And you are here why?

I have no words to describe this - just watch, and listen. Its good - really good - till 3:21, at which point it becomes great , till 4:20, at which point it quite literally goes into overdrive. "Awesome" is over-used nowadays, but this, my friends, is Awesome...

From the mind of Jim Toomey

The folks at Rich Blocks Poor Blocks certainly know how to do it right.  They took the data from the 2006-2010 U.S. Census Community Survey , mashed it up w/ a bit of Google Maps, and Bob's your uncle, you've got a spectacularly cool way of knowing more about the income levels in the neighborhood that you live in.  A couple of things leap out immediately Its fascinating to see trends - and stratification - in the neighborhoods.  NY city (above) vs. D.C. below is a brilliant example It doesn't matter how wing-nutty people get, there is no way that "middle class" is $400,000. Even Suffolk County in NY (which is pretty ritzy) gets to - at most - $110, 000 (its actually $92K +/- $26K).  And the statewide middle-class range in NY is between $49,000 and $62,000. By the way, as you can tell from the above, the variability in the ranges is quite high - but it still gets the point across, and it is fascinating to look at the trends... (The images here are jus...

Its a chocolate thingy we picked up in Helsinki. And ye gods, is it ever addictive... (filed under What The Finns Know... )

Well, you could see this coming up 5th Avenue.  Oliver Blanchard, chief economist at the IMF (motto Austerity Will Cure What Ails Ya! ) has a new paper out - Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multiplier s - which basically sez. "We Wuz Wrong" . Huh? Well, if you recall the serious suffering going on in Europe over the last few years (Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal), the main thrust has been something along the lines of "Your economy is slowing down, so you need to enact serious budget cuts" .  In the immortal words of Dalton, Pain Don't Hurt . (You have seen Road House, right? Greatest movie ever ?) The problem with this math as virtually everyone not in Germany, Britain, or the IMF has been pointing out is that If    - Your economy is shrinking, and    - You cut government spending, and    - You raise taxes then    - Your economy shrinks even more, and    - More people end up out of jobs, and   ...

Phil Howard et al. released a study on the wines available for sale in Michigan (yes, I want his job!).  I know, I know, " Michigan? " etc., etc., but go read the synopsis here - its pretty valid for most of the U.S. Highlights include Just three firms, however, account for more than half of the wine sales in the United States The vast majority of varieties were [extremely uncommon], with 72.8% recorded in only one store, and 87% in two or fewer stores The top firms contribute to an illusion of diverse ownership by offering dozens of brands (and hundreds of varieties), many of which do not clearly indicate the parent company on their label Even company websites may not make ownership apparent. To give just one example, “Octavin Home Wine Bar” is in smaller print on a number of boxed wine brands, including Silver Birch (New Zealand), Pinot Evil (France) and Herding Cats (South Africa). If you go to the Octavin website you’ll see it is a trademark of Underdog Wine ...

There has been quite a hubub in the blogosphere recently about the State Of Macroeconomics.  Noah Smith has a pretty decent encapsulation of the discussion , (started by Paul Krugman , rebutted - poorly - by Steve Williamson , and followed up by Brad DeLong and John Quiggin ). I really don't have much to add to this, except to say that by pretty much any stretch of the imagination Most (all?) of the "modern" macro models have failed, and failed spectacularly DSGE sucketh profoundly Keynes really was a genius. As is Zach Weiner