The Bargain Journal: April 2011

Comparison Apple vs Microsoft profits

Beautiful chart of the day from the silicon alley insider.
* As always click on the plot for enlarging

Comparison of profits - apple and microsoft

Ironic that Microsoft (msft) had supported apple (aapl) with a 150million funding when it was about to go under. Bet they are not too happy now :)

Interesting earnings trends from the census data

2:55 PM Posted by Authors , 0 Comments
Labels: census , comparison , cost of living , gender , income , median income , plots , race , region

1) Relative earnings of women in corporate America are improving as compared to those of males. Great transition. See the progress from the chart below:

* As always, please click on the images to enlarge them

Why the gold bull run is probably not over?

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 5:32 PM Posted by Authors , 0 Comments
Labels: bubble , bull , comparison , condition , gdp , gold , market , nasdaq , plot , prices , silver

Today, we will present a collection of 7 beautiful plots from different sources which will help us understand if the recent rise in gold prices are a bubble or not.

1) Comparison of the rally with previous bubbles: This is based on a comparison recently featured on Seeking alpha. The plot below shows that the recent rise in gold prices are nothing like those seen during bubbles seen during the gold hikes in the 70s or the NASDAQ in the 1990-2009 range. It also does not have the spikes that are characteristic of a bubble.

A nice plot on the general satisfaction levels in the population

9:20 AM Posted by Authors , 0 Comments
Labels: american , comparison , gallup , graph , krugman , plot , satisfaction

Discussion by Paul Krugman on this issue:

There was a big positive movement in satisfaction with the country’s direction after 9/11, despite a deteriorating economy; there was another positive spike with the capture of Baghdad. After that, however, despite a genuinely improving economy, public perceptions slid steadily — reflecting, I believe, the sense of betrayal over the Iraq war, and also the Katrina disaster.

Rich are getting richer, but the poor are also getting there

Monday, April 25, 2011 8:40 PM Posted by Authors , 0 Comments
Labels: benefits , comparison , distribution , income , perry post , selected , taxes

Excellent post by Prof. Perry on his blog. Discusses the result from a recent study which shows that contrary to popular belief, when the rich are getting richer, the poor are also benefiting.

All in all a great post. Numbers re summarized by the following table:

Income distribution for the quintiles

The reason can be summarized as:

“By leaving out additional sources of income – like fringe benefits or employer-provided health insurance – past studies have dramatically understated American households’ access to after-tax resources.” said Dr. Burkhauser. “What we found is that the rich did get richer over the last 30 years, but so did the middle class, the working class and the poorest.”