I notice deisel fuel was $3.27 gal. and all those damn products were on a truck… gee willickers Batman, can we say duhhhhhhhhhh JM

Christmas sales tanked, down in real terms from 2006.

I’ll say. I second the point that it’s not a question of if but when and for how before long a typical family will incur debt when serious illness strikes.

I have one of the best health plans in the US through my union. Last year out of the blue my previously healthy husband was diagnosed with cancer. He’s covered under my policy but at the beginning due to various red tape issues he opted to pay his own cash for a single MRI scan.
Funny thing: upon being informed that he was paying cash the folks at the hospital summarily cut the cost of the scan in half-half-on the spot(we’re still talking a 4 figure bill).
I’m sure there must be some logical reason a Plan would be billed double what John Doe would be expected to pay out of his own bank account, but I’m damned if I know what it is. It just seems so…arbitrary. Strange, isn’t it?

Sorry to digress to such an extent–but I certainly get a very uneasy feeling about the fiscal outlook for 2008 and beyond. I sincerely hope I’m wrong for all our sakes.

The answers were 1) KC’s doing great, no housing crisis, great farm prices, export boom with cheap dollar; 2) Phila’s doing fine, diverse economy, no major problems; 3) LA’s OK, real estate is down, but rest of economy is good, low unemployment; and 4) Detroit is bad, bad housing market, bad auto industry, very bad.

But 1 out of 4 does not a recession make. The consensus was that jobs are the critical factor – as long as employment holds, no recession. One of the writers noted that recessions were often driven by psychology (scare mongering). He cited and old joke that the last 10 recessions were predicted 100 times.

I’m sure Mastercard has developed algorithms to translate mastercard charges into overall retail charges over time, just as the NY Times has developed formulas to ignore significant upward revisions of GNP (see 3rd Quarter 2007) during republican administrations and to spin positive news releases into impending doom.

What I’m saying is that they probably have figured out how take their proprietary data (mastercard, and whatever they buy / trade for) and transform it so that they have a gauge of general economic activity.

But maybe they also apply a liberal bias multiplier.

“It is based on purchases made by more than 300 million MasterCard debit and credit card users and broader estimates of spending with cash and checks. It encompasses sales at stores, on the Internet, of gift cards, gasoline and meals at restaurants.”

I think it’s safe to assume MasterCard Advisors is using MasterCard data. However, I don’t see how it would have access to proprietary information from other sources unless there is some kind of shared data agreement, and that seems unlikely for competitive reasons and antitrust laws.

Of course, they would have access to public information from other sources and some of that is starting to leak out. It seems to confirm the MasterCard numbers, including that some retailers did better than others and online sales were excellent. (I know I bought almost everything online this year.)

But maybe mastercard has a liberal bias.

There, fixed that for you.