*The Great Stagnation*

Americans have grown accustomed to painless, automatic increases in prosperity. This is true of Americans on the right, who believe that painless tax cuts will deliver prosperity, and Americans on the left, who believe that above-market wages and more public investment funded by painless tax increases on the rich will deliver prosperity. Tyler convincingly argues that we've run out of this "low-hanging fruit."

http://tinyurl.com/6cpfvrs

Zero

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/clearly-forecasted-boombustblog-housing-prices-commence-their-downward-price-movement-search
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"The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good." -WB

Employment Problem versus other recessions

Detroit Mayor Plans to Halt Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols in 20% of City

Mr. Bing's staff wants to concentrate Detroit's remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year's Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.

http://tinyurl.com/3xv3cbv

Mompreneur

Mompreneur

A slang term describing women who run their own businesses while also acting as a full time parent. Mompreneurs are more likely to run a business out of the home than out of a commercial building. Because of family obligations mompreneurs have to balance the requirements of running a business with the demands of their children, and may do the bulk of their work during the time when their children do not require as much attention.
Mompreneur is a portmanteau of the words "mom" and "entrepreneur".

Kipling learning he was no longer living

While reading a magazine, Kipling learning he was no longer living.   He wrote to its editors, “I’ve just read that I am dead.  Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.”

1 out of 3 Americans has zero in any retirement account

43 million Americans are depending on government food assistance to get by. But many more millions are merely living paycheck to paycheck hidden in the cellar of the headlines. 1 out of 3 Americans has zero in any retirement account (not one slowly eroding dollar). Half of Americans have $2,000 or less which puts them one month away from needing government assistance.


http://tinyurl.com/24js2ww

Facts

"Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads."
J.M. Barrie, The Greenwood Hat (1937)

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia (1891)

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
Aldous Huxley, Proper Studies (1927)

policy makers persist in perpetrating this fantasy

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of “jobs created or saved,” the Obama administration’s quarterly report card on its $814 billion fiscal stimulus, along comes the Federal Reservewith its own model-derived guesstimates.
........................

That would be the same model that failed to grasp that mortgage loans made during a period of exceptionally low interest rates by lenders with no skin in the game might not be repaid, putting major financial institutions on the brink of insolvency
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Why do policy makers persist in perpetrating this fantasy, in asserting something that can’t be proven? Any econometrician will tell you “the error bands are huge and consistent with almost any result one might imagine,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors, in a Jan. 11 commentary on Yellen’s speech.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/get-a-model-make-a-guess-cure-unemployment-commentary-by-caroline-baum.html

Uncle Sam - people’s inept investment banker

Where does the Constitution instruct Uncle Sam to act as the people’s inept investment banker? Where does it tell him to borrow gargantuan sums to make subsidized loans to dicey borrowers whose credit, collateral and employment he can’t be bothered to check?

It’s time to get the government out of the mortgage business before it loses more of our money and induces more people to borrow beyond their means. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-14/how-to-fix-mortgage-mess-in-three-steps-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html

Free - syncs your files online and across your computers

http://db.tt/Scf3SR6

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers 

Put your files into your Dropbox folder on one computer, and they'll automatically appear on any of your other computers that also have Dropbox installed (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!). You can even download Dropbox apps for your smartphone or mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry). Everything in your Dropbox is available from the Dropbox website, too.

Free 2GB account - Click here 

affordable housing for ordinary Americans

'There is a strange irony in this: more conservative places do a much better job in providing affordable housing for ordinary Americans than progressive states that are believed to care about affordable housing.'

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/what-democrats-might-learn-from-the-census/

Lose it all in Vegas

My Budget 360 Home: "Las Vegas is to the real estate bubble what Detroit was to the US automobile industry – Empty condo projects, apartments poorly built to face the desert sun, and the collapse of commercial real estate."

Irish sayings

"A scholar's ink lasts longer than a martyr's blood"

"The smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.”

"Who gossips with you will gossip of you”

White House Urges Congress to Raise Debt Ceiling -- Despite 2006 Obama Vote Against Doing So - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

White House Urges Congress to Raise Debt Ceiling -- Despite 2006 Obama Vote Against Doing So - Political Hotsheet - CBS News: "Upon casting a vote against raising the debt ceiling in 2006, Mr. Obama said, in part: 'America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.'

Gibbs said at his daily briefing Wednesday that 'it's important [to] understand that raising the debt limit was not in question' when Mr. Obama cast that vote -- essentially characterizing Mr. Obama's vote as a symbolic one.

As a reporter pointed out, the Senate in 2006 only passed the debt ceiling measure 52 to 48, a relatively close outcome. 'Well, we've had closer,' Gibbs quipped."

Stuxnet Variants Will Wreak Havoc on More Information Systems in 2011 - Security - News & Reviews - eWeek.com

"Dec. 24 article in the Jerusalem Post, it was possible Stuxnet hit as many as 1,000 of the approximately 10,000 IR-1 centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The article was based on a paper from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security which analyzed the malware’s code.

David Albright, the Institute’s president, told the Jerusalem Post that the virus caused the engines in Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges, which normally runs at 1,007 cycles per second, to speed up to as fast as 1,064 cycles per second, causing the vibrations to break the motors."

Hell

Capitalism without losers is like Catholicism without hell. Kyle Bass