Arizona ranked #11 for income growth among the states in 2006, but dropped to dead last in 2007, primarily due to the fact that so many jobs in the state have been dependent upon real estate. Note that one economist quoted in the cited article expressed skepticism about this result, and attributes it instead to an overestimate of Arizona population growth by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The March 6, 2008 issue of The Economist features lots of interesting articles (it includes one of the quarterly technology reviews), one of which is “Feel safer now?" This is a report on a study by economists in Texas and Alabama commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, which looks at the effects of increased spending on counterterrorism efforts and “homeland security” globally since 2001, and the effects. They calculate that while such spending has increased by somewhere between $65 billion and $200 billion a year, the benefits are far smaller than the costs of terrorism, which were about $17 billion in 2005. While the spending may have prevented some incidents, even if this extra spending prevented 30 attacks like the July 2005 London bombings every year, it would still be more expensive than the damage from terrorism. The authors suggest that the benefits from increased counterterrorism spending have been about 5-8 cents per each dollar of spending, whereas if instead money was spent specifically on disrupting terrorist finances, $5-$15 of benefits could be obtained for each dollar spent.
A few articles of interest from the last couple of issues of The Economist: February 23, 2008: “Moral thinking," a summary of recent research that sheds light on human moral reasoning processes. Video here. (A related, more in-depth story is Steven Pinker’s “The Moral Instinct” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine on January 13.) March 1, 2008: “Winds of change," a summary of research to use breathalyzer technology to diagnose medical conditions. “Telltale hairs," about new methods of forensics to use hair analysis to identify a person’s location at a given time (based on water consumption–could drinking imported bottled water be used to thwart this?).
It looks like I picked the wrong month to slack on an update to my graph of Phoenix area pre-foreclosures, as January’s notices of trustee’s sales climbed to an amazing 5336! That’s 1461 higher than December’s number, and when you consider that last January’s number was 1623, and that the peak seen by the bursting of the Tech bubble (which, by the way, is hardly noticeable in this graph), in January, 2003, was 1738 I think it becomes clear that we are witness to something rather scary. February’s number dropped to a measly 5048. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/0802NTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for full size"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174474898444172498” /> ...
I’d seen similar blogs for California cities, now I’m glad to see there’s one for Phoenix. The site lists homes currently for sale at a loss, ordered from greatest total loss to least. Most of these homes have been flipped multiple times before the current flipper got stuck with it. Despite what a realtor might tell you, when you see homeowners repeatedly reducing prices like this, it is not a good time to buy. It’s a good time to wait and watch prices continue to drop. When you start seeing prices go back up for a while, then it might be a good time to buy–it’s much better to buy after things have bottomed out and started to increase again than it is to buy on the way down. That’s sometimes referred to as “catching a falling knife." I wouldn’t consider buying anything until 2010 at the earliest. We haven’t yet even seen the peak of subprime ARM resets, which should hit in the next few months. Then we still have Alt-A ARM resets to peak after that. ...
Nationwide, foreclosures are up 57% for January 2008 vs. January 2007 (and up 8% vs. December 2007), and the top states for foreclosures in January (on a per-capita basis) were: 1. Nevada 2. California 3. Florida 4. Arizona 5. Colorado 6. Massachusetts 7. Georgia 8. Connecticut 9. Ohio 10. Michigan Repossessions are up 90% or January 2008 compared to January 2007.
On Friday, I attended the New Mexico InfraGard Member Alliance’s “$-Gard 2008” conference in Albuquerque. It was an excellent one-day conference that should be used as a model by other chapters. The conference was open to the public, and featured an informative and entertaining two-hour seminar on fraud and white collar crimes by Frank Abagnale, author of the autobiographical Catch Me If You Can and anti-fraud books The Art of the Steal and Stealing Your Identity. (Another version of Abagnale’s talk can be viewed as an online webinar courtesy of City National Bank.) Abagnale argued that fraud has become much easier today than it was when he was a criminal forger, with numerous examples, and also offered some simple and relatively inexpensive ways for businesses and individuals to protect themselves. For example, he recommended the use of microcut shredders, and observed that his own business keeps shredders near every printer, and no documents get thrown away, everything gets shredded. He recommended the use of a credit monitoring service like Privacy Guard, and that if you write checks, you use a black uniball 207 gel pen, which is resistant to check-washing chemicals. For businesses that accept cash, he recommended training employees in some of the security features of U.S. currency rather than relying on pH testing pens, which are essentially worthless at detecting counterfeit money. By recognizing where bills use optical variable ink, for example, you can easily test for its presence in the time it takes you to accept bills from a customer and transfer them into a cash register. He also recommended that businesses use bank Positive Pay services to avoid having business checks altered. ...
Today’s Washington Post reports: The FBI, which has had trouble keeping track of its guns and laptops, also has a chronic problem paying its phone bills on time, according to audit results released today. Telephone companies have repeatedly cut off FBI access to wiretaps of alleged terrorists and criminal suspects because of the bureau’s failure to pay its bills, the audit found. The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that more than half of the nearly 1,000 telecommunications bills reviewed by investigators were not paid on time, including one invoice for $66,000 at one unidentified field office. ...
By now it’s barely even newsworthly that December saw another record number of notices of trustee’s sales in Maricopa County (3875, which was more than 300 higher than last month’s record high, which was almost 100 higher than October’s record high, which was roughly 200 higher than August’s record high…). For some extra context and excellent commentary, after looking at the graphs… <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/07DecNTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Maricopa County Notices of Trustee’s Sales - Click to Enlarge"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299145537480498” /> <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/07DecMed.jpg” border=“0” alt=“Maricopa County Median Home Price - Click to Enlarge"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299506314733378” /> <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/07DecSold.jpg” border=“0” alt=“Number of Homes Sold Per Month in Maricopa County - Click to Enlarge"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150299845617149778” /> …I recommend you check out Mish’s Pent Up Housing Demand, and the NYT’s Sound of a Bubble Bursting. ...
Gives you some idea of the local demographic and economic conditions (or at least what the people behind these signs believe it to be).