Bites From Articles
This morning, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sat before lawmakers giving testimony in regards to current and future monetary policy. The chairman's tone was reminiscent of a very polite host making an announcement to his frolicking and inebriated guests that the party would indeed be drawing to a close in due course. The equity markets responded, at one point dropping about 100 Dow points in the period of a few minutes. Read more...
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...When a central bank allows itself to go beyond the point of trying to stimulate the economy by legitimately adding to the illusion of value, for a brief time, to contain a financial crisis by injecting liquidity and instead crosses the line into attempting to actually create value, is where dangerous imbalances will be created and the bonds of society itself can be strained to the breaking point. Read more...
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...The difference between being raised in a deflationary environment vs. an inflationary one caused a significant difference in the perceptions of and attitudes toward the relationship between money and buying power. The argument could also be made that materialism was perceived very differently by the two generations. The parents saw materialism as the profligate spending of money on stuff, while the Boomers saw materialism as the hoarding of money. Read more...
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...As the market is largely unbounded by physical restraints and instead operates in the realm of money and time, the potential to discover or create new dimensions is unlimited. Read more...
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...Genetic engineering of plants takes place in a laboratory and generally involves adding a gene or several genes to a plant's genome. The actual process is usually carried out using a "gene gun" to fire a gold bullet covered with genetic material into a petri dish that contains the "callus", or the tissue of the plant to be modified. The first version of a gene gun was a Crossman air pistol that was modified for the task at Cornell University in the mid 1980s. Read more...
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...The intent is that the cash given to the banks by the fed, in exchange for the assets bought by the fed, will be loaned out at attractive rates in order to spur economic growth. Instead, the majority of this new money gets trapped in the financial system propping up the prices of assets and commodities and very little of it actually makes it all the way down to the average person on the street. The reason for this is that when the economy is struggling there are few business people who feel like borrowing to grow their companies because they see a lack of demand. Also, after the financial crisis many people had damaged credit, which effectively shut out a large segment of the population from access to the new money. Read more...