The Times (Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.) reports on the ever-increasing use of advertising data. The article uses the term “data-based campaigns.” Data-driven decision making has been around since time immemorial for larger companies, but now there are web-based tools for small businesses to enter the fray. There’s a definite need for public [...]
NPR (Poll: Economists Say Recession Likely To End In ’09) reports on the opinions of 45 economists in today’s Morning Edition. The survey respondents from the National Association of Business Economics think the recession will discontinue later this year. The economic barometers they’re citing are unemployment, business spending/profitability, and consumer confidence. These are four fingers [...]
The BBC (US credit card firms clamp down) reports on the new U.S. credit card legislation signed into law by President Obama. It cites U.S. credit card debt as an astounding $1 Trillion (that’s a 1 with 12 zeroes – $1 000 000 000 000) , but unfortunately doesn’t cite the credit card debt of [...]
The Times (Consumers Are Dealt a New Hand in Credit Cards) reports on the credit card legislation that passed the Senate yesterday. Some of it is good, while others are overly restrictive. From the article: If you’re a student, it will become harder to get a credit card. No one under 21 can have a card [...]
Today’s Times (Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers) reports card companies will make everyone pay. Compensated risk is a great concept and makes for neat marginal cost curves in economics courses, but what if the macro equation is incorrect at the individual level? From the article: But with the relaxing of [...]
Excellent article in today’s Washington Post (Poor? Pay Up by DeNeen L. Brown). People who are “poor” lack leverage in the form of credit and other tangible resources, but do have social capital (i.e., people helping people) that can moderate their circumstances. Need to get a car to get to work? If you’re poor, you’ll [...]
USA Today (Gap between Baby Boomers, young minorities grows) reports on the demographic shift of the nation. “A lot of these Boomers are going to be relying on this younger generation to take care of them in a lot of ways,” says Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. “In another generation, this is [...]
Today’s Washington Post (U.S. Clears the Way for Antitrust Crackdown) reports the Justice Department is newly empowered to pursue antitrust enforcement. There are monopolies that control output and can artificially raise prices (much like the interest rates and fees on credit cards!), but what about monopsonies that can also inflate prices but through their buying [...]
Continue reading about Monopoly in Sight, but what about Monopsony?
The Times (U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace Eases) reports April job figures indicate a “slowing recession.” Businesses are expected to cut an additional two million jobs before the economy begins growing again and the unemployment rate ebbs, probably sometime in 2010.
In business school, we learned that every Threat has an inverse Opportunity in the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). A statement from an economic report from USA Today (U.S. may face years of sluggish economic growth) captures this sentiment: More than 5 million jobs have disappeared in the past 15 months, and consumers and [...]