Some Interesting Charts...

courtesy of our friends at Chartporn. The first is a graphic from The New York Times. It shows how large and small banks are dominant in various parts of the country. I may be getting forgetful as maturity sets in, but I seem to remember from my days at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, that smaller banks held a smaller proportion of deposits than is shown in this graphic. That may be a consequence of where the line between large and small is drawn, but the patterns look similar to what we knew about in the Seventh District.

The second is a graphic on outsourcing. The chart does a good job of explaining how outsourcing affects the domestic economy, and really lends itself well to discussions about structural unemployment. I do wish some of the negatives at the bottom of the chart were a bit more prominent, as they need to be part of the discussion when studying the role of government in managing aggregate supply and aggregate demand.

I'd be interested in your comments.