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Originally posted by Hx3_1963
Obama says he'll cut dozens of wasteful programs
www.reuters.com...
The consortium’s experiments, funded in part by DARPA, produced 10 percent to 300 percent more energy than they consumed in 12 of 23 experiments. Their work was published last year in the peer-reviewed American Chemical Society "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook," by Oxford University Press.
CBS asked Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri and an expert in low-temperature physics, to look into the LENR research. Duncan was referred to CBS by Allen Goldman, the head of the condensed matter physics group at the American Physical Society.
*snip*
I had not studied ‘cold fusion’ before, so I had no idea that these excess-heat results were real," Duncan said. "I had heard the controversy back in 1989, and from that, I was suspect of the entire field. "Sam Hornblower of CBS asked me to read some papers and talk to some of the scientists, and it quickly became clear to me that it was a very interesting result. After I saw some of the hardware, I had a chance to ask about the experimental configurations and dig in deeper, and now I am convinced that this excess-heat effect is real."
More at Links...
Volcker says economy recovery a "long slog"
www.reuters.com...
NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) - Paul Volcker, senior economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Saturday that the U.S. economic recovery will be a "long slog" but that the rate of decline "is going to slow."
The United States may not be in a Great Depression but it is "in a great recession for sure," following the economy's unprecedented tumble in late 2008, Volcker said at a financial markets conference at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Volcker, a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, did not give a time-frame on his expectations for when the United States will pull out of the recession that started in December 2007.
Extreme uncertainty in world economic outlook: OECD
www.reuters.com...
BERLIN, April 18 (Reuters) - The world economy remains in a state of "extreme uncertainty" despite some signs of improvement in isolated economic indicators, OECD Vice Director General Pier Carlo Padoan told Reuters on Saturday.
The 30-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has been one of the most pessimistic multilateral observers of the current global recession.
In March, the Paris-based group predicted member economies would contract by 4.3 percent this year with the recession continuing into 2010 -- a much more negative forecast than figures from the World Bank around the same time.
Patrick Wojtowicz's family decided to transform their lives when his paycheck began to shrink last year. A truck driver, he was spending more time on the road, paying his own expenses while waiting for loads. He disliked being away from home for weeks at a time and worried about losing his job. Melissa Wojtowicz is self-employed and works from home.
Their dual paychecks allowed them to live comfortably, but they weren't satisfied, Patrick says. "We would basically buy stuff to feel good," he says. "When that stuff stopped filling the voids we had, we started analyzing what it was that we were really missing. We were missing being around each other."
The Wojtowiczes made a list of the things they could give up if Patrick quit his job and they relied on Melissa's income. They already lived in a house on property Patrick inherited from his father a few years ago.
More at Link...
The Great Recession: America Becomes Thrift Nation
www.time.com...
Sometimes we change because we want to: lose weight, go vegan, find God, get sober. But sometimes we change because we have no choice, and since this violates our manifest destiny to do as we please, it may take a while before we notice that those are often the changes we need to make most. We ran a good long road test of the premise that more is better: we built houses that could hold all our stuff but were too big to heat; we bought cars that could ferry a soccer team but were too big to park; we thought we were embracing the simple life by squeezing in a yoga class between working and shopping and took an extra job to pay for it all.
Now we're stripping down and starting over. A platoon of TIME reporters and pollsters fanned out to every corner of the country to measure — anecdotally and empirically — what's changed in the way we set our priorities and spend our money since the Great Recession began. Most people think the pain will be lasting and the effects permanent: only 12% expect economic recovery to begin within six months, half believe it will be another year or two, and 14% believe we are at the start of a long-term decline.
More links at Link...
More bad news on the recovery
rodrik.typepad.com...
The IMF's partially-released World Economic Outlook makes two points which significantly alter my priors with respect to the speed and vigor of the recovery in the advanced nations--for the worse.
First, the IMF authors find that recessions created by the bursting of financial bubbles are different--they are more severe and last longer--from recessions that are produced by other causes (for example, supply shocks). The likely reason is that pre-crisis growth in the former case is based on an illusion of rising wealth and is more artificial.
Second, synchronized crises (in which several major economies are simultaneously hit) are also more difficult to get out of. You cannot rely on other economies to pull you out of it through their demand for your exports.
Broadly speaking, financial crises are protracted affairs. More often than not, the aftermath of severe financial crises share three characteristics. First, asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Real housing price declines average 35 percent stretched out over six years, while equity price collapses average 55 percent over a downturn of about three and a half years. Second, the aftermath of banking crises is associated with profound declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle, which lasts on average over four years. Output falls (from peak to trough) an average of over 9 percent, although the duration of the downturn, averaging roughly two years, is considerably shorter than for unemployment. Third, the real value of government debt tends to explode, rising an average of 86 percent in the major post–World War II episodes. Interestingly, the main cause of debt explosions is not the widely cited costs of bailing out and recapitalizing the banking system. Admittedly, bailout costs are difficult to measure, and there is considerable divergence among estimates from competing studies. But even upper-bound estimates pale next to actual measured rises in public debt. In fact, the big drivers of debt increases are the inevitable collapse in tax revenues that governments suffer in the wake of deep and prolonged output contractions, as well as often ambitious countercyclical fiscal policies aimed at mitigating the downturn.
More at Links...
U.S. Regulators Clash on How to Release Banks' Stress Tests Without Damage
www.bloomberg.com...
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury and financial regulators are clashing with each other over how to disclose results from the stress tests of 19 U.S. banks, with some officials concerned at potential damage to weaker institutions.
With a May 4 deadline approaching, there is no set plan for how much information to release, how to categorize the results or who should make the announcements, people familiar with the matter said. While the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other regulators want few details about the assessments to be publicized, the Treasury is pushing for broader disclosure.
The disarray highlights what threatens to be a lose-lose situation for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: If all the banks pass, the tests’ credibility will be questioned, and if some banks get failing grades and are forced to accept more government capital and oversight, they may be punished by investors and customers.
Fed's Kohn Says Emergency Lending Isn't Creating Risk for U.S. Taxpayers
www.bloomberg.com...
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said that while the central bank’s emergency lending programs aren’t creating a significant risk for U.S. taxpayers, they may be channeling credit to some lenders more than others.
“We are not trying to favor some sectors over others,” Kohn said in a speech today in Nashville. Still, “we have recognized that the resulting effects can be uneven” across credit markets and “this outcome is not a comfortable one for the central bank.”
Fed policy makers are taking unprecedented steps to revive the economy, including direct support of consumer finance and mortgage lending. The Fed plans to buy as much as $1.25 trillion in agency mortgage-backed securities this year to support the housing market, and is providing financing for securities backed by loans to consumers and small businesses.
Details of the stress test (if any) will be spoon fed to the public, and negative results will be suppressed. Moreover, the results were predetermined and the so-called pessimistic scenario used for the test was a joke: "unemployment rate rises to 8.9% by the end of this year with home prices falling an additional 22% for the same period." That would have been my best case scenario.
Supposedly the pessimistic scenario is now the baseline scenario. Hmmm. What's the pessimistic scenario then? And shouldn't changing the parameters require a re-do of the test?
Is there any wonder why there is now so much stress over the stress test?
More at Link...
Fed's Dudley Says Investor Concern Over Scrutiny Under TALF Is `Misplaced'
www.bloomberg.com...
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley said investors hold “misplaced” fears that participation in a $1 trillion central bank program to revive lending will bring government scrutiny.
The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, aimed at supporting financing of loans to credit card borrowers, students, car buyers and small businesses, is off to a “slow start,” Dudley said, recording just $6.4 billion in loans. “Investor anxiety about using the program has risen.”
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has promoted the TALF as a cornerstone of his efforts to end the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed chief has more than doubled the central bank’s balance sheet to $2.19 trillion during the past year by creating emergency programs aimed at unfreezing credit markets and restoring economic growth.
Layoff Daily
Sat 4-18-2009
www.layoffdaily.com...
Flexsys Stops Production -100
Cinram Inc. Idles Workers -330
Derby Cellular Closing -98
Country Fresh Dairy Closing -110
Noble Metal Processing Closing -79
Kawneer Co. Closing Plant -250
Ecolab Closing Plant -131
City of North Port FL -14
Suncadia Resort -43
California Jobless Rate 11.2%
Reef-Sunset Schools -62
GM More Plant Closings Layoffs
Uttermost Co. -20
Trendway Corp. -25
USA Legal Layoffs -10,000
Nomura -50
Total 11,312
+ GM
More to come...
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The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years."
In addition to copper, the Chinese government is also stockpiling aluminum, zinc, nickel, titanium and other metals. The communist party in China has stockpiled resources for years, but the scope of this new policy may be unprecedented.
Originally posted by Hx3_1963
...This should help make-up for Good Friday... (not good)
Sorry Spinkyboo...when I saw these #'s it just moved me... :cryb
U.S. officials suggest worst of recession is over
www.reuters.com...
WTF?!? What chemicals are they putting in Washingtons water?!?