Minnesota's Premier Designated Driving Service
Monday, July 19, 2010
Markets in Everything: Rent-A-Friend
Scott Rosenbaum, 30, has a database of 218,000 men and women who members of his site Rent a Friend can hire "to hang out with, go to a movie or restaurant with," or be "someone to show you around an unfamiliar town." The US-based site already has around 2,000 members, each paying up to $25 to access the site.
When they see a friend they like the look of, they can rent them for as little as $10 an hour. Rosenbaum said he wanted to "go a step back" from dating sites and offer a service that was, in the words of his website "strictly platonic." He told The Times: "No one was offering friendship."
The service is not just about getting people to meet up for a drink or a meal. It lists a host of diverse activities that members might like to hire friends for, including "teaching manners," "snowboarding," "family functions" and just "hanging out."
Link.
HT: Steve Bartin
Vogue's September Issue: +100 Ad Pages vs. 2009
Crain's New York -- "Luxury magazines, like the economy, are making a slow comeback. On Monday, Vogue magazine will announce ad-pages results for its all-important September issue, and industry insiders say that the fashion monthly will show a spike of 100 advertising pages, or 23% over a year ago, for a total of 529 (see chart above).
The relatively improved economic climate has been boosting numbers for Vogue's sister titles at Condé Nast, the most luxury-oriented of the major magazine publishers and the one that was hardest hit by the downturn. But even 23% growth for the September issue—in which designers and fashion companies display their next season's lineups—barely puts Vogue back in the league it was in a few years ago.
In 2007, the magazine carried a record 727 ad pages—and weighed in at four pounds nine ounces. In 2008, Vogue dropped 7% of its ad-weight, coming in at 674 pages."
Double Dip? Seven Reasons Why Not
From Lord Abbett's senior economist Milton Ezrati in today's WSJ:
"It seems these days that half the headlines in the financial media fear a double-dip recession, as do half the conversations on Wall Street. There certainly are risks, not least in Europe’s financial difficulties. But still, there are reasons to question such widespread concerns. History, after all, offers only one true double-dip experience, and that grew out of a policy error. More, the actual data on the economy fly in the face of such an outlook. Following are seven reasons to doubt the double-dip outlook."
The reasons include: Consumer spending is firm, housing data are misleading, business spending and exports are awfully strong for a dip, overall production is good, employment is not so threatening, financial markets are healthier than the headlines imply, and China continues to grow.
Read the rest here.
"It seems these days that half the headlines in the financial media fear a double-dip recession, as do half the conversations on Wall Street. There certainly are risks, not least in Europe’s financial difficulties. But still, there are reasons to question such widespread concerns. History, after all, offers only one true double-dip experience, and that grew out of a policy error. More, the actual data on the economy fly in the face of such an outlook. Following are seven reasons to doubt the double-dip outlook."
The reasons include: Consumer spending is firm, housing data are misleading, business spending and exports are awfully strong for a dip, overall production is good, employment is not so threatening, financial markets are healthier than the headlines imply, and China continues to grow.
Read the rest here.
Exhibit A: Increased Worker Productivity
Watch an amazing video of robotic inventory and mobile fulfillment that triples worker productivity and reduces errors. See related CD post here on how increases in worker productivity have eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
CA June Home Sales: Median Prices Rise for 8th Month, Foreclosure Sales Fall to 28-Month Low
1. In June, 43,964 houses and condos were sold in California, which was an increase of 7.3% percent from May (40,965), and down by 0.50% from the 44,167 houses sold in June 2009 (see chart).
2. The median price for a California home sold in June was $270,000, up 9.8% from $246,000 in June 2009, and down by 2.9% from $278,000 in May (see chart).
3. The year-over-year increase in median home prices in June is the eighth month in a row of an increase (starting in November 2009, which likely marks the bottom for home prices in CA), following 27 months of year-over-year declines.
4. Of the homes sold in June, 34.7% were properties that had been foreclosed on during the past year, down from 35.4% in May and down from 45.6% in June of 2009 (see chart). The last time foreclosure resales were as low was in March 2008, 28 months ago.
Seattle Shipping Boom: +45% Gain YTD from 2009
The chart above shows monthly shipping volume (TEUs = twenty-foot equivalent units, data here) at the Port of Seattle (America's 10th largest port, and third largest port on the West Coast). As might be expected, shipping at the Seattle port is dominated by trade with China, to the extent that more than half (56%) of the shipping volume (by dollar amount) is with China, and the almost $19 billion of shipping with China in 2009 was more than the value of shipping with the next 100 countries combined.
Shipping volume for June (190,129 TEUs) was 49% above last year's shipping in June, and this follows year-to-year increases of 57.38% in May, 57.2% in April, 39.4% in March, 48.2% in February and 21.7% in January. Year-to-date, shipping volume at the Seattle port is above last year by 45.2%. At this pace, annual Seattle shipping in 2010 will likely exceed both last year's shipping volume of 1.58 million TEUs and the 1.70 million TEUs in 2008, and possibly even the 1.973 TEUs in 2007.
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