Category / Federal Reserve

by Hoosier Econ

Prison Economy: Cell Phones

prison cell phones
Cell phones in prisons and jails are a hot commodity. Finding national numbers was hard to do, but to give you a perspective of how big it is, California prison guards found 9,000 in 2013.

State police officer told me one time while working on a tip they busted a female during visitation at a prison with 3 flip phones. They were wrapped up and “inside her”. That is is an example of great lengths to get these phones inside a prison. But why? Because the price it goes for.

In Texas, a deathrow inmate paid $2,100 for one phone.

In 2011, the NY Times found that

“payments for cellphones range from $300 to $1,000, depending on the type of phone and the service plan. Monthly fees are generally paid by inmates’ relatives.”

Prison guard in Las Vegas was paid $2,000 by an accused murderers family to smuggle in 2 cell phones.

Prison guard in New Jersey was set up in a sting and thought they were getting $1,000 for a cell phone from an inmate.

An unmeasurable financial aspect is when two Indiana prisoners had cell phones smuggled in to run their drug business while on the inside. Indiana prisoners are paying up $1,600 for a phone.

by Hoosier Econ

How Federal Tax Dollars Were Spent in 2014

The Tax Foundation put together a chart showing how federal tax dollars were spent.
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Compare that to 1962 federal spending
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by Hoosier Econ

Housing Graph: Houston, TX Beats California

Mark J. Perry over at Carpe Diem Blog shows an amazing stat on the economy of Houston, Texas.

by Hoosier Econ

Mental Disorders Rising for Social Security Disability

This blog has chronicled how lawyers get rich taking in Social Security Disability claims.

Now CNSNews has come out with some new SS disability data that raises some doubt if this program has any control:

One in three, or 35.2 percent, of people getting federal disability insurance benefits have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the latest data from the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Washington, D.C., the seat of the federal government, ranked in the top-ten list of states where disabled beneficiaries were diagnosed with mental problems.

In 2013, the latest data from SSA show there were 10,228,364 disabled beneficiaries, up 139,625 from 2012 when there were 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries.

Disabled beneficiaries have increased 49.7 percent from a decade ago in 2003 when there were 6,830,714 beneficiaries; and the number is up 14.3 percent from the 8,945,376 beneficiaries in 2009, the year President Obama took office.


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Here is another chart showing how big the disability fund has grown in the last ten years.
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by Hoosier Econ

Why Gas Prices Will Go Back Up Part II

In December I posted a blog about why gas prices will go back up and it received numerous hits. The content of that post is now playing out.  Mark J. Perry just released some data of oil rigs being shutdown due to the drop in price of crude oil.  Here is what he found:

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US Oil Rigs Fell Last Week to 1,317, Down 292 and 18% from October Peak of 1,609

This is a quick reversal so I wouldn’t be surprised if 500 shutdowns happen before March. With production falling and the strength of the dollar in question, crude oil will eventually start rising.

by Hoosier Econ

Percent of Fuel Cost in Your Grocery Store Bill

With fuel prices dropping over the last several months, many shoppers are asking why food prices have not shown corresponding drops in prices. The asnwer may surprise you in how much fuel costs affect grocery store bills.

Annemarie Kuhns with the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service is reporting that only 4.7 cents of every dollar spent at the supermarket goes toward food transportation costs

So less than 5% of your bill is attributed to fuel costs.

by Hoosier Econ

Inflation Alert: Chicken Wings

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According to the Daily Northeast Broiler/Fryer Report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Marketing Service the price for retailers purchasing chicken wings to sell at their business has jumped by 35% compared to last year. This was reported in PRNewswire:

The average price (wholesale, not retail) of whole wings is currently $1.71/lb, up from $1.35/lb at the same time last year.

This is not the highest ever seen:

This is down significantly from when wing prices hit a record high of $2.11/lb in January, 2013.

by Hoosier Econ

$43 Hot Dog

hot dog

CNBC reports as the financial elite meet at Davos for the World Economic Forum they are shelling out some hefty money to eat food. Appearently hot dogs are a big seller:

Full of global leaders, policymakers, business gurus and the odd music star, the attendees at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos aren’t short of a dollar or two. But they might well be at the end of the week — with some of the food prices around town proving to be a little hard to stomach.

At the posh Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvédère, a conference hotspot, even humble menu items can be astronomically pricey. A hot dog with pickles, fried onions and mustard is priced at 38 Swiss francs (about $43.50). It’s 48 Swiss francs for a chicken Caesar salad with parmesan (about $55) and a draft beer at a local restaurant – in a pint-sized glass – can cost 6.50 Swiss francs, about $7.50.

I really don’t know how this yearly meeting of financial gurus does for the world economy. Probably a lot of it is nostalgia. But you do get a lot of lecturing of how to live your life from these people. This does remind me of a story related to Walmart. One year during their annual board meeting of directors the financial numbers weren’t too hot. The meeting was getting close to lunch and board members were getting ready for a big spread. The door opened and it was a Walmart associate with bread, lunch meat and some chips. The members looked stunned and the director said [paraphrasing] “If we are losing money, that means we have to cut expenses”.

I think I’ll buy my hot dogs at Walmart.

by Hoosier Econ

Keystone Pipeline Reality

Economist Mark J. Perry had a Keystone Pipeline perspective today on Twitter:

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by Hoosier Econ

Inflation Alert: Food Prices

My niche in my blog posts is inflation tracking. I do it because of how I position my investments and watching the unethical approach by MSM in not tracking it. Inflation hurts a lot of people and sucks money out of the economy that can be used for savings or other purchases. This update of increases comes from the Wall Street Journal:

Food prices rose 0.3% in December and 3.4% from a year earlier, the largest 12-month increase since February 2012, the Labor Department said Friday.

You can read the rest here.