MeatyREADS

Median Income

The Census today released its annual report on income, poverty and health insurance (Census). From the press release (here):

Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the third annual increase in real median household income.

Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent, not statistically different from 2006. There were 37.3 million people in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006. The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007.

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New Home Sales

Sales of new single family homes increased in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 515,000 (Census). This was 2.4 percent above the revised rate of 503,000 in June, and is 35.3 percent below the July 2007 estimate of 796,000.

The median sales price of new houses sold in July 2008 was $230,700 while the average sales price was $294,600. The months supply of new homes is still high at 10.1 months, but this was still an improvement from 10.7 in June.

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Existing Home Sales

Existing home sales data were released this morning at 10 AM (NAR). Sales increased in July to 5,000,000 from 4,850,000 and are at their highest level since February of this year (5,030,000). Year to year sales declined 13.2% and were up 3.1% over the month. Along with the sales increase, prices declined to $212,400 from $215,100 in June. Year to Year prices are down 7.1%.

Sales of existing single family homes followed a similar pattern. Existing single family home sales increased to 4,390,000 in July from 4,260,000 in June. Month to month this was an increase of 3.1% but a decline over the year of 12.4%. Prices fell to $210,900 in July from $213,600 in June and are down 7.7% versus a year ago. On the bright side, home prices of existing single family homes were below $200,000 earlier this year and relative to recent months July was actually pretty strong. Aside from June, sales prices are at their highest level in 2008.

It is too early to say we have reached a bottom in the housing market, but we have now had several months of stability in existing home sales. While the hardest hit areas are still reeling (NYT) there is a glimmer of hope. In terms of the national accounts (GDP) we will still have negative residential investment through this year and probably into the first quarter. We should see improvement after that.

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Jackson Hole

Every year the Federal Reserve Board of Kansas City sponsors a conference in Wyoming. It is a prestigious retreat involving around 40 of the world’s central banks. The conference papers are now available online, so check them out. The theme this year was: Maintaining Stability in a Changing Financial System (kc.frb).

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What I’ve Been Reading, Fiction Edition

Flying Crows by Jim Lehrer. A fascinating and fun read by the host of the famous tv show that bears his name. The story is a quick look at 20th century America through one man’s life. Recommended.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I had mixed emotions about this and though I made it through to the end, I’m not sure I would recommend it. Apparently the book was written for his son. It is dark with a glint of hope. A good friend recommends Blood Meridian instead.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. The last lecture is a series sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University. Retiring faculty are invited to give one final lecture, hence the name. It has since been renamed the Visions series. Anyway, this is the story of Pausch’s final lecture. It is particularly moving since unlike other professors who were retiring into a life of leisure, the computer science professor was forced into it by pancreatic cancer. Here is a short summary. As most of you know, he recently passed away (CMU). If nothing else, watch the lecture (YouTube). But I read the book anyway, even after seeing the video and recommend you do likewise.

The Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and The Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. To some it will be a shock that I have never read some of the most basic foundational pieces of science fiction. Others will just think I am some wierd trekkie. Regardless, I enjoyed this series and recommend it highly. I consider Asimov to be one of our great writers.

Twilight, New Moon, by Stephanie Meyer. The first two of four books in a series. Supposedly this is the next Harry Potter. It is written for teenage girls so naturally I loved it. Coase resonates throughout, though the author does not realize it. I am reading the third book, Eclipse, now. Her newest book has been getting lots of publicity and all are bestsellers. My biggest complaint is that the author insists on hitting readers over the head with the idea that this story, though it involves vampires and werewolves and other scary things, is simply a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. She references the book throughout to ensure no one misses the point. It is mostly fun otherwise.

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Financial Crisis Here to Stay

One year in and it looks like we’ll be here awhile, or so says Tyler Cowen in today’s Economic View column (NYT). This part is great:

HAVE you ever tried to undo a bunch of tangled wires or cords? If you don’t pull on the right wires in the right order, the mess becomes worse. If you pull too hard, the whole thing can break. But if your first pulls are good ones, the untangling becomes easier with each move.

That’s like our economy’s situation today.

Bottom line: let the Fed do its thing and be very careful about reforming our current regulatory structure. At this point unintended consequences of new laws would be the metaphorical straw, if you will.

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Two Lawyers

Biden is officially the VP nominee. This was a safe choice and Biden will appeal to many people on both sides of the aisle. More to come soon.

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I, Pencil Redux

Don Boudreaux has a post on Leonard Read’s article as well (Cafe Hayek.) There’s even a PowerPoint presentation about I, Pencil, so check it out.

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What’s the Opposite of “Markets in Everything?”

From ABC news:

Call it a rite of passage: children by the roadside peddling their homemade goodies to adults who are more than eager to drop a few cents into a makeshift cashbox.

But Katie and Sabrina Lewis’ veggie stand, in the town of Clayton, Calif., where they sold homegrown watermelons for $1, has been shuttered by town officials who told the girls’ parents that their daughters’ venture violated local zoning ordinances.

Apparently the stand also violates health ordinances against selling produce in a residential neighborhood (ABA). Only supermarkets are allowed to do that. Barriers to entry are often egregious, but this is ridiculous. Lemonade stands are also banned.

Posted in Economics, Law, Politics | No Comments » |

Opportunity Cost

Matthew Kahn, an economist, is concerned that Michael Phelps and his mom are crowding out more important news coverage. He even provides a link to an academic paper on the subject. What do you think? Are you paying less attention to certain topics as a result of the Olympics?

Posted in Economics, Sports | No Comments » |

Google Reader - Politics

From the Google Reader Blog comes news, perhaps old news to many of you, that the team is offering a new site called Power Readers in Politics. The site contains news that political journalists and staff from both political campaigns share from their own reader files. Check it out. See the Reader blog for more info.

Posted in Politics, Technology | No Comments » |

The Anticommons

In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes about The Gridlock Economy, a recent book by Columbia law professor Michael Heller. Heller’s book is on my short list I intend to read soon.

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Austan Goolsbee

Profiled in MIT’s Technology Review (HT). The article contains a funny description of how Goolsbee and Obama met:

“Obama opened the door, looked at me in bafflement, and said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, I’m Professor Goolsbee. Obama said, ‘You can’t be.’” He’d been expecting an older tweed-jacketed academic, not–as Goolsbee claims Obama phrased it–another skinny, tall, youthful, geeky guy with big ears and a funny name.

The article correctly points out that the current crop of economists are “quite unlike the free-market-fundamentalist followers of Milton Friedman who made the university famous in the last century.” I get tired of reading about how Senator Obama is being advised by a bunch of right-wing Friedman types. The Chicago School of Economics reflected a period in time and that time is mostly over.

Here’s an interview with Goolsbee on Charlie Rose.

Posted in Economics, Politics | No Comments » |

China

Gavin Menzies, an amateur historian, is back with another book. His first book, which I did not read, claims that China discovered America. His new book claims the Chinese sparked the Renaissance. I have not read his new book either. For more see the telegraph (HT).

On a semi-related note, from Nicholas Kristoff we learn that: “China’s per-capita income was actually lower, adjusted for inflation, in the 1950s than it had been at the end of the Song Dynasty in the 1270s.” (NYT). The rest of the article eloquently lays out the case that we need not fear China’s rise.

Posted in Books, Economics | No Comments » |

Jury Selection

It was only a matter of time (Law X.0): “Attorneys are turning to various Social Networking sites looking for any bit of information that might aid in process of selecting or removing jurors.”

Posted in Law, Technology | No Comments » |

Law and the Campaign

Via AS, the McCain/Obama antitrust deathmatch (BLT):

Two local antitrust lawyers on different sides of the presidential election are getting ready to square off in a D.C. Bar debate. James Rill, a partner at Howrey, will address Sen. John McCain’s antitrust positions. William Kolasky, a partner with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, will do the same for Sen. Barack Obama.   

Law.com has a roundup of the legal resume’s of potential VP candidates (HT). It is striking how many potential nominees are lawyers. Have you ever dealt with a general counsel’s office? Have they ever said, “Yes, that’s a great idea. Feel free to try it out and we’ll see what happens?” Of course not, they are programmed to block all progress. Isn’t this ironic, given that this election is all about change?

Finally, lest we get too much law, David Leonhardt has an article in the NYT about Senator Obama’s economic policies (again, via AS). Be forewarned that the essay is full of lines like this: “Depending on how you look at it, he is both more left-wing and more right-wing than many people realize.”

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Things You May Not Know About Warren Buffett

A great thing about the ukulele is how easy it is to learn, said Warren Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman, who started playing in college. “You can learn how to play it very quickly, even if only badly, as in my case,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It takes only 15 minutes to actually learn how to play simple songs. You can sing along with it and carry it around easily.”

The secret to his success, no doubt. From the NYT. The rest of the article is about the resurgence of the ukulele. The uke does have some drawbacks however:

There is, Mr. Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway noted, one drawback to the ukulele that he learned early, something that might give someone pause before picking it up. “I thought it would impress girls,” he wrote, “but no such luck.”

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I, Pencil

In 1958 Leonard E. Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), wrote a short article about how a pencil is constructed. It may sound trite, but it is actually a complex process. The story was written from the point of view of a pencil. Here’s how it starts out (econlib):

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

Let that last bit sink in. Not one person contains the knowledge necessary to make a pencil, which is one of the simplest manufactured devices in the world. The story, while admittedly simple, is one of the best explanations of the division of labor since Adam Smith first talked about pin factories.

The reason I bring all of this up is that the Washington Post recently had an article about how dirt is made, and the story is remarkably similar. So similar in fact, that Alex Tabarrock titled a blog post about the article I, Dirt. It occurred to me that many people would not get the reference and would instead think of the Will Smith movie I, Robot. So don’t be confused and don’t take the many wonders of our modern economy for granted.

Read the rest of I, Pencil. Some of the terms have changed: Ceylon is now Sri Lanka, for example, but the basic idea is still fascinating. Keep Leonard Read in mind the next time you watch How it’s Made.

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Grammar

After reading a few posts on BPS, which I linked to below, I followed a link to Research Blogging, a site devoted to academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research articles. Yeah, I did all this on a Saturday. Anyway, the second post caught my eye since it was about running and was written by an M.D./PhD. This slacker wrote a very good article worth reading, but it had an unfortunate title: Your Never too Old to Run (Dr. Shock). It is simply stunning how often people make this mistake. “You’re” is of course the proper way to start this sentence. Silly doctor. While it was ironic and sort of sad to see this simple mistake on a blog about academic research, you should look at the rest of the site, since it is interesting and well researched.

Update: To be fair, it appears that Dr. Shock is Dutch, so it’s much more understandable that he would have some trouble with English. I just thought it was funny seeing an academic blog service with typos.

Posted in Entertainment | 4 Comments » |

Who blogs?

Among both men and women, those who were more open to experience were also more likely to blog - perhaps unsurprisingly given that blogging is a relatively new phenomenon and given that this personality dimension is associated with creativity.

They forgot the part about being unbearably handsome and charming, but perhaps I am biased by my co-bloggers. Lots more, including a link to an academic paper on the subject, over at BPS Research Digest, a highly recommended site.

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