Economics for the Intelligent Amateur

US Markets

DJIA10733.67chart+47.69
NASDAQ2389.09chart+0.00
S&P 5001166.21chart+0.00
2010-03-17 16:02

Intl. Markets

FTSE5637.47chart-7.16
DAX6014.04chart-10.24
Nikkei10744.03chart-102.95
2010-03-18 04:34

Commodity Futures

Oil82.20chart-0.72
Gold1122.30chart+0.00
Copper2.95chart+0.03
2010-03-18 04:39

Treasury Yield

13 Weeks0.15chart-1.35
5 Year2.37chart-21.29
10 Year3.64chart-32.78
2010-03-17 14:59

Exchange Rates

JPY90.00chart+0.00
EUR0.73chart+0.00
GBP0.65chart+0.00
2010-03-18 04:49

Our Theory

Staple a Green Card to their Admittance Letter »

A nice quote from Businessweek, worth repeating:
U.S. education gets rapped, too. India and China produce more scientists and engineers than the U.S., and international students who attend American universities generally must return home as soon as they’ve graduated. “We’re forcing these people to do their productive work elsewhere,” says Mark Chandler, general counsel of Cisco [...]

Yes Virginia, Markets are Efficient »

In the wake of the recent controversy surrounding Free Markets, and more specifically, the “How could we be so stupid as to believe markets could work?” statements, we feel it is time to clear the air and make a couple blanket statements:
Efficient Markets does Not mean continuous growth
It is excusable in a way. We [...]

The Twitter Bubble »

For those of you who are avid Twitter users, the following paragraph will be old news: once you join Twitter, you notice how many Followers others have. People you have never heard of, and who seemingly have very little to offer, will have tens of thousands of followers. How come you have so few? [...]

Books Look at Porn, Movies Don’t »

After having posted about how the movie industry should look to the pornography industry in order to keep up with the times, we feel somewhat vindicated to see that the book industry seems to be doing just that. An article on Bloomberg Businessweek (“Trying to Avert a Digital Horror Story”) states how different publishers [...]

Why New Year’s Resolutions won’t work »

It’s that time of year again. This time you’ve decided to quit smoking, stop eating fast food, take a walk everyday, read a novel per week, etc. etc. Statistically speaking, only 8 percent of you will be able to keep these resolutions.
So where’s the problem? First of all, we’re not saying the [...]