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Krugman points to financial deregulation, cross border financial flows, private debt in dollars and depreciating currencies, and the U.S. Federal Reserve's low interest rate policies, as the main culprits for bubbles and the emerging market crises in the 1990's and 2013.

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This NYT editorial points to the dangers lurking behid the jobless numbers. The House bill that passed recently for $154 billion to extend unemployment benefits- set to expire in Feb 2010- to June 2010, and increases aid to local and state governments. It also includes infrastructure spending and help for small business. But it does not do enough for young people whose joblesness is at all time high. For instance only 4 in 100 low income black students found work in Fall 2009 This according to a study by the Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies. According to the analysis done by this Center the employment rates among teenagers has risen four times faster than the rate among adults since 2000, and todayme over 65 are more likely to find jobs than youth of 16-19 years.

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Important year end reveiw of the oil price forecasting work of so many anlaysts and where they failed . The IEA and the US Enery Dpt forecast have year after year underestimated this pirce by over 20%. Analysts change the price forecasts within a couple of weeks based on changing information and assumptions. Of all this the Saudi Arabian forecasts have ben within 12 % of what has actually ocurred according to a study by Ronald Berger Strategy Consultants of Muich, Germany. And whats their forecast for 2008. By extrapolating from the Saudi budget and the assumptions, used such as giving a wide margin to avoid a deficit in the budget if oil prices undershot by a wide margin, one gets $75 for US benchmark crude. Forecast by experts are in the neighborhood of $80 average for the whole year 2008. Goldman recently revised theirs upwards from $85 average for 2008 to $95 within a 4 week period. How good is the Goldman forecast. No one really knows. Lehman has a forecast of $84 average for 2008 and bases it on the opacity of the market because no one knows what OPEC will do with supply and China does not provide good information on demand. So basically anlysts are adding an uncertainty premium to the price of oil. And this is especially so because as the Chief Economist at IEA says global space capacity is so thin and any event can influence price. Last year the rhetoric about Irans nuclear intentions was enough to stir up the price, as were other smaller events disrupting supplies. But the Iranian situation has since cooled down and diplomatic solutions are in the works. So what to expect in 2008 in the way of political uncertainty. Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon have all seen a cool off in the ast couple of years and the Bush administration rhetoric has become outmoded as has other rhetoric from Iran so that does'nt look like it will stir up oil prices in 2008. Still there will be some uncertainty premium about supply from OPEC and demand from China and India. And demand from the Middle Eastern oil producing countries themselves as well as the increasing demand in India and China will mean that lower demand in the US because of a recession will still mean an increase in global demand over 2007 of 1.5 million barrrels a day over 2007's 85 million barrels a day. What will change the dynamics of this situation is the government mandated fuel economy for all vehicles on the road with Europe more aggressive in this area under the pressures of global warming. If this impacts India, China and Russia as these fuel saving technologies are transferrred there overall consumption should see an impact. Europe's targets are only 4 years away for 2012. And the environment may cause China to bring in newer technologies that both contribute to improving environment and conserving energy. Because China's environmental record is almost catastrophic one could see some of this happen much sooner than expected after the Olympics in 2008. All that might change the way the world looks at oil and its use, and all energy sources and their use. ...

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Roach of Morgan Stanley and the parallels with the Japanese economy after its stock market and property bubbles burst in the late 1980's.

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Indonesia's commodities boom for coal, natural gas and palm oil is not benefitting the majority of the 230 million people in Indonesia's countryside, as India, China and other countries import large quantities of the commodities, especially coal for energy hungry India and China. Even with tariffs on export of palm oil these countries can absorb the added costs from exporters in Indonesia. This means higher food and cooking oil prices in a largely rural country.

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Oil supplies are not expected to go up with Mexicio and Russia's aging fields crimping production, non opec production barely budging with 1% increase this year according to IEA. Indonesia production down by half from its peak. Countries in the middle east like Iran are consuming more and have less available for export. And the Saudis plan to build huge chemical aluminium and other plants as well as cities in the desert, and increase electricity production. This will take up some of the oil production and make less available for export. Militant strikes have shut down over 25% of production of Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels a day of production repeatedly in the last few years. And Saudi Arabia has according to CERA only 2 million barrels a day of spare capacity or 2.3% that it can add, all of the safety cushion in one country according to Daniel Yergin. Yergin sees prices up to $150 barrel based on the supply constraints. The demand side is showing declining consumption in the USA but not by enough to compensate for growing consumption in China by 5% this year, and the increase in consumption in India, Russia, Brazil and other developing countries including Middle East. The reason for continuing consumption increases in the rest of the world is that price impact has been less severe in Europe because of the strong euro and oil priced in US dollars, and in China because Petrochina is required to put price caps so gasoline price increases are not that harsh. And India also cushions the price impact to some extent to protect consumers. And autos are just taking off in large numbers in China, Russia, India, Brazil and other countries. The drop in consumption in the USA has to be large enough to have an impact. And the shift to fuel efficient targets in the new fuel efficiency regulations in the USA are too modest and over a number of years to have any impact in the short term or in the next 1-3 years. In February US oil demand dropped to 19.7 million barrels a day, down 1 million barrels a day from the US average for 2007, but this insufficient conservation to impact price. Even though new cars are shifting to higher fuel efficient small cars the impact on the total fleet is gradual as cars on the road purchased in the last 5-10 years are still on the road. Even as the consumption falls in the US the offset is occurring in the other countries like China, Russia and India. Some of this is due to the euro and some to speculation but the supply constraints are real and demand momentum is still there in China, Middle east, Russia and India to keep offsetting savings elsewhere and keeping supplies tight. The euro increased in value by 2% while oil prices increased by 10% since the 1st week of April so there is more than the weakening dollar and some speculation to this surge, which may be why the normally cautious Yergin says the price rise to $150 is realistic and says, its not just that the genie is out of the bottle, a hundred genies are out of the bottle. That is to say for the immediate future of demand momentum and supply sluggishness which could run 6-24 months, to the Olympics and maybe a year or so from then. This ties in with the thinking behind the Goldman's estimate and CERA's estimate. ...

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Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn speaking at a conference in New Orleans comments that the USA economy is in uncharted waters because the financial system is so disrupted, and because of uncertainty about how credit conditions will evolve and how businesses and households will react to the changing conditions there can only be less confidence in the economic forecasts.

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Kyle Wingfield meets up with Robert Mundell, Nobel winner in 1999. What does he have to say now? He thinks the oil prices are on track and would reach $130 by 2020 with 3.5% inflation, starting with $34 a barrel in 1980 doubling to $68 in 2000 and doubling again to $136 in 2020. Today its already at $136 but he thinks it will settle down lower to about $100, so hethinks were not so far off track. On inflation he looks at the price of gold at$850 an ounce , and now its still about the same, with high inflation gold should be at $1500, so he does not see the public thinking high inflation is coming. He was in favor of the Reagan tax cuts and set the groundwork for this and aslo supported the euro. He believes the Bush tax cuts should be kept as it would be disastrous for the world economy. Mundell has always believed that there is a link between economic growth and lower tax rates. He advocates corporate tax rates of 25%. Tax rates went down to 28% under Reagan back up to 40% under Clinton and down to 35% under Bush. Hewould like to see a ceiling on marginal rates of 30%. He would like to see a fixed exchange rate so that there are not these large currency rate swings, the euro should be valued somehwehere between 90 cents to the euro to $1.30. The US has a growing population and better adoption of innovation with a younger population than Europe so he sees the USA as a leader in innovation and growth and the dollar or some new global currency should be formed for a global economy. Just as he supported the euro he supports a currency for Asia. He does not see overvaluing the Chinese currency as doing much good as he sees the Japanese economy hurt by the overvaluing of its currency after a period of Japoan bashing. He is an advisor to China on currency issues....

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Sales of new vehicles are in even steeper decline in Japan than in Germany. Germany saw a boost with reunification with East Germany. Eastern Europe is next door for sales and manufacturing. Sales declined 7.6% in 2007 over 2006 to reach 3.406 million vehicles, the lowest level since 1972. With 9 new models Toyota's sales declined by 6% in 2007. Something is happening in the developed country markets that shows the markets there are declining relative to the new markets in Asia and other emerging markets. How automakers fare in the future and which survive and grow will depend on how they prepare and execute strategies for these markets focussing on new design, efficient manufacturing and new technologies These markets will bring a different set of customers looking for improvements.

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The slowdown in China, the collapse of oil prices, and depreciation in emerging market currencies, suggest that low inflation in the U.S is likely to continue in 2016. This will make it harder for the U.S. Federal Reserve under Yellen to increase interest rates in 2016.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve's decision to extend Operation Twist beyond June to the rest of the year after the June 2012 FOMC meeting. By extending Operation Twist the Fed will buy $267 billion in long-term Treasury bonds and notes and sell short term Treasurys.

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Samuelson looks at patterns of investing in stocks in the U.S. since 1982. He cites S&P's Howard Silverblatt that the P/E for the S&P 500 averaged 16.9 since 1935 and the current P/E for the U.S. is at 17.6.

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Jeremy Stein tells Eisinger that it is important for the Fed to recognize when a bubble is taking place and take action including jawboning and regulatory action to limit bubble behaviour in capital markets. Fed chairman Yellen did this for social media stocks and bio tech sector stocks in 2014 by pointing out that that the rise in stock prices were excessive, resulting in a pullback.

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Financial Planner Carl Richards, warns investors about relying too much on market predictions. He cites the law of small samples as one way things go wrong. Another is investment managers with good track records in one decade doing badly in the next decade- David Miller in the 70's and Bill Miller of the Legg Mason Value Fund are others. To show how ridiculous market predictions based on computer models can get he gives the example of a researcher who found that over a 13 year period butter production in Bangladesh 'explained' 75% of the fluctuations in the annual returns of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index. Adding in U.S. cheese production and the total population of sheep in Bangladesh and the U.S., this researcher was able to forecast past U.S. stock returns with 99% accuracy.

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The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 327,577 illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2011, ending Sept 30. This is a steep decline from the 1.6 million apprehended crossing the border in 2000. The numbers have been dropping since the 2009 financial crisis and high unemployment in construction and other trades employing migrants. The figures for 2011 suggest a drop of about 25% from 2010. Researchers at the Pew Hispanic Center, say the balance now is about zero for people entering the U.S. across the border from Mexico and people returning to Mexico. In fact there are stories of money being sent to migrant workers without jobs in the U.S. by families in Mexico, which has affected the flow of migrant workers.

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According to a report from the Southern Education Foundation about 51% of the students from pre-Kindergarden to 12th grade in the U.S. were eligible for the federal program of free and reduced price lunches, using an analysis of 2013 federal data. With the highest proportion of students in poverty concentrated in states in the southern and western U.S.. States all across the south, including Texas, show high concentrations approaching 60-70%, and states in the west such as California show about 50-60%. Midwestern states such as Illinois and Michigan show rates over 50%. The implications of this data are that these children from poor and sometimes chaotic backgrounds trail other children in educational development, are less likely to have educationally enriching activity, and more susceptible to dropping out or never attending college. Kent McGuire, president of the Southern Education Foundation says the map showing this is striking. He points to the disinclination to invest in young people today, compared to the focus on leadership in areas of creating opportunity and upward mobility in the decades of the 50's through the 80's. Michael Rebell of Teachers College at Columbia University, says reaching this point where a majority of public school children are from poor backgrounds has happened sooner, and the trend has accelerated over time. ...