The Milken Institute recently released its 2009 list of Best-Performing Cities Index and Austin, Texas has been named the best-performing metropolitan area in the U.S. The index is designed to measure which U.S. cities are most successful in terms of job creation and retention, the quality of jobs being produced and overall economic performance. Austin combines several advantages that put it atop the rankings. It is the capital of an economically powerful state (at $1.1 trillion, the Texas GDP is the nationrsquo;s second-largest and in the top 15 worldwide), and home to the well-funded research centers at the University of Texas, a thriving technology cluster and an extensive professional services sector. Austin has plenty of local company on this yearrsquo;s list ndash; Texas claimed four of the top five spots and nine of the top 25. Our hometown of San Antonio came in at No. 11, up four places from last year. Texas cities ...

The Dow’s up, but why are Main Street Americans still reeling from last year’s economic collapse? With Americans still facing rising unemployment, foreclosures, and declining property values, Bill Moyers discusses with renowned economist James Galbraith,  professor of economics at the University of Texas, whether we have averted the crisis and how to get help for the middle class.

Click here for the full transcript.

Source: Bill Moyers, PBS (via YouTube), October 30, 2009.

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The Dow’s up, but why are Main Street Americans still reeling from last year’s economic collapse? With Americans still facing rising unemployment, foreclosures, and declining property values, Bill Moyers discusses with renowned economist James Galbraith,  professor of economics at the University of Texas, whether we have averted the crisis and how to get help for the middle class.

Click here for the full transcript.

Source: Bill Moyers, PBS (via YouTube), October 30, 2009.

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click here to subscribe to updates to Investment Postcards from Cape Town by e-mail.

The U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 9.4% in July from 9.5% in June, the most encouraging sign yet that the U.S. recession is easing.

But the news – released in a government report Friday – isn’t all good: Unemployment is likely to remain high in the months to come as some of these encouraging indicators of new economic growth evolve into a painful jobless recovery.

Friday’s jobs report and other recent data “reinforce our view that the U.S. recession ended in June, and we have raised our third-quarter 2009 growth forecast to 3.5%,” Christian Broda, a Barclays Capital (NYSE ADR: BCS) economist in New York, wrote in a research report yesterday.

Alan Krueger, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top economist, said he thought forecasts that growth would resume this year were “plausible” but expressed concern about long-term unemployment, which remains as a nagging problem.

“The administration is constantly looking

...

The U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 9.4% in July from 9.5% in June, the most encouraging sign yet that the U.S. recession is easing.

But the news – released in a government report Friday – isn’t all good: Unemployment is likely to remain high in the months to come as some of these encouraging indicators of new economic growth evolve into a painful jobless recovery.

Friday’s jobs report and other recent data “reinforce our view that the U.S. recession ended in June, and we have raised our third-quarter 2009 growth forecast to 3.5%,” Christian Broda, a Barclays Capital (NYSE ADR: BCS) economist in New York, wrote in a research report yesterday.

Alan Krueger, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top economist, said he thought forecasts that growth would resume this year were “plausible” but expressed concern about long-term unemployment, which remains as a nagging problem.

“The administration is constantly looking

...

As attested to by the large amount of coverage of the recent US-China Strategic and Economic Dialog [0] [1], [2], [3], [4],[5] China looms large in any discussion of the world economy. One of the most important contributors to the informed discussion on this subject was Brad Setser, at the Council on Foreign Affairs and before that at RGE Monitor. Unfortunately, Dr. Setser will be leaving the blogosphere, so his insights will be missed (although fortunately for us, he'll be adding his input at the NEC, where we all wish him well).

So now, there'll be even a greater need for reasoned analysis. One addition to the discussion is a Symposium on China's impact on the global economy just published in Pacific Economic Review (August 2009). From my introductory chapter to the symposium:

Over the past decade, China's presence

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While politicians, talking heads, and bloggers blab about the causes of the mortgage crisis, Stan Liebowitz of the University of Texas lays out why they’re all dead wrong in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Rather than subprime or lair loans being the culprits, Mr. Liebowitz illustrates that zero equity lead to the mortgage meltdown.

The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house — that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.

Many policy makers and ordinary people blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime mortgage lenders who presumably misled borrowers into taking out complex loans at low initial interest rates. Those hapless individuals were then supposedly

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Over the past decade there has been a noticeable shift within the field of education and a strong push for continued integration of technology in education. The newly-elected administration understands this world-wide shift and understands America is currently behind the curve as far as education is concerned. To combat this, the administration is concentrating its efforts on increasing the quality of America’s education, resources for required for this education, and technology in the classroom. Thus, education IT seems to be a favorable sub-sector in the long run, and should experience growth in the future, well beyond that which it had previously seen with the emergence of the computer.

Within this subsector there are many small regional private companies along with some larger companies traded on foreign exchanges, but

...

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NYSE Gets Approval To Charge More Fees

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that regulators have approved the NYSE Arca's long-standing request to charge more for "noncore" data. 

As explained by reporter Judith Burns, such noncore data include "information such as orders to buy and sell shares at different prices." Core data is defined as information that show "recent trading activity and the best-available current prices," according to the article. 

You can read the story here. 

 

Investors Walk From Mutual Funds Into ETFs

The latest report by TrimTabs Investment Research shows that more than $12 billion flowed out of stock mutual funds in the week ended Dec. 3, according to CNNMoney.com. That reversed the previous week's $10.4 billion inflow into stock mutual funds.

Note at the very bottom of the story that stock ETFs had an inflow of $920 million

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A batch of interesting video clips about the election of Barack Obama and the unfolding financial crisis has appeared over the past few days as all and sundry are attempting to make sense of a rather murky picture. A number of clips that have attracted my attention are shared below.

Firstly, back to basics with a rudimentary explanation by Enspire of how the mortgage crisis came about. (Click here in case you missed Enspire’s previous video, “Understanding the financial crisis”.)

Enspire Learning: The mortgage banking meltdown

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