Laura Franks Bexley Consumer Price Index quarterly report.

Laura Franks reports the Bexley Consumer Price Index as of First Quarter, 2013.

The Bexley CPI reports on the aggregate prices paid for a uniform basket of merchandise purchased at retail in Bexley and nearby retail stores.

The Bexley CPI measures the change of prices for ordinary retail purchases made by Bexley residents.

The Bexley Consumer Price Index can be compared to the price changes reported by the US Department of Labor.  The comparison can provide useful information for Bexley consumers about local price changes compared to price changes in other parts of the United States.

Comparing current prices to prices for the first quarter, 2012, Bexley prices showed a year-to-year increase of 7.74 percent.for the aggregate cost of the uniform market basket.  The quarter-to-quarter aggregate cost also showed an increase at the rate of 8.51 percent.

Price changes appeared in the amount of sales tax paid, the price of home-office supplies and the price of one personal hygiene product.  The increase in actual sales tax paid is a consequence of the increase in retail prices paid.

HELP BEXLEY PUBLIC RADIO UPGRADE ITS ANTENNA. SEND YOUR MONEY PROMPTLY. BE GENEROUS.

Bexley Public Radio Foundation broadcasting as
WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM, Local Power Radio
2700 E. Main St., Suite 208
Columbus, OH 43209
Voice (614) 235 2929
Fax (614) 235 3008
Email wcrxlp@yahoo.com
Blog http://agentofcurrency.blogspot.com

Bexley Public Radio Foundation is exempt from federal taxes under IRC Section 501(c)(3). Donations are deductible from federal income tax returns for individuals who itemize. Checks may identify the payee as Bexley Public Radio Foundation or WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM.

Design is copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Bexley Public Radio Foundation. Text and photo are copyright 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. All rights reserved. Laura Franks.

Mark your calendar. November 19, 2013. Conference on risk management for agriculture producers and lenders. .

The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank will conduct a conference on the risks faced by agriculture producers and lenders.  The conference will also address risk-management tools that are available to lenders and producers.  Details to follow.

Tuesdays at Trinity. Summer music series at the Lutheran seminary in Bexley.

"Tuesdays at Trinity."

This is the 29^th annual summer music series of three concerts at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. 

There is free parking at the Trinity parking lot on College Avenue in Bexley.

All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

All performances are on Thursday evenings.

All performances are at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 2199 E. Main St, Columbus, OH  43209

There is a free will offering at each performance.

Tuesday June 4, 7:30 p.m.

Raise Choir 

Raymond Wise, director.  Choir members represent several different churches, choirs and denominations.  Raise Choir has received numerous gospel music awards.

Tuesday June 11, 7:30 p.m.

Brass Band of Columbus 

Brian Stevens, director.  Brass Band of Columbus is a well-recognized brass concert band.

Tuesday June 18, 7:30 p.m.

Jazz Concert by Tom Battenberg and Friends.   

Tom Battenberg on trumpet, Michael Cox on sax, Mark Flugge on piano, Terry Douds on bass and Jim Rupp on drums.

After the Newtown, Connecticut outrage, more consideration of the value of a local armory for Bexley.

Does Bexley need a municipal armory?

The Bexley community should discuss a dangerous fact.  Most households in Bexley have at least one gun.

The purpose of a local armory would be to provide safe storage for privately owned fire arms, ammunition and other weapons.

In American history, there was a time when municipalities and counties erected local armories where weapons were stored and repaired. Ammunition was also kept safe and dry in the local armory.  Local citizens received training in military arts at the armory.  Regular drill with rifles and sidearms was provided at the municipal armory.

The local characteristic of armories changed in the twentieth century.  Local militias were superceded by state national guard units and also US Army Reserve units. 

Armories became part of the national defense infrastructure and any connection to local gun-ownership by citizens was forgotten.

If the city government provided an armory available for use by residents, the safety of the community would increase.  Residents who presently own guns and keep ammunition in their homes would have a convenient, safe choice for storage at the armory.  Parents who are reluctant to have guns in their homes because of the risk of death and injury would have a safe choice for storage of firearms out of their homes and away from their children.

Should a local armory be privately-owed or a public facility? Should it be located within the munipal boundaries or nearby.  Should an armory be near the police station?

Wherever its location, the armory should not have signs identifying its purpose.

If appropriate storage charges are posted, the armory can be self-supporting..

Anyone interested in being appointed the Bexley Municipal Armorer?

  Does Bexley need a municipal armory for safe storage of firearms?

HELP BEXLEY PUBLIC RADIO UPGRADE ITS ANTENNA. SEND YOUR MONEY PROMPTLY. BE GENEROUS.

Bexley Public Radio Foundation broadcasting as

WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM, Local Power Radio

2700 E. Main St., Suite 208

Columbus, OH 43209

Voice (614) 235 2929

Fax (614) 235 3008

Email wcrxlp@yahoo.com

Blog http://agentofcurrency.blogspot.com

Bexley Public Radio Foundation is exempt from federal taxes under IRC Section 501(c)(3). Donations are deductible for individuals who itemize their federal income tax returns and also for businesses.

Checks may identify the payee as Bexley Public Radio Foundation or WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM.

Current account deficits are easing in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.

May 22, 2013

30

 

 

New York Federal Reserve Bank

Foreign Borrowing in the Euro Area Periphery: The End Is Near

Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard

Current account deficits in euro area periphery countries have now largely disappeared. This represents a substantial adjustment. Only two years ago, deficits stood at nearly 10 percent of GDP in Greece and Portugal and 5 percent in Spain and Italy (see chart below). This sharp narrowing means that spending has been brought in line with income, largely righting an imbalance that had left these countries dependent on heavy foreign borrowing. However, adjustment has come at a sizable cost to growth, with lower domestic spending only partly offset by higher export sales. Downward pressure on domestic spending should abate now that the periphery countries have been weaned from foreign borrowing. The risk, though, is that foreign creditors might demand that the countries pay down (rather than merely service) accumulated external debts, forcing them to reduce spending below incomes.

    A country’s current account balance measures how much it lends to or borrows from the rest of the world. A country where imports run ahead of exports is also spending more than it produces and must borrow abroad to make up the difference. Countries in the euro area periphery borrowed heavily from abroad during the several years leading up to the ongoing sovereign debt and banking crisis. As a result, they faced wrenching adjustment pressures when foreign investors became unwilling to extend new credit, even with the lure of sharply higher interest rates. These adjustment pressures forced changes in the balance between exports and imports, and equivalently in the balance between income and spending, without any help from an exchange rate channel because of the shared euro currency.





Exports and Imports
The loss in access to foreign credit meant that export revenues had to rise relative to import purchases. As seen in the table below, much of the recent adjustment in Italy, Spain, and Portugal has come from higher export revenues. From 2010 to 2012, nominal goods and services exports in these countries rose by 15 percent or more, roughly in line with Germany’s performance. Higher exports in these countries have helped support growth, softening ongoing economic downturns. Greece, in contrast, saw export sales rise only 8 percent over this two-year period; this increase provided only limited help easing the country’s severe downturn.





    A look at the geographic breakdown of goods exports shows that the lion’s share of the increase was from sales outside the euro area, particularly to markets in North America, Asia, and oil-exporting countries. Indeed, periphery countries’ sales outside the euro area rose by roughly 30 percent over the two-year period, compared with growth of less than 10 percent for sales inside the euro area.





    Discussions of external adjustment in the periphery often stress the need to improve external competitiveness. Unfortunately, competitiveness measures are at best imperfect. A common metric is based on unit labor costs, that is, on labor compensation growth relative to labor productivity. The intuition is simple: Higher wages erode competitiveness unless offset by productivity gains. However, this measure can be misleading in turbulent times. The shutdown of low-productivity firms boosts the economy’s average productivity, but does not mean that competitiveness has improved at surviving firms. Economy-wide unit labor cost measures can be particularly misleading when downturns are concentrated in low-productivity sectors such as construction. For example, much of the measured decline in Spain’s unit labor costs over the past several years owes to the country’s construction crash.

    The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calculates a measure of competitiveness based on export performance adjusted for the strength of trading partners’ economies. If exports grow more rapidly than trading partners’ total imports do, a country gains export market share; if exports grow more slowly, a country loses it.

    By this metric, Spain and Portugal have done well in recent years, with exports growing 6 to 8 percent faster than trading partners’ total imports from 2010 to 2012. (These figures are based on preliminary estimates from late 2012.) This matches up well with Germany’s performance of exports, which grew 5 percent faster than trading partners’ total imports. Italian exports, in contrast, just kept pace with imports in destination markets. Meanwhile, Greece lost substantial market share, with exports growing 10 percent more slowly than destination market imports did over the period.

    Import weakness also contributed to the external adjustment in the periphery. This was particularly true in Greece and Portugal, where purchases of foreign goods and services dropped 11 percent and 4 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2012. Italy’s imports rose modestly, while Spain’s rose 6 percent. In all cases, import growth fell far short of export growth, helping to reduce external borrowing.

    Ongoing economic downturns have been the key driver of import weakness in the periphery. Indeed, import spending remains well below levels prevailing before the Great Recession; import spending in Germany, in contrast, has moved well above it pre-recession level. One concern is that periphery import spending might pick up quite strongly once economies recover, bringing a new round of large current account deficits. A more positive take is that the difficult adjustments have brought imports in line with exports; going forward, the two can grow together without the need for new borrowing.


Spending and Income
A current account deficit means that domestic spending is greater than domestic income. An alternative but equivalent measure of this gap is the difference between domestic investment and domestic saving. (Note that a country’s public and private spending goes either to consumption or investment, while income not spent on current consumption is by definition saved. Thus, the gap between spending and income is equal to investment spending minus saving. This same accounting logic means that a country’s fiscal deficit is the difference between government saving and investment spending.) The table below shows that much of the narrowing in periphery current account deficits over the past two years has come from lower investment spending, with declines equal to almost 2 percentage points of GDP to more than 4 percentage points. Higher saving also contributed to reduced current account deficits, with small increases in Italy and Spain and more substantial increases in Greece and Portugal.





    The drop in investment spending, particularly outside the housing sector, could limit improvement in periphery competitiveness and growth prospects. As the next chart shows, this is especially the case since the recent drop in investment comes on the heels of an already large drop in 2008 and 2009—during the Great Recession but before the euro area crisis took hold. In contrast, investment spending in Germany has seen no pullback. Notably, economic recoveries are often led by investment spending. One risk for the periphery, then, is that stronger growth could see current account deficits widening as investment spending is again financed by external borrowing. On the positive side, stronger growth would also help boost public and private saving by limiting government budget deficits and raising corporate profits.





Conclusion
Periphery countries have suffered painful contractions weaning themselves from foreign borrowing. The hope now is that the restoration of external balance in these countries will set the stage for meaningful recoveries. The debt burden from past borrowing remains, however, and argues for caution about the periphery outlook. Much will depend on the behavior of external investors. A further pullback would force periphery countries to lower spending below incomes to generate current account surpluses to pay down (rather than merely service) accumulated external debts. This would suggest an even steeper drop in periphery consumption and living standards. Recent balance-of-payments data have been encouraging on that point, however, as private investors stopped pulling money out of periphery countries in the second half of 2012, apparently reassured by the European Central Bank’s Outright Monetary Transaction program that was announced last August.


Disclaimer
The views expressed in this post are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.

---

 
Matthew Higgins is a vice president in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Emerging Markets and International Affairs Group.


 
Thomas Klitgaard is a vice president in the Bank’s Research and Statistics Group.

Posted by Blog Author at 07:00:00 AM in International Economics

Volunteer familiar with Shoutcast application.

WCRX-LP needs a volunteer to assist in training other volunteers in working with Shoutcast and webstreaming.

Contact WCRX-LP at (614) 235-2929. 

Ask for Laura Franks.

Security Cameras in Bexley (Originally broadcast September 17, 2009).

Camera #1
Does Bexley need more video cameras as a deterrent to petty property theft?

In a recent broadcast interview with Bexley police chief Larry Rinehart, Bexley Public Radio senior correspondent John Matuszak asked about property theft in Bexley. The chief reported that during calendar year 2008, there were more than six hundred property thefts in Bexley. In the Monday morning Dispatch newspaper, the chief is quoted as describing Bexley as "a city in peril" because of this property crime.

A two hundred dollar bicycle stolen from a Bexley garage isn't a peril for the city but the editorial collective understands the chief's point.

Six hundred thefts, mostly petty thefts, is a large number for sure but not significantly different from the property crime frequencies in Dublin, Gahanna, Upper Arlington, Westerville and Worthington.

For sure, the dollar value of stolen Bexley property is greater than these other suburbs because, well, it's a matter of quality and taste.

Sperling’s Best Places publishes crime rates in American cities on a scale of one (low) to ten. Dublin, Gahanna, Upper Arlington, Westerville and Worthington are rated at eight and Bexley alone is rated at nine. Still all of these communities including Bexley are in the same fourth statistical quartile.

Camera #2
If the average theft involves stolen property valued at $500, there is an economic impact of $300,000 each year on Bexley residents. If the average is $2,000, then the impact is $1.2 million. If damage to door frames and windows averages $1,100, there is an additional $660,000 in economic loss to residents in the community.

Those dollar amounts help to set a range for how much money might be spent prudently to respond to the problem of property theft.

Equipment needs might be eighteen network digital recorders (at $900 each), one thousand infra-red digital night video cameras ($700 each), connecting cables for each camera and installation ($350 each) for a total of $1,066,800. Operations, staffing and repairs will add another $180,000 each year. AEP, Verizon and AT&T will want some compensation when the best camera location is on a utility pole.

Bexley police chief Larry Rinehart is promoting the formation of neighborhood block-watch teams in response to the number of property crimes suffered by Bexley residents.

Camera #3
The Bexley Public Radio editorial collective wonders whether neighborhood block-watch volunteers can be assisted by video cameras.

Currently, video cameras are used in some Bexley retail stores, banks and residences. Should video cameras be installed in all commercial locations in Bexley? Should video cameras be required at all residences?

Should the city install cameras in all of the alleys and along all of the streets?

How should installation be prioritized? Does the Bexley police department analyze property theft by location? Does the police department know which neighborhoods have the highest frequency of property theft? Should frequency of theft be used to prioritize installation?

Camera #4
Does the police department know how many businesses and residences use video cameras? Does the police department have a map of Bexley that shows what views are currently recorded. Banks, CVS and carry-out convenience sores obviously use video cameras currently.

Should Bexley adopt saturation coverage by digital video cameras as part of its response to unacceptable levels of property theft?

Do Bexley residents really want video cameras recording vehicular and pedestrian movement in the neighborhoods? What happens to privacy in our neighborhoods? Is this too much a Big Brother proposal?

Camera #5
Who should own the cameras, computers and discs recording digital data? Should the city own them?. Should the property insurers that carry the property risks in Bexley own the equipment? Should a Bexley property owner cooperative be formed to own the equipment? Should ownership be on a block by block basis?

Installing video cameras everywhere in Bexley sounds like a good stimulus public infra-structure program.

Listener thoughts are welcome. Email to wcrxlp@yahoo.com.

Contribute to Bexley Public Radio now!!!

This WCRX-LP editorial collective comment was first published February 15, 2009.

Bexley Public Radio Foundation broadcasting as
WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM, Local Power Radio
2700 E. Main St., Suite 208
Columbus, OH 43209
Voice (614) 235 2929
Fax (614) 235 3008
Email wcrxlp@yahoo.com
Blog http://agentofcurrency.blogspot.com

Camera #6
Bexley Public Radio Foundation is exempt from federal taxes under IRC Section 501(c)(3). Donations are deductible from federal income taxes for individuals who itemize. Checks may identify the payee as Bexley Public Radio Foundation or WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM.

Design is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Bexley Public Radio Foundation. Text is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Bexley Public Radio Editorial collective.