Clipmarks | Bubbles Clips

There's No Easy Way Out of the Bubble

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:28:59 GMT

There's No Easy Way Out of the Bubble

By VERNON L. SMITH

Since 2006 the U.S. economy has exhibited the features of a crash following a classic bubble.

But the bulge was not precipitated by general stock-market excesses nor by an economy-wide bubble-crash. The excesses were focused in the housing and related financial markets -- banks, mortgage, and insurance companies -- starting in 1998 and accelerating to 2006. This created the mother of all housing bubbles.

True, the crash has been exacerbated by the increase in oil prices, up from a mere $12 a barrel in 1998, to $90 in January 2008, then a spike to $147 in July. But the economy has rolled tolerably well under that punch, and it does not pose the systemic risk of the housing debacle.

Tags: bubble, burst, easy, way, out

The Coolest Halloween Pumpkins I've Ever Seen!P

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:59:35 GMT

clipped by: rko2007
clipper's remarks: Happy Halloween!

Clip Source: thefuntimesguide.com

The Coolest Halloween Pumpkins I've Ever Seen!

These jack-o-lanterns are the coolest pumpkins I've ever seen!...

A gory skeleton skull inside a freshly carved pumpkin

Pumpkin Man - made from lots of pumpkins of various sizes

Jack-o-lantern hell - tiny pumpkins burning inside

A pumpkin-eating pumpkin

A smiley cheshire cat carved out of 2 pumpkins

A spooky haunted Halloween pumpkin.

A fun computer pumpkin

Red apple with core carved pumpkin

A skinned pumpkin that's also been carved into a face

Pumpkin pigs and other animals made from several pumpkins

A puking pumpkin that's had too much to eat

Mickey Mouse pumpkin head

Pumpkin with a toothy grin

Baseball cap-wearing pumpkin head blowing bubbles

And now, my all-time favorite: The Cheeseburger Pumpkin!

Tags: halloween, pumpkins, funny, images

Of bulbs and bubbles

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:38:00 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: During the European Renaissance, it was, nevertheless, financial measures almost exactly like those used by banks and financial institutions today which freed up the flow of wealth to produce economic growth, and thence the great flowering of art and culture, creating the accumulation of glorious artistic treasures now housed in museums and galleries worldwide.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The tulip craze gives us an object lesson

Students of today's financial crisis would do well to look back at the bubbles and the economic innovation of the past, writes Lisa Jardine.

As banks topple and stock markets plunge, it is hardly surprising that voices are raised blaming the current financial troubles on the evils of borrowing and lending.

In an article in the Spectator, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, expressed the view that the current credit crisis had exposed the "basic unreality" of the long-standing global trade in debts, in which "almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders".

Those who make millions out of the financial misfortunes of others have, he said, to recognise and take moral responsibility for what they are doing.

Christianity, like many other religions, has always frowned upon usury - lending money with interest

Tags: greed

The Bailout, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, The Fed and Monetary Policy

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:14:23 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The Cato Institute has been following the crisis in financial markets since the very beginning. From the sub prime crisis to Fannie and Freddie to the $700 billion bailout, the recent financial events have given our analysts and experts plenty to talk and write about. We decided to pull together the op-eds, podcasts, reports, and publications from our scholars on this issue, so all these resources can exist in one place. We hope it’s a useful tool for your research.

"The Bush Legacy: Deflation or Inflation?,"

"The Greenback and Commodity Prices,"

"Milton Friedman: Float or Fix?,"

"Washington Is Quietly Repudiating Its Debts,"

"The Greenback and Commodity Prices,"

"Polluted Markets,"

"The Fed Plays With Fire,"

"Greenspan's Bubbles,"

"Keep Complaining about the Economy,

"Asset Bubbles and Their Consequences,"

more op-eds, podcasts, reports, and publications at link:

http://www.cato.org/special/financial_crisis/

Clip Source: www.cato.org

"Improving the Rescue Plan,"

"An Option for Containing Contagion"

Cato scholars assail the bailout on television and radio

"The Bailout's Essential Brazenness,"

"Mislead,"

"Lies or Ignorance?

"Did the Bailout Vote Revive Conservatism?"

"Bailout Round One: FAIL"

"The Politics of Bailouts"

"The Hoover Analogy Flunks,"

"Of Good Collateral and Bad"

"The Perfect Financial Storm,"

"Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns: What's the Difference?,"

"Bailouts and Uncertainty"

"Socialized Risks, Private Rewards"

"Surprised by the Obvious,"

"Constructing a Financial Perfect Storm"

"'Wall Street' No Longer Exists,"

"The $700-Billion Bailout"

"Political Perils of Overregulation,"

"The D E Fs of the Financial Markets Crisis,"

"Mac's Late Rally with His Money Message,"

"Why Bailouts Scare Stocks,"

"Bailout-Mania,"

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

"Equal Opportunity Corrupters,"

"What Price Stability?,"

"Too Few Regulations? No, Just Ineffective Ones,"

"Fannie/Freddie Bailout Baloney,"

Tags: wall street, fannie mae/freddie mac, bailout, politics, regulation, federal reserve, treasury department

Pumpkin Time Again

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:34:40 GMT

clipped by: vandamonium
clipper's remarks: Yep, time to pull out the chainsaw, knives, hatchets and what ever else you use on your pumkins.

Clip Source: thefuntimesguide.com

The Coolest Halloween Pumpkins I've Ever Seen!

A gory skeleton skull inside a freshly carved pumpkin

Pumpkin Man - made from lots of pumpkins of various sizes

Jack-o-lantern hell - tiny pumpkins burning inside

A pumpkin-eating pumpkin

A smiley cheshire cat carved out of 2 pumpkins

A spooky haunted Halloween pumpkin.

A fun computer pumpkin

Red apple with core carved pumpkin

A skinned pumpkin that's also been carved into a face

Pumpkin pigs and other animals made from several pumpkins

A puking pumpkin that's had too much to eat

Mickey Mouse pumpkin head

Pumpkin with a toothy grin

Baseball cap-wearing pumpkin head blowing bubbles

The Cheeseburger Pumpkin

Tags: halloween, pumpkin, carving

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:06:52 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: timesonline.typepad.com

TC50: Tonchidot - product or conceptual art?

The demo video showed people walking into a Tokyo street, seeing bubbles pop up on their iPhone screens to reveal the English translation of the name of each shop, details of what it sold and information about its opening times. Walk into a mobile phone shop, point the iPhone at a rack of handsets and see their specs and prices on the screen immediately. In the audience we lapped it up, but there was a big question looming: where do all the data come from?

The Tonchidot team, with their limited English and limitless enthusiasm, were unfazed. Exhorting the panellists to trust their imaginations, to "look up, not down", they parried practical questions with baffling non sequiturs and utter confidence. What happens when the store changes the layout of its mobile phone display?

"We have a patent!"

Huge cheers. The question is repeated: what happens when the world changes?

"Join us!"

More cheers. The TechCrunch audience had joined them already.

Water ~ Patterns in Nature

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:20:25 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Water ripples over sand in the Virgin Islands.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Turbines at the Barrage de la Rance electric power generating station in France create a whirlpool in the Rance River

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Sandbars flow into the Coral Sea at Whitsunday Island National Park in Queensland, Australia

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Rushing water creates deep-blue waves at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Illinois.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Waves from the Pacific Ocean leave lines in the sand at Pismo Beach in California.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean's Beaufort Sea traps air bubbles.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Water ripples resemble an impressionist painting in Costa Rica.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

In the midst of a full algae bloom, the waters of Kenya's Lake Magadi run red.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

Sunlight and stones create an undulating effect on a Canadian river bottom.

Clip Source: photography.nationalgeographic.com

The Pacific Ocean tide rises onto a black-sand beach in Manzanillo, Mexico.

Tags: nature, art

The Motley Fools Weigh In On Bailout

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:51:43 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: www.fool.com

What the $700 Billion Proposal Means for You

A call to action!

Tom Gardner, Scott Schedler, and Bill Mann: Tell Congress: We Demand Equity

What this means for your portfolio:

Dan Caplinger: Is This the End of Investing?

Morgan Housel: Bad Luck for Good Banks

Alex Dumortier: The Truth About Naked Shorts

$700 billion, but is it a bailout?

David Lee Smith: Some Tough Questions on the Bailout

Morgan Housel: Can We Afford All of These Bailouts?

Chuck Saletta: What This Bailout Means to You

Alyce Lomax: Fool Blog: Paulson's Mother of All Boondoggles

Alyce Lomax: Bailout: The Sucker Punch

Prelude to a collapse:

What about the point of view that a bailout actually means printing more money out of thin air? Which will lead to runaway inflation followed by a long and severe depression.

We're talking about giving an unprecedented sum of money to the failures who caused this crisis. We are rewarding failure and creating moral hazard. Which will lead to identical bubbles and impending recessions in other sectors.

Tags: industry, stocks, economy, recession

Very cool screensavers

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:51:42 GMT

clipped by: janclip1300
clipper's remarks: There are more screensavers - all free! - but these two I liked the most. Give it a try. No big install, just unzip, copy the .scr files to the system32 folder and doubleclick.

Clip Source: www.pegtop.de

LavaLamp

LavaLamp is a virtual lava lamp for your desktop. Bubbles are moving up and down, melting into one another, while the color smoothly slides.

more

download 100% free

screenshot

Famous

Famous is an impressive screensaver with letters falling down the screen while the camera slowly moves forward. Names of famous characters appear and disappear until a text you can define becomes visible.

more

download 100% free

screenshot

Tags: screensaver

Kudlow on the banning of short sellers

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:08:00 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I don't usually agree with him, but on this point i think Larry Kudlow is spot on!

Clip Source: www.cnbc.com

The decision by SEC Chairman Chris Cox to ban short selling is a terrible idea. It is an encroachment on free-market principles.

In extreme, the absence of short sellers would inflate stock market upturns, probably into bubbles. Short sellers keep the market honest.

Tags: larry kudlow, short selling, stock market

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:56:18 GMT

clipped by: pjr-s

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

After a week of turmoil, has the world changed?

Naomi Klein

Nobody should believe the overblown claims that "free market" ideology is now dead. During boom times it is profitable to preach laissez-faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debt the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalisation for deep cuts to social programmes, and for a renewed push to privatise what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are too costly. If the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure?

Thanks For Playing Ladies And Gentlemen

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:50:31 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: And Bush wanted to give Social Security to Wall Street

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Watching some financial stocks just get wiped out in recent months, I often hear a voice in the back of my head, and it is the same voice as one of those dealers in Las Vegas who coolly tells you as he sweeps up your chips after you’ve busted in blackjack: “Thank you for playing, ladies and gentlemen.”

That’s what happens when bubbles burst. You feel wiped out, and the coolness with which the dealers — in this case the markets — sweep away all your chips is unnerving. It’s easy to over-react, and it is important that we don’t. Now is the time for coolly sorting out what markets can do best and what governments need to do better.

Let’s understand what happened here. Wall Street — the financial industry — became a bubble in recent years thanks to an excess of liquidity and the oldest bubble maker in history: greed.

We need to get back to investing in our future and not just betting on it

Introducing EYE CANDY

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:25:36 GMT

clipped by: Fast T friend
clipper's remarks: Warning: A commercial site, can't tell how scientifically valid the product is.

Clip Source: www.eyecandycan.com

The candy that provides you with a sensational new way to see.

Clip Source: www.eyecandycan.com

Each of your senses (touch, smell, sight, taste, hearing) sends information to the brain at a different frequency. The brain determines where the sensorial information it receives comes from by the frequency at which it resonates, it can then process it in the appropriate way (e.g. turn sight information from the eyes into pictures in the mind). An array of resonators positioned on the surface of an Eye Candy transmit information from the tongue to the brain at the frequency that the eyes usually send visual information to the brain. A pleasant sensation of soda bubbles can be felt on the tongue as the mind decodes this sensorial information as vivid pictures.

This process is called sensory substitution and can be used to supplement peoples senses, enabling them to see the evocative images contained within Eye Candy.

Clip Source: www.eyecandycan.com

Eye Candy is the natural way to become the person you want to be.

Tags: senses, candy, visual, taste, transmitters