Statistics

Gross National Product (GDP)
The total value of goods and services produced within the borders of a country, regardless of who owns the assets or the nationality of the labor used in producing that output.. The growth of output is usually measured in real terms, meaning increases in output due to inflation have been removed.
Importance: One goal (often unstated) of central banks is sustained growth of the economy with full employment and stable prices. Real GDP is the most comprehensive measure of the performance of an economy. By monitoring trends in the overall growth rate as well as the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation, policy makers are able to assess whether the current stance of monetary policy is consistent with its policy goals.

Consumer Price Index (most countries have a similar measure)
The CPI is an index designed to measure the change in price of a fixed market basket of goods and services. The market basket of goods and services is representative of the purchases of a typical consumer. Most countries have an alternate measure of inflation where they exclude volatile items, such as food and energy, to arrive at a measure of underlying inflation. Colloquially, this is usually referred to as “core” inflation. Core inflation can be a useful analytical tool.
Many Central banks explicitly target inflation levels. An acceleration or deceleration of inflation may signal that a change in monetary policy might be appropriate.

Home Starts/Permits
New Home Sales record sales of U.S. newly constructed residences. The U.S. Census Bureau publishes New Home Sales, Starts and Permits statistics monthly.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices measures the residential housing market. This index family consists of 20 regional indices and two composite indices as aggregates of the regions. The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index is a broader composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions and is calculated quarterly.
This is yet another measure of the housing industry in the U.S. It is watched because of its accuracy, but the data tend to be too old to impact the markets much.

Current Account balance
The Current Account balance is the difference between a nation's exports of goods and services and its imports of goods and services. The current account is one of the two primary components of the balance of payments, the other being the capital account. It is called the current account because goods and services are generally consumed in the current period.

U.S. Core PCE price index
The Core PCE price index is defined as personal consumption expenditures (PCE) prices excluding food and energy.
IMPACT: Core PCE is said to be the preferred inflation measure of the Fed and therefore is a very significant release in that it can influence policy. It is thought the Fed targets core PCE loosely between 2.0% and 3.0%.

Industrial Production/Capacity Utilization
Industrial Production is an index designed to measure changes in the level of output in the industrial sector of the economy. The index is grouped by both products (consumer goods, business equipment, intermediate goods, and materials) and industry (manufacturing, mining, and utilities). The data is produced by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
IMPACT: While the industrial sector of the economy represents only about 20 percent of GDP, because changes in GDP are heavily concentrated in the industrial sector changes in this index provide useful information on the current growth of GDP. The level of capacity utilization in the industrial sector provides information on the overall level of resource utilization in the economy which may in turn provide information on the likely future course of inflation.

Personal Income
Personal income is defined as the income that is received by persons from participation in production, from both government and business transfer payments, and from government interest (which is treated like a transfer payment). It is calculated as the sum of wage and salary disbursements, other labor income, proprietors'' income with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments, rental income of persons with capital consumption adjustment, personal dividend income, personal interest income, and transfer payments to persons, less personal contributions for social insurance.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey
Consumer Confidence Survey is a monthly report detailing consumer attitudes and buying intentions. The Index is calculated on the basis of a 5,000 household survey of consumer opinions on current conditions and future expectations of the economy.

Weekly jobless data
Weekly jobless data are the most current read on employment and also the economy.
Initial Jobless claims can be very volatile so many also watch the 4-week moving average to get a better handle on trends.
Continuing claims are used by economists to predict the unemployment rate. These data are not as consistent as they once were as statutory benefit rules have been changing. Changes in the rules can affect the number of individuals eligible for claims.

Purchasing Managers Index – Manufacturing and Service and Regional PMIs
Most major economies have purchasing managers indices (PMI) released monthly. They are compiled by various organizations. Some focus on the manufacturing sector while others measure the service sector. They are a very current measure of the economic health of the manufacturing or services sector. The PMI indies are usually based on five major indicators: new orders, inventory levels, production, supplier deliveries and the employment environment.
A PMI of greater than 50 represents expansion, compared to the previous month. A reading under 50 represents a contraction, while a reading at 50 indicates no change.
We find the PMI indices to be useful predictors of future economic activity.

1209

They who act without sufficient thought, will often fall into unsuspected danger.
Aesop (620 BC-560 BC)

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

One element about performance is clear "Nobody can be at the top of their game unless they love what their doing. Freud put it simply. Life really is all about love and work"
Caliper a Princeton, N.J.-based management-consulting firm:

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the others willing to let them.
American poet Robert Frost

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
Homer (900 BC-800 BC)

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

There is no good ... in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. ... The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

a dog

welcome to ethiopia

BAKO, ETHIOPIA -- In recent months, the Ethiopian government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland.
Why Attractive?" reads one glossy poster with photos of green fields and a map outlining swaths of the country available at bargain-basement prices. "Vast, fertile, irrigable land at low rent. Abundant water resources. Cheap labor. Warmest hospitality."
This impoverished and chronically food-insecure Horn of Africa nation is rapidly becoming one of the world's leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.
Governments across Southeast Asia, Latin America and especially Africa are seizing the chance to attract this new breed of investors, wining and dining executives and creating land-leasing agencies and land catalogues to showcase their offerings of earth. In Africa alone, experts estimate that about 50 million acres -- roughly the size of Nebraska -- have been leased in the past two years.

€ target 1.60

Dollar forecasters predict the world’s reserve currency will continue sliding even when the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates, which policy makers say is an “extended period” away.Standard Chartered Plc, Aletti Gestielle SGR, HSBC Holdings Plc and Scotia Capital Inc. say the dollar will depreciate as much as 7.1 percent versus the euro. 1.4950 + 7.1% = 1.6011.
About $12 trillion of fiscal and monetary stimulus, the world’s lowest borrowing costs and a record $4 trillion of government bond sales between 2009 and 2010 will weigh on the currency, they said. So will the nation’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate and signs that the economic recovery may falter, they said. “History tells us the dollar shouldn’t start rising on a sustained basis until 12 months after the Fed starts to lift rates,” said Callum Henderson, the Singapore-based global head of foreign-exchange strategy for Standard Chartered.

1109

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Gary Moore in Faithful Finances 101: From the Poverty of Fear and Greed to the Riches of Spiritual Investing (Templeton Foundation Press): “It does a fool no good to spend money on an education, because he has no common sense.” Strive for wisdom not education.

Politics have no relation to morals.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.
Ovid

Delegating authority to make decisions implies absolute confidence in those who get the power, says NBA great Bill Russell and co-author David Falkner in Russell Rules:

Entrepreneurs have a huge tolerance for failure because they see it as a process and not an event. Work as a Spiritual Practice by Lewis Richmond (Broadway) talks about Thomas Edison: "Edison tried thousands of combinations of materials before he was successful in inventing the light bulb. He didn't experience these disappointments as failures but as clues on the road to success."

The best marketing

has always been word-of-mouth.

When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life.
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

It is not good to have a rule of many.
Homer (900 BC-800 BC)

Habits change into character.
Ovid

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900

Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Abraham Lincoln

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."

egging

- tr. verb meaning "to incite into action".

The bicycle kingdom is going electric

electric

I bet, he will fall!