Retail Locations in US

1.11 million in 2002... maybe at most 1.3m now.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGQ__icNMvzI&refer=home

Employment numbers from Dec 08

From http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

The official unemployment rate stands at ~6.5%. However including everyone else the unemployment rate is ~12%.

Number of Hotel rooms

An old stat which I found interesting while I was researching India tourism .

India as a country has less number of hotel rooms than newyork city - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/business/worldbusiness/26hotel.html?ex=1324789200%26en=3f5799230518acb5%26ei=5088%26partner=rssnyt%26emc=rss

World Forex Reserves

From latest data by IMF - http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/cofer/eng/index.htm

At the end of Q2 2008, 63% of all forex reserves are in dollars.

Advertisement outlook 2009

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006813

Middle east and central asia economies

From IMF - http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/reo/2008/MCD/eng/mreo1008.pdf

Online retail sales

Lots of interesting numbers from comscore - http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2614

Flight to safety... 3 months T Bills at 0%

The bills were sold at a high discount rate of 0.005 percent - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPOndwHQsnOg&refer=home

Read this again - "The Treasury sold $27 billion in three-month bills at the lowest rate since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929"

Indian IT/BPO services

Recent talk by president of NASSCOM

http://conference.indicthreads.com/presentations/2008/GN_Industry%20Update_nov_2008.pdf

- $64B in total revenues

- >35% of revenue from domestic consumption

- Exports

  - BPO accounts for more than 33% of the exports

  - Banking/Finance accounts for 40% of exports

  - 60% of the exports go to US. 

  - Export growth rate US 30%, UK 43%, Europe 55%, APAC 36%

  - 7 centers account for 95% of the exports. Banglore 36%, NCR 17%, Mumbai/Pune 15%, Chennai - 15%, Hyderabad 14%

  - Costs in tier 2/3 cities is 28% of the cost in leading cities. 

  - 500K technical graduates every year. Population growth in 2007 was 15M. 

Social networking titbits

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS21540708

California foreclosures

From 

http://www.dqnews.com/News/California/CA-Foreclosures/RRFor081023.aspx

Specifically for santa clara county, notice of default increased by 70% and trustee deed records increased by 428%.. the highest in bay area.

India's FDIC

Here it is - http://www.dicgc.org.in/beta02/index.asp

Their recent report shows 

- 40 insured bank failures in India during 2006/07 compared to >100 for past 3 years.

- Has around ~13500 crores to cover all the insured funds.. thats 0.74% of the total funds insured.

Overall web/mobile trends...

Very interesting numbers from morgan stanley.... 

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/TechTrendsWeb2_110508.pdf

Well.. after the recent market crash, my faith in these kind of reports is dim.. taking it with a grain of salt... actually truckloads of salt :)

India foriegn reserves...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=INMORES$:IND

Passenger Cars

From - http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_17.html

Just to put things in context

- US population ~300M

- Car Sales every year between 50M-60M for past 15 years

- New car sales/lease 17M and used car sales 41M for 2007

- New car sales/leaves revenue is more than old car sales revenue even tough the volume of used cars is more than twice the new cars/leases.

- Average cost of a passenger car is 13.5K. New car - 27K and used car - 8.2K.

From - http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_22.html

US manufactured 9%(4.3M) of all passenger cars produced by the world in 2006. Japan produces more than double the US - 9.7M. Germany with 5.4M comes second.

Random numbers...

Very cool - 

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/index.html

Even though most of the numbers here are old, the reports have links to their sources which are up to date.

China lending rates

From bloomberg - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=CHLR12M:IND

Two rate cuts in a week.. wow. Rates are back to Spet 2007 level..

China Export Growth

From bloomberg - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=CNFREXPY:IND

Still growing at 20% yoy.. but below 2007 levels.

Lets take a look at the imports too - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=CNFRIMPY:IND

TED Spread

From bloomberg - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=.TEDSP:IND

As we move closer to resolution of the current crises, TED spreads should move lower towards their normal level.

FII India

From - http://www.sebi.gov.in/bulletin/bulletinaugust08.pdf

Tables on Pg 586 look interesting.  In Q208, mutual funds pumped in around 36k crores whereas FIIs pulled out around 15k crores.

It seems that the FII outflows are really taking off.

Repo Rates

From here - http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=228&a=11944

Libor

A very good article on libor - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n18/mack01_.html

You can get libor rates from here - http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=141&a=11948

Libor is based on borrow/lending rates provided by the following banks - http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=145&a=9743&artpage=all

The spike for USD on Sept 16 08 looks very interesting....

Market share of various mortgages...

From http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0878r.pdf

Prime - 58%
Alt-A - 16%
Sub prime - 24%

War expenditure... iraq and afganistan

Super cool - http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081128r.pdf

Since 2001, congress has provided DOD with about $807B for supporting military operations in GWOT(Global war on terrorism). This is comparable to paulson's $750B credit line to buy MBS. Of the $807B appropriated, DOD has obligated ~$595B.
- About ~$462B was spent on Iraq
- About ~$105 was spent on afganistan and others. I compare this with $80B bailout of AIG.

Nation by numbers..

Very super cool. This one should keep me busy for sometime - http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2007/07frusg.pdf

Somethings I found interesting
Govt spending (Page 10)
- social security 21.5%
- department of defense - 22.8%
- interest on public debt - 8.2%

Govt total assets - $1.6T
Govt total liability - $10.8T
Total net payable - 10.8 - 1.6 = $9.2T

Individual Tax returns...

From - http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=545&Topic2id=90&Topic3id=93

Population around ~300M
Individual tax payers ~139M
Gross income ~8T
- California accounts for ~1T
- 4M tax payers(2% of all individual tax payers) earn more than 200K and account for ~2.4T (30% of gross income)
- 12M tax payers earn between 100 and 200K and account for ~1.6T

Taxes - Individuals vs Corporations

From http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=407&Topic2id=90

Year 2007
Total gross tax collections - around $2.5T
Individuals - $2T
Corporations - $0.38T

Three highest contributing states
California - $299B
New York - $214B
Texas - $204B

Here is historic data since 1934 - http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=203

Sponsers of US debt

From http://www.fms.treas.gov/bulletin/b2008-3ofs.doc

As of June 2008
- Total public debt - $9,492.0M.
- More than 50% of the treasuries are owned is privately held - $4,806.2M
- More than 55% of the privately held debt and 25% of the total public debt is owned by foriegn govts.

From http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
- Japan + China account for more than 40% of debt owned by foriegn govts.

US treasuries - Foriegn holders

Major foriegn holders of US treasuries - http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

Japan + china > 45%

California employment numbers - Aug 2008

From http://wwwedd.cahwnet.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate200809.pdf

- Unemployment rate at 7.7 percent.
- Total number of unemployed people increased by 60000 to around 1.5M.
- Around 0.5M people recieve unemployment benefits.
- Around 17M currently have a job.
- Over the last year construction lost the most number of jobs - 85K.

The table on page 4 of that report is very interesting.

Voters turnout

64% of the eligible population voted in 2004.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/voting/004986.html

India records 57.7% for 2004 elections.

http://www.hindu.com/2004/04/26/stories/2004042603031200.htm

Walmart's overall impact to US economy...

Interesting read...

http://www.be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/sobel/WalMart/Walmart.pdf

US Treasuries

This table here gives good details on US treasuries purchased/sold for past N years...

http://www.treas.gov/tic/s1_99996.txt

You can find countrywise data here - http://www.treas.gov/tic/ticsec.shtml

Home Delinquencies

From http://www.mortgagebankers.org/NewsandMedia/PressCenter/64769.htm
http://www.realtor.org/research/commentary_delinquencies_foreclosures

- Subprime accounts for 36% of all foreclosures and prime accounts for 23%
- Florida and California accounts for 39% of all the foreclosures started during second quarter
- Florida and California accounts for 58% of all prime ARM foreclosure starts in second quarter and 78% of the increase

Pending home sales

Lets compare pending and new home sales.. http://www.realtor.org/wps/wcm/connect/33220e804af59c71a8e7ff4da33b78d3/EHSreport.xls?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=33220e804af59c71a8e7ff4da33b78d3
http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/const/stage_seas_cust.xls

For July 2008 -
New Home Sales - 43K
Existing Home Sales - 5000K.. thats more than 100 times new home sales.

Somehow I am amazed at the numbers above and I don't believe myself.. I think I should take a nap and revisit these numbers.. till then I'll keep admiring these.

New homes report

Lots of numbers on how many new homes got permitted/under construction/completed - http://www.census.gov/const/www/newressalesindex.html

http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/const/stage_seas_cust.xls

Around 43K new homes are being sold in July 2008. The median duration a home was on the market was 8.5 months. There are 416K new homes in permit/under construction/completed state on the market as of July 2008. At the rate of 43K per month, it'll take 9.67 months to sell out existing inventory.

Looking at the data for past 10 years, the median duration for a home on the market was 4.63 months on average.

Poverty level defined by US Census Bureau

From - http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

One person 10,590

Two people 13,540

Three people 16,530

Four people 21,203

Five people 25,080

Six people 28,323

Seven people 32,233

Eight people 35,816

Nine people or more 42,739

Sounds too low - you can read up on how it is determined here - http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povmeas/papers/orshansky.html

US Households

From http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf

- around 116M

- 100.6M native born, 15.4M foriegn born

- South has the largest number of households..  more than one third. Yay for Texas, Florida and other southern states - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States

- Native born american constitute 87% of the population. The remaining 13% are naturalized or foriegn born.

World Gold production and consumption

How much gold does world produce?

I got hold of two sources to check for consistency - 

http://www.gold.org/deliver.php?file=/value/stats/statistics/pdf/Supply_Demand.pdf

http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production.htm

2007 stats

- 2444 metric ton

- No single country dominating gold production. Max by any country is less than 12%

- China moved to the top followed by Australia and US. Most of the gold for US comes from Nevada

- Demand exceeded supply in 2007

- 68% of the gold is used for jwelleries

- Supply has been dropping since a couple of years

A very good read on gold with a lot of numbers - http://www.gold.org/deliver.php?file=/assets/file/marketknowledge/GoldMktKnowledgeSuppDem.pdf

Gold reserves held by central banks per country - http://www.gold.org/deliver.php?file=/value/stats/statistics/xls/Quarterly_Gold_and_FX_Reserves_June_2008.xls

Total Market Cap

World market cap - $56 trillion

Distribution

 Americas - 42.4%

 Asia/Pacific - 25.8%

 Europe, Africa & Mid-East - 31.8%

All numbers are from April 2007 report. Source - http://www.world-exchanges.org/WFE/home.Asp