Reuters (April 6)
On top of February’s big drop in household spending, down 0.9% from a year earlier, “separate data showed wages fell for the third straight month in February, reinforcing the view the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target will remain a distant goal and keep the bank from dialing back stimulus any time soon.”
Tags: BOJ, Data, February, Household spending, Inflation target, Stimulus, Wages
USA Today (June 12)
“Officials mustn’t extend a laptop ban until they can assure the public, with sound data, that they are not trading the possibility of terrorism in the cabin for a greater likelihood of catastrophe in the cargo bay.”
Tags: Airplane, Cabin, Cargo bay, Catastrophe, Data, Laptop ban, Officials, Terrorism
The Economist (June 3)
“It is the fourth time in a year that BA’s computer systems have suffered a major crash. And debilitating IT breakdowns are becoming increasingly common” across an industry with particularly high IT demands. “The sheer quantity and complexity of the data they handle make airlines particularly vulnerable to IT disasters.” And yet, “in 2015 airlines spent 2.7% of their revenues on IT, half the norm across all industries and a lower share even than hotels.” The pressure to pressure to cut costs is strong, given the industry’s harsh competition. The cost of an IT melt down, however, is much greater. Airlines must “refrain from pruning investment in IT too far.”
Tags: Airlines, BA, Complexity, Computer, Crash, Data, Investment, IT, Quantity, Systems
The Economist (May 21)
Before the WWII, available date suggests business “cycles aged like people…. the odds of tipping into recession rose as an expansion got older.” Since then, however, the data is counter-intuitive, indicative of “ageless recoveries.” “Since the 1940s age has not withered them: an expansion in its 40th month is just as vulnerable, statistically, as one in its 80th (each has about a 75% chance of surviving the next year).”
Tags: Ageless recoveries, Business cycles, Counter-intuitive, Data, Expansion, Recession, Vulnerable, WWII
Institutional Investor (February Issue)
“In this era of globalization 50,000 ships carry 90 percent of the $18.5 trillion in annual world trade” and this is causing investors to take note. One firm named CargoMetrics now seeks to “map historically and in real time what’s really going on in economic supply and demand across the planet” with the goal of being “able to automatically profit from spotting any publicly traded security that is mispriced.” To do this, they are utilizing historical cargo data and the global automatic identification system that vessels of 300 gross tons or more are required to use for collision prevention.
Tags: Cargo, CargoMetrics, Collision prevention, Data, Globalization, Identification, Investors, Mispriced, Profit, Ships, Supply and demand, World trade
Wall Street Journal (October 15)
“Murky data” are adding “to China’s housing headache.” The housing glut has eased in China, moving down from 25.2 months’ worth of supply in March to 16.5. But the “glut in China’s property market is worse than official data show,” as data excludes many partially completed or not yet for sale homes.
LA Times (April 5)
“Cybersecurity is a top national priority because of the incessant attacks on computer networks and stored data by hackers around the world, many under the auspices of foreign governments. According to a recent estimate, the toll from cybercrimes in 2013 was more than $100 billion in the U.S. and roughly half a trillion dollars globally.”
Tags: Attacks, Cybersecurity, Data, Foreign governments, Hackers, Networks, Priority, U.S.
Washington Post (June 2)
Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has attracted both applause and derision as it soars in popularity. Recent criticism has aimed largely at the supporting data, which suggests inequality has reached new heights. Not so, writes Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post. “Inequality isn’t as great now as in the ’20s. This is history’s real lesson. Although the debate over inequality is legitimate and important, we shouldn’t distort it with misleading and overwrought rhetoric.”
Tags: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Data, Debate, History, Inequality, Legitimate, Misleading, Rhetoric, Robert Samuelson, Thomas Piketty
The Economist (February 8, 2014)
China is getting “a small breath of fresh air” as new policies stipulate “official data, formerly held secretly, should be published.” This marks “an important step, not just for China’s environment, but also because it gives new power to the large and growing movement of citizen activists who have been lobbying for the government to clean up.”
Tags: Activists, Air, China, Citizens, Data, Environment, Government, Lobbying, Power, Published
Washington Post (December 19, 2013)
“Blue-ribbon panels are often toothless and useless. But the eminences appointed by President Obama to review the out-of-control National Security Agency (NSA) have produced a surprisingly tough report filled with good recommendations.” The report bluntly stated that the NSA had obtained records on every call to or from the U.S., yet these mounds of intrusive data were essentially useless in preventing terrorism.
