12-01-2015, 10:26 PM
But 3.3 percent is still way too high. In the long run, any deficit that stays higher than the rate of nominal GDP growth is unsustainable. Japan's nominal GDP growth is now about zero. Its long-term potential real GDP growth is no more than 1 percent (due to shrinking population), and the Bank of Japan has not managed to increase core inflation to the 2 percent target despite Herculean efforts. Even if interest rates stay at zero forever -- allowing the country to eventually refinance all its debt in order to bring interest payments down to zero -- borrowing 3.3 percent of GDP every year is just too much. And if interest rates rise, deficits would explode.
Japan's Debt Trap Won't Fix Itself - Bloomberg View
The most creative thing done by central banks since the financial crisis is taking benchmark interest rates into negative territory. But, according Willem Buiter and his team at Citi, the results have ultimately been fairly "unspectacular." "Overall, the striking point is how unspectacular the move to negative rates has been," Buiter and his team wrote in a note to clients on Monday. "Money has not flooded out of the banks, exchange rates have not plunged, thrift has not been destroyed, and inflation has not soared. After many years in which it was virtually unthinkable for interest rates to go below zero, the evidence suggests that there is no discontinuity at the zero bound."
Citi's Willem Buiter on negative interest rates - Business Insider
On the one hand, that's how much the Zero costs - just $5. Here in the UK it costs just £4, or the price of a pint of beer. But it's also worth noting that the $5 bill physically dwarfs the Raspberry Pi Zero. At 65mm x 30mm, the Zero is smaller than a credit card, and it's only 5mm thick to boot. It also weighs just nine grams.
What is Raspberry Pi Zero? All you need to know about the $5 computer
Keith Fons showed up for work Nov. 9 at the Subway he manages in downtown Portland, expecting a normal Monday morning rush. A day earlier, The Oregonian's front page featured a story about Fons and the everyday challenges that low-wage workers face. The 35-year-old father worked as many as 80 hours every week at two Subway shops to provide for his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, and their three young children.
Subway fires 80-hour-a-week worker from 1 job after Oregonian story | OregonLive.com
A new method of delivering data, which uses the visible spectrum rather than radio waves, has been tested in a working office. Li-fi can deliver internet access 100 times faster than traditional wi-fi, offering speeds of up to 1Gbps (gigabit per second). It requires a light source, such as a standard LED bulb, an internet connection and a photo detector. It was tested this week by Estonian start-up Velmenni, in Tallinn.