Category: Data Source

With $310 billion in assets (hat tip Nemo), WaMu would be the biggest bank failure in history – in fact it would be larger than the previous top ten added together (although maybe not in inflation adjusted terms).

Here is the link.

In Fairfax County, about half of the homes for sale are bank-owned properties…

Fairfax County, of course, is one of the wealthiest (and stable) counties in the United States.  Here is the story, which shows Fairfax is one of the few places with a rebounding housing market.

…the total liabilities of
Deutsche Bank (leverage ratio over 50!) amount to around 2,000 billion
euro, (more than Fannie Mai) or over 80 % of the GDP of Germany. This
is simply too much for the Bundesbank or even the German state to
contemplate, given that the German budget is bound by the rules of the
Stability pact and the German government cannot order (unlike the US
Treasury) its central bank to issue more currency. The total
liabilities of Barclays of around 1,300 billion pounds (leverage ratio
over 60!) surpasses Britain’s GDP. Fortis bank, which has been in the
news recently, has a leverage ratio of "only" 33, but its liabilities
are several times larger than the GDP of its home country (Belgium).

The Fed has possibly been bailing them out too (not necessarily by intention), as it is likely that some of these institutions had heavy exposure to the weaker U.S. institutions.  Here is the link.  Those failures should also put the U.S. regulatory failures in perspective.  And what would happen if a big U.K. bank were on the verge of failing?  Would the Fed have to step in there too?  Contagion is contagion, as Aristotle once said…

The map is here.  It is more or less what I expected, namely the Northeast.  Virginia does fine, though we seem to be a state of open, disagreeable introverts.  The link shows you other state-by-state personality maps as well.  The pointer is from Arnold Kling, though I would have read it anyway.

I loved this post.  And here is my favorite part:

Ear Cleaners: Though not a part of the South Indian road market, these people are quite a force in North India.

Temple Priests: In many roads of India, temples
awkwardly jut out into the roads (they can’t be demolished as they will
cause an uproar in religious India). Priests either belonging to
neighbouring temple or dedicated to that temple start early morning’s
ablutions for the Gods. It is also common to see small temples for
Virgin Mary.

Here is a list of stuff worth more than its weight in gold, expressed in terms of price per pound:

Here is the link, with much more information.  Here is a short article on the market for rhodium.  Here is an earlier post on the economics of antimatter.  Thanks to Jen Smith for the pointer

In millions of metric tons:

Texas: 688

California: 394

Pennsylvania: 275

Ohio: 262

Florida: 256

Illinois, Indiana, and New York come next.  I didn’t know that Texas would rank so high on the list.  And it’s interesting that #3, 4, and 5 are among the major swing states in many presidential elections.  That’s not good news for a lot of reform ideas.

This information is from the fun to browse The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009, a Colombia/SSRC book.

There is less happiness inequality today than in the 1970’s or 1980’s. And this has occurred despite large increases in income and consumption inequality. Betsey Stevenson and I spell out these facts in a lot more detail in a new paper, “Happiness Inequality in the United States,” forthcoming in the Journal of Legal Studies.

That’s Justin Wolfers, here is much more.  This is one reason — but not the only reason — why so many moral arguments from the Left fall on deaf ears when it comes to most Americans.  Of course happiness inequality is more fundamental than either income or wealth inequality because we care about outputs, not inputs.

By the way, here is a roof access cage ladder.

Or should I have called this post "The language subsidy"?  Anyway, here is the latest from David Albouy, courtesy of the NBER:

The wage differential between Francophone and Anglophone men from 1970 to 2000 fell by 25 percentage points within Quebec, but only by 10 points Canada-wide, largely because the wages of Quebec Anglophones fell by 15 points relative to other Canadian Anglophones. Accordingly, the Canadian measure of the Francophone wage gap better reflects the changing welfare of Francophones than the Quebec measure. Over half of the reduction in the Canadian Francophone wage gap is explained by rising Francophone education levels. In Quebec, the declining number and relative wages of Anglophone workers is best explained by a falling demand for English-speaking labour.

Here is the paper.

…domestically it’s more likely that those middle managers flying
incessantly are the ones who will be sitting up front rather than their
bosses, as roughly 90% of domestic first class seats are upgrades
awarded to frequent flyers rather than paid first class tickets.

That’s from Air Genius Gary Leff.

Some of them.  Buy this stuff!  Overall it looks like a net subsidy to toy-loving, camera-loving nerds and a tax on commuting parents with large families.

Hat tip goes to Patrick Appel.

Females, older people, working people, people who live in high-crime
areas of their country and people who are at the bottom 50% of their
country’s income distribution are more vengeful.

Here’s a more traditional result:

The findings suggest that vengeful feelings of people are subdued as a
country develops economically and becomes more stable politically and
socially and that both country characteristics and personal attributes
are important determinants of vengeance.

Here is the paper, here is the author’s home page.

Prices are here and the pointer is from Elizabeth Pisani.  Comments are closed!

There are already more Chinese living in Nigeria than there were Britons during the height of the empire.

Here is the link, which includes more.

Among cities with more than 500,000 residents, Detroit has the
safest drivers, with accident rates that are 20 percent below the
national average.

For cities with more than 1 million residents, Phoenix has the
safest big-city commuters, with accident rates about equal to the
national average.

Here is much more, Philadelphia is a disaster and L.A. isn’t so safe either.  I wonder to what extent these rankings simply proxy for traffic density.  Here are some charts.  Overall Sioux Falls, Tucson, and El Paso seem to be relatively safe cities for driving.