Modernomics* – Daily Writings on Technology
a site by Erik T. Kaiser, Design Technologist
Worry About Rebound Lowers Stocks Investors continued to sell off stocks on Tuesday, as commodity prices fell and new economic data dashed hopes for an imminent rebound. New figures showing a 1.1 percent decline in industrial production reinforced that view, and blunted the impact of other, more positive economic numbers. “You have a one-two punch [...]
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Wall Street opened modestly higher on Tuesday after investors took in a couple of better-than-expected economic reports. The Dow Jones industrial average was about 17 points higher in early trading, with the broader Standard & Poor’s and the technology heavy Nasdaq up only a few points. On Monday, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell [...]
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Builders take out more permits to build than expected; still trail prior years badly. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The nation’s builders boosted their production in May, starting new housing units at an annualized rate of 532,000, up 17.2% from the revised estimate of 454,000 in April. The data release, a monthly report from the Census [...]
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THE human side of the recession, in the new media genre that’s been called “recession porn,” is the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and [...]
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Citigroup has reported its first quarterly net profit in nearly two years, the latest US bank to see an improvement in its performance. It made a profit of $1.6bn (£1.1bn) compared with a loss of $5.1bn a year earlier. Revenues rose 99% to $24.8bn. However, once dividend payments to preferred shareholders were taken into account, [...]
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From MSN Money But no less an economist than former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan is a fan of men’s underwear sales as an important economic indicator. It’s one of several unusual indicators economists turn to in hard times. We went looking through them in a quest for the much-discussed “green shoots” of an imminent [...]
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“The Storm Is Not Over, Not By A Long Shot” An oped this week in The New York Times, talks about the economic situation, and asks a couple of really intriguing questions. The writers, one a broker, the other a retired Wall Street banker, question the simplified PR campaign of the current Administration that hinges [...]
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Donations to nearly every type of charity faltered in 2008, as contributions declined by 5.7 percent last year after adjustment for inflation, according to the new edition of Giving USA which was released Wednesday morning. It was the steepest decline in the history of the survey, which has been conducted since 1956. (You can ask [...]
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“We experienced in the last three months one of the nicest rallies in Wall Street history, and now we’re seeing the reasons why,” said Robert Lutts, president of Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts. “Texas Instruments and others are bumping up guidance nicely, and many companies that reported very negative consumer reactions are pulling that [...]
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