Labels: religion

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

2009-05-25: Today W3C publishes the report from the April 2009 Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development. Participants discussed how numerous services available on mobile phones could help people in underserved regions. Discussion underlined the need for a concerted effort among all the stakeholders (including practitioners, academics, regulators, governments, and the mobile industry) to build a shared view of the future of the mobile platform as a tool to bridge the digital divide. The Workshop was jointly organized by the W3C Mobile Web Initiative and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of Mozambique, with the generous support of Gold Sponsors UNDP, the Web Foundation, Nokia, and Bharti Telesoft; and Silver Sponsors Opera Software, UNESCO, Microsoft Research, and MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. This work is part of the Digital World Forum project (European Union's FP7). Learn more about the W3C Mobile Web for Social Development Interest Group and the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. (Permalink)"

Labels: technology

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments

"Data.gov The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government….Data.gov includes a searchable data catalog that includes access to data in two ways: through the "raw" data catalog and using tools.”

Labels: finance, united states

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 2:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

Author/Editor: Cardarelli, Roberto; Elekdag, Selim; Lall, Subir

Summary: This paper examines why some financial stress episodes lead to economic downturns. The paper identifies episodes of financial turmoil using a financial stress index (FSI), and proposes an analytical framework to assess the impact of financial stress-in particular banking distress-on the real economy. It concludes that financial turmoil characterized by banking distress is more likely to be associated with severe and protracted downturns than stress mainly in securities or foreign exchange markets. Economies with more arms-length financial systems appear to be particularly vulnerable to sharp contractions, due to the greater procyclicality of leverage in their banking systems.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=22923.0

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Tarek Hoteit
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Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments

Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
+1 (469) 619-5577
http://tarek.hoteit.org

Forum on behavioral finance & economics

Messages In This Digest (2 Messages)

1a.

Article: Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoax From: Martin Sewell

1b.

Re: Article: Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoax From: pgreenfinch

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1a.

Article: Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoax

Posted by: "Martin Sewell" mvs25@cam.ac.uk   martinsewell1

Sun May 17, 2009 9:53 am (PDT)

Paul B. Farrell
[Paul B. Farrell]
May 11, 2009, 7:14 p.m. EST
Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoaxWhy? They're
mercenaries-for-hire working for Wall Street's highest bidders
By Paul B. Farrell <mailto:PaulBFarrell@charter.net> , MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, neuroeconomics is a hoax.And
I'm "mad as hell" about it. Call it whatever name you want, they'reall
the same: Behavioral finance, psychology of investing,
behavioraleconomics, the "new science of irrationality." Let's call
it"neuroeconomics." And yes, it's a scam, a con job, propaganda, a
bigfat hoax.

Neuroeconomists sell themselves as guardians of the little guy.
Wrong.Just the opposite. They are your enemy, working for Wall Street
andWashington, developing data, tools and technologies to
secretlymanipulate investors, savers, voters and taxpayers.
Plumbing the investor mood
What does the state of investor sentiment hint about the market's
outlook? Barron's Mike Santoli reports.

Don'tbelieve me? I didn't believe it at first. Back in 2002 when
Princetonpsychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Economics Prize I
wasecstatic. He exposed Wall Street's two-century-old myth of
the"rational investor." We cheered. Yes, investors are irrational, but
wecan change. Right? Maybe Wall Street will even help.

Fat chance. Since then, neuroeconomists chased the almighty buck
too,doing whatever it takes to get research grants, speaking
fees,university tenure and juicy consulting contracts with Wall
Street,Washington and Corporate America. They are obsessed with
pretty-coloredMRI brain scans, misusing the scientific method,
exaggerating,misinterpreting research.

The result? In recent years many of their publications resemble
highschool level self-help "Psych 101" books with cute titles
like"Freakonomics," "Nudge," "Sway," "Animal Spirits," "Blink,"
"Blunder"and other pulp nonfiction packaged for mass-market consumption.

Since 2002, neuroeconomics has failed Americans in 5 key ways:
1. Neuroeconomics is a light-weight self-help marketing gimmick
Pretty colorful brain scans are window dressing, like photos of
sexymodels in bikinis selling muscle cars and cigarettes. The scam
issubtle and dangerous. A few years after Kahneman's Nobel I ran across
astudy by Deena Skolnick Weisberg. Her Yale mentor Paul Bloom
summarizedher psychology experiment in Seed magazine:

Weisberg "asked her subjects to judge different explanations of
apsychological phenomenon. Some of these explanations were crafted to
beawful. And people were good at noticing that they were awful --
unlessSkolnick inserted a few sentences of neuroscience."

However, her neuroscience references were "entirely irrelevant,basically
stating that the phenomenon occurred in a certain part of thebrain. But
they did the trick: For the novices and the experts(cognitive
neuroscientists in the Yale psychology department), thepresence of a bit
of apparently hard science turned bad explanationsinto satisfactory
ones."

The human brain is so gullible: "It's amazing how many people(including
many who should know better) see functional brain imaging as'showing us
directly what the brain is doing,' rather than as providingyet another
dependent measure."

That was a few years ago, before the meltdown of the credit
bubblecreated by Wall Street's army of quants,
neuroeconomists,psychologists, ad executives, demographers and
statisticians -- thosesame geniuses will never stop developing ways to
penetrate thepsychological defenses you (falsely) believe you get from
reading thosemisleading books about neuroeconomists.
2. Neuroeconomics will never deliver on its bogus promise
What is their promise? Very simple: Neuroeconomists promise that
ifinvestors, taxpayers and voters simply follow the advice
ofneuroeconomists, they'll get rich. Your 401(k) and your
retirementportfolios will prosper because neuroeconomics promises to
make you"less irrational," in control of your brain, and therefore,
asuccessful investor.

Sorry, but that'll never happen. Never. The human brain is, and
alwayswill be, irrational. Not because all their books are based on
junkscience, anecdotes, broad conclusions from small samples and
prettybrain scans calculated to mislead readers. Not because the human
brainis historically and genetically "irrational," incapable
ofreprogramming itself. Not because our brains' "irrational"
hemisphereis in a perpetual battle with the rational hemisphere. And not
becausethe human brain prides itself in being irrational for fear of
becominga robot like the masses in "1984," "Fahrenheit 451" and
the"Terminator."

Yes, all that's true, but there's is a more accurate and far
biggerreason why the human brain is always irrational, vulnerable, easy
tocontrol and manipulate. Neuroeconomics is based on a false
premise:That "irrational investors" can teach themselves to become
"lessirrational." And yet, the more we learn about our irrational
brains,the more we dupe ourselves into believing we're in control and
actingrationally, even though we are not.

Remember, 88% of our behavior is driven by the subconscious, by stuffwe
don't grasp but quants can define and control with their algorithms.So
they can manipulate you into making irrational decisions. Amazingisn't
it: Your brain really is your worst enemy.
3. Neuroeconomics works for Wall Street, keeping us irrational
The biggest reason the human brain will always remain irrational
isbecause Wall Street wants it that way. Wall Street can
controlirrational Americans better using its high-tech neuroeconomic
data,strategies and algorithms. As University of Chicago Prof.
RichardThaler (co-author of "Nudge" with Obama appointee Cass Sunstein)
wrotein his earlier classic, "Advances in Behavioral Finance II:"
WallStreet "needs investors who are irrational, woefully
uninformed,endowed with strange preferences, or for some other reason
willing tohold overpriced assets." He describes "these conditions
collectively asirrational."

Get it? Wall Street does not want rational, informed investors.
WallStreet is a money machine, in a good year generating hundreds
ofbillions in fees, commissions, bonuses, and options for insiders.
Yes,these folks created the credit meltdown, but arrogantly feel
they'vesuffered more than Main Street, and are already using the same
scam toregain power.

And they are always one step ahead of you and whatever you think youget
from their neuroeconomics books. They really are working for WallStreet
insiders. What they're doing is similar to DNA mapping, exceptthe
neuroeconomists use MRIs to map your irrational behavioralpatterns,
then, like a CIA intelligence team secretly monitoring theenemy, their
quants develop algorithms that help Wall Street target thelittle guy
with new "financial weapons of mass destruction" thatmanipulate
financial markets.
4. Neuroeconomists are biased, partisan, political mercenaries
Admit it, under all the fancy jargon, neuroeconomists, as indeed
alleconomists, are biased about their political ideologies. "What Good
AreEconomists Anyway?" screamed a recent BusinessWeek cover: "The rap
oneconomists, only somewhat exaggerated, is that they are
overconfident,unrealistic and political. They claim a precision that
neither theirraw material nor their skill warrants.

BusinessWeek made clear one key point: All economists,
includingneuroeconomists, are political animals whose opinions are up
for sale:"No surprise, the equilibrium school mainly leans Republican,
and theinterventionist school seems to be crawling with Democrats." In
short,all economists are political mercenaries-for-hire who can "prove"
anyscenario.
5. Neuroeconomics misleads Main Street, helping the rich get richer
In Congressional testimony last October, Alan Greenspan admitted thatthe
Reaganomics and Milton Friedman ideology failed America: "I made
amistake in presuming that the self-interests of
organizations,specifically banks and others, were such as that they were
best capableof protecting their own shareholders and their equity."
There was "aflaw in the model ... that defines how the world works."

Our leaders and their greedy ideologies failed us: "Those of us whohave
looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to
protectshareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of
shockeddisbelief," he told Congress. Unregulated markets "held sway
fordecades" ... then "the whole intellectual edifice, however,
collapsed."

Economist Barry Eichengreen summarized it beautifully in "The
NationalInterest." There was a widespread cultural mindset dominating
everyonefrom Friedman in the `960s on to Reagan, Greenspan, Bush and
Paulson.Worse yet, the Dems collaborated as this "virus" invaded
everyone,including working economists in business, academia, regulators,
riskassessment officers, think tanks, and a naive public, creating a
"herdbehavior, where everyone follows the crowd, giving rise to
bubbles,panics and crashes [and] extreme instability" from the dot-com
crash tothe recent bank-credit meltdown.

Unfortunately, economists, quants and neuroeconomists mastered
thisnumbers game so beautifully they could "build models with virtually
anyimplication." As mercenaries they prove any scenario they're paid
toprove, conservative or liberal, Washington or Wall Street, which
means"that policymakers could pick and choose at their convenience."

So that's my five reasons: But do you agree that neuroeconomics --
WallStreet's lethal cocktail of psychology, mathematics and investing
mixedwith politics, marketing and propaganda -- is a con job, a scam, a
bigfat hoax? Is it an objective science protecting average Americans or
away for Wall Street to get richer? What do you think, and why.
Copyright � 2009 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.
<http://www.omniture.com>
source:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-reasons-neuroeconomics-is-a-big-fa\
t-hoax
<http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-reasons-neuroeconomics-is-a-big-f\
at-hoax>

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Messages in this topic (2)

1b.

Re: Article: Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoax

Posted by: "pgreenfinch" pgreenfinch@orange.fr   pgreenfinch

Sun May 17, 2009 10:37 am (PDT)

Wow, a case of angry neurons ;-)
Peter

--- In Behavioral-Finance@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Sewell" <mvs25@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Paul B. Farrell
> [Paul B. Farrell]
> May 11, 2009, 7:14 p.m. EST
> Five reasons 'neuroeconomics' is a big, fat hoaxWhy? They're
> mercenaries-for-hire working for Wall Street's highest bidders
> By Paul B. Farrell <mailto:PaulBFarrell@...> , MarketWatch
>
> ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, neuroeconomics is a hoax.And
> I'm "mad as hell" about it. Call it whatever name you want, they'reall
> the same: Behavioral finance, psychology of investing,
> behavioraleconomics, the "new science of irrationality." Let's call
> it"neuroeconomics." And yes, it's a scam, a con job, propaganda, a
> bigfat hoax.
>
> Neuroeconomists sell themselves as guardians of the little guy.
> Wrong.Just the opposite. They are your enemy, working for Wall Street
> andWashington, developing data, tools and technologies to
> secretlymanipulate investors, savers, voters and taxpayers.
> Plumbing the investor mood
> What does the state of investor sentiment hint about the market's
> outlook? Barron's Mike Santoli reports.
>
> Don'tbelieve me? I didn't believe it at first. Back in 2002 when
> Princetonpsychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Economics Prize I
> wasecstatic. He exposed Wall Street's two-century-old myth of
> the"rational investor." We cheered. Yes, investors are irrational, but
> wecan change. Right? Maybe Wall Street will even help.
>
> Fat chance. Since then, neuroeconomists chased the almighty buck
> too,doing whatever it takes to get research grants, speaking
> fees,university tenure and juicy consulting contracts with Wall
> Street,Washington and Corporate America. They are obsessed with
> pretty-coloredMRI brain scans, misusing the scientific method,
> exaggerating,misinterpreting research.
>
> The result? In recent years many of their publications resemble
> highschool level self-help "Psych 101" books with cute titles
> like"Freakonomics," "Nudge," "Sway," "Animal Spirits," "Blink,"
> "Blunder"and other pulp nonfiction packaged for mass-market consumption.
>
> Since 2002, neuroeconomics has failed Americans in 5 key ways:
> 1. Neuroeconomics is a light-weight self-help marketing gimmick
> Pretty colorful brain scans are window dressing, like photos of
> sexymodels in bikinis selling muscle cars and cigarettes. The scam
> issubtle and dangerous. A few years after Kahneman's Nobel I ran across
> astudy by Deena Skolnick Weisberg. Her Yale mentor Paul Bloom
> summarizedher psychology experiment in Seed magazine:
>
> Weisberg "asked her subjects to judge different explanations of
> apsychological phenomenon. Some of these explanations were crafted to
> beawful. And people were good at noticing that they were awful --
> unlessSkolnick inserted a few sentences of neuroscience."
>
> However, her neuroscience references were "entirely irrelevant,basically
> stating that the phenomenon occurred in a certain part of thebrain. But
> they did the trick: For the novices and the experts(cognitive
> neuroscientists in the Yale psychology department), thepresence of a bit
> of apparently hard science turned bad explanationsinto satisfactory
> ones."
>
> The human brain is so gullible: "It's amazing how many people(including
> many who should know better) see functional brain imaging as'showing us
> directly what the brain is doing,' rather than as providingyet another
> dependent measure."
>
> That was a few years ago, before the meltdown of the credit
> bubblecreated by Wall Street's army of quants,
> neuroeconomists,psychologists, ad executives, demographers and
> statisticians -- thosesame geniuses will never stop developing ways to
> penetrate thepsychological defenses you (falsely) believe you get from
> reading thosemisleading books about neuroeconomists.
> 2. Neuroeconomics will never deliver on its bogus promise
> What is their promise? Very simple: Neuroeconomists promise that
> ifinvestors, taxpayers and voters simply follow the advice
> ofneuroeconomists, they'll get rich. Your 401(k) and your
> retirementportfolios will prosper because neuroeconomics promises to
> make you"less irrational," in control of your brain, and therefore,
> asuccessful investor.
>
> Sorry, but that'll never happen. Never. The human brain is, and
> alwayswill be, irrational. Not because all their books are based on
> junkscience, anecdotes, broad conclusions from small samples and
> prettybrain scans calculated to mislead readers. Not because the human
> brainis historically and genetically "irrational," incapable
> ofreprogramming itself. Not because our brains' "irrational"
> hemisphereis in a perpetual battle with the rational hemisphere. And not
> becausethe human brain prides itself in being irrational for fear of
> becominga robot like the masses in "1984," "Fahrenheit 451" and
> the"Terminator."
>
> Yes, all that's true, but there's is a more accurate and far
> biggerreason why the human brain is always irrational, vulnerable, easy
> tocontrol and manipulate. Neuroeconomics is based on a false
> premise:That "irrational investors" can teach themselves to become
> "lessirrational." And yet, the more we learn about our irrational
> brains,the more we dupe ourselves into believing we're in control and
> actingrationally, even though we are not.
>
> Remember, 88% of our behavior is driven by the subconscious, by stuffwe
> don't grasp but quants can define and control with their algorithms.So
> they can manipulate you into making irrational decisions. Amazingisn't
> it: Your brain really is your worst enemy.
> 3. Neuroeconomics works for Wall Street, keeping us irrational
> The biggest reason the human brain will always remain irrational
> isbecause Wall Street wants it that way. Wall Street can
> controlirrational Americans better using its high-tech neuroeconomic
> data,strategies and algorithms. As University of Chicago Prof.
> RichardThaler (co-author of "Nudge" with Obama appointee Cass Sunstein)
> wrotein his earlier classic, "Advances in Behavioral Finance II:"
> WallStreet "needs investors who are irrational, woefully
> uninformed,endowed with strange preferences, or for some other reason
> willing tohold overpriced assets." He describes "these conditions
> collectively asirrational."
>
> Get it? Wall Street does not want rational, informed investors.
> WallStreet is a money machine, in a good year generating hundreds
> ofbillions in fees, commissions, bonuses, and options for insiders.
> Yes,these folks created the credit meltdown, but arrogantly feel
> they'vesuffered more than Main Street, and are already using the same
> scam toregain power.
>
> And they are always one step ahead of you and whatever you think youget
> from their neuroeconomics books. They really are working for WallStreet
> insiders. What they're doing is similar to DNA mapping, exceptthe
> neuroeconomists use MRIs to map your irrational behavioralpatterns,
> then, like a CIA intelligence team secretly monitoring theenemy, their
> quants develop algorithms that help Wall Street target thelittle guy
> with new "financial weapons of mass destruction" thatmanipulate
> financial markets.
> 4. Neuroeconomists are biased, partisan, political mercenaries
> Admit it, under all the fancy jargon, neuroeconomists, as indeed
> alleconomists, are biased about their political ideologies. "What Good
> AreEconomists Anyway?" screamed a recent BusinessWeek cover: "The rap
> oneconomists, only somewhat exaggerated, is that they are
> overconfident,unrealistic and political. They claim a precision that
> neither theirraw material nor their skill warrants.
>
> BusinessWeek made clear one key point: All economists,
> includingneuroeconomists, are political animals whose opinions are up
> for sale:"No surprise, the equilibrium school mainly leans Republican,
> and theinterventionist school seems to be crawling with Democrats." In
> short,all economists are political mercenaries-for-hire who can "prove"
> anyscenario.
> 5. Neuroeconomics misleads Main Street, helping the rich get richer
> In Congressional testimony last October, Alan Greenspan admitted thatthe
> Reaganomics and Milton Friedman ideology failed America: "I made
> amistake in presuming that the self-interests of
> organizations,specifically banks and others, were such as that they were
> best capableof protecting their own shareholders and their equity."
> There was "aflaw in the model ... that defines how the world works."
>
> Our leaders and their greedy ideologies failed us: "Those of us whohave
> looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to
> protectshareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of
> shockeddisbelief," he told Congress. Unregulated markets "held sway
> fordecades" ... then "the whole intellectual edifice, however,
> collapsed."
>
> Economist Barry Eichengreen summarized it beautifully in "The
> NationalInterest." There was a widespread cultural mindset dominating
> everyonefrom Friedman in the `960s on to Reagan, Greenspan, Bush and
> Paulson.Worse yet, the Dems collaborated as this "virus" invaded
> everyone,including working economists in business, academia, regulators,
> riskassessment officers, think tanks, and a naive public, creating a
> "herdbehavior, where everyone follows the crowd, giving rise to
> bubbles,panics and crashes [and] extreme instability" from the dot-com
> crash tothe recent bank-credit meltdown.
>
> Unfortunately, economists, quants and neuroeconomists mastered
> thisnumbers game so beautifully they could "build models with virtually
> anyimplication." As mercenaries they prove any scenario they're paid
> toprove, conservative or liberal, Washington or Wall Street, which
> means"that policymakers could pick and choose at their convenience."
>
> So that's my five reasons: But do you agree that neuroeconomics --
> WallStreet's lethal cocktail of psychology, mathematics and investing
> mixedwith politics, marketing and propaganda -- is a con job, a scam, a
> bigfat hoax? Is it an objective science protecting average Americans or
> away for Wall Street to get richer? What do you think, and why.
> Copyright � 2009 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.
> <http://www.omniture.com>
> source:
> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-reasons-neuroeconomics-is-a-big-fa\
> t-hoax
> <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/five-reasons-neuroeconomics-is-a-big-f\
> at-hoax>
>

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Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 6:05 AM | Permalink | Comments

"EPI President Lawrence Mishel addresses the human toll of this recession with an analysis predicting that, even using conservative forecasts for future job loss, the poverty rate for children could increase from an already high 18% -- where it stood in 2007, -- to more than 27% by next year. Poverty among African American children, currently at a staggering 34.5%, could reach 50% before the employment picture starts to turn around."

Labels: finance, world

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

"There is a need for integrated support for annotation and sharing within the primary tool used for interacting with the World Wide Web, which today is a web browser. Based on prior work and user studies in our research lab, we1 propose design recommendations for a global shared annotation system, for the domain of scholarly research. We describe a system built using these design recommendations (NeoNote), and provide an example video demonstrating the suggested features. Finally, we discuss the major challenges that remain for implementing a global annotation system for sharing scholarly knowledge."

Labels: education, technology

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hate goes viral on social network sites: group

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 7:29PM UTC

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Militants and hate groups increasingly use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube as propaganda tools to recruit new members, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The report released on Wednesday noted a 25 percent rise in the past year in the number of "problematic" social networking groups on the Internet.

The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism."

"Every aspect of the Internet is being used by extremists of every ilk to repackage old hatred, demean the 'Enemy,' to raise funds and since 9/11, recruit and train Jihadist terrorists," the Center said in a statement.

Examples of what the report calls "digital terrorism and hate" range from a Facebook group named "Death to gays" in Croatian to a YouTube video of a Koran being burned and various Web sites promoting militant groups such as Hezbollah, the Taliban, al Qaeda and Colombia's FARC.

The Jewish human rights group named for the renowned Nazi hunter has been monitoring use of the Internet by extremists for over a decade. It said the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook had accelerated the spread of racist and bigoted views in recent years.

It said Facebook officials had met with its experts and pledged to remove sites that violate its terms of usage, "but with over 200 million users, online bigots have to date outpaced efforts to remove them."

HARD TO ERADICATE

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said Facebook recently removed several Holocaust denial sites, including one that featured a cartoon of Adolf Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, whose diary written in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam is among the best known stories of the Holocaust.

"The main social networkers understand they have a problem," Cooper told Reuters. "The company that's tried to do its best so far has been Facebook, yet we've seen that sometimes your best isn't enough to eliminate a problem."

He pointed out a YouTube user whose racist content has caused his postings on the site to be taken down repeatedly, but he simply creates a new user profile, or channel, and posts the material again, boasting that it is his 64th channel.

Extremist groups are also setting up their own social networking sites, the report said, picking out one called "New Saxon," described as "a Social Networking site for people of European descent" produced by an American Neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Movement.

Other groups have created online games such as one created by an Iranian organization and called "Special Operation 85 - Hostage Rescue," and one called "Border Patrol" in which the player has to shoot Mexicans, including women and children, as they try to come over the border into the United States.

Leena Shehadeh, a 17-year-old who attended a presentation of the report with her class in New York, said such games and racist language are often treated as jokes by her generation.

"We didn't live through the Holocaust, we didn't live through slavery," she said during an audience discussion. "So people see it as a joke, until something bad happens."

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Ellen Wulfhorst)

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

"Pres. Carter on Lessons Learned from 1979 Energy Crisis Today Pres. Jimmy Carter offered an historical perspective on the impact of energy issues on national security before a Senate Foreign Relations Cmte. hearing. During his time in office, the Iranian Revolution resulted in an oil shortage and high gasoline prices that increased tensions between the two nations."

see the video

Labels: politics, united states

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

US Treasury Department released an updated monthly and quarterly economic statistics.

Monthly Statistics

http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/economic-policy/macroecon/monthly_economic_data.pdf

Quarterly Statistics

http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/economic-policy/macroecon/quarterly_economic_data.pdf

Labels: finance, united states

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/bechara.pdf

Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
+1 (469) 619-5577
http://tarek.hoteit.org

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments

The role of emotion in decision-making: Evidence from neurological patients with orbitofrontal damage
Antoine Bechara

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/bechara.pdf

Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
+1 (469) 619-5577
http://tarek.hoteit.org

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments

"April Job Numbers Show Slight Improvement By NICK WILSON WASHINGTON (CN) - Job losses slowed somewhat in April with the cutting of 540,000 jobs but total unemployment rose to 8.9 percent, the highest level in a quarter century, according to a report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday. "This is still a really bad number, but job loss did moderate," Commissioner Keith Hall said. The loss in April represent an improvement over the last five months, all of which were among the 10 worst months ever recorded for job loss. In January, for example, Americans lost a devastating 741,000 jobs. Hall appeared before the Join Economic Committee in Congress and argued that the April loss suggests a boost in consumer confidence. Once consumers spend more, Hall added, the economy rises to meet the demand and more jobs result. Nonetheless, April saw the total loss of American jobs continue to stack up. Unemployment rose to 8.9 percent in March, the highest rate since 1983. Of the 13.7 million Americans now reported as unemployed, 5.7 million of the losses occurred since the beginning of the recession in December of 2007. Race and level of education continue to play a significant role in unemployment. Blacks had the highest unemployment at 15 percent, Hispanics faced 11 percent unemployment, Whites had eight percent unemployment, and Asians had the lowest unemployment, 6.6 percent. In keeping with past trends, higher levels of education are directly linked to higher employment rates. People without a high school diploma have the worst chances, recording a 15 percent unemployment rate. High school diploma holders are unemployed at a 9 percent rate. Those with some college education earned a 7 percent unemployment rate, and those with college held a 4.4 percent unemployment rate. Hall cautioned that we will have to wait for next month's report to determine if the slowing of job loss is a trend."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/05/08/april%20unemployment.pdf

Labels: finance, united states

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

Irish student's Jarre wiki hoax dupes journalists

Thursday, May 07, 2009 9:18AM UTC

DUBLIN (Reuters) - "When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head," Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre once said, according to several newspapers reporting his death in March.

However, the quotation was invented by an Irish student who posted it on the Wikipedia website in a hoax designed to show the dangers of relying too heavily on the Internet for information.

Shane Fitzgerald made up quotes and entered them on Wikipedia -- an encyclopedia edited by users -- immediately after Jarre's death was first reported on March 30.

The 22-year-old sociology and economics student at University College Dublin said he had expected blogs and perhaps small newspapers to use the quotes but did not believe major publications would rely on Wikipedia without further checks.

"I was wrong. Quality newspapers in England, India, America and as far away as Australia had my words in their reports of Jarre's death," Fitzgerald wrote in an article in Thursday's Irish Times newspaper.

Britain's Guardian was one title that had to correct its obituary, saying the fake quotes appeared to have originated on Wikipedia before being duplicated on other websites.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth.

(Reporting by Andras Gergely; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
+1 (469) 619-5577
http://tarek.hoteit.org

Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:48:52 -0400 (EDT)
To: <tarek.hoteit@waldenu.edu>
Subject: Richard Rothstein to appear on C-SPAN's Book TV

May 8, 2009 Richard Rothstein to appear on C-SPAN's Book TV Grading Education Getting Accountability Right by Richard Rothstein Upcoming Schedule Sunday, May 10, 1:00 AM Sunday, May 10, 1:00 PM on C-SPAN 2 About the Program In Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, Richard Rothstein makes a case for holding public schools accountable for more than just test scores. He argues that basic knowledge, basic skills and critical thinking are all needed upon graduation but are not necessarily taught. About the Author Richard Rothstein is a former New York Times Education Columnist and a current research associate at the Economic Policy Institute. His other works include Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap and The Way We Were? Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement. The Mission of EPI To inform and empower people to seek solutions that will ensure broadly shared prosperity and opportunity. If you received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, click here. To unsubscribe from all EPI email alerts, click here. Questions? Contact webmaster@epi.org. Economic Policy Institute 1333 H Street, NW Suite 300, East Tower Washington, D.C. 20005 Copyright © 2009 Economic Policy Institute. All rights reserved.

 

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments

EPI: No paid leave for new U.S. moms writes

by Elise Gould

This Mother’s Day we reflect on the critical but often overlooked issue of maternity leave. Among peer countries with comparable per capita income (i.e., those in the G7), the United States provides the fewest mandated maternity leave benefits in both length of leave and amount of paid time off

Labels: society

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments

Greenspan, circa 2003: When in doubt, be vague

Wednesday, May 06, 2009 10:40PM UTC

By Emily Kaiser

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In June 2003, when the U.S. Federal Reserve was wrestling with how to boost the economy and ward off the threat of deflation, the advice from Chairman Alan Greenspan was to be vague about possible policy steps.

According to transcripts released on Wednesday, then-Fed Governor Ben Bernanke's response was that financial markets needed more information from the central bank, not less.

The transcripts shed some light on Bernanke's approach to today's financial crisis, and highlight a key difference in the current and former Fed chairmen's thinking on communicating when investors were hanging on their every word. (http://federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomchistorical2003.htm)

The U.S. central bank releases minutes from its policy meetings, held eight times a year, three weeks after each gathering, but transcripts follow more than five years later.

The transcript from the June 2003 meeting shows Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig was concerned that questions would arise over how the Fed planned to proceed if already low interest rates fell to 0.75 percent or below.

"My suggestion is that, if you get asked those questions, just say we're examining nontraditional methods and there are many different ways in which we can address the issue," Greenspan replied. "I would be as nonspecific as you know how to be."

While Greenspan said it was important to explain that the Fed would still have room to maneuver even when rates were approaching zero, "as for what that means beyond that, I would be very vague.

"The major reason is that I don't think we will know until we start to address the issue," Greenspan said.

But Bernanke, who succeeded Greenspan as chairman in February 2006, countered that the Fed would be much more successful in achieving its goals if investors understood what it was trying to do.

"Ambiguity has its uses but mostly in noncooperative games like poker," he said. "Monetary policy is a cooperative game. The whole point is to get financial markets on our side and for them to do some of our work for us. In an environment of low inflation and low interest rates, we need to seek ever greater clarity of communication to the markets and to the public."

PARALLELS

In 2003, like now, the Fed was concerned about how to prevent a dangerous downward spiral in prices when there was little room left to lower its benchmark interest rate.

Bernanke's views on deflation were already well known by then. He had delivered what became his famous "helicopter" speech the year before, in which he quoted economist Milton Friedman in suggesting that the central bank could combat deflation by printing money and dropping it from helicopters.

The nickname "Helicopter Ben" has stuck, and the reference came up frequently when Bernanke began ballooning the Fed's balance sheet in 2008 in an effort to restore normal lending. However, deflation concerns are still running high.

Bernanke also appears to be acting on his 2003 views on Fed communication. In March, he took the unusual step of granting a prime-time television interview to try to explain why the Fed was pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. He has also considered holding news conferences.

The 2003 transcripts show that Bernanke was concerned about sending clear signals to financial markets when economic cycles were turning and monetary policy was likely to shift.

He said the Fed may have triggered "unnecessary anxiety among the less sophisticated and ... skepticism about the Fed's seriousness among the more sophisticated" in May 2003 when it hinted at concerns about deflation in the closely watched statement released after its policy-setting meeting.

"I expect that the need to make our public statements more precise and less ad hoc will ultimately lead to the introduction of some elements of quantification," he said.

In 2003, he also advocated releasing the Fed's own internal forecasts for economic growth, inflation and unemployment more regularly, another practice he has put in place as chairman.

(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

"Facts and figures about how children live - and some solutions

Life as a child: it's about playing in the sandpit, chasing butterflies, climbing the very highest tree in the whole world& That is one side. And the other? Child labour, child soldiers, juvenile refugees. While SOS Children's Villages strives to make a happy childhood possible for the children cared for as part of its programmes, such happiness remains, for millions of children, just a dream."

The article then discusses some facts and proposed solutions for children without parental care, violence against children, education, health, HIV/AIDS and children with disabilities.

Labels: society

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments

"The best dropout prevention is a focus on the future. The School Archive Project does that with a 10-year time-capsule and class-reunion plan designed to provide a physical connection to each student's future. The goal is to help students understand their own natural ability to make the differences they want in their lives and communities, and the world as a whole, through their planning and work."

thanks to Bill Betzen for referring this site as his reply to the blog article Dallas ISD, 44.4% graduation rate. Why?.

Labels: education

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments

Boston Public Library, Print Department

In a Ponzi scheme, potential investors are wooed with promises of unusually large returns, usually attributed to the investment manager’s savvy, skill or some other secret sauce.

From the New York Times:

Lost Manuscript Unmasks Details Of Original Ponzi
In the summer of 1920, William H. McMasters, one of Boston’s top publicists, was in a pickle. A new client, a dapper and charming Italian immigrant named Charles Ponzi, was raking in millions on promises to pay investors 50 percent interest in 45 days.

“If he was everything he claimed, I would have a client such as no man ever had in the publicity field,” Mr. McMasters wrote in a newly found and never published memoir. But, he reflected, “if he was crooked or deluded, I must make up my mind to have him stop taking the money from the public.”

As fate would have it, Mr. McMasters decided that Ponzi was indeed a fraud and wrote a newspaper exposé in The Boston Post. The front-page article declaring that Ponzi was insolvent and had used incoming deposits to pay off earlier investors proved instrumental in unmasking him as history’s most infamous swindler — at least until Bernard L. Madoff came along.

 

…

The memoir — “The Ponzi Story,” typed on 206 double-spaced pages and completed around 1962, six years before Mr. McMasters died at 94 — is part of a trove of 2,200 books, manuscripts and pamphlets on swindlers and their frauds, hoaxes and confidence games acquired a year ago and recently catalogued by John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

"Economies Still Contracting, Gradual Recovery Expected in 2010 The global economy continues to slow. The world's largest economies are seeing their sharpest contractions in several decades, and many developing and emerging markets that showed resilience until late last year are now in decline. First quarter 2009 GDP growth numbers were dismal, and a further drop is expected for the remainder of this year (Chart 1). Contributing to the deterioration are the prolonged global demand slump, the fall in asset prices and wealth, and the continued crunch in trade and investment financing. Among the consequences of the protracted decline are weakened labor conditions and an uptick in protectionism. Efforts to shore up the economy include aggressive fiscal stimulus packages and the continued easing of monetary policies."

Labels: finance, world

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments

"Neuroeconomics: How Neuroscience Can Inform Economics Author(s): Colin Camerer 1, | George Loewenstein 2, | Drazen Prelec 3 doi: 10.1257/0022051053737843"

Journal of Economic Literature

Print ISSN: 0022-0515

Volume: 43 | Issue: 1

Cover date: March 2005

Page(s): 9-64

Abstract

Neuroeconomics uses knowledge about brain mechanisms to inform economic analysis, and roots economics in biology. It opens up the “black box” of the brain, much as organizational economics adds detail to the theory of the firm. Neuroscientists use many tools— including brain imaging, behavior of patients with localized brain lesions, animal behavior, and recording single neuron activity. The key insight for economics is that the brain is composed of multiple systems which interact. Controlled systems (“executive function”) interrupt automatic ones. Emotions and cognition both guide decisions. Just as prices and allocations emerge from the interaction of two processes—supply and demand— individual decisions can be modeled as the result of two (or more) processes interacting. Indeed, “dual-process” models of this sort are better rooted in neuroscientific fact, and more empirically accurate, than single-process models (such as utility-maximization). We discuss how brain evidence complicates standard assumptions about basic preference, to include homeostasis and other kinds of state-dependence. We also discuss applications to intertemporal choice, risk and decision making, and game theory. Intertemporal choice appears to be domain-specific and heavily influenced by emotion. The simplified ß-d of quasi-hyperbolic discounting is supported by activation in distinct regions of limbic and cortical systems. In risky decision, imaging data tentatively support the idea that gains and losses are coded separately, and that ambiguity is distinct from risk, because it activates fear and discomfort regions. (Ironically, lesion patients who do not receive fear signals in prefrontal cortex are “rationally” neutral toward ambiguity.) Game theory studies show the effect of brain regions implicated in “theory of mind”, correlates of strategic skill, and effects of hormones and other biological variables. Finally, economics can contribute to neuroscience because simple rational-choice models are useful for understanding highly-evolved behavior like motor actions that earn rewards, and Bayesian integration of sensorimotor information.

Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain. Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. (White Noise, Don DeLillo)

Author(s): Colin Camerer ¹, | George Loewenstein ², | Drazen Prelec ³

Author(s) affiliations

¹California Institute of Technology.

²Carnegie Mellon University.

³Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Labels: finance

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

" The paper provides estimates of global relative poverty trends from 1970 onwards. Relative poverty is shown to have decreased significantly, but at the same time there has been a worsening poverty outcome among up to one billion of the world's poorest citizens. The paper also proposes a straightforward method for dividing an income distribution into classes of poor, rich, and middle-class"

Author/Editor:
Nielsen, Lynge

Authorized for Distribution:
April 1, 2009

Electronic Access:
Free Full Text (PDF file size is 654KB)

Labels: finance, world

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

"An Unsettling Settlement: The 1922 Middle East Peace Agreement Seen Today (Video) Speaker: David Fromkin, Professor of International Relations, History, and Law, Boston University; Author, Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East Presider: Harold M. Evans, Editor-at-Large, THE WEEK Magazine April 29, 2009 General Meeting: An Unsettling Settlement: The 1922 Middle East Peace Agreement Seen Today"

Labels: middle east

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

Posted by Tarek Hoteit at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments