- Wireless Firms Raise Fees, Blame Regulations (Washington Times): “Some wireless companies have begun charging users a monthly fee to pay for three new government regulations. Sprint PCS announced this week it will assess a monthly $1.50 fee to all its customers beginning with their next bill to help offset the costs of government regulations. Of that, $1.10 will cover the cost of number portability and pooling, spokesman Larry McDonnell said. The other 40 cents is for enhanced 911 emergency service, required to be in place in the next several years. Under new rules from the Federal Communications Commission, wireless carriers must allow customers to keep the same phone number when switching providers starting Nov. 24 if they stay in the same region. The concept is called ‘portability.’”
- US Economy Watchers Get Stimulating New Tool (Globe and Mail): “A leading brokerage unveiled a new economic indicator yesterday that may not be the most scientifically rigorous in the world but is certainly one of the most fun. At a time when U.S. forecasters are turning more optimistic about the outlook for their country, economist Russell Sheldon of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. has come up with what he calls, variously, the Official U.S. Stimometer, or the BMONB Seat-of-the-Pants Stimulus Meter. ...The Stimometer is a blend of six measures that point to where the economy is heading.”
- Revisionists Target Great Emancipator (Times-Picayune): “Lincoln has also come under attack from the Libertarians. Thomas J. Dilorenzo, an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland, agrees in “The Real Lincoln” that the Proclamation had no effect whatsoever and was only a cover for an inveterate racist who waged civil war in order to impose federal hegemony and trample on states’ rights. Slavery could have been abolished without bloodshed in this country, as it was in the British empire and elsewhere, according to Dilorenzo, who regards Lincoln as heir to Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay and the father of intrusive big government in this country. A Libertarian could hardly make a more serious accusation than that.”
- They call this deflation? (Bloomberg.com): “The overall PPI in June was 2.9 percent higher than the same month last year. Producer prices are running at a 4.8 percent annualized pace in the first half of this year compared with a 1.3 percent rate from January through June of 2002.”
- Data in Conflict: Why Economists Tend to Weep (NYT): “The scope of a statistical agency’s work can also be limited by its budget. For instance, the federal government has been gradually replacing its classification of industries in the last few years — a move that has affected thousands of figures collected by many agencies. Yet while the Federal Reserve painstakingly reconstructed decades of old data to match the new framework, Mr. Berner said, the Census Bureau has been unwilling or unable to follow because of a lack of money. The experts all said that almost constant revisions in methods and data sources made continuity a recurring problem in government statistics. Drawing comparisons of trends in inflation, employment and growth could be tricky, even, Mr. Berner said, for periods as short as five years.”
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