Jul 18 Were We Too Easy on Lincoln Electric? EmbedVideo(1006, 514, 320); Watch 'Cleveland Manufacturer Welds Together Job Security, Profits.' We received a flurry of worried responses to our Lincoln Electric story from Wednesday night. They deserve an airing and a reply. First, from Dean Brown… Continue reading
Jul 15 Is the ‘Pain At the Pump’ Fair? Larry Bessler purchases gasoline at a Shell station in Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images. Name: Stephen Sohasky Jr. Question: Adjusted for inflation, I believe gasoline should be about $4.53 per gallon. The local news stations are making… Continue reading
Jul 15 The People’s Choice: Australia Once again, the Making Sen$e audience has spoken. Once again, the results are lopsided. Recently, we polled you on my hat(s): "great" or "goofy"? You accentuated the positive, latched onto the affirmative, and chose "great" over… Continue reading
Jul 14 The Not-So-Golden Years: Are You Better Off Than Other Americans? This is a compendium of retirement shortfall facts, presented in graphic form by Making Sen$e reporter/producer Elizabeth Shell. As should always be your habit with poll data, don't try to take the actual numbers to the bank. Continue reading
Jul 12 Smacking Into the Debt Ceiling: the Day-by-Day Consequences Daily U.S. Government Income and Expenditures: Use the slide bar to see how Treasury's cash deficit is projected to grow if the debt ceiling is reached, starting with Aug. 3. Mouse over the red points to see the running… Continue reading
Jul 08 Jobs: the Dreary Data, a Desperate Viewer, a Pessimistic Professor By Paul Solman Goodness! U-7, our own measure of under-and unemployment, shot up to 18.6 percent this morning, a rise that gets us back near the number when we first inaugurated the Solman Scale last December. This morning's job numbers: only… Continue reading
Jul 07 How an English Investor Dabbled in Cleveland Real Estate…and Got Burned By Paul Solman Video edited by Elizabeth Shell. As a follow-up to Tuesday’s story on abandoned housing demolition in Cleveland, we’re posting a short video. A show-and-tell about one vacant property, it covers all the bases – from… Continue reading
Jul 05 Fannie Mae: What’s Politics Got To Do With It? EmbedVideo(906, 482, 304); 'Protecting Its Fannie: How Mortgage Giant Primed the Bubble, Covered Its Assets.' Paul Solman answers questions from NewsHour viewers and web users on business and economic news most days. Here's Monday's query: Name: B… Continue reading
Jul 01 Joseph Stiglitz, Barney Frank Respond to ‘Reckless Endangerment’ Allegations By Elizabeth Shell Friday on the NewsHour, New York Times finance specialist Gretchen Morgenson and co-author Josh Rosner, a longtime housing analyst, talk about their new bestseller, "Reckless Endangerment" (no. 17 on the Times list this week). The book is a sustained indictment… Continue reading
Jun 28 Latest Housing Prices More Than 30% Below Peak This month's Case-Shiller index is out and, rather than paraphrase or plagiarize Phil Izzo's succinct account on the Wall Street Journal blog, Real Time Economics, how about we reproduce it? "S&P/Case-Shiller home-price data showed… Continue reading