cap applied to tickets sold in the primary market, it would basically put Ticketmaster out of business, since its fees are often in the 20-25% range.   But that's not Rep. Geiss's target - he's upset about tickets sold on Seat Geek, Stub Hub, eBay, Craigslist, etc.  In today's Detroit...

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Markets in Everything: An Ingestible Sensor That Sends Health Information to Your Phone

From Springwise.com: "Just cleared by the FDA late last month, this new ingestible sensor from California-based Proteus Digital Health is about the size of a grain of sand and can be integrated into an inert pill or medicine. Once in the stomach, it is powered solely by contact with stomach fluid and communicates a unique signal that identifies the timing of ingestion. This information is transferred through the user’s body tissue to a battery-operated patch worn on the skin that detects the signal along with physiological and behavioral metrics...

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Private-Sector Real GDP Grew By 3.3% Over the Last Year Through Q2, Equal to Post-1947 Average

Graph, post and title have been updated to reflect the 3.26% average growth rate in private GDP since 1947. The chart above shows annualized growth rates for: a) quarterly private-sector real GDP, calculated as real total GDP minus real government spending (which would be equal to personal consumption expenditures, gross private domestic investment, and net exports), see blue bars in chart, and b) quarterly public-sector real GDP, which is ...

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2012: The Year of the Housing Recovery, Part III

More positive housing data: 1. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported today that its Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) rose by 12.4% in July above a year ago, and reached the highest level since April 2010 when buyers rushed to take advantage of the first-time homebuyer tax credit that expired that month.  The PSHI is a leading indicator of future housing sales activity based on contract signings for existing homes.  July's year-over-year increase in the PHSI was the 15th straight month of back-to-back increases in pending...

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A New Era of Transformational Technology Is Here

A synopsis of the article in The American, "The Next Great Growth Cycle," by Mark P. Mills, CEO of the Digital Power Group and adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute: Apple went public in December 1980. And there followed the longest run of economic growth in modern history, spanning five presidencies from Reagan through Clinton. Apple grew to become the world’s largest market cap company and a tech icon. According to today’s techno-pessimists (Tyler Cowen, Niall Ferguson and Jean Gimpel are cited in the article), nothing like that can...

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Location, Location, Location

1. Here's what you can get in Flint, Michigan for $395,000 (pictured above): A castle of a home. Quality stone construction with slate roof. New kitchen, excellent condition with 2 new boilers and central air. Grand halls with walnut floors, ornate plaster ceilings, 9 foot ceilings, towering circular foyer. Library, Morning Room, Sitting Room, 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms and a five-car garage on 2 acres.Price per square foot: $652. Here's what you...

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Michigan Economy Shifts Into High Gear: Economic Activity Index Rebounds to a Ten-Year High in July

Here's some extremely positive news about the Michigan economy, which would be consistent with recent reports about the rebound in Midwest manufacturing, and especially strong gains in Midwest automotive production: Comerica Bank’s Michigan Economic Activity Index (a composite index based on 7 individual variables) increased 2.0 points in June, spiking to a level of 105.9. The June index reading is 46 points, or 77%, above the index cyclical low...

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FDIC Quarterly Banking Report Suggests That U.S. Banks Have Returned to Pre-Recession Conditions

The FDIC released its Quarterly Banking Profile today for the second quarter, here are some highlights:1. U.S. banks earned a total of $34.5 billion from April through June, a 20.7% increase compared to Q2 2011 (see chart above). Almost two out of every three (62.7%) of the 7,246 FDIC-insured banks reported higher earnings than a year ago. Only 10.9% were unprofitable, down from 15.7% in Q2 2011.  The increase in profits was the 12th consecutive...

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Increases in Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes for July and Second Quarter Set New Records

Here are some initial observations on today's report from S&P/Case-Shiller on its Home Price Indexes for July and Q2:1. The 2.3% monthly increase in the Composite-20 Home Price Index in July was the highest monthly increase in the 12-year history of that index (it started in January 2000).2. The 2.2% monthly increase in the Composite-10 Home Price Index in July matched the 2.2% increase in May, and marked the highest monthly increase in that index since June 2004, slightly more than eight years ago. 3. The 6.9% increase in the quarterly...

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Pew Research Calls It "Hollowing Out of the Middle Class," But 150 Americans Moved Up for Every 100 Who Moved Down Between 1971 and 2011

The Pew Research Center released a report last week titled “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class: Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier,” which starts out with this depressing introduction: “As the 2012 presidential candidates prepare their closing arguments to America’s middle class, they are courting a group that has endured a lost decade for economic well-being. Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed...

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Chicago Fed: Midwest Manufacturing Grew 12.5% Over Last Year, vs. 5.2% for U.S. and 2.2% for GDP; Midwest Auto Output Is Above 2007 Levels

Midwest manufacturing is booming, especially autos. The Chicago Federal Reserve reported today that its Midwest Manufacturing Index increased 1.8% in July from June to a four-year high, following a revised 0.9% monthly gain in June. On an annual basis, regional manufacturing activity in the 7th Federal Reserve district improved by 12.5% in July from a year earlier, more than twice the annual 5.2% increase in the national manufacturing component...

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Classic Milton Friedman on Equality vs. Liberty

"You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others. What ultimately happens when you aim for equality is that A and B decide what C shall do for D; except that they take a little bit of a commission off on the wa...

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Intellectual Conformity 1, Intellectual Diversity 0

Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse explains in today's WSJ how intellectual diversity on college campuses has been replaced by intellectual conformism, aka political correctness:  "The increased political conformism at universities may be traced in part to the redefinition of diversity that accompanied the introduction of group preferences, aka "affirmative action." Schools instituting this policy never acknowledged that it conflicted with competing commitments to equal consideration "irrespective of race, religion, or gender," or that at least...

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Energy Updates: Marcellus Shale Gas Production Doubles and the Shale Boom Spreads to Russia

1. The shale gas boom continues in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale region, with output doubling this year during the January-June period compared to the same period in 2011, and energy industry jobs in Pennsylvania increasing by 150% from 2009 to 2011.  Here are some details:Despite low prices and a new tax on the industry, natural gas production in Pennsylvania has doubled in the past year. Drillers operating in Pennsylvania’s expansive Marcellus...

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Cartoon of the Day: Green Jobs

By Lisa Benson.More than a decade ago, Paul Gigot of the WSJ pointed out that "ethanol is produced by mixing corn with our tax dollars."  In that case, solar energy is produced by mixing sunlight with our tax dollars. ...

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One-Year U.S. Stock Market Return = Almost 20%

Top 20 Stock Market Returns Over the Last YearWith all of the bad news coming out of Europe, and the ongoing gloom and doom in America with predictions of a pending double-dip recession, it might be counter-intuitive that some stock markets have actually registered impressive returns over the last year, see the table above of one-year returns based on MSCI data that includes both developed and emerging markets.  Denmark leads the list with a...

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Quotation of the Day: Pro-Business vs. Pro-Market

Why do you say that America’s political system is degenerating into crony capitalism?There is not a well-understood distinction between being pro-business and being pro-market. Businessmen like free markets until they get into a market; once they are in it they want to block entry to others. Pro-marketeers want free markets at all times. The more conservative pro-marketeers are fearful of criticizing business, because they assume they will be seen as criticizing the free market. But we need to stand up and criticize business when business...

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Markets in Everything: Private Online DMV in CA

"Cartagz is licensed and bonded with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and we are officially authorized to perform a variety of DMV related transactions. Official CA DMV license stickers and registration cards are issued directly from our central office.""Each month, thousands of Californians benefit from Cartagz.com’s higher level of customer service and efficiency. As California’s leading vehicle registration service, Cartagz.com helps people save time and avoid trips to the DMV through this unique and easy to use online ...

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More Example's (!) of the Misuse of It's for Its

From the Web and the CD comment's section: 1. Crony Capitalism at it's best! 2. Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, the band is paving it's own unique path in the world. 3. Reductio ad Absurdum is a legitimate technique for pushing an argument to it's logical limits and showing it to be absurd. 4. I'll take the opportunity costs of shale gas over it's subsidized or less environmental alternatives. 5. And it's sold, for it's "skin rejuvenating properties.” 6. You actually made a case for it's existence. Remember the simple...

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