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Each month, questionnaires are mailed to a probability sample of approximately 5,000 employer firms selected from the larger Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS). Firms responding to MARTS account for approximately 65% of the total national sales estimate. Advance sales estimates are computed using a link relative estimator. The change in sales from the previous month is estimated using only units that have reported data for both the current and previous month. There is no imputation or adjustment for nonrespondents in MARTS. Got it? The number is cooked. Only same-store sale changes count and those stores that closed or were newly...

Here is some interesting trivia about China: It is the largest country in the world by population, with about one fifth of the world's population residing there. It has the second largest GDP by purchasing power parity. It has the fourth largest economy in the world by GDP. The poverty rate went from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001. It is the second largest exporter in the world. It is the world's second largest importer of petroleum. It is is the third largest importer in the world. It is largest consumer of steel in the world. It is largest...

(Installment One in a Series) By Walter J. "John" Williams abeus@verizon.net __________ Series Introduction In 1996 -- the middle of the Clinton economic miracle -- the Kaiser Foundation conducted a survey of the American public that purported to show how out of touch the electorate was with economic reality. Most Americans thought inflation and unemployment were much higher, and economic growth was much weaker, than reported by the government. The Washington Post bemoaned the economic ignorance of the public. The same results would be found today. Neither the Kaiser Foundation nor the Post understood that there was and still is...

John Dessauer is an authority on global investing....he had this in his recent newsletter....worth reading. This is an excerpt..... "Are We Losing Millions of Jobs"? The popular view is that the U.S. economy is losing jobs at a rapid clip--more than two million fewer jobs since President Bush took office. But Nobel Laureate and Economics Professor Gary S. Becker throws some doubt on these numbers. Becker says that two leading government job surveys give very different pictures of changes in employment. Data from surveys of company payrolls show large job losses since the start of the last recession. But the...

There's been a lot of chatter on the web, and I've received lots of e-mails from readers, concerning Arnold Kling's open letter to Paul Krugman, posted yesterday on Tech Central Station. I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth — it's great to see an economist take on Krugman in public. But truth be told, I think Kling's critique fails to come to grips with what's wrong with Paul Krugman. For the moment, I'm afraid, I'll have to withhold Kling's membership in the Krugman Truth Squad. Kling sets up a framework in which economic propositions can be argued...