Ironman is the alias of the blogger at Political Calculations, a site that develops, applies and presents both established and cutting edge theory to the topics of investing, business and economics. We should acknowledge that Ironman is either formerly or currently, and quite possibly, simultaneously employed as some kind of engineer, researcher, analyst, rocket scientist, editor and perhaps as a teacher of some kind or another. The scary thing is that's not even close to being a full list of Ironman's professions and we should potentially acknowledge that Ironman may or may not be one person. We'll leave it to our readers to sort out which Ironman might behind any of the posts that do appear here or comments that appear elsewhere on the web!
Spain: A Very Different Fiscal Crisis By Political Calculations (May 26, 2012) Having looked at how Greece arrived at its current crisis, we thought we'd turn to the next country that is coming to dominate the bad economic news in Europe: Spain.... more
The New Order S&P 500 By Political Calculations (May 22, 2012) On Friday, 18 May 2012, the state of order that had existed in the stock market since 4 August 2011 came to an end. You can see that is the case in our highly refined chart... more
The Ultimate Sell Signal By Political Calculations (May 21, 2012) Just for fun, we've adapted one of our analytical methods for forecasting stock prices and applied it to the stock market of the Roaring Twenties, which really ran from... more
The Greek Budget Identity By Political Calculations (May 20, 2012) How much money is the government of Greece capable of collecting? That's the basic question behind economist Michael Rizzo's recent exploration of what he called the... more
Three Charts for the S&P 500 By Political Calculations (May 19, 2012) Good morning, Kremlinologists! For some seemingly inexplicable reason, we're breaking our pattern of recent weeks where we would only look at the recent performance of the... more
Enabling Disability Fraud By Political Calculations (May 18, 2012) We were inspired by Climateer Investing's summary of the econoblogosphere's ongoing analysis of the increasing level of disability fraud in the U.S., where hundreds of... more
Kremlinology, Political Calculations and the S&P 500 By Political Calculations (May 15, 2012) Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there was a whole field within political science known as "Kremlinology", where people outside the ruling circle within the Kremlin... more
Are Baby Boomers Stealing Jobs from the Young? (Part 3) By Political Calculations (May 14, 2012) What's the real story with the changing age distribution of working Americans over the previous five years? We've previously shown that large declines in the working... more
Are Baby Boomers Stealing Jobs from the Young? (Part 2) By Political Calculations (May 13, 2012) Today, we're going to start by looking directly at the evidence that would seem to support the case that Baby Boomers are making out much better than younger Americans in the... more
Are Baby Boomers Stealing Jobs from the Young? (Part 1) By Political Calculations (May 12, 2012) Walter Russell Mead writes on the disappearance of jobs for non-Baby Boomers: An analysis of recent jobs figures at Investor.com reveals a disturbing development: the... more
Jobs Fade in April 2012 By Political Calculations (May 10, 2012) After stalling out in March 2012, the employment situation for April 2012 in the U.S. faded across the board. We see that for all the age groups we routinely cover. The... more
New Jobless Claims: Thunderdome Edition By Political Calculations (May 03, 2012) Previously, we advanced two possible hypotheses that might explain what is currently happening with the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claim... more
Revisiting the Future for Dividends By Political Calculations (May 02, 2012) We weren't planning to revisit the future for the S&P 500's dividends quite so soon, but ExxonMobil's move to boost their cash dividend payments per share by 21% to... more
A First Look at Where GDP Will Be in 2012-Q2 By Political Calculations (May 01, 2012) On 2 April 2012, we forecast that the U.S.' real GDP for the first quarter of 2012 would be $13,508.2 billion in terms of constant 2005 U.S. dollars. This value represents... more
S&P 500 and Dividends By Political Calculations (Apr 28, 2012) Since August 2011, stock prices have been behaving in a very orderly manner. By that, we mean that the relationship between average stock prices and their underlying... more
Trade Suggests Near-Recession Slowdown for China, US By Political Calculations (Apr 27, 2012) Currently, international trade data suggests that both China and the U.S. are undergoing significant, near-recessionary slowdowns in economic growth, if not outright... more
Two Hypotheses for the "Current" Trend in New Jobless Claims By Political Calculations (Apr 25, 2012) Those who follow our analysis on a regular basis already know that we consider the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims filed each week to be... more
How Much Does President Obama Still Owe on His House? By Political Calculations (Apr 23, 2012) In June 2005, President Barack Obama paid $1.65 million to acquire his house in Chicago. How much do you think he still owes on it today? Stately Obama Manor (Image... more
GE CEO Stuck Inside Wet Paper Bag By Political Calculations (Apr 19, 2012) The March 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review is featuring an article by General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, a man we've previously described as someone who... more
Calculate Your Tax Burden in 2012 and 1913 By Political Calculations (Apr 18, 2012) Just in case you might have thought that we were the only ones going tax-related tool crazy these days, Nick Kasprak of the non-profit Tax Foundation has done a major update... more
Jobs Stall Out By Political Calculations (Apr 12, 2012) Let's get all the good news for jobs in the U.S. in March 2012 out of the way first, shall we? Here it is, in bullet point format: The U.S.' official unemployment rate... more
The Future for Dividends through 2013Q1 By Political Calculations (Apr 11, 2012) Standard & Poor has updated their data to show the amount of cash dividends per share that the companies that make up the S&P 500 composite index paid through the end... more
Data Revision: Major Trends in U.S. New Jobless Claims By Political Calculations (Apr 04, 2012) Today, we're not presenting new analysis so much as we're catching up with the multi-year data revision that the BLS incorporated into its latest report on the number of... more
Finalized: GDP Forecast for 2012Q1 By Political Calculations (Apr 03, 2012) With the BEA's release of the third and final (for now) GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2011, we can now project ahead and finalize our forecast of the size of the... more
Spring 2012 Edition: Who Really Owns the U.S. National Debt? By Political Calculations (Mar 31, 2012) The U.S. Treasury has revised its data indicating which nation's institutions through the end of the U.S. government's 2011 Fiscal Year, which ended on 30 September 2011.... more
Student Loans: The Next Scary Hockey Stick Chart By Political Calculations (Mar 29, 2012) If Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph should be taken seriously as evidence that human activity is causing global climate change that must be stopped, or else it will... more
Real Estate: Somebody Here Is Wrong By Political Calculations (Mar 28, 2012) Carpe Diem's Mark Perry has been highlighting positive signs of economic recovery and expansion in the U.S. economy, including some indications that some the regions where... more
What President Obama Believes Will Happen With Iran By Political Calculations (Mar 27, 2012) On Friday, 23 March 2012, President Obama stated that tension with Iran was adding $20-$30 to oil prices: "The key thing that is driving higher gas prices is actually the... more
The New 800-lb Dividend Gorilla of the S&P 500 By Political Calculations (Mar 24, 2012) On 19 March 2012, Apple (NYSE: APPL) announced that it would initiate paying regular dividends to its shareholders for the first time since 1995, effective with the end of... more
The Failure of Pigou's Taxes By Political Calculations (Mar 23, 2012) Once upon a time, economist Arthur C. Pigou proposed that by imposing taxes upon things that might create excess social costs, those costs could be reduced. Called a... more
The Effect of Apple's Dividend Announcement on the Future By Political Calculations (Mar 22, 2012) One day later, and we're still blown away by the effect of Apple's dividend announcement upon stock prices. Here's why. This is the only time we've ever observed stock... more
Visualizing the Actual Price of Gasoline Across the U.S. By Political Calculations (Mar 20, 2012) We've been playing around with Google's Fusion Tables data visualization tools, which have been improved since our last experience in test driving them, and in doing so,... more
Three of Ten Things You Don't Need on St. Patrick's Day By Political Calculations (Mar 17, 2012) It's a little known fact that in addition to being the patron saint of Ireland, Nigeria and the excluded, St. Patrick is also the patron saint of engineers. Because of... more
The Natural Rate of Unemployment in the U.S. By Political Calculations (Mar 16, 2012) Given today's economic situation, what is the natural rate of unemployment in the U.S today? To answer that question, we're dusting off an old tool today, which we... more
Inside the S&P 500's Fun Ride By Political Calculations (Mar 15, 2012) On 13 March 2012, the S&P jumped upward by nearly 2%, rising by 24.86 points to 1395.95, mainly on the news that the Federal Reserve was giving a passing grade to 15 of... more
The Changing Futures for S&P 500 Earnings By Political Calculations (Mar 14, 2012) The current edition of Standard and Poor's S&P 500 Earnings and Estimates spreadsheet features a pretty remarkable chart, showing how the future expectations for the... more
Teens Absent from Job Gains By Political Calculations (Mar 13, 2012) It's happened again! In a month that saw job gains for all other age groups, American teens saw their numbers in the U.S. workforce decline. Again. Here, we see that the... more
Beer Taxes By State By Political Calculations (Mar 11, 2012) How much tax will you pay on a can of beer? The answer is: it depends. Specifically, it depends upon which U.S. state you might be in when you buy that 12-ounce container... more
Brain Trust By Political Calculations (Mar 09, 2012) Once upon a time, we were referred to as the "brain trust over at Political Calculations". From that moment on, we've always referred to ourselves as "we", not because we... more
The Future Just Got a Lot Cooler Than It Used to Be By Political Calculations (Mar 08, 2012) And it can run a mile in 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Meet Boston Dynamics' Cheetah, which has just set the land-speed record for robots with legs as part of DARPA's Maximum... more
Gasoline Prices and the Unemployment Rate By Political Calculations (Mar 07, 2012) A story in two pictures, covering January 1976 (the earliest year for which we have average inflation-adjusted monthly retail motor gasoline prices in the U.S.) through... more
Why So Many "Green Energy" Companies Fail By Political Calculations (Mar 06, 2012) A Venn diagram is a tool for visually demonstrating the relationships between different sets of things. Using these diagrams, we can quickly see what aspects of the things... more
How High Gas Prices Affect the Number of Layoffs in the U.S. By Political Calculations (Mar 03, 2012) How do high gasoline prices affect the pace of job layoffs in the United States? We now have the ability to answer this question thanks to a recent break in the trend for... more
A Break in the Trend for New Jobless Claims By Political Calculations (Mar 02, 2012) The new trend officially began on 3 December 2011 and has continued through at least 18 February 2012. We suspect our previous prediction that the trend will flatten out in... more
The Rising Unaffordability of a College Education By Political Calculations (Mar 01, 2012) Perhaps worse for students than a crowding out effect is the Bennett Effect, named for William Bennett, who 25 years ago as Secretary of Education wrote for the New York... more
Office Survival Skills (Part II) By Political Calculations (Feb 29, 2012) At some point during your office-based career, you will be required to run a meeting. And when that happens, it won't just be a large quantity of your time that will get... more
Questions From Our Inbox: Why Are Gasoline Prices Rising So Much? By Political Calculations (Feb 28, 2012) It seems that unlike say a "trained journalist" like the Incredibly Incurious Jonathan Chait, our casual readers are more than capable of asking us questions about our work!... more
Should You Trade in Your Gas Guzzler? By Political Calculations (Feb 27, 2012) Tired of high gas prices? Are you looking at possibly trading in your old car for a newer, much more fuel efficient model? Would doing so really save you money? Once again,... more
Hauser's Law Says Hiking Tax Rates Won't Collect More Money By Political Calculations (Feb 26, 2012) Hauser's law is one of the stranger phenomenons in economic data. It was originally proposed by Kurt Hauser, who observed back in 1993 that: No matter what the tax rates... more
Can Billy Crystal Sell Movie Tickets? By Political Calculations (Feb 25, 2012) If you think about it, the Academy Awards ceremony is really just a three to four (or more!) long televised advertisement for the "Best Picture" winner. Our question about... more
How Sanctions on Iran Might Affect World Oil Prices By Political Calculations (Feb 24, 2012) John Iacovelli recently ran some "back of the envelope" calculations on the potential impact of Western country sanctions on Iran upon world oil prices. He estimated: The... more
The Billionaire Decay Function By Political Calculations (Feb 23, 2012) Previously, we built a tool to calculate the probability that an individual could keep earning at least $1 million dollars annually after having done it once. Today, we're... more
What's Next in the Cards for the S&P 500? By Political Calculations (Feb 21, 2012) Although we've stopped offering forecasts for where stock prices will go next, we're still more that happy to occasionally show you where things stand with respect the the... more
What Are the Chances that Your Marriage Will Last? By Political Calculations (Feb 20, 2012) Although we don't go there often, we're not ones to shy away from personal topics here at Political Calculations. We are, after all, the only blog out there that gets into... more
Wind Energy Versus Keystone By Political Calculations (Feb 18, 2012) How much power does America's wind industry produce every day? To find out, we started with the U.S. Department of Energy's current estimate of the total installed wind... more
President Obama's Permanent Spending Achievement By Political Calculations (Feb 17, 2012) How much has President Barack H. Obama grown the size of the U.S. government's budget since coming into power in January 2009? If we go by President George W. Bush's final... more
What's Driving U.S. Fuel Efficiency? By Political Calculations (Feb 16, 2012) We recently tapped the U.S. Department of Transportation's Traffic Volume Trends report to use the data it provides on the total miles accumulated by Americans on the... more
Math Formula Explains Geek's Dating Drought By Political Calculations (Feb 15, 2012) We're not sure how we missed this news story when it broke earlier this year, but apparently, there's a mathematical formula that has been developed to explain why a geek is... more
China Enters Into Recession By Political Calculations (Feb 14, 2012) China entered into recession in December 2011. We base that observation upon our analysis of international trade data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, where we have... more
Using Miles to Measure Recessions By Political Calculations (Feb 10, 2012) Can we use the odometers in the vehicles driven by millions of Americans to tell if the United States is experiencing an economic recession? Let's find out! Each month,... more
Has Order Resumed in the Stock Market? By Political Calculations (Feb 09, 2012) Stock prices, as measured by the S&P 500, continued to behave in a very orderly fashion through January 2012, rising from an average level of 1243.32 in December 2011 to... more
The Continuing Adventures of an Incredibly Incurious Journalist By Political Calculations (Feb 08, 2012) It seems the Incredibly Incurious Journalist Jonathan Chait has decided to double down. Picking up the story from where we make our appearance in Jonathan's cloistered world:... more
Teens Still "Big Losers" By Political Calculations (Feb 07, 2012) Now that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has updated its overall count of the number of employed Americans to incorporate data recorded by the 2010 U.S. Census, with a... more
The Discouragement of the American Worker By Political Calculations (Feb 03, 2012) According to Nomura Global Economics, there has been a rather dramatic divergence between the "real" and "official" unemployment rate in the United States since 2009.... more
The Incredibly Lazy Journalism of Jonathan Chait, New Yorker By Political Calculations (Feb 02, 2012) What are we to make of journalist, editor and author Jonathan Chait's New York Magazine article "Inequality and the Charles Murray Dodge"? Here's the particular passage we... more
Millionaires: Most Downwardly Mobile of Society By Political Calculations (Feb 01, 2012) Did you know that the most downwardly mobile members of society are millionaires? It's true, and what's more, we have the data and math to prove it! Our featured... more
Forecasting GDP: Looking Backwards and Forwards By Political Calculations (Jan 31, 2012) The advance GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2011 was released on Friday, 27 January 2012, with that quarter's inflation-adjusted GDP figure being reported at $13,422.4... more
How Good Are Earnings Forecasts? By Political Calculations (Jan 28, 2012) How good are stock market earnings forecasts? Well, if you go by our chart below, which we constructed by sampling data we obtained from S&P roughly one-year apart (at... more
New Jobless Claims: Still on Track, But Increasingly Volatile By Political Calculations (Jan 27, 2012) Two weeks ago, we observed that the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims being filed each week was still following the same trend it has since... more
Obama Fails on Jobs by Own Definition By Political Calculations (Jan 26, 2012) In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama sought to "embrace manufacturing". Since the President has been in office for three years now, we thought we would... more
A Tool for Average Investors to Detect Public Company Accounting Fraud By Political Calculations (Jan 24, 2012) If you're just an average investor, how can you pick up on whether or not a company is cooking its books? Craig Newmark recently pointed to one of the neater ways in which... more
The Core Business of Planned Parenthood By Political Calculations (Jan 23, 2012) How much of the revenue Planned Parenthood generates through its health center affiliates comes from performing abortion procedures? The question arises because of a... more
Race, Poverty and Abortion By Political Calculations (Jan 22, 2012) How are the number of annual abortions in the United States distributed by race? And how does that compare to the distribution of the potential child-bearing (Age 15-44)... more
The Volume Pricing of Abortion- $135 million for Planned Parenthood By Political Calculations (Jan 20, 2012) Now that we've revealed the pace at which the most prolific abortion providers in the United States conduct their business, it's time to consider their primary motivating... more
The Throughput of Abortion Providers By Political Calculations (Jan 19, 2012) How many abortion procedures do the highest volume abortion providers perform every day? Having previously determined the number of abortions performed by the various types... more
The Providers of Abortion in the U.S. By Political Calculations (Jan 18, 2012) Who provides abortions in the United States? The chart below reveals what we found for the year 2008, which corresponds to the most recent year for the U.S. Centers for... more
The Number of New Jobless Benefit Claims for the First Week of 2012 By Political Calculations (Jan 15, 2012) How many people filed for new unemployment insurance benefits in the first week of January 2012? We'll find out the answer to that question below, but in the meantime,... more
Technology's End By Political Calculations (Jan 14, 2012) All technology eventually becomes obsolete. Think of things like buggy whips, or Commodore 64 computers, or newspapers, or DVDs. What all these things have in common is... more
Cavalcade of Risk No: 148 By Political Calculations (Jan 12, 2012) Welcome to the 148th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk! For our readers who see our posts through sites that pick up its RSS news feed, the Cavalacade of Risk is a throwback... more
Adults Only By Political Calculations (Jan 11, 2012) The big news on the jobs front is that the unemployment rate for December 2012 fell to its lowest rate since early 2009, reaching 8.5% following a massive revision in U.S.... more
Uh oh Obama: S&P 500 Dividends- The Futures Flatline... Again By Political Calculations (Jan 10, 2012) The stock market's forward looking economic prediction for the next six to nine months of 2012, in one picture. Commentary from today's picture: Between 9 December 2011... more
IDing the Biggest Civil Rights Crisis of 2012 By Political Calculations (Jan 08, 2012) Welcome to 2012! We're kicking off the new year by solving the biggest civil rights crisis in America today, at least according to the United States Department of Justice:... more
Your Paycheck in 2012 - After Stealing from Social Security By Political Calculations (Jan 07, 2012) How much money will you really take home from your paycheck in 2012? To find out, we've created the tool here so you can run the numbers that matter the most for you!... more
Meet the Married Rich of 2012! By Political Calculations (Jan 06, 2012) We're following up our look at the payroll and income tax withholding plight of Single tax filers today with a look at the plight of those who have their income taxes... more
Meet the Rich of 2012- Obama Edition By Political Calculations (Jan 05, 2012) Two days before Christmas 2011, the U.S. Congress acted to pass a temporary extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut that had originally been passed a year earlier,... more
Why OWS Hates Married, Filing Jointly By Political Calculations (Jan 04, 2012) Sometimes, as we work on our various projects, we stumble across data that's kind of interesting in and of itself. To that end, today's example of that would appear to... m |
