Economy Blog

The Congressional Budget Office, puzzling as scholars have been for years about why Medicare spends so much more in some communities than others, says two factors?the prices of health care services and severity of illness?are most important, but leave a lot unexplained. In 2004, for instance, per capita Medicare spending ranged from roughly $4,000 in Utah to $6,700 in Massachusetts.
?Different studies support different conclusions about the relative importance of those two factors, but most concur that together they account for less than half (and possibly much less than half ) of the geographic variation in spending,? CBO says in a new report, Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending. ?Income and the preferences of individuals for specific types of care appear to explain little of the variation in spending.?
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Emptying my burgeoning browser tabs: Searching for "headwinds" in financial filings (SEC Edgar) China’s manufacturing costs are up big (depending on whether you buy the source) (American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai) Fun stagflation/1970s quote (B…
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Lot’s of noise and volatility but other than Gold, Oil, IBKR and NEOG, breakouts remain thin.
If you are trading this market or even watching it, you better be good, getting paid for it, or you are addicted to losing.
Why punish yourself? Use the money that you are throwing away on commissions and losses to take a few days off somewhere fun and think.
The market will always be there.
Fired up for LindzonPalooza next week in Phoenix and Suns/Pistons Sunday for me and Max. Lot’s of good news is hitting my portfolio these days as well and I am feeling really lucky, priviledged and yoga’d to the max. My buddy I…
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Several bloggers talk about the bankruptcy filing of Sharper Image, and they’re not engaging in much eulogizing. Jeff Matthews says that “what goes around, as they say, comes around, and in this case, what went around at Sharper Image was a hubris during its salad days when everybody in America plus their cat seemed to need a tall, thin, plastic air filter supplied by Sharper Image.”
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According to new data, Countrywide Financial, one of the biggest online ad spenders, cut such spending dramatically in December. Compare the the following two consecutive month figures from December and January: …
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The U.S. central bank must serve both sides of its mandate and not allow concerns over rising unemployment to overwhelm its duty to rein in inflation, Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard W. Fisher said Friday in Fort Worth, Texas.

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Some are arguing that the Apple iPhone premium is on its way to zero. I call "bullshit". Granted, iPhone’s model is mutating quickly different than most of us expected — the company has been too slow launching in new  markets; it has been too slow bringing out the SDK — but the factors driving that are disappearing quickly. This is classic market misbehavior. …
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$$$ We apologize for the paucity of posts today. The DealBreaker servers decided to take a snow-day. In fact, we have no idea when this edition of write-offs will show up. We’ll be back on at full speed on Monday. [John and Bess]

$$$ Chuck G says Wachovia, Citi and a consortium of other banks are thisclose to arriving at a deal—equity infusions and lines of credit—to bailout out the bond insurers. [CNBC]
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addslashes(The Real Story Wrap, February 22

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Shares of trucking companies are often watched as economic bellwethers, as freight volumes reported are a good signal for the status of economic activity around the nation.
Of late, their performance has been disconcerting. Trucking stocks performed reasonably well in January, offering hope to some who watched the stocks struggle in 2007….
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addslashes(Top 10 Most Searched Stocks on TheStreet.com, February 22

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The Christopher Leinberger article in the Atlantic which I plugged at the beginning of last week is finally online. I moaned about such delays this morning, and got an email asking why exactly they’re so bad. I replied that C…
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Even if the Philadelphia Fed survey of late has been good for a market crack-up, Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management, says the market has tended to better in the year after this index shows recession-level readings. The S&P 500 had higher future returns following what the Philly Fed would show as negative economic readings,…
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Aventine Renewable Energy (NYSE: AVR) Bad earnings and liquidity issues. Down to $6.79 from 52-week high of $20.85. Life Time Fitness (NYSE: LTM) Bad outlook from 2008. Sells off to $30.40 from 52-week high of $65.09. Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) Forecast is below Wall St. numbers. Falls to $46.44 from 52-week high of $58.63. Blackstone (NYSE: BX) Environment getting worse for private equity. Drops to $15.25 from 52-week high of $38. Syntax Brillian (NASDAQ: BRLC) Falls on problems with creditors. Down to $.83 from 52-week high of $9.04. Cbeyond (NASDAQ: CBEY) Investors not happy with quarterly numbers. Sells down to…
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Steve Austin, jazzed about the stock price. (Source: Wikipedia)

To survive a market like this, it takes a bit of brawn and a thick exterior. So look no further than World Wrestling Entertainment…
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The threat of online terrorism has become a reality in the increasingly digitized world of high finance. The US economy has become more and more reliant on computerized functionality, as has the global economy to a certain extent. Moreover, companies that conduct the bulk of their business online have become major players in a variety of financial venues. A physical storefront on Main Street is no longer a prerequisite for starting a new business, but a virtual storefront has become a necessity….
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There are new signs of broader credit pain to possibly come for small businesses given turmoil in the economy. Last year, smaller firms had been relatively immune.
First, an interesting post on Entrepreneur.com about American Express cutting back the credit line of a small handbag maker recently. The item, written by Rosalind Resnick who runs a small-business consulting firm, describes how the owner of Lil’ Diva Enterprises received a letter recently from Amex saying her $25,000 credit line would be trimmed by $10,000 because her business lacked a Dun & Bradstreet number.
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