This week, the Carnival of Entrepreneurs makes a trimphant return to Political Calculations' On the Moneyed Midways, and we're happy to welcome the new Carnival of Business to the ranks of blog carnivals we scan for each week's edition!
Below, you'll find the top business, economics, personal finance, investing, marketing and frugal living posts for the week ending on Friday, May 12. For those visiting for the first time, On the Moneyed Midways is the best way to catch up with the best posts from each of the biggest money-related blog carnivals on the web, and is the only place you can find the blog post that has earned the title of being the Best Post of the Week, Anywhere!(TM)!
But enough about us - here are the best posts of the week:
Kevin Surbaugh runs the numbers and frames the issue this way: "Paying off your mortgage early is always better, because 72 cents will always be more than 28 cents."
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
Political Calculations' U.S. GDP Temperature Gauge provides a means to quickly evaluate the growth rate of the U.S. economy against the backdrop of how the economy has performed since 1980, with the "temperature" color spectrum ranging from a recessionary "cold" (purple) through an expansionary "hot" (red).
The GDP Temperature Gauge presents both the annualized GDP growth rate as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports for a one-quarter period and also as averaged over a two quarter period, which smooths out the volatility seen in the one-quarter data and provides a better indication of the relative strength of the U.S. economy over time.
Recession Probability Track
Political Calculations' Recession Probability Track shows the probability that the U.S. economy will be in recession 12 months from the indicated date (shown in red) while revealing the probability trend over the past four years.
Previously, the probability of recession peaked at 50% on 4 April 2007, which means that March-April 2008 was the most likely period in which the NBER would have found the U.S. to be in recession.
As it happens, they almost did. The NBER instead chose December 2007 as the beginning month of the most recent recession (we had found a 46% probability for a recession beginning in that month!)
On the Moneyed Midways
Political Calculations is also the online home of On the Moneyed Midways (aka OMM), a review of the best posts contributed to the week's best business and money-related blog carnivals. More than that, we also name one post in each edition as being The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere! and at the end of each year, we name The Best Post of the Year, Anywhere! as well as identifying the best blogs we found during the course of the year!
The link below will take you to the running index containing our most recent back issues (you can easily navigate the index to find older editions.)
The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best
free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.
Other Cool Resources
ZunZun - Exceptional regression analysis tool. Wolfram Integrator - Solve integrals. Do calculus! Create a Graph - Easy-to-use basic graph-making tool. Many Eyes - Data visualization extraordinaire!
This week, the Carnival of Entrepreneurs makes a trimphant return to Political Calculations' On the Moneyed Midways, and we're happy to welcome the new Carnival of Business to the ranks of blog carnivals we scan for each week's edition!
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