Recession Buzz: 2011

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Ranking of WSJ forecasters: May update

The GDP estimate for the first quarter is out, so it's time to update my ranking of the Wall Street Journal forecasters. (Remember: to pit forecasters against each other I use the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and the most accurate forecaster is the one with the lowest RMSE, among all who have submitted at least ten forecasts since May of 2004. I only include the predictions submitted in the months of February, May, August and November for quarters Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, respectively. The Q1 forecast is the one submitted in February, the Q2 forecast is the one posted in May, and so on.)

According to the latest ranking, the most accurate forecaster is Gene Huang of FedEx, pushing Gary Thayer of A.G. Edwards to second place. Resler and Hoffman keep third and fourth place, respectively. The median forecast falls from 6th to 10th. The lanterne rouge continues to be James Smith of the University of North Carolina. At 2.6%, his forecast for 2008:Q1 was as inaccurate as usual.

The naive forecast, which is equal to the growth rate observed during the previous quarter, would have been spot-on this time, since GDP grew by 0.6% in both Q4 and Q1. Historically, however, it has performed worse than any forecaster but one.

Only Edward Leamer of UCLA Anderson Forecast was right on the mark. The predictions of 38 of the 52 forecasters were within one percentage point of the truth.

Top-20 WSJ forecasters, by Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), as of 2008:Q1

Rank	Forecaster	Firm	RMSE	Absolute deviation for 2008:Q1
1	Gene Huang	FedEx Corp.	0.95	0.4
2	Gary Thayer*	A.G. Edwards	0.95	--
3	David Resler	Nomura Securities International	1.01	0.8
4	Stuart Hoffman	PNC Financial Services Group	1.01	0.6
5	Allen Sinai	Decision Economics Inc.	1.01	0.1
6	Dana Johnson	Comerica Bank	1.02	0.1
7	Nicholas S. Perna	Perna Associates	1.02	0.3
8	Mike Cosgrove	Econoclast	1.02	0.4
9	J. Prakken and C. Varvares	Macroeconomic Advisers	1.03	0.1
--	Median	--	1.05	0.6
10	Scott Anderson	Wells Fargo & Co.	1.07	0.4
11	Nairmen Behravesh	Global Insight	1.08	0.9
12	John Lonski	Moody's Investors Service	1.08	0.8
13	Edward Leamer	UCLA Anderson Forecast	1.08	0
14	R. Berner and D. Greenlaw	Morgan Stanley	1.08	1.3
15	Douglas Duncan	Mortgage Bankers Association	1.09	0.2
16	Robert DiClemente*	Citibank SSB	1.09	--
17	Diane Swonk	Mesirow Financial	1.09	0.1
18	Neal Soss	Credit Suisse	1.11	0.1
19	Dean Maki	Barclays Capital	1.12	0.4
20	David Rosenberg	Merrill Lynch	1.12	1

Source: WSJ's survey of forecasters and author's calculations.
*Not in WSJ group of forecasters, as of February 2008.

The May forecast for Q2 is also available now. On average, the top five forecasters according to my ranking predict growth of -0.1%. The median of all forecasts is 0.3%.

Previous ranking

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Saturday, May 21, 2011

Economy Slowing Says Calculated Risk

Great Blogger, Calculated Risk "Clearly the economy is slowing sharply"

Friday, May 20, 2011

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

That pesky LFP

“Americans delay retirement as housing, stocks swoon” was the headline of a recent story in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). As a description of what's going on, it should be taken with a rock of salt.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Nouriel Roubini: "clear by now that a severe U.S. recession is inevitable in next few months."

Nouriel Roubini, a leading economist at New York University, is now saying that a US Recession is almost here:

"It is increasingly clear by now that a severe U.S. recession is inevitable in next few months. Those of us who warned for the last 12 months about a combination of a worsening housing recession, a severe credit crunch and financial meltdown, high oil prices and a saving-less and debt-burdened consumers being on the ropes causing an economy-wide recession were repeatedly rebuffed the consensus view about a soft landing given the presumed resilience of the US consumer."

"But the evidence is now building that an ugly recession is inevitable."

Roubini is a smart economist who often goes against the consensus view.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Sugar Giants Shove Their Sweetener

by Chris Tenove

Jul/Aug 2003 Issue

What does anybody know about the sugar industry? The people who put the frosting on the frosted flakes keep a low profile and are happy when folks are too busy eating to ask a lot of questions. Now, though, a dust-up with the World Health Organization (WHO) has flushed them into the limelight, where they're pitting profits against public health.

The conflict was inflamed by a new set of dietary guidelines drawn from two years of research by the WHO and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. The guidelines are part of a worldwide strategy to tame the swelling epidemic of obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases. One recommendation is that free sugars (i.e. sugar added to foods) should make up no more than 10 percent of our daily caloric intake. The sugar lobby reacted to that suggestion like a toddler asked to hand back his Halloween booty...

'It was particularly stupid for them to put in writing that they're going to try to get Congress to take away WHO's money,' says Michael Jacobsen, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. 'It gave consumers a chance to see the kind of bullying that is usually done behind closed doors.' [Adbusters]

Saturday, May 14, 2011

A ranking of WSJ forecasters

For a number of years, The Wall Street Journal has been conducting a survey of economic forecasts. The newspaper is kind enough to publish the prediction of each forecaster, so we can entertain ourselves observing how they fare.

I restrict my attention to quarterly forecasts of GDP growth. Between 2004 and 2007, 27% of the predictions were within 0.5 percentage points of the actual outcome (see Table 1), whereas 56% (27% + 29%) were within one percentage point. Or, if you’re a member of the empty-glass club, 44% missed the target by more than one point.

Table 1. Distribution of accuracy of forecasts (2004-2007)

Forecasts within...	Percentage
0.5 percentage points (p.p.) of actual value	27.2
0.5 - 1 p.p.	28.9
1 - 1.5 p.p.	22.6
1.5 - 2 p.p.	13.7
2 - 2.5 p.p.	5.2
over 2.5 p.p.	2.4
All	100

Source: WSJ's survey of forecasters and author's calculations

To pit forecasters against each other I use the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), a one-number summary of the deviations of several forecasts. The RMSE punishes both positive and negative deviations equally, but penalizes big errors proportionally more than small ones*. I also can use it to form confidence intervals.

According to the RMSE measure, the most accurate forecaster is Gary Thayer, of the firm A.G. Edwards, although he no longer participates in the survey. The second most-accurate forecaster, and still in the panel, is Gene Huang of FedEx. (See Table 2.) The best forecaster is able to predict GDP growth within 1.67 percentage points, at a 90% level of confidence. (That means that if he posted 100 forecasts, 90 of them would deviate from the actual GDP growth rate by plus or minus 1.67 percentage points.)

Table 2. Top-20 WSJ forecasters, by Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE)

Rank	Forecaster	Firm	RMSE	Forecasts' 90% confidence margin (p.p.)
1	Gary Thayer*	A.G. Edwards	0.95	1.67
2	Gene Huang	FedEx Corp.	0.98	1.72
3	David Resler	Nomura Securities International	1.02	1.79
4	Stuart Hoffman*	PNC Financial Services Group	1.03	1.82
5	Allen Sinai	Decision Economics Inc.	1.05	1.83
--	Median forecast	--	1.05	1.83
6	Mike Cosgrove	Econoclast	1.05	1.84
7	Nicholas S. Perna	Perna Associates	1.05	1.85
8	Dana Johnson	Comerica Bank	1.06	1.88
9	J. Prakken and C. Varvares	Macroeconomic Advisers	1.06	1.86
10	R. Berner and D. Greenlaw*	Morgan Stanley	1.07	1.87
11	Nairmen Behravesh	Global Insight	1.09	1.90
12	Robert DiClemente*	Citibank SSB	1.09	1.92
13	John Lonski	Moody's Investors Service	1.09	1.91
14	Scott Anderson	Wells Fargo & Co.	1.11	1.97
15	Douglas Duncan	Mortgage Bankers Association	1.12	1.97
16	David Rosenberg	Merrill Lynch	1.13	1.97
17	Diane Swonk	Mesirow Financial	1.13	1.99
18	David Lereah*	National Association of Realtors	1.13	1.99
19	Neal Soss	CSFB	1.15	2.01
20	Paul Kasriel	The Northern Trust	1.15	2.02

Source: WSJ's survey of forecasters and author's calculations.
*Not in WSJ group of forecasts anymore, as of November 2007.

It is well known that, over time, a group’s forecast is closer to the mark than almost any particular individual’s. Among the WSJ panel it’s no different: the median forecast is sixth in the ranking, out of 47. The same conclusion applies to the average forecast (average and median are very close to the each other in every release of the WSJ survey).

The top participants in the group hold but a tiny advantage over the rest. Even the 20th most accurate person has a margin of error of just over 2 percentage points, versus 1.67 points for the top forecaster. It’s not surprising then that rankings tend to change frequently. For example, at the end of 2006 the top five forecasters were (latest ranking in parentheses): Thayer (1), Rosenberg (17), Perna (8), Sinai (5) and Lonski (14).

Catching a “hot streak” seems to be exceedingly difficult too. Suppose that we define “winning” as being among the 50% most-accurate accurate forecasts for a given quarter. (A rather modest victory, may I say.) By that measure, only 37% of successes were followed by a second win, 31% of two-in-a-row’s were followed by a third success, and just 17% of those were followed by a fourth one.

Can a simple predictor outperform the pros? Michael Bryan of the Federal Reserve of Cleveland, whose commentary I follow in this post, asks that question. He compares the predictions in the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) with the naïve forecast that next period’s outcome will be the same as the latest observed outcome. In terms of my data, that is the prediction that GDP growth in, say, 2008:Q1 will be the same as in 2007:Q4.

Bryan finds that 53% of economists made worse predictions than the naïve forecast. The WSJ panel shows much better marksmanship. All of them performed better than the naïve forecast, except one. (The exception is James F. Smith of Western Carolina University, and by a long shot. His RMSE is 2.83, whereas that of the naïve forecast is 1.89. Compare with the values in Table 2.)

By Clay Bennett

Friday, May 13, 2011

Economist: America's Vulnerable Economy

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Alien arguments

It’s again that time of the year when some people fill out a lot of forms and everyone gets mad at the government. No, it’s not taxes; it’s the visa program for skilled workers.

April 1st marks the beginning of the annual application period. The government sets a general quota of 65,000 H-1B visas, plus 20,000 for people with a graduate degree from a U.S. institution. Last year over 100,000 applications swamped the immigration service on the very first day. This year people are expecting an even bigger excess demand. A lottery will decide who gets to live and work in the U.S.

Over the next two weeks we shall witness a repetition of last year’s debate. On one side, businesses and pro-immigration groups advocate lifting the cap. Skilled labor, they say, gives the U.S. an edge in high human-capital sectors, particularly science and technology, and contributes to faster growth. The country should, therefore, welcome as much skilled labor as employers will bear. On the other corner, some professionals in the IT industry and protectionists would like to restrict the hiring of foreigners, if not kill the program altogether. Their main complaint is that employers just want to hire foreign computer programmers and engineers on the cheap.

I have been indoctrinated to believe in the virtues of the free movement of goods, capital and labor. But if we’re going to make any progress in this quarrel, both sides should come clean. Free-traders must acknowledge that immigrants will lower wages in some sectors; some Americans will lose their jobs to foreign nationals. And any system is susceptible to abuse from greedy employers. Failing to mention the negatives does little service to the cause. And simply stating that “the country is better off on the whole” won’t cut it.

Protectionists should accept that the job market is not always a zero-sum game. In many instances, a job “lost” to a foreigner generates several other complementary positions, whether horizontally or vertically. Immigration detractors must also admit that, if skilled people don’t move in, capital and entire companies will move out. Don’t forget that Canada and the UK, just to mention two close rivals, have much friendlier immigration policies than the U.S.

Evidence of the effects of immigration is tenuous, which keeps skepticism alive. For example, a 2007 study by Ottaviano and Peri reported that immigrant and native workers are not perfect substitutes within skill groups —their study included all education levels. Their conclusion, another paper discovered, hinges on a disputable assumption, and has been promptly proven wrong. (George Borjas briefs us in his blog. The paper also provides a short review of the literature on the substitutability of immigrants and natives.)

About.com: political humor

Monday, May 9, 2011

Risk Factors For A 2008 Recession

Here are the top risk factors for 2008 US Recession:

Continuing Housing Bust
High Oil Prices
Security Issues
Credit Crunch
High Consumer Debt
Large Trade Deficit
Consumer Spending is slowing (it makes up 70% of the US GDP)
Commercial Construction decline

Sunday, May 8, 2011

More Desperation from the Right

Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Rush, and the right-wing blogosphere seem interested in a talk I gave in September, 2007 to students in a political science class here at Berkeley, in which I played the role of a presidential candidate so politically incorrect and tone-deaf as to pummel every sacred cow in sight -- including the notion that our society could afford and would continue forever to pay whatever amount of money was required to keep everyone alive forever. The whole point of the mock exercise was to show that presidential candidates can't state what everyone knows to be the truth because they'll be taken apart by the Right or the Left. I slew many other sacred cows in that mock exercise, some of which are held dearly by the Left. Nonetheless, two years later the Right has exhumed the lecture and taken my words completely out of context purportedly to show that Obama and the Democrats plan death panels.

If their desperation weren't so pathetic it would be funny. After all, they have proven the whole point of my lecture. UC Berkeley maintains an archive of webcasts and my speech is available there verbatim, should you wish to listen to it in its entirety.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Friday, May 6, 2011

The Fed's new tools (II)

Last week I described the traditional tools of the Fed (open market operations and the discount window) and an old, but less well-known one (repurchase agreements). Then I described the first innovation, the Term Auction Facility, inaugurated in December.

This week I’ll go over the forms of lending introduced in 2008, and then I'll discuss the options that the Fed is rumored to be considering next.

* * *

In 2007 the Federal Reserve made an effort to provide liquidity through channels other than open market operations and repos. To that effect, it created the Term Discount Window Program (TDWP) and the Term Auction Facility (TAF), as I explained last week. Both of those facilities, however, are available only to depository institutions.

So far I’ve been using the ambiguous term “banks” to refer to institutions that borrow funds or buy Treasurys from the Fed. There are however two broad classes of “banks”: depository institutions and primary dealers. Depository institutions are allowed to accept deposits. Primary dealers, on the other hand, are investment banks and brokers that trade in Treasurys with the Federal Reserve. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are two examples in the latter group. As of today, there are 20 of them.

One defining characteristic of depository institutions is that they can use a broad range of assets to secure their loans from the Fed. The discount window, the TDWP and the TAF all accept a set of assets known as “discount collateral.” That includes pretty much all paper of investment quality, including performing sub-prime mortgages. Primary dealers, on the other hand, only have access to open-market operations (OMOs) and repos. The latter only can be obtained after posting General Collateral —that is paper issued by the Treasury or US agencies only.

Following problems in the mortgage and real estate markets last summer, primary dealers found it increasingly hard to obtain short-term financing because nobody would take their suspicious assets as collateral —or would do so only at very high prices. The Fed stepped up to the plate by opening the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) to primary dealers, on March 27. Roughly speaking, a TSLF loan is an exchange of risky securities for Treasuries for 28 days between Federal Reserve and primary dealers. The range of acceptable collateral, although not as wide as at the discount window, includes some types of paper issued by non-agency institutions (AAA/Aaa-rated private label RMBS and CMBS).

To be sure, the Fed has had a securities lending program for a number of years. The novelty of the TSLF is that it extends the range of acceptable collateral beyond Treasuries. A second novelty is that the term of the loans increases from overnight to 28 days.

Unlike the other tools I have discussed, the TSLF does not have an effect on reserve balances by design. This allows the Fed to pursue its recent strategy of providing liquidity to the banking system without increasing the monetary base.

This is what these loans would look like on the balance sheet of the Fed:

Changes in the Fed's balance sheet after a $1,000M TSLF loan
Assets	US government securities	-1,000
	Repurchase agreements	0
	Reverse repurchase agreements	0
	Direct loans	0
	TSLF loan	+1,000
	Other assets	0
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	0
Liabilities	Reserve balances	0

In March the Fed inaugurated a second form of lending: the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). This venue provides overnight cash loans to all primary dealers, at the same interest rate as the discount window does, and by pledging the same type of collateral. With the PDCF the Federal Reserve has de facto opened the discount window to primary dealers.

PDCF loans increase the monetary base (read the FAQ). Because this facility is meant to oil the credit market, not to provide a monetary stimulus, the Fed will continue to offset the increase in reserves using "a number of tools, including, but not necessarily limited to, outright sales of Treasury securities, reverse repurchase agreements, redemptions of Treasury securities, and changes in the sizes of conventional RP transactions." Here's what a PDCF loan looks like, after it has been offset:

Changes in the Fed's balance sheet after a $1,000M PDCF loan, offset by an open market operation
Assets	US government securities	-1,000
	Repurchase agreements	0
	Reverse repurchase agreements	0
	Direct loans	0
	PDCF loan	+1,000
	TSLF loan	0
	Other assets	0
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	-1,000 + 1,000
Liabilities	Reserve balances	0

The composition of the Fed’s assets has changed substantially over the last nine months. Here’s the balance sheet of the Fed again, in December and March:

Federal Reserve's balance sheet, $ millions
Assets		Aug. 15, 2007	Mar. 19, 2008
	US government securities	789,601	660,484
	Repurchase agreements	24,000	62,000
	Reverse repurchase agreements	-31,941	-46,143
	Term Auction Facility loans	0	80,000
	Primary Dealers Credit Facility	0	28,800
	Direct loans	264	125
	Other assets	37,058	36,603
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	813,085	818,362
Liabilities	Reserve balances	5,897	3,507

Source: Federal Reserve, H.4.1 release.

With its new tools, the Fed has provided liquidity without printing much money. In a way, the Fed has become a pawnbroker.

The future?

Loans to commercial banks and primary dealers, from one facility or another, represent now a much larger fraction of assets (see chart, from the Wall Street Journal). The fraction of Treasurys has declined to 53% from 87%.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Recession Fears Grow

Reuters reports that "Unsold goods are piling up in warehouses as the housing meltdown and soaring oil prices strain consumers, raising fears that already glum fourth-quarter growth prospects may tip toward recession."

"The sluggishness is apparent in the retail sector, where 70 percent of chain stores posted weaker-than-expected October sales results, according to research firm Retail Metrics.

"We expect the challenging retail environment to continue for the foreseeable future," Mike Ullman, chairman and chief executive officer of department store chain J.C. Penney (JCP.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said last week. He added that the company would keep inventory levels tight through 2008."

Respected economist Nouriel Roubini writes "Any recession call for the U.S. is clearly dependent on US consumption faltering. Since residential investment is only 5% of even a worsening housing recession cannot – by itself – trigger an economy-wide recession. Rather, since private consumption is over 70% of aggregate demand a sharp and persistent slowdown in consumption growth – below 1% or even negative - is necessary to trigger a full blown recession

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Why the Dow Broke 10,000, and Why You Should Still Watch Your Wallet

How did the Dow break 10,000 when the rest of the economy is in the toilet?

1. Corporate earnings are up -- mainly because companies have been cutting costs. Payrolls comprise 70 percent of most companies' costs, which means companies have been slashing jobs. In the end, this is a self-defeating strategy. If workers don't have jobs or are afraid of losing them, they won't buy, and company profits will disappear.

2. Federal borrowing has filled the gap that consumers and businesses created when the latter began to reduce their debt. Federal debt, in other words, has kept the economy from tanking. Can't keep up forever, though.

3. With such horrid employment numbers, Wall Street figures the Fed will keep interest rates low for some time, and continue to flood the economy with money. That's good news for the Street because it means money stays cheap -- and with cheap money the Street can make lots of bets on almost everything under the sun and moon. As a result, the Street's earnings are way up. But this, too, is temporary. At some point the Fed is going to worry about inflation and a falling dollar.

4. Investors of all stripes want to get in early and ride the wave. Pension funds, mutual funds, and other institutional investors figure the bull market has more oomph in it because, well, other investors will jump in. Think Ponzi scheme. Nice for now, but watch out if you're one of the last in.

In other words, this is all temporary fluff, folks. Anyone who hasn't learned by now that there's almost no relationship between the Dow and the real economy deserves to lose his or her shirt in the Wall Street casino.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Monday, May 2, 2011

The odds of getting an H-1B visa

I just read about this. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 163,000 applications for H1-B visas by April 7. Since that number exceeds the visa cap, the government will not consider any more applications this year (Source: USCIS, via the H1B data blog). 31,200 of the applications were from individuals with an advanced degree. The government quotas are: 20,000 for applicants with an advanced degree and 65,000 for the rest. (I wrote about the H1-B visa system a couple of weeks ago.)

The USCIS will hold two lotteries this week. The first one is for applicants with an advanced degree from a US institution (MA or higher). Applicants who are not selected in that first lottery will be pooled with the rest of the applications in the second lottery.

Unless my math is failing me, the probability of getting a work visa is then 80.4% for advanced-degree holders, and 45.5% for the rest of the applicants.

UPDATE: I'm really behind on this. USCIS already conducted the lottery (they did it on April 14, two days ago). Lucky applicants should get a notification by early June. I really recommend reading H1B data if you want timely information.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

More Americans Expecting Recession in The Next Year

More Americans are expecting a recession in the next year. Consumers are waking up to the reality that the economy has a significant chance of recession next year.

The economic mood took a sharp turn for the worse over the past month, with 40 percent of Americans expecting a recession in the next year, according to a Reuters / Zogby poll released Wednesday.

That was a big rise from a month earlier, when 31 percent of the likely voters polled predicted a recession. The darker mood came as mounting concerns about housing and credit markets pounded Wall Street, and oil prices approached $100 per barrel.

That was a big rise from a month earlier, when 31 percent of the likely voters polled predicted a recession. The darker mood came as mounting concerns about housing and credit markets pounded Wall Street, and oil prices approached $100 per barrel. (CNBC 1/21/07)

Recession times are increasingly being expected. The coming holiday spending season will likely provide important clues to where consumer spending is headed. Consumer spending is about 70% of the US's GDP. Consumer spending is a key factor in a forecasting a recession.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Why Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize -- Yet

President Obama's only real diplomatic accomplishment so far has been to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy from unilateral bullying to multilateral listening and cooperating. That's important, to be sure, but not nearly enough. The Prize is really more of Booby Prize for Obama's predecessor. Had the world not suffered eight years of George W. Bush, Obama would not be receiving the Prize. He's prizeworthy and praiseworthy only by comparison.

I'd rather Obama had won it after Congress agreed to substantial cuts in greenhouse gases comparable to what Europe is proposing, after he brought Palestinians and Israelis together to accept a two-state solution, after he got the United States out of Afghanistan and reduced the nuclear arm's threat between Pakistan and India, or after he was well on the way to eliminating the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Any one of these would have been worthy of global praise. Perhaps the Nobel committee can give him half the prize now and withhold the other half until he accomplishes one or more of these crucial missions.

Giving the Peace Prize to the President before any of these goals has been attained only underscores the paradox of Obama at this early stage of his presidency. He has demonstrated mastery in both delivering powerful rhetoric and providing the nation and the world with fresh and important ways of understanding current challenges. But he has not yet delivered. To the contrary, he often seems to hold back from the fight -- temporizing, delaying, or compromising so much that the rhetoric and insight he offers seem strangely disconnected from what he actually does. Yet there's time. He may yet prove to be one of the best presidents this nation has ever had -- worthy not only of the Peace Prize but of every global accolade he could possibly summon. Just not yet.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Who's Paying For Your Fix?

by Kate Duncan

May/Jun 2003 Issue

Unless your morning latte was a fair trade blend, it probably cost more than what the farmer who picked the beans earns in a day.

Conventional coffee prices are at their lowest in a century, even below the cost of production. Farmers have been leaving the fruit to rot on the tree, pulling the kids out of school, abandoning the family land and pouring into the cities to find non-existent work. That’s why, as the most heavily traded commodity after oil, and the most common beverage after water, coffee is a major focus of the fair trade movement.

If your morning latte was a fair trade brew, it means the person who farmed the beans is earning enough to support his family. This is all well and good, but the way fair trade is usually explained - with prices, numbers and statistics - ignores it’s lasting benefits. The true point of fair trade is the cultural, communal, and environmental stability it bolsters.

A farmer who sells through fair trade is a member of a cooperative that is a vehicle for community empowerment. And not just a neighborhood watch: The people typically organized via fair trade are those whom the free market has filtered to the lowest economic stratum. Rather than maneuvering them into a position where they’re forced to take what they can get, fair trade recognizes farmers as equal partners, a platform from which they can command more control over their business and lives.

'Fair trade is a different kind of business relationship between the producer and buyer, which has been an inspiration to help these communities pull together instead of caving to the pressure of all the things trying to blow them apart,' says Monika Firl. Monika heads up producer relations for Cooperative Coffees, and as such, led half a dozen coffee roasters and me (as a grateful representative of Idyll Development Foundation, one of Cooperative Coffee’s funders) on a buying trip to farmers’ co-ops in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico in February, where we were able to see the effect for ourselves. [Clamor]

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Recession buzz: March update

Recession buzz remained stable from February at a moderate to elevated level. The Washington Post and the New York Times printed an average of 4.8 stories per day containing the word “recession,” 0.2 more than in February. And among the set of eight major US newspapers that I track every month, each one published 2.2 stories per day, about the same as in February (see Chart 1).

Chart 1 (click to enlarge)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Housing Bubble Sites

National Sites

Regional Sites

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

So Much Happening in Washington and So Little To Show for It, So Far

The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote Tuesday on a healthcare bill that just got a seal of approval from the Congressional Budget Office and is very likely to garner the vote of Republican Senator Olympia Snowe -- a twofer that gives the bill preeminence over four other healthcare bills that have emerged from House and Senate committees over these long months. Unlike those bills, though, the Senate Finance bill won't it have a public insurance option to compete with private insurers. Nor does it allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices, or adequately subsidize millions of middle-class families who will be required to buy health insurance that will be hard for them to afford. In short, it's a great deal for private insurers and Big Pharma but not such a great deal for middle-class Americans.

Meanwhile, the House Banking Committee is quietly circulating a draft set of reforms of financial markets likely to become the basis for whatever legislation emerges to fix the Street. Barney Frank, who heads the Committee, is a thoughtful progressive. But the draft has gaping loopholes that will let most financial firms escape -- such as one that exempts corporations that deal in financial derivatives from any requirements for capital, business conduct, record-keeping, and reporting if they use derivatives for the purpose of "risk management," which is the very thing they all claim they're doing. Neither the draft bill, nor the Committee, nor anyone on the Hill having anything to do with financial regulation, is raising what I consider to be the two key reforms necessary for avoiding another financial meltdown -- resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial from investment banking, and applying antitrust laws to the remaining five biggest Wall Street banks so none is "too big to fail."

At the same time, environmental legislation is now slinking its way through Congress. The Waxman-Markey climate bill was passed by the House in June; John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have now released a Senate version. All four legislators claim to be progressives concerned about the environment, but the bills are, frankly, far short of what's needed. Waxman-Markey gives away 85 percent of pollution permits to the nation's biggest polluters, and the "cap" it proposes on overall carbon emissions would cut greenhouse gas emissions only by an estimated 2 to 4 percent by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990. (If America was to play its appropriate role in a global climate deal, the reduction would be more like 40 percent, and the U.S. would also provide financing and technology so developing countries could reduce their emissions by a comparable amount.) The Kerry-Boxer bill has a stronger cap on emissions but it's still far short of what's necessary -- and it leaves out the hardest part, which is the actual cap-and-trade mechanism. Kerry and Boxer are leaving that to the Senate Finance Committee, of all places.

And what's happening on the job's front? Nothing except a blip of interest in tax credits to small businesses that create new jobs. That's not a bad move (I suggested it myself), but it's rather like bailing out the ocean with a teacup. If that's all there is, we're headed toward two years of double-digit unemployment. No one on the Hill or in the Administration is yet willing to say openly and clearly that the stimulus plan must be larger, and continued through 2010 and 2011.

My friends in the Administration and on the Hill repeatedly tell me "don't make the perfect the enemy of the better," or words to that effect. Politics is the art of the possible, blah blah blah. True. But in each of these areas -- healthcare, financial regulation, environment, and jobs -- the "better" is really not that much better. Forget perfect; anything that offered real reform would suffice for now. But in every case, what should be the centerpieces of reform are being left out.

Why? Congress is overwhelmed with corporate and Wall Street lobbyists (far too many of whom are former Democratic office holders). The White House is trying best it can to push and prod in the right direction but there's too much going on, too many arenas where private interests are framing the debate and stifling major reform, and too many friends of friends and relations of relations who are making tons of money working for the other side. The public doesn't know what's going on because the national media would rather report on the sexual escapades of famous people or social trends or high finance (a recent Pew study of economic reporting shows the vast majority of stories about the Great Recession have focused on Wall Street rather than Main Street). And progressives -- that is, progressive organizations in our nation's capital -- have been remarkably and consistently outgunned, outmaneuvered, or just plain ineffectual. This is largely due to the fact that they're sitting in Washington rather than organizing and mobilizing the rest of the country.

And I haven't even brought up Afghanistan.

Monday, April 25, 2011

There Was a Reason They Called It... The Casino Economy

by Thomas Croft

02 Jul 03

In the last three years, a 'perfect storm' of rising energy costs, record consumer and corporate debt and massive trade and current account deficits joined with unsustainable investment practices, and resulted in an economic collapse. The first recession since 1929 to be primarily caused by over-investment, these 'collateral damage' investing schemes-in overseas boondoggles and sweatshops, extreme mergers, absurd dot-coms and derivative scams-all came home to roost. Enron used all of these investment tricks and more. The corruption scandals of 2001-2 completed the melt-down. Now, the world is probably in a double-dip recession, thanks partly to the scandal and continuing international disruptions.

The problem with casino bets and Russian Roulette is that somebody always loses. [CounterPunch]

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Fed's new tools (I)

By popular demand, I improved and expanded the notes I published a couple of weeks ago about the new tools of the Federal Reserve. I have added instruments that are not in place yet but the Fed considers using. I have ended up with a very long post, so I have broken it down into two parts. The second part will come out next week.

(I thought somebody would like to use these posts as a refresher, a summary, or even class notes. Jim Hamilton has a few great posts on the subject: September 23, December 14, December 16, March 15. The New York Federal Reserve made its own pocket version. And Greg Ip wrote a rather educational piece. Enjoy.)

UPDATE (4/13/2008): The link to the New York Fed's pocket version does not work any more. But you can find that document here now. Sorry about that.

* * *

The central bank has a balance sheet, as any other bank. As assets, it holds primarily securities issued by the government and loans to banks. As liabilities, it has currency (the cash in your pockets) and reserve balances. Reserves are deposits that regular banks keep at the central bank. When a bank needs currency it withdraws from its deposit, effectively turning it into notes and coins that you and I can use. As you will see in a minute, reserves are a key element in monetary policy.

This was the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve on August 15, 2007:

Federal Reserve's balance sheet, $ millions (Aug. 15, 2007)
Assets	US government securities	789,601
	Repurchase agreements	24,000
	Reverse repurchase agreements	-31,941
	Direct loans	264
	Other assets	37,058
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	813,085
Liabilities	Reserve balances	5,897

Source: Federal Reserve, H.4.1 release.

(For the moment, regard “repurchase agreements” as loans to banks.)

The sum of currency in circulation and reserve balances is the monetary base (M0). The Federal Reserve’s target, however, is not M0 but the federal funds rate.

Banks keep deposits at the Fed to meet reserve minimums required by the Fed and to clear financial transactions. Institutions with balances in excess of reserve requirements lend reserves to institutions that don't have enough. The interest rate on those loans, typically overnight, is called the federal funds rate. That’s a market rate, determined by the supply and demand of such funds. The more reserves, the lower the fed funds rate, and vice versa.

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Enjoy!

Friday, April 22, 2011

The Audacity of Greed: How Private Health Insurers Just Blew Their Cover

The health-insurance industry has finally revealed itself for what it is.

Background: The industry hates the idea that's emerged from the Senate Finance Committee of lowering penalties on younger and healthier people who don't buy insurance. Relying on an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, insurers say this means new enrollees will be older and less healthy -- which will drive up costs. And, says the industry, these costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Proposed taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" policies will also be passed on to consumers. As a result, premiums will rise faster and higher than the government projects.

It's an eleventh-hour bombshell.

But the bomb went off under the insurers. The only reason these costs can be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums is because there's not enough competition among private insurers to force them to absorb the costs by becoming more efficient. Get it? Health insurers have just made the best argument yet about why a public insurance option is necessary.

Right now they run their markets and set their prices, and pass on any increased costs directly to consumers. That's what they're threatening to do if the legislation attempts to squeeze, even slightly, the colossal profits they plan to make off of thirty million new paying customers.

They want every penny of those profits. They demand every cent. And if the government dares raise their costs a tad higher than they expected when they first signed on to support the bill, they'll pass those costs on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. They can carry out their threat only because they have unaccountable, untrammeled market power.

But they've now hoisted themselves on their own insured petard. They've exposed themselves. If they had to compete with a public insurance plan, they couldn't get away with this threat. They couldn't pass on the extra costs. They'd have to compete with a public insurance option that forced them to give consumers the best deals possible.

Now's the time for Congress and the White House to say to the insurance industry: You want to play hardball? Okay. We'll play it, too. You didn't want a public insurance option. That was one of your conditions for supporting the bill. You wanted gigantic profits from having thirty million new paying customers and the market to yourself. The Senate Finance Committee and the White House agreed because they wanted your support and were afraid of the negative ads and hurricane of opposition you could finance. But you're even greedier than we imagined. And now you've demonstrated that greed to the American people. They don't want to turn over even more of their hard-earned money to you. So, insurance companies, we've got news for you. We're going to make sure Americans have the freedom to choose a public insurance option that's cheaper and better, and you're going to have to work hard to keep them your customers.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Brief announcement

This week's post will come out particularly late (some time late Saturday)--I have an important deadline this Friday. Sorry, folks.

I'll leave you with a couple of great comics from phdcomics.com:

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Googling "recession" from United States has Tripled in the Past Year

Monday, April 18, 2011

Specifically, What Should Be Done For Jobs?

In his Saturday radio address, President Obama acknowledged the White House is exploring "additional options to promote job creation.” It's about time. This is the worst job market in seventy years -- including the longest duration of steep job losses.

If anyone had any doubt that something far more dramatic must be done, listen to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He warned Sunday against further stimulus because “we are in a recovery, and I think it would be a mistake to say the September numbers alter that significantly.” Greenspan has turned into an inverse soothsayer. After his cataclysmic error about where the economy was headed before the meltdown, his views about the future should be carefully noted as being the exact opposite of what's likely to be in store.

The economy may be in a technical recovery but this is not a real recovery and the "green shoots" or "positive signs" that Wall Street cheerleaders love to shout about are phantoms of their ever-optimistic imaginations. The stimulus is working but it is far from adequate. Before the stimulus, we were losing more than 500,000 jobs a month. Now that 40 percent of the stimulus has been spent, we are losing more than 250,000 jobs a month.

What to do? With the debt ceiling approaching and the gravitational pull of the 2010 elections increasing, the White House can't go back to Congress with a formal bill to enlarge the stimulus package. Four simpler moves would be to:

(1) Use existing authority under both the stimulus package enacted earlier this year and the nefarious TARP bailout fund -- extending and combining them into a fund to make up for state and local cuts in public school budgets, childrens' health, public health (we need workers to administer swine flu vaccine) and public transportation. Instead of bailing out banks and giant automakers, we should switch to bailing out public services that average people need.

(2) Propose a one-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20,000 of income. Republicans as well as Blue Dog Dems could go along with this, and it would be a highly progressive tax cut since 80 percent of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes.

(3) Give small businesses a "new jobs tax credit" for every net new job created over the next year. Granted, under normal circumstances this sort of jobs credit doesn't have much effect, and it's difficult to separate hires that would have happened anyway from net new ones. But we're not in normal circumstances; small businesses, which are responsible for most new jobs, still aren't hiring. They need a boost.

(4) Dramatically expand the Small Business Administration's lending programs and have the Fed buy up the SBA's debt. Big banks are not lending to small businesses. TARP has been an utter failure in this regard. The SBA and the Fed should circumvent them and help small businesses get the capital they need, so they can start hiring again.

The politics of these four steps aren't difficult. It would be hard to get a new stimulus package through Congress, but no member who's up for reelection next year when unemployment is likely to be in double digits wants to be accused by rivals of voting against steps to help small businesses, public schools, childrens' health, and average working people who need a tax cut.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Saturday, April 16, 2011

That pesky LFP

Friday, April 15, 2011

Economy Slowing Says Calculated Risk

Great Blogger, Calculated Risk "Clearly the economy is slowing sharply"

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Addendum: The Job Numbers for September

This morning's job numbers are bad enough -- 263,000 more jobs lost in September, and unemployment now at 9.8 percent -- but look behind them and the news is even grimmer. The only reason the numbers don't look worse is that 571,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. Remember, too, that the economy needs about 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with a growing population. So we're even further behind.

The numbers would be even worse but for the stimulus package. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the stimulus is saving or creating between 200,000 and 250,000 jobs a month. Without it, job losses in September would have been nearly twice what they actually were.

State governments, meanwhile, continue to shed employees. Here's one of the most depressing statistics I've seen (if you need any additional ones): Some 15,600 teachers didn't return to work in September. They were laid off. So our classrooms are bigger, we have fewer teachers, and our students are presumably learning less -- at the very time when they need to be learning more than ever.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Sugar Giants Shove Their Sweetener

by Chris Tenove

Jul/Aug 2003 Issue

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Ranking of WSJ forecasters: May update

Rank	Forecaster	Firm	RMSE	Absolute deviation for 2008:Q1
1	Gene Huang	FedEx Corp.	0.95	0.4
2	Gary Thayer*	A.G. Edwards	0.95	--
3	David Resler	Nomura Securities International	1.01	0.8
4	Stuart Hoffman	PNC Financial Services Group	1.01	0.6
5	Allen Sinai	Decision Economics Inc.	1.01	0.1
6	Dana Johnson	Comerica Bank	1.02	0.1
7	Nicholas S. Perna	Perna Associates	1.02	0.3
8	Mike Cosgrove	Econoclast	1.02	0.4
9	J. Prakken and C. Varvares	Macroeconomic Advisers	1.03	0.1
--	Median	--	1.05	0.6
10	Scott Anderson	Wells Fargo & Co.	1.07	0.4
11	Nairmen Behravesh	Global Insight	1.08	0.9
12	John Lonski	Moody's Investors Service	1.08	0.8
13	Edward Leamer	UCLA Anderson Forecast	1.08	0
14	R. Berner and D. Greenlaw	Morgan Stanley	1.08	1.3
15	Douglas Duncan	Mortgage Bankers Association	1.09	0.2
16	Robert DiClemente*	Citibank SSB	1.09	--
17	Diane Swonk	Mesirow Financial	1.09	0.1
18	Neal Soss	Credit Suisse	1.11	0.1
19	Dean Maki	Barclays Capital	1.12	0.4
20	David Rosenberg	Merrill Lynch	1.12	1

Monday, April 11, 2011

Nouriel Roubini: "clear by now that a severe U.S. recession is inevitable in next few months."

Nouriel Roubini, a leading economist at New York University, is now saying that a US Recession is almost here:

"It is increasingly clear by now that a severe U.S. recession is inevitable in next few months. Those of us who warned for the last 12 months about a combination of a worsening housing recession, a severe credit crunch and financial meltdown, high oil prices and a saving-less and debt-burdened consumers being on the ropes causing an economy-wide recession were repeatedly rebuffed the consensus view about a soft landing given the presumed resilience of the US consumer."

"But the evidence is now building that an ugly recession is inevitable."

Roubini is a smart economist who often goes against the consensus view.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Why Obama Has to do What Letterman Did: Refuse to Pay Hush Money

Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the American Medical Association the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of healthcare reform, as long as they were paid off.

But now that it's time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and it's going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin).

So the President has to do what Letterman did: Refuse to pay.

Big Pharma is on the road to getting its deal: not only 25 to 30 million more paying customers, but also a continued ban on Medicare using its bargaining clout to reduce drug prices, a bar on genetic drug manufacturers introducing similar biologic drugs until the originals have been on the market at least twelve years, and no public insurance option to negotiate low drug prices. (Big Pharma did agree to $80 billion of cost cuts over the next ten years, to be sure, but its hush money payoffs far exceeded that sum.)

Big insurance is well on the way to getting what it wants: 25 to 30 million more paying customers (many of them young and healthy), a requirement that almost all businesses "pay or play," and no competition from a public option.

Doctors (that is, the American Medical Association) are on the way to getting what they want: Instead of a temporary patch on scheduled decreases in Medicare reimbursements to them, a permanent fix that would change the reimbursement formula altogether and reward them $240 billion over the next ten years.

But when they all get paid off, who will do the paying? Middle-class Americans who are already in a financial squeeze -- whose wages are lower, adjusted for inflation, than they were thirty years ago, and whose jobs are disappearing. They'll face still higher premiums, co-payments, and deductibles; and they'll pay higher drug prices, Medicare premiums, and taxes to cover the rest.

That's because these payoffs make it next to impossible to contain the wildly escalating costs of health care. And 25 to 30 million additional Americans will be covered.

The only thing in the emerging bills that's related to cost containment is a proposed excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans, priced over a certain threshold amount (the threshold is now up for grabs). But because the costs of health care are likely to rise faster than inflation, whatever the threshold, the middle class will get socked again.

So Obama has to forcefully weigh in with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as the two try to cobble together passable bills for each chamber -- demanding real cost containment.

The three big means of containing costs: (1) A true public option (better yet, one that allows anyone now holding private insurance to opt into; (2) authority for Medicare to negotiate low drug prices; and (3) lower Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors (in other words, no "doctor fix").

In addition, the so-called "medical exchanges" in the emerging bills (as well as the public option, which hopefully will be included) should give preference to pre-paid heathcare plans, like Kaiser Permanente, whose doctors are on salary and have every incentive to keep people healthy rather than charge for more services and tests.

But if Obama doesn't weigh in forcefully and say "no" to the hush money for Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA, America's middle class will get walloped. And if the walloping starts before 2012, Sarah Palin or some other right wing-nut populist will wallop Obama. And after she or he wallops Obama, America will get walloped even worse.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Friday, April 8, 2011

Alien arguments

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Economist: America's Vulnerable Economy

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Empty Hands on the Climate, and What Obama Needs to Do

On Friday, Denmark's climate and energy minister, Connie Hedegaard, who will be chairing U.N.-sponsored climate talks in December in Copenhagen, said President Obama needs to do more on climate. "It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later," she said.

But there's no way between now and then Obama can get a strong climate bill through Congress.

Over the next months, the White House needs to focus on health care if it's to have any hope of coming up with anything more than Big Pharma and the private insurance companies want.

This is the cost of trying to do so much so quickly. Initiatives revert to powerful industry lobbyists because there's no time to organize countervailing power. When he's trying to do everything at once, the President can't mobilize public opinion behind any one thing. Progressive voices (which have difficulty being heard even under the best of circumstances) drown each other out because they're hollering over one another.

Climate change legislation is moving forward -- but big polluters have shaped much of it. As I noted recently, the Waxman-Markey climate bill, passed by the House last June, gives away 85 percent of pollution permits to the nation's biggest polluters, and the "cap" it proposes on overall carbon emissions would cut greenhouse gas emissions only by an estimated 2 to 4 percent by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990. The Kerry-Boxer bill has a stronger cap on emissions but it's still far short of what's necessary -- and it leaves out the hardest part, which is the actual cap-and-trade mechanism.

Why has so little been accomplished? Because coal, shale, oil, big manufacturers, and utilities -- the big old polluters (BOPs) -- have beaten back anything better.

The only real countervailing powers on climate change are industries that stand to gain from stronger legislation -- mostly nuclear and ethanol, along with a smattering of companies that have invested in wind, biomass, and solar. But they're no match for the BOPs. Nor do their bottom lines necessarily match what's good for the world.

Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward on its own efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and the White House is quietly using the threat of the EPA doing more as a prod to get the BOPs on board with legislation that the White House says will be easier on them than what the EPA comes up with. But that's no real threat. The BOPs know they can keep the EPA tied up in litigation for years.

So here's my suggestion. The White House should tell Congress it's raising the bar on climate change but is simultaneously putting the current legislation on hold -- until it can focus the public's attention on it. That is, until after a worthy piece of healthcare legislation is on the President's desk.

Arriving in Copenhagen strongly committed to fight for a large reduction in greenhouse gases, even if that means empty hands at the time, is better than arriving there with a weak and ineffective law.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Monday, April 4, 2011

The Fed's new tools (II)

* * *

Changes in the Fed's balance sheet after a $1,000M TSLF loan
Assets	US government securities	-1,000
	Repurchase agreements	0
	Reverse repurchase agreements	0
	Direct loans	0
	TSLF loan	+1,000
	Other assets	0
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	0
Liabilities	Reserve balances	0

Changes in the Fed's balance sheet after a $1,000M PDCF loan, offset by an open market operation
Assets	US government securities	-1,000
	Repurchase agreements	0
	Reverse repurchase agreements	0
	Direct loans	0
	PDCF loan	+1,000
	TSLF loan	0
	Other assets	0
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	-1,000 + 1,000
Liabilities	Reserve balances	0

The composition of the Fed’s assets has changed substantially over the last nine months. Here’s the balance sheet of the Fed again, in December and March:

Federal Reserve's balance sheet, $ millions
Assets		Aug. 15, 2007	Mar. 19, 2008
	US government securities	789,601	660,484
	Repurchase agreements	24,000	62,000
	Reverse repurchase agreements	-31,941	-46,143
	Term Auction Facility loans	0	80,000
	Primary Dealers Credit Facility	0	28,800
	Direct loans	264	125
	Other assets	37,058	36,603
Liabilities	Currency in circulation	813,085	818,362
Liabilities	Reserve balances	5,897	3,507

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Friday, May 20, 2011

Thursday, May 19, 2011

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Monday, May 9, 2011

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Saturday, May 7, 2011

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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Monday, May 2, 2011

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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

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Monday, April 25, 2011

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

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Monday, April 18, 2011

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Friday, April 15, 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

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