This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Jim Jubak (MSN Money): 3-step strategy for a twitchy market, November 19, 2009. Many investors are deeply suspicious of the 60% run-up in stocks this year and are itching to sell. But then what? Here’s how to take some gains now while setting up a profitable 2010.

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Treasury yield plunge sends warning, November 20, 2009. Collapse in note yields suggests economic distress will keep Fed on hold well into 2010 or beyond.

• Gordon Chang (Forbes): When in doubt, blame Bernanke, November 19, 2009. According to Liu Mingkang, China’s chief bank regulator, low American interest rates and the falling dollar have “seriously affected global asset prices, fueled speculation in stock and property markets

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Economist.com: Jobs gloom, with glimmers, November 6, 2009. America’s jobless rate passes 10% but the job market should start to improve soon.

• Paul Krugman (The New York Times): Why not a WPA? November 6, 2009. A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question. As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through private contractors. You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective.

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While I touched on unemployment duration at the end of my last blog, this is a very important subject and deserves a bit more elaboration. Quite simply being out of work for three or four weeks is a very different experience with very different economic implications than being out of work for six months to a year or more. The focus on the total number of unemployed obscures that reality. The thing that makes this recession so much different than the ones that have gone before it is how long people are staying out of work once they become unemployed. Yeah if you get laid off for a few weeks, it can be a pain in the butt, but essentially it is just an unplanned vacation. It does not really affect your long term financial solvency, nor do your job skills diminish significantly. After six months, regular state unemployment ...

Recently, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) quipped on the floor of the House that the GOP health care plan amounted to: "1) Don’t get sick, and 2) If you do get sick, die quickly." Yesterday, John Boehner (R-OH), the top GOP man in the House, finally unveiled the official GOP plan...and did little to disprove Rep. Grayson. The GOP plan would allow firms like WellPoint (WLP) and Aetna (AET) to continue to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It would not offer any subsidies to the working poor to help them get covered, and would not require people to buy health insurance, or for employers to offer it. It would make it harder for people to sue if they are injured by medical malpractice. The use of contingency fees by lawyers in malpractice suits would be strictly limited. Thus, for example, if the doctor misread your ...

As a puny yet honest attempt to show you that I actually read other things than plain economics I thought that I would share this piece with you on declining nomadism amongst Americans; it is written for Newsweek by author Joel Kotkin. I am not quite sure whether he believes the ageing of the population to be the decisive factor contributing to the rise of localism which he speaks about or just a factor among many. I would presume that sociologists and historians could find an explanation for this development in their distinct theoretical tool kits too without invoking the demographic evolution. Although, it is tempting to go for a nostalgic narrative here I don't think this is appropriate. To me, an increase in physical localism could go well hand in hand with an ever greater degree of global integration and social mobility in the non-physical sense.

On

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“The US is an empire in decline, according to Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money,” reported Aaron Task of Yahoo Finance - Tech Ticker.

“People have predicted the end of America in the past and been wrong,” Ferguson concedes. “But let’s face it: If you’re trying to borrow $9 trillion to save your financial system …and already half your public debt held by foreigners, it’s not really the conduct of rising empires, is it? Excessive debt is usually a predictor of subsequent trouble.”

The report highlights Ferguson as saying America today is comparable to Britain circa 1900: a dominant empire underestimating the rise of a new power. In Britain’s case back then it was Germany; in America’s case today, it’s China.

“When China’s economy is equal in size to that of the U.S., which could come as early as 2027

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Jeffry Frieden, Professor of Government at Harvard, has a new Council of Foreign Relations working paper "Global Imbalances, National Rebalancing, and the Political Economy of Recovery" :

Global macroeconomic imbalances -- massive borrowing by some countries and massive lending by others -- drove the financial boom and bubble that eventually burst into the current crisis. There is now nearly universal agreement that such imbalances cannot be sustained, and that the former deficit and surplus nations need to move toward macroeconomic balance.

However, rebalancing requires a fundamental reorientation of some of the world's major economies, a reorientation that will lead to major economic, social, and political tensions. Foreign borrowing by the deficit countries fed an orgy of consumption that was wildly popular so long as it continued; but the accumulated foreign debt that has resulted will now begin to impose sacrifices that will be just as wildly unpopular. Nations that have relied on foreign borrowing to

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Pretend, just for a moment, that you’re President Obama. You have big spending plans – national health insurance, two wars, and a trillion dollar bailout for your friends on Wall Street. Not to mention paying for the soaring costs of Social Security and Medicare.

Unfortunately, revenues simply aren’t keeping up.

Your Treasury Secretary – accused tax-evader Timothy Geithner – tells you that the unfolding recession is starving the country’s government for tax revenue. Indeed, just as you unveiled your trillion-dollar national health plan, Tricky Timmy informed you that federal tax revenues were dropping the fastest since 1932 – at the height of the Great Depression.

What to do…cut spending? Well, Obama did challenge his cabinet in April to come up with a whopping US$100 million in budget cuts. That’s out of an estimated 2009 budget deficit exceeding US$1 trillion, perhaps more. To put that

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LAS VEGAS, Sept. 2, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Most alternative energy market watchers know GWS Technologies (OTCBB:GWSC) from a series of announcements regarding efforts in the red-hot solar industry. As we covered those reports, we noted how the company continued to refer to itself as an alternative energy company developing renewable energy solutions, not just a solar play. Today’s announcement regarding GWS’s entry into the wind energy market in Montana perhaps explains why.

A profile featuring emerging alternative energy company GWS Technologies and of interest to wind energy leaders American Superconductor Corporation (Nasdaq:AMSC), A-Power Energy Generation Systems, Ltd. (Nasdaq:APWR), Florida Power & Light Company (NYSE:FPL), and Trinity Industries, Inc. (NYSE:TRN) has been published at the link below:

http://www.emergingmarketsllc.com/profiles.php?ID=greenwindsolar.php

GWS announced this morning that it is working with Wind Pro Energy Systems in Circle, Montana to develop wind solutions throughout the state. A Harvard study found Montana to be the

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Just reading the newspapers gives me a daily diet of economic gloom. For example, my pessimism for today (Aug. 26) started with the headline of my local newspaper this morning. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review delivered a banner message, “Record Red Forecast at $1.58 Trillion.” (I think they printed the newspaper before the word came out that Sen. Ted Kennedy died.)

Then for a national perspective, I looked at The Wall Street Journal, which published a slightly different alliteration, “Decade of Debt: $9 Trillion.” And finally, for an international view, The Financial Times summed it all up in characteristic British understatement, with, “US Says Debt Outlook Worsening.” Oh, you don’t say.

The big problem – obviously, the headline issue – with the US economy is too much debt. (That’s the BIG problem. There’s a long list of other problems after that.) And the debt problem is getting worse, not better.

Debt is ubiquitous across

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