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N.Y. / Region
De Blasio Talks With 3 Candidates for Police Commissioner
New York’s mayor-elect said he spoke with former Commissioner William J. Bratton; Philip Banks III, the Police Department’s top chief; and the first deputy commissioner, Rafael Pineiro.Getting on with the job.
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World
Germany, Austerity’s Champion, Faces Some Big Repair Bills
Germany, once known for autobahns and efficiency, is facing an aging infrastructure that, if left unaddressed, could undermine economic growth.
"Germany, experts say, has been slow in establishing a high-speed fiber
optic network, for instance, and is now behind countries like Bulgaria,
Lithuania and Romania. Officials in small towns in the rural north have
grown so tired of waiting for a plan, they have started on their own to
get fiber optic cables laid down, with residents coughing up 1,000
euros, more than $1,300, each.
“We have a steel company, for instance, that wanted to move to another
community where the Internet is better,” said Holger Jensen, the mayor
of Lowenstedt, a village of 650 near the Danish border. “We realized
something had to happen quickly.”"
3
Science
Video: ScienceTake: Sea Slug Love
In the mating game, males and females can have different agendas even when they inhabit the same body.
4
U.S.
Kansas: Pilot Lands Jumbo Jet at Wrong Airport
The pilot of a Boeing 747 mistakenly landed at a small Kansas airport instead of McConnell Air Force Base eight miles away.
5
N.Y. / Region
A Boxer With an Unfriendly Owner
Metropolitan Diary: The owner of a 60-pound mutt likes to pet other dogs, but this time was refused permission.
6
Business Day
Russian ‘Fertilizer War’ Appears to Wind Down
The release from Belarussian custody of the director of the Russian potash fertilizer mining company Uralkali could lead to the return of a price-fixing cartel for potash fertilizer.
7
Fashion & Style
Not Your Grandmother’s Skin Care?
Think again. New lines promoting old family recipes are proving both popular and profitable.
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N.Y. / Region
Outcast Mother’s Death, and Questions About Jewish Sect’s Sway Over Children
Deb Tambor, whose death may have been a suicide, had forsaken the Hasidic Jewish world in which she was raised and married, leading to the estrangement of her young children.
9
Science
An Icy Observatory Detects Neutrinos From Far, Far Away
Over two years, the IceCube Neutrino observatory in Antarctica detected 28 neutrinos from outside our solar system, the first detected since 1987.
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Home & Garden
Soaking Up the Local Color
The Watermark collection from Tilevera includes tiles dipped in indigo.-
Yarn with multiple shades of the same hue are called ombre, while a ... static electricity; and the propensity to become stained and to accept dyes. ...68 KB (10,294 words) - 07:03, 19 November 2013http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigofera_tinctoriaNot stable.
11
Home & Garden
Should I Install Professional-Style Appliances?
Advice on repairing or redecorating a home before selling.
12
Business Day
Subway in London Plans to Run 24 Hours
Starting in 2015, the London Underground will be open all night. But most ticket offices will close, costing 750 people their jobs.
14
World
Raw Sewage and Anger Flood Gaza’s Streets as Electricity Runs Low
A shortage of electricity and cheap diesel fuel from Egypt led the Hamas government to shut down Gaza’s lone power plant, which caused sewage stations to stop working.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority
"The Palestinian Authority was formed in 1994, pursuant to the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the government of Israel, as a five-year interim body. Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the two parties regarding its final status. As of 2013, more than eighteen years following the formulation of the Authority, this status has yet to be reached."
A self inflicted problem.
15
Arts
How the Original 1 Percent Showed Off
Two exhibitions now in New York have much to say about the imbalance of money and taste in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.
16
Opinion
The Only-Child Blues
Relaxing the one-child policy may hurt some Chinese women by reviving patriarchal Confucian practices.
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N.Y. / Region
Carnegie Mellon Bringing Sciences Programs to Brooklyn
The university plans to offer graduate education in emerging media and game design, as well as four more fields, at an outpost campus in Steiner Studios.
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Fashion & Style
The Return of Logo Culture
The recent rise in logos is in part a rejection of the anti-capitalist, grunge, no-logo 1990s.
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Opinion
Taxing Times for the Tax Collector
As years of budget reductions take a toll on public services and on the national psyche, France’s sense of balance is lost.Hard Hearts, Soft Heads
Many years ago my colleague Alan Blinder wrote a very good book with, it seemed to me, a slightly unfortunate title. It was way too easy to slip from “Hard heads, soft hearts” to the reverse.
On the other hand, maybe that’s a book that needs to be written about today’s austerians, both on our side of the Atlantic and in Europe.
What set me off this morning was an interview by Jens Weidmann, head of the Bundesbank:
Let’s think about the current problems of the euro are in terms of perfectly ordinary, textbook macroeconomics.
First, take the aggregate view. The euro area as a whole has record high unemployment and record low inflation. By any normal standards, this says that monetary policy is too tight. Yes, there’s a problem getting traction, because the ECB is close to the zero lower bound — but that’s a problem of implementation. On what possible grounds could you argue that printing money is not at least a partial solution to the crisis?
Next, look at the internal adjustment problem. The big capital flows from north to south during europhoria have left Spain etc. overvalued , and in need of “internal devaluation”. But there is now completely overwhelming evidence for downward nominal wage rigidity: it’s much easier to get Spanish wages relative to German wages in line through rising German wages than falling Spanish wages. Germany’s own internal devaluation from 2001 to 2007 was accomplished through inflation abroad, not deflation at home. But a too-low overall euro inflation rate pushes the burden onto deflation in debtor countries. Again, on what possible grounds could you argue that a somewhat higher inflation rate — remember, it’s now running at just 0.8 percent — would do nothing to help solve the crisis?
Finally, to the extent that debt levels are a problem, low inflation makes this problem much worse, for all the usual reasons.
Now maybe, maybe, there would still be a euro crisis even if Europe had strong internal demand and 2-plus percent inflation. But we don’t know that — and it’s bizarre to dismiss any effort to move in that direction presumptively.
What it comes down to is that Weidmann — like, I’m afraid, much conventional opinion in Europe — has thrown analysis out the window in favor of a peculiar form of wishful thinking. What’s peculiar about this wishful thinking is that it doesn’t consist of fantasies about the existence of easy, painless solutions; it consists of fantasies about the absence of easy solutions, even when the evidence says very clearly that such solutions exist. Instead of a weak-minded search for pleasure without pain, it’s a search for reasons to inflict pain regardless of the actual economic situation.
Yes, it fits the definition of sadomonetarism.
What’s awesome is that this grim fantasy passes for wisdom, and dictates policy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/opinion/krugman-the-plot-against-france.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
On the other hand, maybe that’s a book that needs to be written about today’s austerians, both on our side of the Atlantic and in Europe.
What set me off this morning was an interview by Jens Weidmann, head of the Bundesbank:
“We have lowered interest rates and are offering banks unlimited liquidity. But there are no easy and quick ways out of this crisis,” he told German weekly Die Zeit in an interview to be published on Thursday.What could possibly justify this remark, other than sheer faith in the redemptive power of (other peoples’) pain for its own sake?
“The money printer is definitely not the way to solve it. It will still take years until the causes of the crisis are eliminated.”
Let’s think about the current problems of the euro are in terms of perfectly ordinary, textbook macroeconomics.
First, take the aggregate view. The euro area as a whole has record high unemployment and record low inflation. By any normal standards, this says that monetary policy is too tight. Yes, there’s a problem getting traction, because the ECB is close to the zero lower bound — but that’s a problem of implementation. On what possible grounds could you argue that printing money is not at least a partial solution to the crisis?
Next, look at the internal adjustment problem. The big capital flows from north to south during europhoria have left Spain etc. overvalued , and in need of “internal devaluation”. But there is now completely overwhelming evidence for downward nominal wage rigidity: it’s much easier to get Spanish wages relative to German wages in line through rising German wages than falling Spanish wages. Germany’s own internal devaluation from 2001 to 2007 was accomplished through inflation abroad, not deflation at home. But a too-low overall euro inflation rate pushes the burden onto deflation in debtor countries. Again, on what possible grounds could you argue that a somewhat higher inflation rate — remember, it’s now running at just 0.8 percent — would do nothing to help solve the crisis?
Finally, to the extent that debt levels are a problem, low inflation makes this problem much worse, for all the usual reasons.
Now maybe, maybe, there would still be a euro crisis even if Europe had strong internal demand and 2-plus percent inflation. But we don’t know that — and it’s bizarre to dismiss any effort to move in that direction presumptively.
What it comes down to is that Weidmann — like, I’m afraid, much conventional opinion in Europe — has thrown analysis out the window in favor of a peculiar form of wishful thinking. What’s peculiar about this wishful thinking is that it doesn’t consist of fantasies about the existence of easy, painless solutions; it consists of fantasies about the absence of easy solutions, even when the evidence says very clearly that such solutions exist. Instead of a weak-minded search for pleasure without pain, it’s a search for reasons to inflict pain regardless of the actual economic situation.
Yes, it fits the definition of sadomonetarism.
What’s awesome is that this grim fantasy passes for wisdom, and dictates policy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/opinion/krugman-the-plot-against-france.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
"On Friday Standard & Poor’s, the bond-rating agency, downgraded France.
The move made headlines, with many reports suggesting that France is in
crisis. But markets yawned: French borrowing costs, which are near historic lows, barely budged. So what’s going on here? The answer is that S.& P.’s action needs to
be seen in the context of the broader politics of fiscal austerity. And
I do mean politics, not economics. For the plot against France — I’m
being a bit tongue in cheek here, but there really are a lot of people
trying to bad-mouth the place — is one clear demonstration that in
Europe, as in America, fiscal scolds don’t really care about deficits.
Instead, they’re using debt fears to advance an ideological agenda. And
France, which refuses to play along, has become the target of incessant
negative propaganda.
Let me give you an idea of what we’re talking about. A year ago the magazine The Economist declared
France “the time bomb at the heart of Europe,” with problems that could
dwarf those of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. In January 2013, CNN
Money’s senior editor-at-large declared France in “free fall,” a nation
“heading toward an economic Bastille.” Similar sentiments can be found
all over economic newsletters.
Given such rhetoric, one comes to French data expecting to see the
worst. What you find instead is a country experiencing economic
difficulties — who isn’t? — but in general performing as well as or
better than most of its neighbors, with the admittedly big exception of
Germany. Recent French growth has been sluggish, but much better than
that of, say, the Netherlands, which is still rated AAA.
According to standard estimates, French workers were actually a bit
more productive than their German counterparts a dozen years ago — and
guess what, they still are.
Meanwhile, French fiscal prospects
look distinctly nonalarming. The budget deficit has fallen sharply
since 2010, and the International Monetary Fund expects the ratio of
debt to G.D.P. to be roughly stable over the next five years.
What about the longer-run burden of an aging population? This is a
problem in France, as it is in all wealthy nations. But France has a
higher birthrate than most of Europe — in part because of government
programs that encourage births and ease the lives of working mothers —
so that its demographic projections are much better than those of its
neighbors, Germany included. Meanwhile, France’s remarkable health care
system, which delivers high quality at low cost, is going to be a big
fiscal advantage looking forward.
By the numbers, then, it’s hard to see why France deserves any particular opprobrium. So again, what’s going on?
Here’s a clue: Two months ago Olli Rehn, Europe’s commissioner for
economic and monetary affairs — and one of the prime movers behind harsh
austerity policies — dismissed France’s seemingly exemplary fiscal
policy. Why? Because it was based on tax increases rather than spending
cuts — and tax hikes, he declared, would “destroy growth and handicap the creation of jobs.”
In other words, never mind what I said about fiscal discipline, you’re supposed to be dismantling the safety net.
S.& P.’s explanation
of its downgrade, though less clearly stated, amounted to the same
thing: France was being downgraded because “the French government’s
current approach to budgetary and structural reforms to taxation, as
well as to product, services and labor markets, is unlikely to
substantially raise France’s medium-term growth prospects.” Again, never
mind the budget numbers, where are the tax cuts and deregulation?
You might think that Mr. Rehn and S.& P. were basing their demands
on solid evidence that spending cuts are in fact better for the economy
than tax increases. But they weren’t. In fact, research at the I.M.F.
suggests that when you’re trying to reduce deficits in a recession, the
opposite is true: temporary tax hikes do much less damage than spending cuts.
Oh, and when people start talking about the wonders of “structural
reform,” take it with a large heaping of salt. It’s mainly a code phrase
for deregulation — and the evidence on the virtues of deregulation is
decidedly mixed. Remember, Ireland received high praise for its
structural reforms in the 1990s and 2000s; in 2006 George Osborne, now
Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, called it a “shining example.”
How did that turn out?
If all this sounds familiar to American readers, it should. U.S. fiscal
scolds turn out, almost invariably, to be much more interested in
slashing Medicare and Social Security than they are in actually cutting
deficits. Europe’s austerians are now revealing themselves to be pretty
much the same. France has committed the unforgivable sin of being
fiscally responsible without inflicting pain on the poor and unlucky.
And it must be punished."
20
U.S.
Concerns as Austin Residents Drill New Wells
As more Austin residents drill wells to offset the drought, officials and environmentalists grow concerned that it will negatively impact groundwater supplies.
1
Science
An Icy Observatory Detects Neutrinos From Far, Far Away
Over two years, the IceCube Neutrino observatory in Antarctica detected 28 neutrinos from outside our solar system, the first detected since 1987.
2
Science
Video: ScienceTake: Sea Slug Love
In the mating game, males and females can have different agendas even when they inhabit the same body.
4
Business Day
Russian ‘Fertilizer War’ Appears to Wind Down
The release from Belarussian custody of the director of the Russian potash fertilizer mining company Uralkali could lead to the return of a price-fixing cartel for potash fertilizer.
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13
Education
Frequent Tests Can Enhance College Learning, Study Finds
Short quizzes at the start of each class increased attendance and performance, an experiment showed.
18
World
A Karnataka Dance Moves With Modern Times
As Yakshagana, a 700-year old dance-drama, evolves, a constant debate rages between tradition and change, and how far to go with both.
19
N.Y. / Region
Carnegie Mellon Bringing Sciences Programs to Brooklyn
The university plans to offer graduate education in emerging media and game design, as well as four more fields, at an outpost campus in Steiner Studios.
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