Mark Dotzour, chief economist at Texas A&M’s Real Estate Center stopped by yesterday to chat. Lots of parts of Texas are doing just dandy, he reported, thanks to the booming energy and technology industries, trade with Mexico, internal population growth and people moving to Texas from other parts of the country. House prices last year …
What if you live in Wyoming and NEED that gas-guzzling SUV?
Commenter caitlilly asks a couple of good questions:
I live in Wyoming – and live, as most people do in Wyoming – a lifestyle that truly benefits from SUV’s and trucks. Come to any rural area like this and the streets are dominated by gas guzzlers. But here it’s not a status symbol – it’s a way to live the life we’ve chosen: one that
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Is McCain really willing to be as radical as his health care plan?
Karen Tumulty declares over on Swampland that “The Great Health Care Debate of 2008 is Finally Engaged,” and she’s definitely right that the approach McCain announced yesterday is radically different from what Obama and Clinton have been talking about. It is pretty much the same as what the Bush administration has been promoting for …
Why link online with a stranger?
So I finally succumbed to Facebook. It’s really your fault. You kept friending me. All your friend requests were starting to clog my Gmail account. It felt rude not to accept. Like I was refusing your friendship. Like I’m all that.
So far I’ve been friended by TIME colleagues and former workmates, sources and old school pals. My …
The Fed cuts a quarter point. What?!? You don’t find that exciting?
So after two days of gabbing, the folks on Federal Open Market Committee did what was mostly expected of them and cut the intended Federal Funds rate down to 2%. I really can’t be bothered to come up with something to say about a measly quarter-point rate cut, so I’m going to outsource to my buddy Andy Busch at BMO Capital Markets:
Taken
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Everybody in Alabama will eventually go to jail
So they let my old friend Don Siegelman out last month. But now the Bond Buyer reports (thanks to Mrs. CC for the tip; link only works if you have a subscription, and it’s highly unlikely that you do) that:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed securities fraud charges against Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, Alabama bond
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Taco Bell concerned that obesity rates not rising fast enough
From an e-mail that just landed in my inbox:
Irvine, Calif., April 30, 2008 – Is that a rumble of hunger in your stomach, or a rumble of anticipation as you stare at Taco Bell’s all-new Big Bell Box Meal? Hunger will meet its match beginning today with a Bacon Club Chalupa, Beef Crunchy Taco, Bean Burrito and Cinnamon Twists loaded
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Why newspapers will continue to milk their current business until they die
This struck me as the smartest of a bunch of smart observations by former Dallas Morning News (and still syndicated) personal finance columnist Scott Burns in a Q&A with Talking Business News (via Romenesko):
As much as I love newspapers, they are hamstrung by their attachment to a business model that no longer works. The longer
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New U.S. passport: efficient, high-tech, purty
Remember all the hullabaloo about a year ago on the mess that was the U.S. passport application process?
I applied a week ago last Saturday, April 19, for a renewal. I downloaded the application online at the surprisingly easy-to-use website of the U.S. State Department; then I popped it in the mail along with a $60 check. Easy, …
The economy’s 0.6% solution
It’s always dangerous to read too much into the advance GDP estimates made by the Bureau of Economic Analysis–they’re subject to revision in subsequent months, and the changes can be substantial. But today’s report that the U.S. economy grew at an estimated 0.6% annual pace, adjusted for inflation, in the first quarter is nonetheless …
If everything is coming your way, you’re probably in the wrong lane
If I wrote motivational posters for a living, that’s what mine would say. Actually, I didn’t write that line; I found it in a fortune cookie from my buddy Greg’s wedding. They’ve since divorced.
Another friend of mine, Rob Walker, wrote this terrific piece in his Consumed column in The New York Times Magazine. It’s about a company called …
What do Costa Ricans have against street addresses?
They don’t really have street addresses in Tokyo, and I’ve always chalked that up to a combination of the city’s plethora of really short streets running into each other at odd angles, and the widespread Japanese desire to remain undecipherable to foreigners.
They don’t really have street addresses in Managua, either, and when I was …
