Weekly Reports

THE ‘BIG MAC INDEX’ is an annual gauge of foreign purchasing-power-parity – a measure of whether currency exchange rates are realistic – based on the price of a comparable item everywhere: the Big Macburger which last month averaged $4.62 across... Continue

FOR A BRILLIANT PERSPECTIVE ON HOW & WHY OUR ECONOMY WORKS (OR DOESN’T) and where the cycle is headed, a 30-minute animated course in simple English, absolutely worth your attention: http://www.economicprinciples.org    Also, for a  very clever 3-minute simple animated... Continue

ABOUT MIDDLE-AGE MEMORY:  The good news – A University of California-Irvine study of 160 non-coffee drinkers found that one daily cup of coffee with 200-milligrams of caffeine “sharpened memory recognition of pattern separation” in pictures viewed five minutes later.  Interestingly,... Continue

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON ECONOMIC ‘RECOVERY.’ “Companies around the world held almost $7 trillion of cash and equivalents at the end of 2013, more than double the level of ten years ago… and assumption has been that as the economic fog lifts, this... Continue

BEWARE: MEDICAL MISINFORMATION PROLIFERATES. A fake study about cancer treatment with obvious mistakes (made up by a reporter) found 157 scientific journals willing to publish it.  And three of every four members of “panels that define diseases and determine how... Continue