America Everything is Going To Be Alright

[Guest Charlie]

“Energy will be one of the industries that lead us out,” said Scott Minerd, who oversees more than $100 billion as chief investment officer at Guggenheim in Santa Monica, California. “Shares are cheap and attractive. It’s a very good time for investors to buy the group betting on stronger demand for commodities and a rebound in earnings.”

[Guest Bighorn]

In economics, a Taylor rule is a monetary-policy rule that stipulates how much the central bank would or should change the nominal interest rate in response to divergences of actual inflation rates from target inflation rates and of actual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from potential GDP. It was first proposed by the by U.S. economist John B. Taylor in 1993.

 

In 2007, Bernanke praised the Taylor Rule as providing “essential guidance” on setting interest rates. Fed staffers provide Taylor Rule estimates to policymakers before each of the Fed’s Open Market Committee meetings.

 

Taylor’s formula says the Fed’s main target interest rate should be 1.5 times the inflation rate, plus 0.5 times the gap between the economy’s potential growth rate and the current pace, plus 1. Taylor, 62, who served under President George W. Bush as a Treasury undersecretary, published the rule in a paper for a 1992 conference when at Stanford.

 

One main inflation indicator Fed officials use to monitor price pressures, the personal consumption price index, rose 0.8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. In the same period, the so-called output gap, as measured by the Congressional Budget Office, showed a shortfall of 6.31 percentage points.

 

Those figures suggest the federal funds rate target should actually be negative 0.955 percent. Since the Fed can’t lower rates to less than zero, the Taylor rule means the central bank has to pump money into the economy through other methods, such as purchases of Treasuries, mortgage securities and agency bonds.

 

That’s exactly what the Fed under Bernanke has been doing, more than doubling assets on its balance sheet to $2 trillion. The debate among economists is whether they’ve done enough to meet the Taylor formula.

[Guest Jane]

Any tested bank needing to boost its capital buffer will have until June 8 to develop a detailed capital-raising plan and until November 9 to implement that plan. While private sources of capital are preferable, our Treasury is offering support through its Capital Assistance Program, or CAP -- part of its $700 billion financial rescue fund -- as a "bridge to private capital."

 

You make sense.

[Guest MadHatter]

Pay attention:

 

Investors should favor debt and stocks of “strong” companies because U.S. economic growth will be closer to 3 percent than the range of 5 percent to 7 percent for the past 15 years, said Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co.

[Guest Daniel]

With all of the financial deregulation over the past 20-30 years, Wall Street began creating and selling what became known as "derivative securities". And it was such instruments as these, not traditional mortgage loans or standard bank lending, that spawned a mass of "faux credit". These events have created the building of too many houses while it also weakened America´s capital structure for the traditional banks which has undermined public confidence in America´s banks.

[Luke_Wilbur]

I think the government should consider doing a "Green Loan Program" like the "Cash for Clunkers." At least we will no where the money is going. Consumers want to purchase goods, but they need financial assistance, because they have no money. This time only benefit American companies. The "Cash for Clunkers" allowed people to purchase foreign cars. We do not want people to purchase foreign made goods. It defeats the whole purpose.

[Luke_Wilbur]

Here are some National Green Building Funding Opportunities

 

 

For: Government, Consumers, Industry, Nonprofits Enterprise

 

Green Communities - Green Communities provides grants, financing, tax-credit equity, and technical assistance to developers who meet the criteria for affordable housing that promotes health, conserves energy and natural resources, and provides easy access to jobs, schools and services.

For: Industry, Nonprofits Federal Government

 

Federal Tax Credits for Energy Efficiency The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes tax credits to consumers for energy efficiency home improvements, specific automobiles, and installation of solar energy systems and fuel cells. Tax credits are also available for home builders and appliance manufacturers, and tax deductions are available for commercial buildings that meet specific efficiency standards.

 

As of December 31, 2007, most of the tax credits expired. You have until April 15, 2008 to report these credits on your 2007 taxes.

For: Consumers, Industry The Funders' Network

 

Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities - The Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that exists to inspire, strengthen and expand philanthropic leadership and funders' abilities to support organizations working to improve communities through better development decisions and growth policies.

For: Government, Industry, Nonprofits The Home Depot Foundation

 

Building Healthy Communities - The Home Depot Foundation provides grants to eligible nonprofits, three times a year, under two different programs: the Affordable Housing Built Responsibly Program and the Healthy Community Trees Program.

For: Nonprofits Kresge Foundation

 

Green Building Initiative - The Foundation's Green Building Initiative is intended to increase the awareness of sustainable or green building practices among nonprofits and encourage them to consider building green. The Initiative offers educational resources and special grants to help nonprofits.

For: Government, Nonprofits.

 

Tax Incentive Assistance Project - The Tax Incentive Assistance Project (TIAP) provides information for consumers and businesses to make use of the federal income tax incentives for energy efficient products and technologies (specified in the Energy Policy Act of 2005).

 

As of December 31, 2007, most of the tax credits expired. You have until April 15, 2008 to report these credits on your 2007 taxes.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Luke_Wilbur

[Luke_Wilbur]

 

Federal Tax Credits for Energy Efficiency

 

Click Here

 

[Guest Eddie Vale]

The dip in the unemployment rate in July is a welcome sign that President Obama's economic recovery package is starting to blunt the impact of the most severe recession in a generation. By refusing to listen to the naysayers, the President and Congress have helped to avert a total financial meltdown – despite much continuing pain. We still have a long way to go until our economy is growing and creating good jobs at a healthy rate -- and we will need decisive and timely action from our government in the meantime.

 

It is not good news that we lost 247,000 jobs in July, bringing total job loss since the recession began to 6.7 million. The growth of long -term unemployment by another 584,000 is especially disturbing and cries out for immediate, additional attention. There are now more than 5.7 jobseekers for every available job – up from 1.7 at the start of the recession.

 

The July job figures would have been much worse without the stimulus, which has helped to slow the pace of job loss to less than half of what it was just six months ago. From May to July, job losses averaged 331,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 645,000 per month from November to April.

 

President Obama's Economic Recovery Act has clearly slowed the rate of job decline, but the current deep and broad economic crisis is not going to be solved quickly—or with one shot in the arm of economic stimulus. Much more needs to be done to begin to produce the sustained growth we need to create good jobs for America's workers. We look forward to working with the President and Congress to that end.

 

To help the unemployed, the AFL-CIO and Working America have created the nation's largest online resource for workers at:

 

http://www.unemploymentlifeline.com

[Guest American For Progress]

The Council of Economic Advisers, in a report released earlier this month, called the Recovery Act the "boldest countercyclical fiscal stimulus in American history" and concluded that the stimulus added nearly 500,000 jobs to the economy in the second quarter of 2009 that would not have been there without it. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), one of the few Republicans who voted in favor of the stimulus, noted last March that even "those who were opposed to the stimulus spending will see some of the projects that are underway in their communities as they've initiated." Snowe said she believes that the effect of the spending has been to create an "amazing" number of projects in her home state. Many conservatives who opposed the stimulus or the idea of Keynesian spending in general have started to line up to defend the Recovery Act. On Aug. 7, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) chief economic adviser during his 2008 campaign, told reporters that "no one would argue that the stimulus has done nothing." Three days later, Niall Ferguson of the conservative Hoover Institution said the Recovery Act "has clearly made a significant contribution to stabilizing the US economy."