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August 7, 2004
Celebrity Auctions and the Prospects for the U.S. Economy
Bloomberg columnist Caroline Baum has a typically cheeky piece scoring a recent celebrity auction's implications for the U.S. economy (and for George Bush's re-election prospects). An excerpt:
During the late 1990s stock-market bubble, companies continued to report soaring quarterly profits even as income reported to the Internal Revenue Service was falling.
Profits as measured in the Bureau of Economic Analysis's National Income and Product Accounts (derived from tax returns) peaked in the third quarter of 1997. Reported profits for the Standard & Poor's 500 companies kept rising through the second quarter of 2000.
The rich must have sensed that some of their wealth was ephemeral. The record for money raised at the "Possible Dreams Auction"' during the bubble was $460,000 in 1998. The total fell in 1999 and 2000 before rising in 2001, taking out the old high in 2003 and topping it again this year.
The rich seem to be saying the economy's OK again.
Scorecard: Bush 2, Kerry 2.
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