In theory, blogging is not difficult to do. You only have to write posts on a regular basis and include necessary advertising or links in order to be called a blogger. However, if you want to do more than write a few posts every week and your goal is to make a decent profit, you must understand how to create blog posts that will capture the interest of readers, keep  them coming back for more and encourage them to click on the links that will ultimately be your payout.

1. Choose a niche that matches your writing ability and knowledge experience or be prepared to hire a professional blogger who can do it for you.

2. Incorporate multiple media in your blog and blog posts. Images, photos, screenshots, video, charts, graphs or software that can be manipulated by the reader are great for giving your blog an edge over those that use only one medium: writing.

3. Keep your blog posts relatively short and easy on the eyes. Two to six hundred words is the norm for most blogs. Separate paragraphs into blocks of text, creating plenty of white space to make for easier reading as well.

4. Unless your blog is scientific or very technical, make the posts easy to digest for anyone with an 8th grade education. Th

atís right! Studies have shown that the majority of online readers have a junior high reading level. You donít have to ìdumb it downî, just be clear, simple and concise and avoid using verbiage that inspires a ìhuh?î

5. Get personal. Write in first person as though speaking directly to the reader. Talk about things that inspire you and inject some of your personality into your posts. Think ìpersonableî and ìfriendlyî.

6. Unless you are absolutely crazy about a product, donít express extreme enthusiasm. Be honest in your reviews and critiques. This will not only instill a sense of trust between yourself and your readers, it will keep readers coming back to purchase more of the products you DO recommend highly because after trying something you like, they find you that you are trustworthy.

7. Keep your blog fresh. Outdated information will have people running for the hills whereas content that is current and trendy will make them want to stick around. Update your blog at least twice a week ñ more if possible.

8. Do not overwhelm the pages with huge banners and flashing animations when adding advertising to your blog. A few smaller banners scattered here and there along with text links should be enough to get some clicks.

Remember:

Your blog is not the place for the high-pressure sales pitch but a place to discuss relevant information that pertains to your niche and encourage readers to delve deeper into what you have to offer.

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Web apps can be great for many things and Google is a big supporter of anything that lives in the cloud. But they have one major disadvantage, if there’s no Internet connection there’s no app. Broadband is becoming ubiquitous in some countries and wireless connections are increasingly available and reliable, but we’re still far from the point where this is no longer a concern.

In the mean time, Google along with other web companies are working on making web apps usable without the need for an Internet connection with much of the focus being placed on some HTML 5 features which would make this possible. Those are still only half-backed and there may still be a while until most people and developers can take advantage of them.

This hasn’t stopped Google though and the company has launched an offline version of its flagship product Gmail almost a year ago. The feature has been in testing since and Google is now confident that it reached a point where it can be rolled out to everyone.

“Now, we’re happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you’re already using it, then you’re all set. While you’ll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings,&rd… (read more)

A few things to ponder as the flu activity (mercifully) declines, at least for now:

• Interested in evidence that HIV treatment has become staggeringly effective?  Fully 87% of patients receiving treatment in the large British Columbia cohort have an HIV RNA < 50; not only that, the incidence of HIV drug resistance has declined more than 12-fold since 1997.  Wow.  I wouldn’t want to be in the business of selling resistance tests.
• Did you read about this scam?  The text from the hoax is pretty awkward — “This profile has to be created both for the vaccinated people and the non-vaccinated ones” is a choice bit of prose — but one could easily imagine how it could trap at least somebody.  And as an example of the levels to which humans will stoop to make money, using fear of a real virus to spread a computer one has to be way down there.
• Has anyone yet actually used telavancin?  Not in a clinical trial, but in a patient in clinical practice?  If so, what were the indications?  How did it go?
• Related, here is a great cartoon — but there’s an even better one on antibiotics that has not yet appeared on-line at The Cartoon Bank, so stay tuned.

Google Analytics has evolved over the years to become a very powerful tool if used to the full extent of its capabilities. The free tool allows webmasters to get detailed information on the visitors to their websites and how they engage with the content. One of the strengths of the product is the possibility to customize the tracking and focus on a particular group of users or a particular behavior. Now Google is taking the customization features one step further while also introducing some interesting new tools.

One of the interesting new features is Annotations which, as the name suggests, allows users to leave notes right inside the graph display to mark any unusual activity or a specific event. The explanation for traffic surges or drops can now be added right next to the graph making it easy for other users of a shared account to know what happened or to explain the phenomenon months after it happened.

Not only that, future events can be labeled in advance so that everyone is aware of any special circumstances. The applications for this feature are numerous and it can come in really handy especially for larger companies. Google says this was one of the most requested feature by its users and it’s easy to see why.

Google introduced a useful new feature about a mo… (read more)

16% of total jobs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been eliminated during just the last 12 months, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is because government companies are the largest employers, mostly in construction, and property companies such as the infamous Nakheel are reeling.

One wonders what the longer term effects of such a sharp jobs destruction might be.

'Luckily', for the UAE, many of these workers can just be sent home. They won't have to deal with mobs of unemployed with nowhere to go. So perhaps their serfdom model of construction employment could pay off of the country.

There are even more job losses to come.

WSJ: Last month, Deyaar Development PJSC (DEYAAR.DFM), Dubai's second-largest developer, laid off around 60 people, or 20% of its workforce. Dubai World has cut its global workforce by 15% to just under 70,000, with the deepest cuts in the U.A.E. Last November, Nakheel cut 500 jobs, or 15% of its workforce.

A further reduction of the emirate's working foreign population could weigh on an economy already hit by a 50% fall in real-estate prices over the last year. Oil sales account for less than 5% of the sheikdom's economy, with the majority of its income coming from service industries, retail, trade and tourism.

Of those expatriate workers who were laid off, most returned home, the survey said, while others relocated to neighboring Abu Dhabi or other Gulf countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Gulf Talent said among expatriates living in Dubai, the percentage who work in Abu Dhabi has tripled over the last year to 3% from 1%.

Read more here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Dubai World To Sell Overseas Assets, Retain Private Equity Arm
• Creditors Gave Billions To Dubai, With Just Barren Land As Collateral
• Times Of London Censored Again In Dubai After Ruling Sheikh Is Called A "Benign Dictator"

As economic indicators have improved, concern about the financial crisis has abated. But the next big problem could be approaching. Greece’s public deficit is skyrocketing and the country may become insolvent. The effect on Europe’s common currency could be dire.

Josef Ackermann, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, has given the all-clear signal many times in the past. He has repeatedly said that the worst was over, only to see the financial crisis strengthen its grip on the world economy.

Last week, however, Ackermann was singing a completely different tune. Although many indicators are once again pointing skyward, he said at a Berlin summit on the economy, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the assembled cabinet ministers, corporate CEOs and union leaders should not to be deluded. He warned emphatically that the financial situation could deteriorate once again. "A few time bombs" are still ticking, Ackermann told his audience, noting that the growing problems of highly leveraged small countries could lead to new tremors. And then, almost casually, Ackermann mentioned the problem child of the European financial world by name: Greece.

Read the whole story at Spiegel Online >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• After Dubai, Is Greece Next?
• Dubai World To Sell Overseas Assets, Retain Private Equity Arm
• Greek Debt Is About To Get Whacked (Again)

Here’s good news from temp staffing firm Manpower, which just completed its latest employment and staffing survey.

American businesses, they say, are ready to start creating new jobs. The cuts are over, and though they won’t be going hog-wild adding new workers, they are going to go out there and find some.

As you can see form the chart, the outlook in the US is for job creation in the beginning of the new year.

Most of the rest of the world is growing, too, although check out the nightmare in Ireland, Spain, and Japan.

Now see how things look in the rest of the world >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Actually, Government Employment Data Matches Up Nicely With ADP
• Rosenberg: There’s Just A 1-In-35 Chance Friday’s Employment Number Was Right
• David Goldman: 10 Reasons To Doubt The Government’s Rosy Employment Data

Times are tough — even for cybercriminals.  Online merchants in the U.S. and Canada report a dramatic 18 percent drop in fraud, down from $4 billion in 2008 to $3.3 billion this year, according to a survey by the security firm CyberSource. Meanwhile, the fraud rate of 1.2 percent of all sales is the lowest in the 11-year history of the survey. Even among international orders, traditionally the bane of Web sites, fraud rates plummeted by 50 percent.

The news comes just in time for Web shoppers who are pulling out their credit cards and wondering about the safety and security of online holiday gift shopping.

"We were surprised," said Doug Schwegman, CyberSource’s director of market and customer intelligence. "Internally people were thinking that with the recession, fraud would go up, that there would be more people out there with technical skills who needed to put food on the table. But it looks like the merchants stepped up to the plate and got their act together."

Schwegman said the recession may actually have helped Web site fraud departments in two ways:  prompting online firms to implement tighter fraud controls to chase down every dollar during the tough economy and giving computer security professionals at these Web sites a chance to catch their breath.

"They've been dealing with double-digit growth for years and when the market slowed down they were able to catch up a little bit," he said.

But new technologies undoubtedly contributed to the fight against fraud.  This year, a relatively new technique called device fingerprinting, which can make life very difficult for would-be credit card thieves, took hold in the marketplace.

Device fingerprinting goes far beyond cookies and IP addresses to identify users, employing software to examine a variety of unique identifiers on computers used to order products. These range from the version of Flash software stored on a computer to the time and date stamp of the installed Web browser and the version of BIOS used inside the machine.  Combining these characteristics, the software can positively identify computers with accident rates as low as one in 1 million, Schwegman said.

The technique is chiefly used to identify criminals who are placing numerous orders with multiple credit cards using a single computer. Traditionally, criminals could use proxy servers or other evasive techniques to place multiple fraud orders when using a cache of stolen cards. Now, it's relatively easy for Web sites to spot multiple orders coming from the same machine.

Other anti-fraud techniques are common too, including geo-location, which uses IP address to determine a customer’s location (used by 52 percent of large merchants); telephone number reverse look-up (33 percent); and shared “negative  lists” of attempted frauds among merchants (23 percent).

Courtesy CyberSource

Despite the apparent success, there's little cause for celebration, Schwegman warned.  This year's cybercrime dip could be an anomaly. 

"It's kind of an arms race. It could be things will bounce back next year (for criminals),” he said.

And there is another more discouraging explanation for lower e-commerce fraud rates: Serious computer criminals have moved beyond basic credit card fraud to more sophisticated account creation fraud that allows them to steal money directly from banks.  So-called "new account fraud is not counted in the CyberSource survey, Schwegman said. 

Kevin Haley, director at Symantec Security Response, said this migration could explain why merchant fraud was down but overall cybercrime activity spiked, according to Symantec research. Clearly, he said, cybercriminals haven’t gone away.

"In general we're seeing 2009 as a pretty bad year from a security standpoint," he said. "Record levels of spam, a nine fold increase in malware sent through e-mail.  The rises we saw in the things we track are astronomical."

The price of stolen credit cards in the underground economy was flat, however, supporting CyberSource’s research that that Web site fraud is no longer the sexy part of cybercrime.

And there's more sobering news — fraud rates remain abysmal among online electronics , Schwegman said.  Electronics sellers still turn down one order of every 18 they receive, the CyberSource survey found, a rate that's consistent with past years and double that of other merchants. Turning away fraud is good, of course.  But with high order rejection rates, there’s always some babies thrown out with the bath water – the more rejections, the more legitimate orders and the more lost sales.

Meanwhile, heavy losses also hurt consumers, in two ways: through higher prices and more hassles at the checkout counter.  When a site suffers fraud, it conducts more "manual reviews" of orders, which can slow down the purchasing process. Consumers who wish to buy Christmas gifts and have them shipped to the recipient can find they face far more questions when the shipping address and credit card billing address don't match.

Still, despite the caveats, the drop in overall fraud is meaningful, Schwegman said. 

"The fraud rate was stable for so long, and we are very careful with the methodology, so we think it's significant," he said.  “This isn’t a battle that can ever be won outright. But we’re certainly going to make life difficult for the bad guys.”

The CyberSource survey involves both customers and non-customers of CyberSource security products; it involved 352 responses from Web sites representing more than $60 billion in annual online sales, and was conducted by Mindwave Research.

RED TAPE WRESTLING TIPS
Consumers shopping online for the holidays should be heartened by survey results, as it appears online Web sites are gaining ground on criminals. If it becomes harder to use stolen credit cards, criminals will steal them less often.

But that doesn't mean shoppers don't have to be vigilant. The security gap between well-known, large e-commerce sites and niche sites continues to widen. So those surfing and buying at smaller Web sites should consider using old-fashioned purchasing tools, Schwegman said.

"If I'm shopping for a unique gift at a smaller site, that's when I would tend to use more secure payment methods, or maybe even place the order over the phone," he said. 

Symantec's Haley pointed out that, despite years of work battling the problem, phishing remains the number one threat to consumers during the holiday season. The frequency of e-mails from retailers offering consumers receipts or shipping status updates creates a fertile ground for hackers to send fake e-mails soliciting personal information.

"We'll see things around the Christmas seasons, like e-mails that claim to be from a department store they may really be doing business with," he said. "Users can be tricked to click on a link and give up their credentials. People should be more wary of that kind of attack during this season."

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	GM invests $336 million into Detroit plant to build Volt Step #5,453 of #7,503 to bring the car to market.		EPA says green house gases endanger people, environment – and it’s all our fault It’s official: the cars we drive are hurting us.
	Hopenhagen brings eco-cars to Denmark for climate change conference Plenty of EVs, hydrogen vehicles and more in Denmark right now.	Other news: Chevy Volt: The Song REPORT: Minicar, EV on the way from Opel Peugeot to show off fuel cell ER-EV 307CC this week

AutoblogGreen for 12.08.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google launched Wave to a wider audience a couple of months ago, though it mostly failed to live up to the hype. People were expecting the next-generation communications system, the email killer and got instead a rather complicated service which doesn’t really know what it wants to be when it grows up. Nevertheless, demand has been high, people wanted to see for themselves if the hype was warranted or if the negative reviews were accurate, and Google is now saying, more or less, that it has sent out one million invites for the service which is still in private beta and closed to the public.

“[O]ur users’ top feature request is “more invitations.” We’ve been working to increase the capacity of our preview setup and have sent invitations to everyone who requested an invite through our online form. If you’d like to request an invitation, you can still sign up here,” Grim Iversen, product manager, Google Wave wrote. “We’ve also given existing users additional invitations to share with family, friends, and colleagues.”

Google did a survey a while back to see what it is that Wave users dig about the service and what they want to change. Unsurprisingly, most people just wanted more invitations to send out to their friends and family which Google has now provided. The number of invite… (read more)

The latest numbers out of foreclosure ground zero — South Florida — are pretty ugly, though if you squint, there’s some good positives signs in there.

——

Lenders filed more than 7,000 foreclosure actions in November against properties in the tricounty South Florida region, representing an average of 233 filings per day in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, according to a new report from the Condo Vultures® Foreclosure Database™.

The November 2009 foreclosure actions represent a 15 percent increase over the 6,085 filings in November 2008 and a 76 percent increase over the 3,986 actions submitted in November 2007, according to the report produced using government records. 

The November actions put the South Florida region on pace for nearly 97,000 foreclosure filings in 2009, down from a pace of more than 100,000 actions at the end of the second quarter on June 30. By comparison, lenders filed 75,000 foreclosure actions for the year of 2008 and 33,000 for the year of 2007, according to the report produced using government records.

“South Florida foreclosures continue to increase on a daily basis but just at slower pace than was being realized in the first half of 2009,” said Peter Zalewski, a principal with the Bal Harbour, Fla.-based real estate consultancy Condo Vultures® LLC. “A key reason for the slowdown in filings may be the sudden willingness of lenders to permit short sales by owners who owe more than their properties are worth. This philosophical adjustment by lenders is effecting the number of properties that are ultimately going into foreclosure and being repossessed by lenders.” 

To repossess a South Florida residence, a lender must undertake a lengthy and costly legal process that can take up to a year.

Lenders normally plan for a six month to nine month process that will cost between $40,000 and $80,000 per property. In addition to that, many lenders do not even file the initial foreclosure paperwork – known as a Lis Pendens or a Notice of Default – until a borrower is at least 90 days late on regularly scheduled mortgage payments.

Once a lender finally does repossess a property, the bank inherits the responsibility of settling up outstanding liens on the property that live on after the foreclosure, such as property taxes, past-due condo association maintenance fees, and open permits. 

On a county-by-county basis overall, Broward County, where Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood Beach, and Pompano Beach are located, had the highest number of foreclosure filings in November with 3,305, up nine percent from 3,031 filings during the same period in 2008, according to CondoVultures.com.

Palm Beach County, where Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach are located, had the second highest number of foreclosure filings with 1,890 in November, up 24 percent from 1,526 filings in the same month in 2008.  

Miami-Dade County, where Miami Beach, Key Biscayne, and Aventura are located, was third with 1,808 foreclosure filings in November, up 18 percent from 1,528 filings in November 2008, according to the Condo Vultures® Foreclosure Database™.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Millions More Are At Risk Of Foreclosure Than Anyone Realizes
• Foreclosure "Tsunami" Means The Florida Market Won’t Bottom Until 2011
• Foreclosures Fall For The Third Straight Month

In its almost yearly tradition to help the data-addicted readers between us buying appropriate presents, here is the data-inspired wish list for the holidays.

1. iPhone
Newcomers to this blog can recognize how hip this blog is by the novelty of the first proposed gadget.
Because: An iPhone to a data addict is like crack to a heroine addict. There is no way back. Shown above: The Financial Times app with incredibly beautiful stock market graphs.
However: You will miss the time before-the-iPhone, that is when you had to ‘wait’ for a time and a place to access rich data.

2. The Visual Miscellaneum
Because: The book must be beautiful, if it resembles anything on its blog Information is Beautiful.
However: For those insisting such graphs are just ‘eye candy’, there is Stephen Few’s Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis.

3. We Feel Fine
Because: The infamous We Feel Fine is the classic example of information aesthetics. Nice detail: the book is available as a PDF version on the website.
However: Is the book as good as …. the interactive version?

Editorial Note: I do assume all these book are absolutely great and must-haves, as I haven’t seen them in flesh myself. The virtue to receive free review copies and gadgets seems to be reserved to blogs like Engadget. Not an aesthetic data visualization blog.

4. Ego iPhone App
Because: Logging into all these self-indulgent online services is too time consuming.
However: We do not care about self-indulgence. Having some overview over historical trends would be nice. Sparklines anyone?
Price: $2.49

5. Chumby One
Because: You cannot have too many information displays in the home. For instance, my own first-generation Chumby is located in the kitchen. That is: after realizing playing with an iPhone while washing the dishes is not that smart.
However: Why is there no Newsmap or Digg Arc for the Chumby?
Price: $119.5

6. Infographic Posters
Because: Its seems to be quite popular, selling infographic posters online. Take your pick: HistoryShots, FlowingPrints, WallStats, and the recently emerged TimePlots are all competing for that little wall space in your home or office.
However: Isn’t that white wall meant to ‘rest’ your eyes on after straining to all those graphs online?

7. Nooka Zaz
Because: You can subtly show off the coolness of the watch while others figure out what time it is.
However: Might be problematic when you really want to know the time.
Price: $380.

8. Infographic Vinyl Decal
Because: You stopped having available wall space after all those infographic posters. Hence, the bath tub, Fridge and kitchen backdrop must be information-enhanced.
However: You can still do it better and go all the way. For instance, tile your bathroom according to a subway map.
Price: $25-$125

9. Philips DirectLife
Because: With this electronic pedometer, web-based statistics and LED-based reward system in one, you want to measure, store and analyze every move you make.
However: As this technology even works when placed in a trouser pocket, you could wait until a service like this becomes the next-generation iPhone app.
Price: $79 + monthly subscription.

10. Amazon Kindle
Because: You want to tell you children you once read books in black-and-white. Think about experiencing We Feel Fine, The Visual Miscellaneum or Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis on e-paper.
However: Hmmm, think about reading We Feel Fine, The Visual Miscellaneum or Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis on e-paper.
Price: $259.

11. Measure Me Stick
Because: visualization + kids + measuring = fun
However: For that price, looks like a future DIY project.
Price: $120.

Some of this, and much more, at the infosthetics shop.

Any other suggestions?

In its recent presentation on the future of gold prices, miner Barrick Gold (ABX) bullishly noted the coming, permanent decline in annual gold production.

It’s a topic that’s been getting A TON of attention lately, as gold soars.

It’s also a relatively new (and controversial) idea, piggybacking on years of thought and analysis related to peak oil.

Over at The Oil Drum, Jean Laherrére has been attempting to model global gold production to show that indeed, the amount we pull out of the earth annually is set to decline permanently.

His first endeavor (which we wrote about here) focused on production within each major gold producing country.

The second part focuses on the macro, global measures of mining which further bolster the case for peak gold. We’ve picked out some of our favorite, most-telling charts from the presentation.

Now see the evidence >>

This content originally appeared on The Oil Drum and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Money Pours Into Tiny Speculative Miners As "Peak Gold" Looms
• Barrick Gold: Here’s Why We Eliminated Our Gold Hedges, Just As The Marked Started To Peak (ABX)
• The Overwhelming Evidence For Peak Gold (GLD)

Visit us on our booth xxx in hall xxx at the testing expo in Stuttgart / Germany from 22nd to 24th June 2010.

No one denies that child pornography is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. However, it often seems like the laws related to child pornography are targeted at the wrong thing. That’s why we get laws requiring filters, rather than the shut down of whoever is producing the content, and laws against those who end up having any on their hard drive, even as that could make a felon out of someone just because they receive an email. Take, for example (as pointed out by Slashdot), this story of a man who was searching online for regular (legal) pornography, but accidentally downloaded some underage pictures — which he immediately deleted. Though the FBI officials who eventually searched his hard drive admit that the images had been deleted and could not be accessed, he was still charged with child pornography and is pleading guilty to get a shorter sentence (3.5 years, 10 years probation, and a lifetime on the sex offenders list).

Though this article serves as a warning of why you shouldn’t go looking for porn online — it would seem that the stronger argument is why the laws on possession should change. In cases like this, where the guy was clearly not out there seeking out or collecting such content, it seems ridiculous that he should be charged and feel the need to plead guilty. Anti-child porn efforts should really focus on those who produces and distributes such content. As for those who collect it, I would assume that mental health help would be a more appropriate response than jail time. And, for those who accidentally come across it… it seems fairly ridiculous to charge them as well.

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Google made a big splash with the announcement of the real-time search features it’s rolling out over the course of a few days. Apart from the feature itself, there’s another announcement that warrants some attention, Google has signed a deal with Facebook to integrate data from the world’s biggest social network in the real-time search results. Considering that the two companies are shaping up to be the two major players online over the coming years, it’s understandable that a partnership, even a limited one, is somewhat surprising.

Nevertheless, Facebook is the world’s largest source for real-time information, even though Twitter gets most of the attention, and Google is the world’s largest search engine, so some sort of deal should have been expected. However, Facebook won’t be providing the bulk of its data, arguably the most important one as well, but only updates from Facebook Pages which are always public.

The Pages are used by companies, artists, organizations and so on to establish a presence on Facebook mostly for promotional purposes, which makes them less than ideal as a real-time information source. Facebook updates from regular users, even the public entries, won’t be included in the Google real-time search results for now, though they may be in the future.

Facebook … (read more)

Two decades of stimulus and cheap money haven’t worked in Japan, but hey, why not give it another shot? Maybe it will work this time.

NYT: In the package announced Tuesday, which comes to about 1.5 percent of Japanese gross domestic product, the government will spend $39 billion to prop up regional economies and pay for public works projects.

Environmental programs like incentives to purchase energy-efficient gadgets will receive $9 billion, and measures to increase employment will get $6.8 billion.

The government will also offer loan guarantees for small companies to ease the credit crunch, the cabinet said in a statement.

All very familiar sounding, no. Only the part about gadgets seems particularly Japanese. The rest could be announced here on any day.

Of course, this move is being undertaken by newly-eledted, but unpopular prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, who will again face the voters soon, showing that, in the end, all politicians running for office are Keynesians.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Fears Mount Over Japan’s $100 Billion Treasury Sell Off
• Japan Fights Deflation With Keynesian Kamikaze
• Japan Preparing To Launch Quantitative Easing; What Are Three Lost Decades Among Hyperdeflationary Friends?

American dividend yields not quite enough either.

Well here some of top Asian dividend stocks we picked from a Citi Investment Research list.

They're interesting because they provide high yields, but also allow you to tap into established Asian cash cow businesses in telecom, real estate, and infrastructure.

They are also essentially bets on stronger Asian currencies and growing domestic demand in Asia. Thus long-term trends are very much in their favor

Cash In On Asian Cash Cows >>>

Everyone should due their own due diligence, but this is at least a starting point. Note that we provide links to each company's website, just click on the ticker we show for each slide.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Citi: Cost Cutting Is Over, Now Leverage Will Drive Earnings
• Former Citi Chairman Says Geithner Looks Uptight And Needs To Relax
• Citi: The Market Is Back In Panic Mode

According to a former part-time tutor at Cardiff University, January 24th is the most depressing day of the year.  Dr Cliff Arnalls took a number of factors into consideration including the weather, debt, money due to be paid in the month of January, time since Christmas, motivation levels and more.  

The formula Dr Arnalls used a somewhat complicated looking equation to establish this downer of a day.  Following the publishing of this date, an insurance company spoke up to say that drivers seem to lose their tempers more often and speed more in January.  There’s even a name for this: Winter driver’s disorder.

Included in the equation is ‘Q’ which represents the failure to quit a bad habit and ‘NA’, the need to take action and do something.  Dr Arnalls’ research led him to believe that one month after Christmas festivities have ended is the most dire day because holiday energy has worn off by then and many have abandoned their New Year Resolutions by this point.  These factors all combine to create a sense of failure that knocks the confidence for a loop by the 24th.

(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

I’m generally not a big fan of picking a few recessions out of a hat in order to compare them to the current recession (particularly considering the de-levering nature of this recession), but these charts are interesting nonetheless.  Although bubble bursts rarely repeat themselves the price action does tend to rhyme.  On the back of a massive market implosion and the subsequent rally you have to wonder if Goldman Sachs isn’t right when they say that 2010 might just rhyme with the ultra boring investment year of 2004.  As you can see in the following chart, the last 4 major market crashes were all followed by major downside or sideways movement at this point in the rally:

Read more market commentary at The Pragmatic Capitalist >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Goldman: It’s 2004 All Over Again
• Morgan Stanley: Here Comes A Brutal 2010
• Watch The Market Go Gaga For Ben Bernanke