Budget gaps, bank regulations, confidence, and forecasts.

The city of Houston needs to make up a $25 million budget gap. There was a budget gap of $103 million, but about $50 million was previously set aside for this sort of situation, with about $28 million more already planned to help try to reach the rest of the gap. $25 million is a lot better than $103 million!

A good, though lengthy, article on bank regulation in the Harvard Magazine.

Consumer confidence seems set to go higher and business confidence is loads better. Seems like consumers are looking at the unemployment rate while businesses are looking at stocks. Go figure.

The OECD predicts growth (or lack thereof) for some countries. Pretty decent news for the US--less so for Canada.

Oil, government, manufacturing, and low wage workers.

BP found a lot of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Good news for Houston, and anyone who pays for gas. Though, keep in mind, that this is just a drop in the bucket for worldwide supply, and the oil is harder to get than ever.

The Wall Street Journal actually has an article about government helping the economy.

Growth in manufacturing too? Interesting. Cash for Clunkers may have helped that, but I don't know if it'll hold in the long term.

Low wage workers reportedly are often cheated, as a result getting paid less than the minimum wage. This is widespread, not just affecting undocumented workers.

Bailout money, underwear, and good news.

Banks are paying back bailout money, with interest. Sounds like it was a pretty good deal!

Another strange economic indicator: underwear. The worse times are (and, presumably, the less money you have), the more willing you are to wear tattered underclothing. Who's gonna see? Also, people attempt to cut their own hair (with hilarious results).

Some regions are seeing potential growth! Seems a little early to be sure, though. Building contracts are up in the Houston area.

There is now increased productivity. Not a surprise, really. When firms lay people off or slow hiring (as they have been doing), they presumably hold on to more productive people in order to achieve this very effect--higher productivity at proportionally lower costs. This goes hand-in-hand with higher profits, which leads to all sorts of benefits in the economy. Yet another sign that we're in recovery mode.

Hurricane claims, grocery stores, inventive cities, recession news, and Venezuela

2008 hurricane claims put Texas home insurance companies in the red. Ouch. Hurricanes continue to affect us. I guess whoever designed the hurricane insurance plans didn't know how much risk was actually involved, or those insurance companies didn't properly prepare themselves for such a situation.

Grocery stores are doing well during the recession.

Houston is one of the world's most inventive cities. We're pretty creative people! I don't think a lot of people believe this, though.

Productivity and labor costs are up. You might expect this from a recession, as companies try to focus on efficiency to weather the rough times.

Venezuela is seizing the assets of more oil service companies. I would have ended my operations there some time ago.

Local stuff, business models, infrastructure

Unsurprisingly, the economy is the top concern for Houstonians. The Harris County Sheriff wants federal stimulus money for a helicopter, a surveillance van, eight machine guns for their boats, and some other stuff. Is that really necessary? Not only do machine guns not provide jobs, but who exactly are they going to shoot? Is that really in their jurisdiction? Will that keep Harris County safe? Galveston is considering bringing in gambling. I wonder what studies there are to show the negative effects of casinos for a neighborhood or area. I suppose Nevada does casinos pretty well. Houston's job losses increased, though unemployment held constant. Dr. Barton Smith gives some commentary, though to clarify one point--he projects Houston will lose 56,000 more jobs over the next two years. That doesn't sound too bad. Houston home sales and prices continue to drop. Some people in Houston want some infrastructe expenditure to upgrade the power grid. I hope this gets off the ground.

I think this is a good example to use when I describe firms in the same industry with different business models. I often lack knowledge of real life examples of this. Pepsi is buying up their bottlers, while Coke chooses not to.

There was a lot of talk, recently, about Obama's high-speed rail plans. I've gotta say, I like the infrastructure spending, but I didn't really expect this in Obama's first 100 days. I expected a more along the lines of smart grids and high-speed internet access. I'm not sure how essential high-speed trains are, but I admit having realistic rail options would be nice. And, hey, maybe they'll have wireless internet access on them, too. If I could jump on a train and go from Houston to Chicago or New York in 4-6 hours, that'd be nice. I don't think that's very realistic, though. I wonder how much tickets would be.

Health care, alternative energy, housing in Houston, and police

Companies are working harder than ever to ensure the health of their employees, it seems like.

Algae as an alternative energy. They apparently have a very low carbon footprint, and can be grown just about anywhere. Seems pretty good to me, and likely good for the city of Houston. Houston seems to have a number of routes to keep their title as the energy capital.

The price of homes per square foot went down 2% last year, in Houston in 2008. No surprise, really.

Another bit of Houston news: policemen get pulled off the streets to work on a backlog of work in internal affairs. Some worry that public safety will be affected. I'm not so sure that public safety will be drastically affected by a temporary shock. I'm assuming, of course, that once they're caught up with their work, the policemen should be able to go back to their normal duties.

Local stuff: UTMB, HOT lanes, and employment numbers

UT-Medical Branch is re-hiring 500 workers, showing the role of expectations and high risk. Due to the risks at the time, UTMB had to lay off the workers, but now the risk has apparently passed.

Houston might be converting many of its HOV lanes to HOT lanes. You can still drive on the lanes for free if you have a passenger, but you can now pay a toll to drive on the lane if you don't. Sounds good for economic efficiency, though I always figured the point of the lanes were to encourage people to carpool, save gas, and produce less smog. I guess we're less concerned about that, now.

Relatively speaking, Houston had pretty decent employment numbers in January.

Buy American, recession woes, wine, African buses, and NCAA basketball

An article from the Detroit Free Press explaining why "Buy American" sentiments are bad for the economy.

Is death a victim of the recession? Eight states are considering getting rid of the death penalty, due to cost.

The wine competition at the Houston Rodeo brought in much less money than last year for the winning wines. That's why we call them luxury goods! The money goes to fund Texas college scholarships, so there's yet another example of education getting tougher in a recession.

Cote D'Ivoire is now producing buses, aimed at Africans. African transportation systems are known for their terrible buses, so this is meant to fix that. The post I link to says, "Not only are better buses now rolling out onto the roads of western Africa, Cote D'Ivoire is becoming better because of its entrepreneurial drive." However, I wonder if that "entrepreneurial drive" was already there, but now there's enough capital or credit available to justify the venture.

I'm surprised by this article, warning the Fed to not be so expansionary. Really? I think most are agreed that recession-fighting is more important, right now, than inflation-fighting. After all, we're still concerned about whether or not our same jobs will still be around, as the middle class shrinks.

NCAA basketball teams tend to lose a lot of money, with the median team having net loses of over $850,000. I wonder what incentives there are for universities to hold on to get basketball teams, or to hold on to them if they have them.

Unemployment rate, auto industry, Asia, morality, and business cycles

The unemployment rate is 8.1% nationwide, but in Houston it's--erm--"only" up to 6.5%.

James Hamilton at Econbrowser shows us some numbers on the auto industry. It looks like the industry has been faltering since June, those numbers are way down. I'm reminded of James Joyner's piece this past week celebrating the exit of manufacturing jobs. Still, I get the idea that the numbers are soft--domestic and import numbers are down. People have to start buying cars again eventually.

Sachs writes a Letter to the Editor at NYT, disagreeing with Krugman. According to Sachs, the global crisis isn't Asia's fault.

Here's an interesting discussion on the claim that morality is analogous to economics. I've been thinking about similar issues on and off--I even saw a book comparing economic and Christian principles. Although, I guess it isn't surprising that there are similarities in what different groups say will make us better off.

David Beckworth provides an industry-by-industry look at the employment numbers during the recession. Some of them have actually been growing! I don't think it's much of a surprise, but it's still worth a look.

CalculatedRisk talks about business cycle indicators, from lead to lag.

Houston Rodeo, ESE, marginal taxes, protectionism, and popular kids

The Houston rodeo is feeling the effects of the recession.

There is now an Economics Search Engine. It sounds like a very useful thing, but I haven't tried it out yet. (I'm having trouble with the link provided, so maybe you'll also have better luck with this one)

Jonathan Chait has some fun with people who believe they'll be better off by keeping their incomes under $250k.

A couple of World Bankers worry that trade protectionism is rising. I hope any trend doesn't last. (Edit: another Voxeu.org article on a similar subject, but a bit more broad)

Popular kids make more money, says some research. An extra two percent for every extra friend. I wonder what Bill Gates would say about this.

Blogging, eating, and assorted stuff

Another interesting piece on blogging in economics from the Economist. Departments are typically measure prestige in their research output, but blogging reaches more people faster. Also, schools may have a comparative advantage in blogging rather than in research.

Should I be less amused when bankers are eating at McDonald's?

Contrary to what might be implied in Michael Mandel's article, Bloomberg reports that Texans will not be eating out less.

James Hamilton at Econbrowser attempts to put a trillion dollars in perspective for us. He reports that the IRS collected a trillion dollars in income taxes in 2006. So, imagine having to pay that much in income taxes.

I'm a sucker for silly. This post from the World Bank explains to us why we shouldn't fear ghosts. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Ryan Hahn. Ghostly revenge makes me feel safer.

The Secretary of Energy predicts rising demand for oil over the next two decades.

Houston is apparently the second largest home-building market in the nation. Katy's doing pretty well!

Houston: We're so great.

According to the Department of Labor, Houston has seen the second strongest job growth in the past 12 months. That's really good!

And, if you weren't impressed by that, there's a new book out to tell people why Houston's great. I wonder how widely it'll be distributed.

There are apparently projects to make the city more green, too, at affordable prices. Interesting!

In other news, ConocoPhillips is getting out of retail gas.

Economics is all about how everything is linked to everything else. If you cut taxes for the poor, they can more easily afford education, meaning a more educated populous, meaning a higher skilled workforce, and thusly higher GDP (just as an example). Hurricane Gustav may have hurt parts of Louisiana, but it's also affected the shrimping industry.

Cities, broadband, and globalization

This should surprise no one. As cities grow more dense and traffic gets worse, people turn to closer-to-home solutions for shopping. Sprawling cities get shopping centers, close to home, that support the majority of local shoppers' needs. It, of course, makes perfect sense. Some places even have everything self-contained in single, massive buildings--living space, work, and shopping all in one.

Have you ever been worried that municipal politicians are wasting your money? It happens at every level of government. How's that for dead weight loss?

Google talks about municipal broadband. As I said in my other blog, Houston's working on it! Apparently, other cities aren't having success, though.

PBS has a neat web page on globalization, though the economist in me always wants more data.