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ECONOMY

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Economic history: Germany, Greece and the Marshall Plan. All together now: “The forward curve is not a forecast” The Pickup Truck Indicator: The Recovery Is Real - 'I Love the Delusion of the Markets at This Point in the Cycle' - Albert Edwards - Marx Versus Capitalism Versus You. By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst.

Marx Versus Capitalism Versus You

Cross posted from MacroBusiness It is a measure of how un-self critical modern economics has been, that the Marxists are starting to appear to be making the most sense of the current crises. The supine acceptance that “the market is always right” — a truism only to traders and vested interests — means that there has been precious little understanding developed about how markets can go wrong. Or what is wrong, as well as right, with markets and the modern practices of capitalism. An article in the London Review of Books came to my attention recently by Benjamin Kunkel that shows how Marxist analysis is actually looking quite pertinent to the current mess.

CHARTS OF THE WEEK: Here's The Trend Obama Is Fighting, If He Wants To Save American Manufacturing.

Stocks

Volatility. Finance Lobby - Capital City. European Power Commodity. Nuclear. ELECTRICITY. CO2. COAL. GAS. Trading Lesson. Book Review – "Trade the Trader," by Quint Tatro - One more book about trading various financial assets ...

Book Review – "Trade the Trader," by Quint Tatro -

Ten Words That Build Trust. Do you think one short sentence at the end of your ad could cause a major increase in the level of trust customers place in you?

Ten Words That Build Trust

Believe it or not, it’s true. Researchers found that placing the following statement at the end of an ad for a auto service firm caused their trust scores to jump as much as 33%! “You can trust us to do the job for you.” Seems simple, eh? Trading Blog - Trader's Narrative. Trading. Mercenary Trader » Cockroaches, Extinction Events and Anti-Fragility. Great insights stand the test of time.

Mercenary Trader » Cockroaches, Extinction Events and Anti-Fragility

The value of 100-year-old trading books attests to this. An excellent insight of more recent vintage comes from a 1999 article by Rick Bookstaber, “Risk Management in Complex Organizations.” Sleepless nights can lead to risky behavior. Researchers at UC Berkeley and Harvard Medical School have found that the same neural pathway that stimulates feelings of euphoria, reward, and motivation after a sleepless night may also lead to risky behavior, says Matthew Walker, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Sleepless nights can lead to risky behavior

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of 27 young adults, half of whom got a good night’s rest and the other half of whom pulled an all-nighter. Brain scans of the participants who pulled all-nighters showed heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that regulates positive feelings, motivation, sex drive, addiction, cravings and decision making. When less means more. Want Students to Succeed? Let Them Fail - Education. How many times have you heard the mantra "failure is not an option"?

Want Students to Succeed? Let Them Fail - Education

The need to succeed whatever the cost permeates our society, and schools are no exception. But new research in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General concludes kids might perform better in school if teachers and parents sent the message that failing is a normal part of learning. Researchers from France's University of Poitiers conducted several experiments with three groups of 6th graders, giving them difficult anagram problems to solve.

OIL.

SHALE OIL

Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08. What happens when energy resources deplete? What happens when energy resources, such as oil, deplete?

What happens when energy resources deplete?

One view is that energy prices will rise, substitutes will be found, and prices will come back down again, perhaps settling at a somewhat higher equilibrium reflecting the cost of producing the substitute energy source. The economy will continue to function pretty much as before. The catch is that we aren't finding reasonably-priced, scalable substitutes, so this isn't happening. Jumpstarting Energy Independence. In an effort to jumpstart America's efforts toward energy independence, U.S.

Jumpstarting Energy Independence

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced last week that 69 early career researchers at U.S. academic institutions and Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories have been chosen to receive a collective total of up to $85 million in funding for five years under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The money is going to young scientists doing basic research in six major areas covered by DOE's Office of Science: advanced scientific computing, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental research, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics, and nuclear physics. "This funding highlights the Administration's continued commitment to building the nation's scientific workforce by attracting top emerging researchers to careers in vital areas of basic research," Chu says.

That's because the world badly needs breakthroughs in energy science. Daniel Yergin on the future of energy: A perilous and crucial quest. Chris Cook: Naked Oil. By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange All is not as it appears in the global oil markets, which in my view have become entirely dysfunctional and no longer fit for its purpose.

Chris Cook: Naked Oil

In Depth: The Top 10 Oil Fields Of The Future - The Top 10 Oil F. The regulatory muddle in energy markets. Oil Price rallies to more than $80, but will. Oil and natural gas prices started the year with a rally today, mainly because of the weather and perhaps a bit of bullish sentiment lent by the falling dollar, the unresolved oil pricing dispute between Belarus and Russia and the positive manufacturing news from China.

Oil Price rallies to more than $80, but will

But will these levels stick around much of this year, as traders and some notable onlookers expect? February crude oil futures trading on New York’s Mercantile Exchange today were up more than $2, or 2.6 per cent, at more than $80 a barrel, while gasoline futures were up 2.59 per cent. In London, Brent futures rose $1.85 to $79.78 a barrel after hitting a high of $80.13. The unresolved oil pricing issue between Belarus and Russia was also sighted as a reason for the increase even though Belarus’s state oil firm said that Russian oil was flowing normally to Europe regardless of Minsk and Moscow’s differences. Thank speculators and contango for relatively. Oil economist Philip K. Verleger points out a ‘dog that didn’t bark‘ in his latest weekly newsletter: home heating prices in the US are not skyrocketing, despite the extra cold conditions.

The reason for this happy and unremarked-upon turn of events, he writes, is that passive investors going long heating oil have contributed to market contango (in which long-dated contract prices are higher than current contracts). This in turn creates an incentive to store more of the products than has been set aside in previous cold winters, which in turn means no great supply squeeze and no dramatic price jumps. First, stock levels in 1989 versus 2009: Goldman, JP Morgan Have Now Become A Commodity Cartel As They Slowly Recreate De Beers' Diamond Monopoly.

Two oil bears: Vitol and Opec. The IEA and the EIA have both revised their 2010 oil demand forcasts upwards this month, though only slightly. The Untold Story Of How Banks Took Over The Oil Market. I have not rerad Senor Dicker’s book, so please take my comments with a grain of salt. This is an awesome blog and it feels a little weird voicing an opposing opinion. That said, perhaps it makes sense to consider this: at least 33% of the world’s oil is produced by countries that need the price of oil to stay above $90 to fund fiscal spending.

Commodities general

Top 10 Energy Stories of 2009. Posted by Robert Rapier on December 26, 2009 - 10:35am Topic: Miscellaneous Tags: biodiesel, china, climate change, ethanol, exxonmobil, geothermal, global warming, media coverage, natural gas, oil consumption, oil demand, oil prices, oil refineries, t. boone pickens, valero [list all tags] RIO TINTO: COMMODITY PRICES COULD DROP TO NEW LOWS. Gold Report: investment coverage of gold and other precious meta. Source: Frank Holmes, U.S. Global Investors (1/25/10) Econophysicist Accurately forecast gold collap. FREIGHT. Trading.

Pragmatic Capitalist

Massive Jump in Emergency Unemployment Compensation Benefits: Up. I was intrigued by a post by Zero Hedge asking Is The Government Misrepresenting Unemployment By 32%? : "...government spent a record $14.7 billion on Unemployment Insurance Benefits as of December 30, a 24% jump sequentially from the $11.8 billion in November. A million use credit card to pay mortgage. Surely he can’t still be bearish? The Myth of U.S. Jobs Created or Saved - Where are the two million jobs created or saved by the Obama Stimulus? My 10 Predictions for 2010 - The Mad Hedge Fund Trader-Tuesday. CHINA. Financial & Economic Infographics - VisualEconomics.com. Bryan Appleyard » Blog Archive » Bring Back the Long Lunch. Why the housing recovery will slow - May. 25, 2010. By Kit R. Roane, contributorMay 25, 2010: 10:54 AM ET (Fortune) -- Americans purchased homes at a surprising clip in April, but don't let that fool you into thinking the housing market is back.

Although economists were expecting a month-over-month increase of 5.5%, the National Association of Realtors reported yesterday that sales of previously owned homes rose an unexpected 7.6%. That continued a yearlong rise in housing activity and marked the highest number of sales recorded since November of last year. It also follows a drumbeat of similarly rosy economic news signaling the possibility that the United States may be on the economic mend.

The Man Who Could Unsnarl Manhattan Traffic. Banks reel from Barack Obama's '$30bn speech' Consumption Contraction Approaches 2008 Low - One Decision Per Decade: Three Choices — DollarCollapse.Com. How Much Damage Did The Wall Street Jo. Kill all business journalists.

GOLD

DOLLAR. EURO. Books on economy. The tricky business of forecasting orderbooks. The Volcker rule, our bet it goes through… (MWAG) Roubini Pessimistic on Euro Area, Calls Spain a Risk (Update1) - Concerning Gray Swans: Europe, China, Profit Margins and The Fed. What It Means to Be a Contrarian - Inaugural Kauffman Economic Outlook: survey of leading economics. DEBT & DELEVERAGING. How do you say speculators in Japanese? For you Southern Europe, ze inflation is over. Biggest Bubble of Them All: The Pain Has to Go Somewhere, But Wh. August 13 2010: Bubble Psychology and Lessons from History.