Source: Economist Archive:

Home equity vs mortgage debt is about to flip back to the good side.

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Of course, this is on a net basis, so a lot of people are still underwater – 6.3 million according to one estimate (13% of mortgages).

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This map is missing a proper label for the legend (sigh) but it is apparently “concentration of underwater mortgages”.

Zillow has a similar interactive analysis that let’s you zoom in, if you want to see how your region is doing:

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Which of these do you worry about?

How effective was all the new campaign spending? I’m sure the analysis will be debated until the next election.

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Preliminary estimates of total:

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Also, if you’re all worked up about the election (as I was yesterday), it calmed my nerves and restored my faith in democracy a bit to read this article from Cracked (which is having oddly insightful articles lately)

I’m a little surprised by the increase in non-payers over the years.

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Non payers by state. I’m not sure I agree with using ordinal coloring – especially when so many states fall into the 30-40% range.

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“Eastern Europe” doesn’t really exist anymore. In fact, it never really did in the first place, according to this videographic.

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From The Economist:

OUTSIDE China, people tend to assume that the country’s impressive economic growth is due to exports. As the chart below, drawn from our special report on China’s economy, shows, this notion has always been exaggerated and is now plain false. China grows thanks to high levels of investment—far higher than those seen in previous Asian miracles such as South Korea and Japan. The corollary of this is low levels of private consumption. Some argue that this must lead to imbalances that one day will send China’s economy off a cliff. We disagree.

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Graphing the Corruption Perceptions Index vs the Human Development Index shows a pretty clear correlation. Of course, “perception” indices are always of dubious value.image

This is a strange little tool: an interactive index to middle east unrest.

Move the sliders to ascribe different weightings to the various indicators that may influence instability (since the values shown are rounded, they may not always add up to exactly 100). Lock individual sliders by clicking the checkboxes. Roll over the chart to see indicators for each country.

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Even though the “content limit” is only 140 characters, each tweet actually contains a crazy amount of meta-data. (related Economist article; via The Big Picture)

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America’s military spending is larger than the next 17 countries combined.

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In some parts of the world, marrying young is commonplace. I couldn’t find the exact comparison for the United States, but the median age when married is 26 (2009). Wikipedia lists data for additional countries, if you’re interested.

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Interactive tree map of the top 20 charts viewed on the Economist’s website.

Interactive menu of Economist magazine top charts of year 2010

The Economist produced this video explaining population trends using a series of well designed radial diagrams, including the birth of the 7th billion living person, expected in 2011. The surprising part: after ridiculous growth in the past century, things are starting to slow down.

Video of population trends in 2011 and future

From the Economist, a graph of public and private settlements. From the BBC, a map of the settlements and a summary of previous peace talks. note: we posted a (slightly better) WSJ settlement map in Feb.

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Who supports the tea party? (entire poll)

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