Money and Computing
Moving ... Forward? Highlights From a Fairly Long-Running Sitcom
Joan L. Cannon writes: Several hundred pounds of bookshelves that were to be left behind for Habitat, and one for a friend, arrived here where I have no place to put them. Such treasures as all my baking pans, including the ones that fit my toaster oven, are somewhere between here and North Carolina. How could they have lost the smallish box with my (expensive) no-line bifocals I use to watch TV? Ditto the basket of un-ironed tablecloths I left to await pressing after they got here.
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States Make 'Historic and Disturbing Cuts' to Unemployment Benefits
For now, emergency federal benefits have mitigated the state cuts. During the depths of the recession, Congress approved federally funded aid for unemployed people who exhausted their state benefits. But as a state’s jobless rate goes down, the federal government gives its unemployed residents fewer weeks of benefits. In states with the lowest rates, the federal government provides just 14 weeks of additional coverage. more »
What "substantial improvement" means: Comments on Monetary Policy by Federal Reserve Governor Jeremy Stein
"Specifically, we continue to have a 6.5 percent unemployment threshold for beginning to consider a first increase in the federal funds rate. As we have emphasized, the threshold nature of this forward guidance embodies further flexibility to react to incoming data. If, for example, inflation readings continue to be on the soft side, we will have greater scope for keeping the funds rate at its effective lower bound even beyond the point when unemployment drops below 6.5percent." more »
"I dare say Mrs D. will be in Yellow": Reconstructing an Art Exhibit Attended by Novelist Jane Austen
"Even if Jane Austen had not attended this public exhibit, it would still be well worth reconstructing. ...The British Institution's show was a star-studded 'first' of great magnitude for the art community and a turning point in the history of modern exhibit practices." Among the canvases in the retrospective gallery, portraits of 18th-century politicians, actors, authors and aristocrats offer examples of just how someone such as Jane Austen, who did not personally circulate among the social elite, was nonetheless immersed in Georgian England’s vibrant culture. more »