Even though St. Patrick's day is known as a drinking holiday, it doesn't do too much to spur beer sales for home consumption. Nielsen, a market research company, tracks the purchase of beer for the two weeks leading up to holidays... and St. Patrick's is the lowest. Of course, St. Patrick's day also sees a higher number of people going out to restaurants and bars (only 16.7% went to a private St. Patrick's party in 2009).
As Chuck Klosterman writes in his book IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Minds, the phrase 'guilty pleasure' is culturally backwards. As he can take pride in his watching the Ashley Simpson Show, I can admit to the my audience that I've watched every episode of Jersey Shore. I was born in Boston and raised in Rhode Island; to be truthful, I could field a pretty decent cast for a new season. I must say, for the record, an article in CNN Money made me respect the entrepreneurial spirit of the cast of the Jersey Shore.
Every once and a while I like to check in on the market's inflation predictions. This is for my own personal curiosity, and possibly to entertain you, dear reader. You'll be interested to know that inflation expectations have tempered somewhat over the last few weeks; it all goes to show that throughout all of the howling on raising debt ceilings and mudslinging in politics, the market still believes in the general stability of the United States dollar. My method is the classic "subtract real treasury yields from the yield curve rates". All information is available at the U.S. Treasury's web site.
Carnivals and links, presented for your viewing pleasure!
CNN's Walter Updegrave fielded a question this weekend which, simply, sort of shocked me. A reader wanted to know if he and his wife should temporarily stop paying the full balance on their credit cards in order to build up an emergency fund. Is this really an option that some people are considering?
One of the nice things about the Bureau of Labor Statistics site is the centralized location of employment and labor trends data which inspires interesting articles. Count today as one of those days; the BLS today released figures on the rates of volunteerism in the United States. In the midst of a recession, volunteer rates increased in the United States from September 2008 to September 2009. In fact, the percentage rate of volunteering by citizens in the United States is now .1% higher than it was in September 2006, after a falloff from that point in 2007.
A popular topic in the blogosphere, given new life after comments by Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, is the relative success of the United States vs. the states that make up the European Union. The European Union is a loose confederation of 27 countries in Europe, ranging from Spain to Estonia. Krugman goes so far to suggest that "[y]ou should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it."