Last Sunday it was really warm here in Berlin. I was able to get on my bike and do a nice ride to the northern part of the city. Nevertheless, I remembered some data I read back in January about how the world is really warming up:
This winter has been really mild in Berlin.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics published the unemployment figures for January, and the rate is low: 4.9%. It’s one of the lowest unemployment rates since the financial crisis of 2008. The rate is half of what it was at the peak in October 2009:
Even though this is very good news for the American people, the increase in wages is still sluggish. In the last quarter of 2015, the rate was 1.9%. It was around 3% before the crisis hit hard.
If I were American, I would ask these questions to the presidential candidates.
The Economist recently published an interesting graph of the most violent cities in the world (in terms of homicide rates) in their daily chart section. It includes an analysis of the Venezuelan economy in turmoil and, according to a Mexican report, “Venezuela’s capital Caracas had the highest murder rate in the world last year”.
Wikipedia also offers a page compiling a list of cities by murder rate. Unfortunately, most of the top 50 cities on this list are located in South America (and many of those in Brazil!). Take a look at the following chart and map:
Last night I was reading a headline in Business Insider about how Bernie Sanders just melted away a 30-point Hillary Clinton lead in a new poll related to the US presidential elections. Wikipedia has a useful article that tracks the different polls for both parties. The results of those polls are reported here on that page: Democratic Primaries.
It's true that the last poll conducted by Quinnipiac University shows a preference of: Clinton: 44% and Sanders: 42%, and with a 4.5% margin of error, they are virtually tied. There is even a newer one conducted by "Reuters/Ipsos" showing a similar trend: Clinton: 48% and Sanders: 45% (with a 5% margin of error).
It's fascinating to see how this candidate, without any of the infamous [super PACs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Super_PACs) behind him, has been able to attract so much attention and has become a real contender in the US 2016 presidential elections.
This morning I read in the news that the “Average 30-year mortgage rate falls for a fifth straight week” (3.72%). I checked whether the data was available to verify this headline. Fortunately, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis offers this data set on their website. It's called MORTGAGE30US, and the data goes back to 1971.
Looking at the data, it’s true that the 30-year mortgage rate has been falling over the last couple of weeks. However, it's not the lowest point on the graph. In fact, last year around the same time, it was even lower (3.59%):
