Leading Economic Indicators

• Amazon.com has riled up Buddhist temples in Japan, according to a January Associated Press dispatch, by offering traveling monks rentable online to conduct funerals and other rituals. The monk would go to a home, grave or funeral home, at fees and upgrades ranging from the equivalent of $300 to about $8,500. (Many of Japan's 75,000 Buddhist temples are struggling financially and destined to close. Complained a spokesman for the Japan Buddhist Association, what Amazon is facilitating "is allowed in no other country in the world.") [Associated Press, 1-30-2016]

• In February, Gawker.com introduced the semi-serious Lube Crude Index as a poignant indicator of how far the price of oil has fallen. Comparing the world price of a standard 42-gallon barrel of crude (about $31) with that of a 55-gallon barrel of Passion Natural Water-Based Lubricant (retailing as, when packaged in smaller quantities, a sexual aid) shows that "sex lube" is more valuable than crude oil by a factor of 28 -- a barrel's worth of the lube recently priced at $1,175 versus crude's barrel-adjusted $41. As recently as June 2014, the Lube Crude Index was near 1. (Gawker reported that only two actual barrels of Passion Natural could be found and that the price would likely rise further if one of them were sold.) [Gawker.com, 2-3-2016]

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