There’s a new book called “Who Owns The Future?” and it apparently starts with an interesting observation. In 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy and basically started selling off any asset with value (they own a ton of patents). Shortly thereafter, Facebook bought the photo sharing site Instagram. Kodak is dying as Instagram is getting started. [...]

The first friday of every month is a big deal in the world of economics. That’s when we learn key figures like the unemployment rate and how many jobs were added over the last month. Everyone thought the report for April, which came out on 5/3, would be a bit of a letdown. But it [...]

All the way back in 2012 we talked about the shadow economy in Europe. The shadow economy is every kind of transaction that doesn’t pass through official channels. This includes things like paying your painter in cash (there’s a reason they gave you a discount). This probably won’t get reported as income so it enters [...]

The jobs report released last week was a bit of a disappointment. The economy added a lot less jobs than recent months and compared to expectations. Caroline Baum does a good job dismissing this. So it’s an isolated incident on a job situation that is weak, but still adding jobs. But in the report, a [...]

It’s well documented that women make less than men. Just see the chart above. It’s also well understood that due to the choices the different genders make a wage gap is unsurprising. Of course it is unacceptable when all else equal a woman is making less than a man, and we hope the law can [...]

Instead of one story today, I want to point at three with a common theme. They all deal with stuff we know to be occurring, but we either don’t understand it or can’t see it happening. These hidden aspects of our world play a very big role in how the world we can see works. [...]

While the recession may have officially ended in 2009, the construction industry continued to suffer all the way up through 2011. Only recently has the industry started to increase their spending and hiring. But spending has far outpaced hiring. One can reasonably assume that would be the case, but after a while the hiring has [...]

Last Friday’s jobs report was not only better than expected, it was almost good. We added 236,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell to levels not seen since 2008. This was especially exciting because many had feared that concerns over the sequester or just a dysfunctional Congress would hamper hiring. All around, considering the circumstances, [...]