| U.S. Economy and Federal Budget |
JANUARY 2008
1/31/08 Brazil Adds Compulsory Deposit Rule for Some Accounts, Bloomberg. Brazil's central bank raised deposit reserve requirements to tighten credit, removing about $23 billion from credit markets. Inflation is near the central bank's 4.5 percent target. The requirement goes after the fastest-growing lending sectors. Banks that receive cash deposits from lease underwriters will have to use a portion of the funds to buy government bonds. Those deposits were previously exempt from compulsory deposit rules. The requirement will begin at 5 percent of deposits in May and climb to 25 percent by January 2009. The outlook for inflation in Latin America's biggest economy has worsened recently. The bank targets an annual inflation rate of 4.5 percent, plus or minus 2 percentage points to accommodate price shocks. Consumer prices (the IPCA-15 index) rose 4.55 percent in the 12 months through mid-January. The central bank said the increase in reserve requirements gives equal treatment for leasing companies' interbank deposits and term deposits, which have a 23 percent reserve requirement. Comment: The Central Bank of Brazil is using a tool – varying reserve requirements - that has been in disuse in the United States. This tool may provide an avenue for something not discussed much yet – how do Senators Clinton and Obama propose to reform the regulation of the financial sector to prevent a recurrence of the subprime meltdown in some new sector (say, commercial real estate or alternative energy)?
1/31/08 Employment Cost Inflation 3.3 Percent, BLS. Employment costs rose 3.3 percent in December year-over-year for the second year in a row. Comment: For an employer, this is a major component of costs. Another sign that it will be hard to keep consumer price inflation below 3 percent.
1/30/08 Nader Warns Bloomberg Not to Run for President, HuffPost. Ralph Nader's advice for Michael Bloomberg: Don't screw up this election - that's my job. As allegedly told to humorist Andy Borowitz.
1/30/08 Fed Cuts Rate by Half-Point, NY Times Online, 4:15 pm. Fed statement: “Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households." The statement referred to data showing the housing market continuing to worsen and the job market “softening.” Comment: At the end of the day, all three major stock market indicators were down - i.e., the FOMC's reduction in the target fed funds rate was fully anticipated. The dollar weakened because lower interest rates in the United States make investments here marginally less attractive than investments in other countries that are paying a higher interest rate
11/28/07 Report on the Annapolis Peace Conference, Middle East Progress. Reports on the conference from multiple sources.
11/28/07 Unemployment Higher in Most U.S. Metro Areas, BLS. Unemployment rates were higher in October than a year earlier in 210 of
the 369 metro area in the United States, lower in 138 areas and unchanged in 21 areas. NYC's unemployment rate rose to 5.3 percent in October 2007 from 4.3 percent in the same month in 2006. For the NYC region, unemployment rose to 4.3 percent from 3.9 percent the same month a year earlier.
11/24/07 What the Energy Needs of China and India Mean for Energy Prices, Jurgen Brauer, Hull College of Business, Augusta State University. As China and India ("Chindia") start using their new economic power to consume more, Professor Brauer speculates about the impact on world energy prices. Another voice calling for stepped up interest in alternative energy.
11/15/07 U.S. Inflation Running at 3.6 Percent. Through October, the urban CPI rose at a 3.6 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR). This is on the high side, 1.1 percentage points above the 2.5 percent inflation rate for all of 2006. The energy component accounts for most of the difference -it rose at a 12.3 percent SAAR in the first ten months of 2007, vs. 2.9 percent in all of 2006. In line with the high UK figure for food price inflation issued the day before, the U.S. food price index has increased at a high 5.5 percent rate thus far in 2007, following a 2.1 percent rise for all of 2006. Excluding food and energy, the CPI advanced at a 2.3 percent SAAR in the first ten months of 2007 after increasing 2.6 percent in 2006. With the U.S. unemployment rate running at 4.7 percent, the misery index (inflation + unemployment) in October was 8.3 percent.
11/14/07 UK Food Price Inflation Fastest in 14 Years, Daily Telegraph. The official figures are mirrored and enlarged by supermarket price indexes.
11/14/07 China's Economy Is 40 Percent Smaller than Thought, Based on Revised PPP Data, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, based on World Bank data.
11/10/07 Foreign Cash Helps U.S. Housing Market, Forbes. Inquiries from prospective buyers from overseas has increased "five or ten-fold" since the same period in 2006.
11/08/07 S&P Publishes Case-Shiller Home Price Data, Standard & Poors. The Case-Shiller Housing Price Index for the United States has been falling every month from the beginning of 2007.
11/4/07 Beyond Those Health Care Numbers, N. Gregory Mankiw, NY Times. Statement 3 notes that as we earn more, we naturally spend more on health care. But the idea that spending 30% of our national income on health care by 2050 is "progress" doesn't make sense unless we use a larger definition for health care, including more spending on recreational activities - a broader definition than Mankiw uses for Statement 1.
11/02/07 October Jobs Rise 166,000, BLS. U.S. unemployment stays at 4.7 percent. It was the same in the third quarter (not seasonally adjusted), and this was unchanged from the third quarter of 2006.
11/01/07 Elderly Have Problems in Their Aging Upstate NY Housing, Albany Times-Union.
10/31/07 Home Prices Are Down and So Is Confidence, NY Times.
10/31/07 For the Fed, Falling Houses Trump Falling Dollars, Randall W. Forsythe, Barron’s.
10/29/07 Thompson Only Republican to Take on Cost of Entitlements, Christian Science Monitor.
10/29/07 Rudy Awakening, Rachel Morris, Washington Monthly (November).
10/25/07 Reports Suggest Broader Losses From Mortgages, NY Times.
10/24/07 U.S. Existing-Home Sales Down 8% in September, SAAR, Worst on Record, National Association of Realtors via AOL Money & Finance.
10/24/07 Jim Rogers: U.S. "In Recession," Reuters.
| NOVEMBER 2008 11/19/08: I was privileged to attend a breakfast meeting this morning sponsored by the Drum Major Institute. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was the featured speaker. He spoke about how he surveyed his city for abandoned buildings and through a variety of creative initiatives, not without opposition, reduced the number of abandoned units by 77 percent. Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President, said: "We tax buildings -- imagine if we created a system of incremental land value taxation." Unimproved land is taxed at a much lower rate than improved land. Some cities have attempted to solve this problem by taxing vacant land at a multiple of the rate for improved land. Others have taxed improvements at a fraction (e.g., half) the rate of taxes on land value. The ultimate fix is to tax just the underlying land (hence "land value taxation" or LVT) and not the improvements, so that property-owners pay the same tax regardless of whether or not they build anything on the land. The problem with tax abatements and PILOTs is that they undermine the City's ability to pay for the service needs created by the development. These service needs include education, sanitation, police, and the annual debt service for the bond issues to pay for local infrastructure improvements. 11/19/07 Comment by John Tepper Marlin, Blogspot, Manhattan Borough President Stringer on LVT on liveblog by Corinne Ramey.
11/15: Real estate brokers are happy about continuing European interest in NYC real estate. Comment: Europeans have every reason to be interested in Manhattan real estate because the euro, which was worth as little as 84 cents in mid-2001, is now (November 18) worth $1.47. So a condo priced at $1 million then that has gone up to $1.47 million today would be discounted to $840,000 to a Frenchman who had shopped for it in 2001 and is looking at it again. This is good news not only for the European, but also for anyone in Manhattan (where the typical European buyer would be looking) seeking to sell their apartment, because it means there are some new buyers showing up. But it is bad news for a young person who is waiting for prices to come down, because it means there is competition for the space. It also means that parents of young people are still in demand by sophisticated young Manhattanites. 11/15/07 Comment by John Tepper Marlin on NYC’s Real Estate Brokers Link with European Buyers, NY Sun.
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Federal Government Projects
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National Commission on Productivity and Quality of Work Life: New York State Survey
Commissioned the Council on Municipal Performance (John Tepper Marlin, President) to prepare a study of performance indicators for a sample of local governments throughout New York State. Developed a questionnaire for use by counties throughout the state. Documented the uneven state of performance measures, while providing some comparisons among communities that did develop indicators. Conducted four workshops throughout the state to review the measures. Professor Lewis Friedman worked on this project..
Department of Housing and Urban Development
1. Via a competitive process, commissioned the Council on Municipal Performance to prepare a guide for localities on contracting municipal services, edited by John Tepper Marlin and published by Wiley. This book was used as the basis for a series of seminars on public-private comparisons in different parts of the United States.
2. Through a competitive process, commissioned a guide for local governments on auditing, which was prepared by Peter F. Rousmaniere. The first edition sold out and a second edition was printed.
United States Information Agency
Commissioned John Tepper Marlin to give several talks and work with local business and government leaders in Kharkov, Ukraine, to consider projects to convert military facilities to civilian use. Recommended using tank factories to build freight trucks and military airfields to create a distribution center like that of Federal Express in Memphis that might attract high-value manufacturers and consolidators. Bertelsmann has created just such a distribution center in Kharkiv for its books in the region.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Study of deposit insurance in different parts of the world, published in The Banker's Magazine.
- Study of the quality of bank credit in different states, published in The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking
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