If you look at the Forbes 400 richest Americans you will see that the industry that has the most rich people is "investments" (96 people, or 24%). The next category is technology which has 48 people. So investments have generated twice as many billionaires as America's powerful and dynamic technology sector. By the way, manufacturing has only 17 people on the list.

aftermath of a financial crisis brings slow and halting growth, sustained high unemployment, and surging public debt—with the overhang of public and private debt being the most important impediment to a normal recovery from recession.

On average, it takes four and a half years to get back to the same per capita GDP where you started out and about the same amount of time for unemployment to stop rising.

verhang of private and public debt that is much more severe than it is after a normal recession. There are many mortgages still under water—perhaps 25 percent—and people are more cautious about extending their borrowing than they were before 2007. That leads to slower consumption growth. Businesses in turn invest more slowly.

Most financial crises have at their root very, very high leverage.

I would start with changing our corporate-tax law and any overt incentives that favor debt.

governments need to find ways to spark market innovation in indexing debt instruments. If we had housing loans indexed to, say, regional housing prices, as Bob Shiller has advocated, it would have helped a lot and provided better incentives to borrowers and lenders.² If in 200 or 300 years, we’re experiencing fewer and milder financial crises, it will be because we figured out how to put some basic indexation clauses into debt that make it a little less vulnerable to systemic risk.

in the 1300s and 1400s the Catholic Church—which was the regulator at the time, of course—had very strict usury laws. The financiers got around them by thinking of very clever devices, including denominating loans to be repaid in a foreign currency. You give the money in a weaker currency and require the repayment in a stronger currency, which, of course, everyone perfectly well understood to be equivalent to paying interest.

Innovation is always ahead of the regulators.

I do think that this is a period when we shouldn’t be worried about raising inflation slightly. Indeed, moderate inflation, I would say, is exactly the prescription for a Great Depression–type scenario or a Japan-type scenario. It lowers real interest rates, helps facilitate housing price adjustment (the real price still needs to come down in many places), and modestly shortens the typical long post-crisis deleveraging period. I’ve pushed the idea, for some time, that we’re in a Great Contraction, not in a typical recession,

When debt gets over a certain level—a good marker is 90 percent of GDP—it is linked to lower growth.

If elevated inflation—I’ve suggested 4 to 6 percent for a few years—somewhat reduces real debt levels

how much should they worry about whether inflation is under 2 percent right now when the euro could fall apart in the next year or two?

Inflation is not a panacea, but this is a once in eight or ten decades situation where it would be helpful.

y any historical benchmark, Greece, Portugal, and probably Ireland are way over the line. Their debts should be dramatically reduced—for Greece by at least 60 percent or 70 percent. Portugal probably 40 to 50 percent. Ireland is more complicated because it’s difficult to disentangle what’s government debt and what’s bank debt. The big problem is Ireland’s bank debt. But the government has guaranteed it.

What indicators would you look to for signs that we’re finally starting to get out of this?

Job growth and unemployment. I don’t expect unemployment to come down again to 4 or 4.5 percent until the next time the economy overheats. That level was never normal. More likely, when this is all over, unemployment will settle down at around 6.5 or 7 percent. Until we’ve seen unemployment come down to a level like that, things will remain precarious.

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Energy_Resources_Materials/Electric_Power/Winning_the_battle_for_the_home_of_the_future_2874

f selected existing technologies were deployed to the fullest by 2020, a new home could consume around 90 percent less energy, whether gas or electricity, from the grid than it does today. The opportunity for existing homes, which form the majority of housing stock, is substantial too: cuts of 35 to 40 percent could be achieved.

Energy utilities would thus be hit by lower revenues and profits, both in retailing and generating power. For the latter, margins could fall by 30 percent in a scenario in which new homes became almost energy neutral

We don’t expect truly disruptive technologies to boom over the next ten years and lead the way to the low-energy home of the futureThe pace at which a wide range of relatively mature and emerging technologies develop and become commercially viable will therefore determine when we can see a critical level of consumer adoption. That in turn would enable production at scale, further reducing costs and paving the way for mass adoption.

One example is “active windows” with coatings that block incoming light when temperatures are high. They could recoup investments in less than three years when installed in new homes.

we expect the push for low-energy homes, where energy efficiency measures reduce demand for power

Sweden, for example, increasingly supports the conversion of electric heating to heat pumps and biofuels, and the United Kingdom is introducing a “green deal” to help consumers finance energy efficiency packages

In the 2020 time frame, low-energy homes will not be “smart homes.” Building fabrics (such as roof and wall insulation) and central systems (including heat pumps) represent approximately half of the total value pool across the four countries (Exhibit 3). Appliances (such as energy-efficient white goods) represent a bit less than a third, and microgeneration around 10 percent. While growing fast, smart applications (for instance, metering) do not represent much value. The same holds true for electric vehicles, which we see more as a post-2020 opportunity.

When you print money everything goes up at different times, different asset classes. I think

that stocks may still continue to go up, and I would rather own equities than government bonds for the next 10 years. - in CNBC

SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), iShares Barclays 20+ Yr Treas. Bond ETF (TLT), iShares Lehman 7-10 Yr Treas. Bond ETF (IEF)

CHIMA

National Bureau of Statistics show that home prices have fallen up to 50% in many parts of the country in the period from July to September

http://www.disinfo.com/2011/10/16-things-libya-will-never-see-again/

http://www.gizmag.com/nest-learning-thermostat/20283/

http://www.gizmag.com/japanese-spherical-flying-machine/20286/