Relying on Central Banks for Growth, New Abnormal

New Abnormal Means Relying on Central Banks for Growth - Bloomberg: "The “new normal” may be new. It’s hardly normal. The “new abnormal” would be more apt, according to reports published this month by Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research Inc. in New York and ING Bank NV’s Mark Cliffe in London. “Dictionaries define ‘normal’ as regular, usual, healthy, natural, orderly, ordinary, rational,” Cliffe said Nov. 7. “It is hard to use those words to describe the current performance of the world economy and financial markets.” Among signs of irregularity since Pacific Investment Management Co. popularized the expression “new normal” in 2009 to describe an environment of below-average economic growth: Central banks are still deploying near-zero interest rates or quantitative easing six years after the financial crisis, yet output, inflation, business investment and wages remain mostly subpar. In financial markets, equities are hitting new highs as bond yields probe new lows. Even as the U.S. shows signs of strength, commodities are slumping. The lesson for Yardeni is that by running to the rescue every time asset prices swooned in the past two decades, central bankers’ prescriptions distorted economies. “If a central bank moderates recessions, then speculative excesses are likely to build up much more during the booms and never get fully cleaned out,” Yardeni, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank AG, said in a Nov. 19 report. “So each financial crisis gets progressively worse than the previous one, forcing the central bank to provide even more easy money to avert a financial meltdown.”..."

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American Dystopia, Suspicion, Spying, New Normal

America’s dystopian new normal: Endless suspicion, limitless spying - Salon.com: "....The SARs program and the consolidated terrorism watchlist are just two domestic government databases of suspicion. Many more exist. Taken together, they should be seen as a new form of national ID for a growing group of people accused of no crime, who may have done nothing wrong, but are nevertheless secretly labeled by the government as suspicious or worse. Innocent until proven guilty has been replaced with suspicious until determined otherwise. Think of it as a new shadow system of national identification for a shadow government that is increasingly averse to operating in the light. It’s an ID its “owners” don’t carry around with them, yet it’s imposed on them whenever they interact with government agents or agencies. It can alter their lives in disastrous ways, often without their knowledge. And they could be you. If this sounds dystopian, that’s because it is."

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Amazon Web Services, The Cloud is the New Normal

'The cloud is the new normal,' Amazon Web Services executive says | Computerworld: "The cloud is no longer relegated to handling ancillary jobs, but is quickly become the base for mission critical -- or even all -- enterprise IT operations, the head of Amazon Web Services said. "The cloud is the new normal," said Andy Jassy, Amazon Web Services senior vice president during Wednesday's opening keynote of the company's annual Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas...."

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Education, Lessons of Hope, New Normal

Newsweek
Joel Klein's Book on American Schools Tries to Find a Way Forward
Newsweek
The goal here is instead defensive, coming at a time when the city's new .... But it's a fair point, especially since the new normal so thoroughly trumps ...

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Corn, Nebraska, Iowa, Return To a New Normal

Omaha World-Herald
Corn, Nebraska and Iowa's top cash crop, selling for half 2012 prices
Omaha World-Herald
The current correction should be seen not as a bust, but a moderation of the recent boom — a return to a new normal, said Michael Swanson, ...(read more at link above)

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