Monday, April 08, 2013

The best kept secret to sluggish economic growth. The Fed Interest Rate.

The American economy has been dependent on government spending. Even Walmart has been seeking guidance after the Payroll Tax Cut expired. One might ask why that is the case?

After the Global Economic Collapse of 2008, Wall Street took their money and ran. They haven't engaged investment to improve unemployment. Why is that? It is completely counter intuitive to any real desire for profits. Research investment always leads to new economic opportunities, job growth and profits. So, why is it Wall Street isn't interested in investment?

I have a theory. What if lack of job growth actually provides simply cheap money to the financial sector. That is what is occurring. The low and absent interest rates of The Fed actually fuels market growth and profit without economic improvements.

Two things happen when Wall Street doesn't invest; no job growth and continued investment by government to improve the economy. So, why would Wall Street invest in anything? They want to let the governments of the world take all the risk and responsibility while they sit on their nest egg and wait for the next best thing to happen out of government investment.

Basically, why use their capital when they don't have to?

This economic collapse was not only engineered for Wall Street profits, it continues to be.

Dean Baker
April 7, 2013
...Construction has also been rising rapidly, (click here) albeit from a very low base. The continuing weakness in construction should not be surprising. The building boom of the bubble years has left the country with an enormous oversupply of housing. Vacancy rates are still near record highs, in spite of being down from peaks reached in 2009-10.
This huge backlog of vacant homes will prevent construction from returning to normal (not bubble) levels for several years.
The Federal Reserve's low interest policy deserves serious credit here. This has made it much easier to buy homes than would otherwise be the case. It also has put money in the economy through refinancing. If we assume that the average mortgage interest rate has fallen one percentage point as a result of Fed policy, it means that homeowners have an additional $80 billion (0.5% of GDP) to spend each year....

Les Blank dead at the age of 77.


By Martin Chilton
08 April 2013
...Blank's early films (click here) were intimate portraits of musicians, including a 1965 study of jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and a 1968 film about blues guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins. He made movies about the Texas blues guitarist Hot Pepper (1973), which features the zydeco accordionist Clifton Chenier; and Sprout Wings and Fly (1983), about the Appalachian fiddler Tommy Jarrell. He also made a 31-minute film with Huey Lewis and a movie with Ry Cooder (Ry Cooder And The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces).
He shifted his focus to food with documentaries, including 1980's highy-praised Garlic is as Good as 10 Mothers (he occasionally promoted what he called 'smellovision' or 'aromaround', cooking up garlic-spiced dishes in the cinema while the movie played), which was selected by the US Library Of Congress for inclusion in The National Film Registry. He also made 2007's All in This Tea and In Heaven There is No Beer, which won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize....

Thirty years after Thatcher invaded The Falkland Islands, it is being turned into an oil slick.

By 
April 04, 2013

On March 10 and 11, Falkland Islanders voted (click here) in a referendum on whether to remain under British rule. Of its 2,563 citizens, only three voted no. The victory set off howls of indignation in nearby Argentina, which fought a brief, disastrous war with Britain over the South Atlantic islands in 1982. On March 28, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner tweeted, “An English territory more than 12,000 km away [from the U.K.]? The idea is not even worthy of a kindergarten of three-year-olds.”
Soon Argentines may have something else to be angry about. The Falklands are no longer just an archipelago of sheep farmers and fishermen at world’s end. A promising offshore oil discovery is expected to bring the British territory $10.5 billion in tax revenue and royalties over 25 years....

"Good Night, Moon"

Waning Crescent

5% lit

27.3 days old

It’s already the morning of April 8, 2013 in the Philippines. This beautiful photo of the moon and Mercury comes from EarthSky Facebook friend Jv Noriega, who lives in Manila (latitude about 14 degrees N). 
Thank you, Jv! Awesome.