The IMF's World Economic Outlook Database is a free resource that contains selected macroeconomic data series. Data is available from 1980 to the present and includes national accounts, inflation, unemployment rates, balance of payments, fiscal indicators, trade for countries and country groups (aggregates), and commodity prices. While this information is available elsewhere, this database is very easy to use and information is well organized. Tables are in tab deliminated format and easily downloadable to Excel.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2008/01/weodata/index.aspx

Posted by Louise Feldmann at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting was held last week in Davos, Switzerland. I happened to catch a C-Span replay of a session with Bono, Al Gore, and Thomas L. Friedman entitled " A Unified Earth Theory: Combining Solutions to Extreme Poverty and the Climate Crisis." Heavy stuff for a Saturday morning when my intent was to find some mindless programming, but this was incredibly interesting. Gore approached Bono several months ago about combining Bono's efforts towards poverty (One campaign) and Gore's concerns on global warming. They discussed this and how the two efforts are intertwined. You can view this and other sessions from the forum's annual meeting at:

Annual Meeting 2008 Webcasts, Podcasts, and Vodcasts
http://gaia.world-television.com/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2008/

The World Economic Forum website can be found at:
http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm

One
http://action.one.org/declare/index.html?gclid=CJn85-rnnpECFRE_OAodiyeCQQ

Al Gore's website
http://www.algore.com/

Posted by Louise Feldmann at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The October 2007 issue of Liber8 has just come out. It covers the topic of declining or low personal savings rates and its effect on the U.S. economy; providing a good quick overview of the topic along with links to additional reading. The Liber8 newsletter is produced by the Research Library of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/newsletter/2007/200710.pdf

Posted by Louise Feldmann at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, September 27th, The Denver Post's Business section had a report on the new metropolitan area GDP report released earlier this week by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Denver Post has a site that provides this information for metro areas around the country. Also included in this information is the percent change in GDP by industry sector from 2001 to 2005.

Real GDP by Metropolitan Area, 2001-2005
http://www.denverpost.com/gdp

Also worthwhile - explore the Bureau of Economic Analysis' website where you can find international, national, regional, and industry sector economic information.
http://www.bea.gov/

Posted by Louise Feldmann at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Liber8 is a new economic newsletter from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. Their first issue covers Suprime Mortgage Lending and provides a brief overview of the topic as well as links to articles with further information and free web resources. The newsletter is geared towards librarians and students and will be published 9 times a year and cover current economic topics. You can subscribe via RSS or asked to be added to their mailing list.

Liber8
http://liber8.stlouisfed.org/newsletter/newsletterarchives.html

Posted by Louise Feldmann at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)