The Curmudgeonly Professor

Daily Trivia and Information Tidbit for April 17 2009

Listen up class, here is your water cooler and coffee break topic for today.  Ponzi schemes, according to Kevin McCoy of USA Today, are named after an Italian immigrant named Charles Ponzi who duped thousands in postage stamp speculation in the 1920s. Ponzi played the fluctuations between U.S. and foreign currencies to buy and sell stamps, promising 40% return in  90 days.  Of course, Ponzi's luck ran out, as will always happen after the supply of new investors runs out to pay those at the top.  Imagine, being inventive enough to have a fraud scheme named after you.  I wonder what is engraved on Mr. Ponzi's tombstone?  You can read the article on Ponzi scammers here.  And, whatever you do, don't be gullible enough to fall for one.  Any unrealistic "promised" high rate of return denotes a fraud, sooner or later.

Daily Trivia and Information Tidbit for April 16 2009

Did you know that the new New York Yankee stadium cost $1.3 billion, and that the combined cost of the new Yankee Stadium and the new Mets' Citi Field is $2.3 billion?  And that premium seats at the new Yankee Stadium cost $2,625 a game?  The website includes a great moving panoramic photo which is worth seeing.  We won't even discuss the ramifications, implications, and observations that might go along with these observations.  You can make them up yourselves.  For the story, go here.

Daily Trivia and Information Tidbit for April 15 2009

One of the most significant economic indicators is the unemployment rate, or the percentage of the labor force that is unemployed.  The labor force, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, consists of persons 16 years of age and over who are not institutionalized or in the armed forces.  People with jobs are employed.  People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.  People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.

In perspective, here are some recent unemployment statistics:

• Jan. 1982    8.6
• Jan 1983   10.4
• Jan 1989     5.4
• Jan. 1992    7.3
• Jan 2000     4.0
• Mar. 2009    8.5

Unemployment statistics are estimated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from a survey of 60,000 households, representing about 110,000 persons.  In an economy like we are experiencing today, the unemployment estimates understate the total number of unemployed because of "discouraged workers," or those workers who gave up trying to find a job.  These workers are not in the labor force and do not count in the unemployment rate.  The BLS estimates that the total percentage of unemployed workers plus discouraged workers plus all other marginally attached workers is about 9.8%, or 1.3% points above the March 2009 unemployment rate.  We could spend a month analyzing the unemployment rate, the methods of estimating it, the quirks and statistical procedures involved in analyzing it, and what it means to the economy.  Though the rate is high today, it is not as high as the 10.4% in January 1983 in the Reagan first term.

Daily Trivia and Information Tidbit for April 14 2009

As promised, the Curmudgeonly Professor is embarking on his campaign to provide at least one new bit of trivia, an informative information tidbit, or some unrelated nonsense on a daily, more or less, basis.  To start with, consider these data on how goods move in the US, based on data from the U.S. Transportation Forecast to 2020 as reported in USA Today in its April 3-5 issue, p. 1:

• Truck 69%
• Rail 15%
• Pipeline 10%
• Water 6%
• Air <1%

There you have it.   When the conversation gets boring, rise to the occasion and recite these data.  The Curmudgeonly Professor actually taught transportation economics for many years, a field that got much less complicated and much less interesting when freight rates and air fares became deregulated.  Remember, we have approximately 364 more such tidbits during the coming year, and there will be a final exam to see how many of them you remember.