Monday, April 30, 2012

Wall Street Journal Online vs regular Wall Street Journal

Sometimes the article you're looking for is in the Wall Street Journal ONLINE (link to our holdings).

The online version sometimes has distinct articles.

We also carry full text online versions of the regular Wall Street Journal - so, it's online so to speak, but not ONLINE (see link above.)

By the way, you can set up RSS feeds for WSJ articles using the ABI Inform database in the links.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Read What the Policymakers Read: Economist Hyman Minsky

To understand what the policy makers (both public and private) are thinking, read the intellectual works that inform their worldview.

This is why you should check out Hyman Minsky (1919-1996).

Minsky pointed out that the economic system is inherently unstable, and given to excesses of credit euphoria (sound familiar?).

However, it's less clear what Minsky advocates as a response. On the one hand, Minsky cautions against avoiding dips (they are healthy), but also seems to leave the door open to state intervention like propping up busted markets (sound REALLY familiar?) with monetary policies to avoid catastrophe.

As a bonus, Minsky also foresaw the shadow banking system and derivatives in piling up unsustainable private debt that would eventually affect everyone.

Familiarize yourself with his works and then watch people try to make Minsky support their ideas.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

NAFTA, with an emphasis on Texas

NAFTA - you know it, North American Free Trade Agreement.

A link to our holdings on NAFTA.

Some our other official subject headings are
Free Trade - North America,
North America - Economic Integration,
and Free Trade-Mexico.

Suggested databases for journal articles on NAFTA are:

Business Source Complete
HAPI

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Inflation Resources

Here are some inflation resources.

Inflation related books

List of consumer and commodity prices from the Fed

The USDA estimates elasticity of prices and demand for food around the world. Which is a fancy way of saying how much people will be affected by inflation. Contains neat excel files with many countries' current and projected expenditures affected by inflation.

Track inflation (for multiple countries) based on online prices of anything you can sell at the Billion Prices Project from MIT.

There's a great reference book called The Value of a Dollar: Prices and Incomes in the United States that lists prices of daily life items throughout our history.

This source culls information from old magazines, newspapers and other sources to show actual prices of everything from screwdrivers to food to beds to cars.

Here's the Bureau of Labor Statistics's Consumer Price Index (CPI).

How much money are we printing?

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Videos and YouTube Production

You might get interviewed. You might make a YouTube spot. So you are going to have to know the following things:

Television Acting (trust me, the right subject heading). includes

Video Production


YouTube videos

Monday, April 2, 2012

Researching Mobile Apps and Technology

Finally, a better way to research smart phone apps, smartphone market share and strategies. For all of you how do I monetize my app? people.

Gartner Research database has the industry analysis you'll need.

Simply Map (yes) has market share for smartphones for both local and national data. Do a search for a local area and you'll get both local and national data in an Excel file.

Don't try this without watching this tutorial
on using Simply Map.