Some New Zealanders might say that this is a question that only an Australian could ask, but it seems to me to be a good way to raise the issue that I want to discuss. (I hope that when I look back on this in a few days time it will still seem like a [...]

Strong demand for communications equipment, machinery and fabricated metal led an upbeat durable goods report for April. Overall orders jumped by 1.9%.
Most analysts were wrong and had expected only a rise of 0.4%.
The bounce in new orders was broad but was led by communication equipment which alone was up 6.9 percent. Significant new [...]

From a recent Zerohedge blog post:
James Brigagliano, co-acting director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, said dark pools could impair price discovery by drawing valuable order flow away from the public quoting markets. “To the extent that desirable order flow is diverted from the public markets, it potentially could adversely affect the execution [...]

Consumer confidence is surging, investment fear is subsiding, and brave buyers are wading back into the existing home market.
On Wednesday the National Association of Realtors said that sales of existing homes rose 2.9 percent. The annual rate now stands at 4.68 million homes, up from the 4.55 million annualized rate in March.
The results were [...]

An Economic Times article today, titled “Slums and economic stimulus”, says

“If slum dwellers could be given property rights that are heritable but inalienable to the land on which they now have their make-shift homes, if these title deeds provide for being used as collateral, then immediately all of these people become eligible for drawing on [...]

In an interview with Tim Treadgold for the Eureka Report, Mark Creasy makes a point about watching the stocks, not flow, of gold:
Scrap gold, and even mine-supply, aren’t really the big players in the (gold) market. There’s about 160,000 tonnes of gold in existence, and the world produces about 2000 tonnes of freshly-mined gold a [...]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” during his State of the Union Address in 1944. He noted that while “under the protection of certain inalienable rights…our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness….true [...]

Disclaimer:  This article neither constitutes nor should it be relied upon as legal, investment or tax advice.
Almost everyone uses the dollar to calculate, plan and settle transactions in the United States and beyond.  Likewise feet or meters are commonly used to calculate, plan and construct many building and engineering projects.
If units of length were mired in definitional [...]

Some useful observations on the gold market in a recent Unqualified Reservations blog entry:
One trivial example of a liquid, functioning prediction market that does not, and cannot, produce accurate predictions is the gold futures market. The gold futures market is a large, active and efficient market in future gold, but in hindsight it demonstrates little [...]

This week the government’s data showed that unemployment actually fell in 21 states in April. Additionally 11 states saw their unemployment numbers hold steady rather than rise. Given that the unemployment rate rose in 46 states in March, the April state numbers are further evidence that the labor market is stabilizing.
Here are highlights [...]