Paul Krugman Explains How to End the Depression Now

Listen to Paul Krugman's interview with Tom Ashbrook at:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/04/30/paul-krugman-2/player

The On Point post explains: Nobel Prize-winning economist and policy warrior Paul Krugman is not shy about spelling out exactly what he thinks. And right now it’s this: Despite all the talk about “green shoots” and signs of recovery, the United States is, says Krugman, in an economic depression. The stimulus wasn’t enough to shake it. Austerity, here and abroad, is making it worse. Lives are being ruined.
And it’s going to stay bad until and unless we act. Krugman’s going after budget-cutters as blind. Ben Bernanke as part of the ‘the borg”.

A recent NY Times column: The Amnesia Candidate can be read at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/opinion/krugman-the-amnesia-candidate.html

Paul Krugman, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is also an author and columnist at the New York Times. His latest book is End This Depression Now! An excerpt of the book was published in the New York Times Magazine here.

The New York Times “While the Fed went to great lengths to rescue the financial system, it has done far less to rescue workers. The U.S. economy remains deeply depressed, with long-term unemployment in particular still disastrously high, a point Bernanke himself has recently emphasized. Yet the Fed isn’t taking strong action to rectify the situation.”
Audio: Hear Federal Reserve Chairman respond to charges made in Krugman’s New York Times article.

Here is New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum questioning Bernanke during a press conference at the Fed on April 25, 2012.

Washington Post “Bernanke is making two arguments here. First, he’s saying that the situation in the United States isn’t as bad as it was in Japan. “We are not in deflation.””

Business Week “Krugman’s own stance is clear. A Princeton University professor who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, he’s best known as a New York Times columnist who hews to the teachings of John Maynard Keynes. “

Remembering Pete Fornatale at WFUV Radio and Elsewhere

Remembering Pete Fornatale | WFUV Radio

It's been a almost a week since we learned about the death of Pete Fornatale.
With the dust from all the various news outlets rushing out their obits now settled, it is Don McGee, Pete's long time producer, who noted that one insightful appreciation was a version put out by the AP, the one written by Verena Dobnik.

At WFUV, Pete's radio home, the on air team has been playing musical tributes to Pete. Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight archive stream [the station does not offer podcasts]from the past weekend is worth hearing complete; as is Don McGee April 28th edition the Mixed Bag program. http://wfuv.org/audio/archives/mixed-bag/mixed-bag-42812

A more personal reflection that runs true for many listeners is from Kath Galasso and can be found at Technorati.  http://technorati.com/entertainment/music/article/losing-a-broadcasting-legend-pete-fornatale/ 


Some of what Verena wrote:

NEW YORK (AP) — Rock music fans Thursday were mourning the death of Pete Fornatale, a beloved New York radio disc jockey who promoted the best new musicians for decades in his easy, free-form style. He was 66.

Fornatale died in New York a week after suffering a stroke, his son, Peter Thomas Fornatale, told The Associated Press.

"He represented the golden age of progressive FM radio," he said.

When The Beach Boys "were the most uncool thing in the world," he said, his father had the clout, in the 1970s, to help make them popular again — by introducing them on the Carnegie Hall stage.

Fornatale entered with a surfboard.

"It's a very sad day for radio," said songwriter Paul Simon. "New York has lost one of its most acclaimed and wonderful radio personalities. ... He really knew his era and his music."

At New York's Fordham University, the DJ's alma mater, president Joseph McShane called Fornatale "the voice of several generations" who conducted soul-searching interviews with the hottest musicians and played their work.

As a DJ on WNEW-FM in the 1970s, he established a loyal following by spinning records by lesser-known artists and album cuts beyond the hit singles.

One of his favorites was Poco, a country-rock band he championed.

He helped launch the careers of singer-songwriters like Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and Christine Lavin. Grammy winner Shawn Colvin told The New York Times in 2001, "Pete helped pave the way for so many of us. He was a rare guy in radio then."

In the 1990s, Fornatale was featured on the station known as "K-Rock," following Howard Stern's show.

Fornatale's hallmark was "to use music in a very creative way," his son said.

"He could take a song that you heard a hundred times, but play it in a context — whether on a special occasion or the music around it — that would make some of the most familiar tracks in rock history sound like you were hearing them for the first time."

Until his death, his father still hosted the show "Mixed Bag" on Saturdays for Fordham University's WFUV-FM station.

The Bronx native was a Fordham student DJ when he developed the style that grew into the kind of FM rock broadcasting listeners still enjoy.

"The complete freedom to put this package together, for better or for worse stamped me then and is still with me today," Fornatale said in 2001.

In recent years, he also became a rock historian.

He and his son worked together on a book celebrating the Rolling Stones' 50th anniversary that they finished just before Fornatale's death, titled "50 Licks," to be published later this year or in early 2013. The DJ also wrote "Bookends," the story of the Simon & Garfunkel album by that title.

http://www.petefornatale.com/index.html

How Brands Will Redeem Klout's Clout

How Brands Will Redeem Klout's Clout

At Social Media Today Steph Parker pointed out how a few weeks ago, Klout announced that they were unrolling brand pages, starting with Red Bull. By turning a brand into a topic, Klout is expanding brand promotions into engaging, trackable metrics for the social crowd.

So it's all focused on the visitor/user.

Here's how it works, in the case of Red Bull vistor:

1. I'm a consumer who loves Red Bull. I drink it almost daily. I love what the brand represents, and I'm plugged in, so I take my sentiments to Facebook and Twitter regularly.
2. I discover that my favorite brand, Red Bull, is on Klout, meaning I can get credit for all of the conversations I'm starting about them.
3. The more I talk about them, the more +K points I get, and the more influential about them I become.
4. I become a featured influencer, and can unlock exclusive perks like Red Bull merchandise.
5. Replace Red Bull with your brand, rinse, and repeat.

http://socialmediatoday.com/steph-parker/496838/why-brands-will-redeem-klouts-clout

Shopping in a Storage Motif : Breaking All the Retail Rules

Faux-Warehouse Shopping
It's almost like that cliche romantic relationship where the worse one is treated, the more the attraction increases: CNBC's Lori Gordon Logan and Michael Beyman report on Costco:

Imagine a store that never advertises, has no signs in its aisles, doesn’t bag what you purchase, and charges you a fee just to walk in the door. With so many choices in the retail universe, who in the world would shop there?

David Grogen, CNBC

“One ketchup, one bottle, one package, one choice,” explained marketing consultant Pam Danziger. “You don’t have to make those decisions. You don’t choose from a variety of other ones.”

Limited selection, according to Danziger, makes it easier for the consumer to choose. “There was a research study in marketing that if you offer people 24 different types of jellies, you’re not going to sell as many as if you offer them six,” she said. “Making people decide, that causes confusion, and they ultimately decide to walk away. At Costco, you don’t have to make those decisions.”

“We try to create an image of a warehouse type of an environment,” said Jim Sinegal, Costco’s co-founder and recently retired CEO. “I once joked it costs a lot of money to make these places look cheap. But we spend a lot of time and energy in trying to create that image."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47175492

Is Good Corporate Citizenship Also Good for the Bottom Line?

Freakonomics » Is Good Corporate Citizenship Also Good for the Bottom Line?

Stephen Dubner reports that the good news is that there is an upside. George Serafeim at the Harvard Business School has just finished an analysis of 180 U.S. companies over the course of 20 years to measure the effect, if any, that being a good corporate citizen has on a company's bottom line. Now, he did this by comparing the financial performance of firms that exhibited high sustainability behavior versus low sustainability firms.
George Serafeim: We found that the high sustainability group out-performs the low sustainability group in terms of stock market performance. And also we found that the high sustainability group out-performs the low sustainability group in terms of operating performance as well. Whether you look at in term of assets or in terms of equity, you find stronger performance.

http://www.freakonomics.com/?powerpress_pinw=89276-podcast

The Trabantimino: The Art of Building a Trabant Lowrider

The Trabantimino: The Art of Building a Trabant Lowrider - NYTimes.com
“It’s a domino effect — if one thing is really off, it’s all off.”  Ms. Cohen said
That sounds like a twist on theory from the cold war, but it's true when combining a General Motors product with East Germany's icon of inefficiency and bureauocracy. {I won't go for the easy snark that line just set up.}

TAMARA WARREN wrote a piece for the New York Times of what Liz Cohen is up to in Detroit  and I thought we could use an auto article on this blog.

 Liz Cohen, an artist in Detroit, is building an El Camino out of a Trabant. [Tamara Warren for The New York Times]

Ms. Cohen’s pairing of the Trabant, the only car within reach of many people in the former East Germany, with the 1973 El Camino lowrider offers a juxtaposition of American immigrant cultures that makes for a curious mechanical tale of East meets West.

http://nyti.ms/Ic63WR

Yes, Your Boss Is Crazy. Here's How To Deal.

Yes, Your Boss Is Crazy. Here's How To Deal. - Forbes

It's True: Your Boss Is Crazy. Here's How To Deal With It.

Jenna Goudreau reviews some of the recent writing on the links between leadership and mental illness.

Some bosses are just mean and/or nuts... most of the the research points to great leaders dealing with personal depression, not being abusive of others. So if you have an SOB above you, don't assume the B stands for Brilliant.

Research shows a connection between mental illness and great leadership. Here's how to work for a  boss who's also a little bit nuts.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/04/27/yes-your-boss-is-crazy-heres-how-to-deal/

When Will this Low-Innovation Internet Era End?

When Will this Low-Innovation Internet Era End? - Justin Fox - Harvard Business Review

Justin Fox heard another view from author Neal Stephenson in an MIT lecture hall last week. A hundred years from now, he said, we might look back on the late 20th and early 21st century and say, "It was an actively creative society. Then the Internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation."
Is facebook an opiate?

Justin Fox is editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Group and author of The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street.

http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2012/04/low-innovation-internet-era.html

Forrester Research sees a digital future where the tablet and cloud storage are king

In digital future, the tablet and cloud storage are king - latimes.com

There is still alot to be said and realized about the danger of relying on the cloud for our storage, but as Michelle Maltais reported in the L.A. Times, Forrester Research is saying it is where computing is going; that "PC no longer will mean personal computers — instead it will be the full spectrum of personal computing, from personal cloud services to the broad range of personal technology used for work, including tablets, smartphones, and frames".

The tablet market is led by Apple's iPad with the Amazon Kindle Fire and other Android tablets on its heels, according to a new survey. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times / April 18, 2012)

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tablets-forrester-report-20120423,0,7931043.story?goback=%2Egde_2181454_member_110366531

How e-mail and texting have driven people to overuse exclamation points!

How e-mail and texting have driven people to overuse exclamation points!

By Christopher Muther

I’m sick of exclamation point abuse!
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2012/04/26/how_e_mail_and_texting_have_driven_people_to_overuse_exclamation_points/?page=full

Dory Previn Re-Assembled by Bob Sherman and Bruce Weber

Dory Pevin Re-Assembled by Bob and Bruce  WFUV Radio
On Woody's Children, Bob Sherman is remembering Dory Previn by using her confessional songs of love and loss along with introductions that are actually excerpts of the New York Times article by Bruce Weber. It's like listening to her musical autobiography with footnotes.  

Here is Bruce Weber's piece excerpted:

Dory Previn: the lyricist for three Oscar-nominated songs who as a composer and performer mined her difficult childhood, bouts of mental illness and a very public divorce to create a potent and influential personal songbook.       

Enlarge This Image

Larry C. Morris/The New York Times                        

       

Ms. Previn rose to prominence as a singer-songwriter with a substantial cult following in the early 1970s and she enriched a period in pop music history that also saw the emergence of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Laura Nyro.

She never became as widely known as they were (though she did record a live double album at Carnegie Hall), partly because her voice was never as big as theirs, but also because her lyrics — frank and dark, even when tinged with humor, and often wincingly confessional — were not the stuff of pop radio. They were, however, clear antecedents of the work of later balladeers like Sinead O’Connor and Suzanne Vega.

In “With My Daddy in the Attic,” Ms. Previn wrote of her complicated relationship with her disturbed father. In “Esther’s First Communion,” she wrote about a girl’s indoctrination into religious ritual and her revulsion at it. In “Yada Yada La Scala,” she wrote about women in a mental hospital. In “Lemon Haired Ladies,” she wrote about an older woman pining for a younger man:

Whatever you give me

I’ll take as it comes

Discarding self-pity

I’ll manage with crumbs.

Unusually for a pop singer of the day, Ms. Previn’s background was in neither folk nor rock. Her early success came in Hollywood, writing songs for the movies, generally as a lyricist working with her husband, André Previn, who later earned fame as a classical composer and conductor.

Together they were nominated for two Academy Awards: in 1960 for “Faraway Part of Town,” from “Pepe,” and in 1962 for “Second Chance,” from “Two for the Seesaw.” But their best-known collaboration was the theme from the 1967 film version of Jacqueline Susann’s drug-soaked show-business novel “Valley of the Dolls” (later recorded by Dionne Warwick), which begins:

Gotta get off, gonna get

Have to get off from this ride

Gotta get hold, gonna get

Need to get hold of my pride.

The halting, almost stammering progression of laments, Ms. Previn later said, came from her own experience of relying on pills.

In 1969, working with the composer Fred Karlin, Ms. Previn earned a third Oscar nomination, for “Come Saturday Morning” from “The Sterile Cuckoo,” which became a hit for the Sandpipers.

By then, however, the Previn marriage was in a shambles. Mr. Previn had begun an affair with the actress Mia Farrow, then in her early 20s, whom he later married, and Ms. Previn, who had a history of emotional fragility and mental illness, fell apart. Fearful of traveling in general and of flying in particular, she had a breakdown on an airplane that was waiting to take off, shouted unintelligibly and tore at her clothes, and spent several months in a psychiatric hospital.

The episode, as awful as it was, proved to be a turning point in her life and career.

Her first album afterward, “On My Way to Where” (1970) — the title was a reference to the airplane debacle — included perhaps her most famous song, “Beware of Young Girls,” about Ms. Farrow, and received polarized reviews. On her second, “Mythical Kings and Iguanas” (1971), many critics noticed a growing vocal confidence. Her third, “Reflections in a Mud Puddle/Taps Tremors and Time Steps” (1971), included a pained report of and reflection on her father’s death, and drew praise from the New York Times music critic Don Heckman.

“Ms. Previn is no great singer, her guitar playing is only adequate, and her melodies sometimes have an uncomfortable tendency to move in too-familiar directions,” he wrote. “But her message is stated so brilliantly in her lyrics, and the tales she has to tell are so important, that they make occasional musical inadequacies fade away.”

Dorothy Veronica Langan was born in New Jersey — sources differ on the town, Rahway or Woodbridge — on Oct. 22, 1925, and she grew up in Woodbridge. Her father, Michael, was a laborer and a frustrated musician who pushed her toward music and dance. He had also been deranged, Ms. Previn wrote in a 1976 memoir, by his service in World War I. He had been gassed, she wrote, and he was convinced the gassing had made him sterile; therefore she could not be his daughter. For a while he locked himself in the attic.

Ms. Previn left home as a teenager and worked in summer stock and in commercials and sang in small clubs, writing new verses to popular songs. Her work came to the attention of Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM movie musicals like “An American in Paris” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” who hired her for MGM, where she met Mr. Previn. They married in 1959. She had been married and divorced previously.

In the 1980s, Ms. Previn and Mr. Previn reconciled as friends, and she came to loathe the fact that she was best known for their breakup. But the pain and grief were the foundation of her art. In the hospital after her breakdown, she was encouraged to write down her feelings, and they emerged as poems.

“I was always afraid to write music,” she said in 1970. “I wouldn’t have presumed to with a musician like André around the house. But I play a little guitar. So I started working them out on the guitar, thinking I could interest some singer in recording them and that’s how all these songs were born.”

NYT - http://nyti.ms/AkBnhr 

WFUV - http://www.wfuv.org/audio/archives/woodys-children/woodys-children-4152012

Funniest mistakes Germans make in English

Funniest mistakes Germans make in English - The Local
The Local.de is pointing out that learning a language is tough. Not only do you struggle through a dense new jungle of vocabulary, subject-verb agreements and third conditionals, you also have to contend with smug native speakers sniggering when you say something slightly wrong that gives it an amusing double entendre.

People learning German, for example, always have to remember the difference between "schwül" (humid) and "schwul" (gay) – one dropped umlaut and you can end up in a very sticky situation.

"I am becoming a sausage"

But Germans learning English also have a few land-mines to avoid - some are annoying, others can brighten up a dull day. Please.
http://www.thelocal.de/gallery/lifestyle/1523/

The CMO Site - Mitch Wagner - Star Trek Teaches Everything You Need to Know About Marketing

The CMO Site - Mitch Wagner - Star Trek Teaches Everything You Need to Know About Marketing

Mitch Wagner's essay, based on the book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek offers that the various captains and crews that have manned the Federation's flagship vessel can teach marketers valuable lessons.


http://www.thecmosite.com/author.asp?section_id=1137&doc_id=242549#.T5mMnwtmifc.blogger

How to Use Facebook's Timeline to Humanize Your Brand :: PR News

How to Use Facebook's Timeline to Humanize Your Brand :: PR News

Bill Miltonberg is reporting that a successful Facebook Timeline page should be properly integrated so all aspects of the page merge with a brand's personality. Zakes points to Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Facebook page as a shining example. "They use the cover page, the milestones and Facebook's app section cohesively to give a visitor a lasting impression," he says.

http://www.prnewsonline.com/free/How-to-Use-Facebooks-Timeline-to-Humanize-Your-Brand_16396.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2432077&hq_l=9&hq_v=a24480408a#.T5mLKqaPBf8.blogger

The Local List: 12 German words you won't find in English

Germans have literally hundreds of words that don't exist in other languages.

Thelocal.de reports that this was not a difficult list to compile – Germans have literally hundreds of words that don't exist in other languages.

That's partly because of their wonderfully-logical habit of attaching words to one another like stickle-bricks - to make new, unwieldy creatures like Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän - but also because Germans just have very peculiar, precise notions that they prefer to describe in a single noun.



Top 12 words you won't find in English!
For instance, who knew that a husband who stays out too late might need a particular word to describe the gifts he needs appease the disgruntled wife who threw his dinner away?
(Cue the Herbert Hisel clip, please)
http://www.thelocal.de/gallery/culture/1509/
.

Treppenwitz

Another wonderful German word, for a bittersweet situation familiar to everyone on the planet. The Treppenwitz, literally "stair-joke," is the brilliant comeback you think of when you're already out of the door and halfway down the stairs. "And you, sir, are a prick! Ach! If only I'd thought of that at the time!"

Photo: DPA

US Warms Up To EMV Credit Cards | Bankrate.com

US Warms Up To EMV Credit Cards | Bankrate.com
Head-to-head security comparisons are hard to come by. However, the UK Cards Association along with Financial Fraud Action UK published a report on card fraud in 2011, which found that counterfeit fraud losses in the U.K. dropped by more than 63 percent since 2004. The report attributes the steep decline to the broader usage and acceptance of chip cards in the country.

Read more: US Warms Up To EMV Credit Cards | Bankrate.com http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/emv-credit-cards-1.aspx#ixzz1sbix7Oex