With deficit hawks circling overhead, the responsibility for creating jobs has fallen by default to Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Last week the Fed said it expected to keep interest rates near zero through mid 2015 in order to stimulate employment.

Two cheers.

The problem is, low interest rates alone won’t do it. The Fed has held interest rates near zero for several years without that much to show for it. A smaller portion of American adults is now working than at any time in the last thirty years.

So far, the biggest beneficiaries of near-zero interest rates haven’t been average Americans. They’ve been too weighed down with debt to borrow more, and their wages keep dropping. And because they won’t and can’t borrow more, businesses haven’t had more customers. So there’s been no reason for businesses to borrow to expand and hire more people, even at low interest rates.

The biggest winners from the Fed’s near-zero rates have been the big banks, which are now assured of two or more years of almost free money. The big banks haven’t used  the money to refinance mortgages – why should they when they can squeeze more money out of homeowners by keeping them at higher rates? Instead, they’ve used the almost free money to make big bets on derivatives. If the bets continue to go well, the bankers will continue to make a bundle. If the bets sour, well, you know what happens then. Watch your wallets.

The truth is, low interest rates won’t boost the economy without an expansive fiscal policy that makes up for the timid spending of  consumers and businesses. Until more Americans have more money in their pockets, government spending has to fill the gap.

On this score, the big news isn’t the Fed’s renewed determination to keep interest rates low. The big news is global lender’s desperation to park their savings in Treasury bills. The euro is way too risky, the yen is still a basket case, China is slowing down and no one knows what will happen to its currency, and you’d have to be crazy to park your savings in Russia.

It’s a match made in heaven – or should be. Because foreigners are so willing to buy T-bills, America can borrow money more cheaply than ever. We could use it to put Americans back to work rebuilding our crumbling highways and bridges and schools, cleaning up our national parks and city parks and playgrounds, and doing everything else that needs doing that we’ve neglected for too long.

This would put money in people’s pockets and encourage them to take advantage of the Fed’s low interest rates to borrow even more. And their spending, in turn, would induce businesses to expand and create more jobs. A virtuous cycle.

Yet for purely ideological reasons we’re heading in the opposite direction. The federal government is cutting back spending. It’s not even helping state and local governments — which continue to lay off teachers, fire fighters, social workers, and police officers.

Worst of all, we’re facing a so-called “fiscal cliff” next year when $109 billion in federal spending cuts automatically go into effect. The Congressional Budget Office warns this may push us into recession – which will cause more joblessness and make the federal budget deficit even larger relative to the size of the economy. That’s the austerity trap Europe has fallen into.

Mitt Romney has been criticizing the Obama administration for not doing more to avoid the cliff, but he seems to forget that congressional Republicans brought it on when they refused to raise the debt ceiling. They then created the cliff as a fall-back mechanism. Romney’s vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan, chair of the House budget committee, voted for it. 

It’s a mindless gimmick that presumes our biggest problem is the deficit, when even the Fed understands our biggest problem right now is unemployment. Yet even the nation’s credit-rating agencies have bought into the mindlessness. Last week Moody’s said it would likely downgrade U.S. government bonds if Congress and the White House don’t come up with a credible plan to reduce the federal budget deficit. (Standard & Poor’s has already downgraded U.S. debt.)

Hello? Can we please stop obsessing about the federal budget deficit? Repeat after me: America’s #1 economic problem is unemployment. Our #1 goal should be to restore job growth. Period.

The Federal Reserve Board understands this. And at least it’s trying. But it can’t succeed on its own. Global lenders are giving us a way out. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity. 

Are you tired of spending lots of time and money writing blog posts day in and day out to ensure you have fresh, quality content on your website? If so, it may be time to consider a user-generated content strategy.

What Is User-Generated Content?

First off, let’s define user-generated content (UGC) and why it’s useful:

UCG is content that is generated by people who visit your site. Pretty straightforward. Examples include product reviews, blog post comments, and forum entries.

What Are the Benefits of User-Generated Content?

Some benefits of UCG include:

• Increased User Engagement: When people have the chance to write their mind on your website, they tend to stick around longer. Also, they also want to read what others are saying and make connections. It has the potential of creating a great community for your audience.
•  More Effective Marketing: We trust reviews more than we trust traditional marketing pitches. If you can get customers to write reviews about your products or services (good and bad!) it is a lot more effective than you telling your visitors what a great offering you have.
• Improved SEO: Of course, fresh content is good for SEO. With UCG you get new content daily without lifting a finger (sweet!). The search engines like that.

Now that we know what UCG is, and why it’s awesome, let’s talk about some fun ways to get it.

User-Generated Blogs with a Twist

Who says your audience can’t blog for you? Getting users to create blog posts for you is a great way to increase engagement and build a community around your brand.

GoodBlogs is a UGC blogging platform that allows visitors to submit blog posts. What’s cool about it is that readers can vote for their favorite posts. And bloggers whose post reaches the “Top Posts” page get paid (for example, $10)!

This incentive drives quantity and quality content and creates an improved experience for visitors who are just there to read content, thus increasing return traffic, social sharing, and consequently more exposure for your brand.

According to the GoodBlogs website, The Flaming Vegan is an example of a GoodBlog. In the first three months, it “published over 500 original user-submitted blog posts.” And a month later, they had over 500 new registrations opting in to receive information from them. That’s the power of UGC.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

People love to take pictures. Just take a look at this content omniverse infographic and note that 3,000 images are uploaded to Facebook every second.

Encourage your audience to take pictures using your products, doing wacky things (just not too wacky) related to your business/services/products, or posing in front of (or inside) your place of business.

To see this concept in action, check out Bear Naked’s “How do you live Bear Naked?” page. (The lasting impact of this strategy is illustrated by the fact that 2+ years after last visiting their site, I still remember this page…)

The Age of Video

Not only does your audience love taking pictures, they also love shooting videos. With the advances in video-editing technology and its relative accessibility, anybody can be a movie star, director, or producer. And people love watching videos, too! Going back to the content omniverse infographic, we find that YouTube had 1 trillion views in 2011. That’s a lot of video watching.

Learn more about user-generated content videos.

How Are We Doing?

Remember those suggestion boxes at the gym, doctor’s office, and grocery stores? They may still exist in various locations, but more and more, the suggestion boxes are moving online.

People like to give feedback—good and bad. It makes them feel like they have input into their future happiness with your product or service. So why not create a virtual suggestion box on your website and allow users to post their thoughts, ideas, and complaints?

Of course, this requires a certain amount of moderation, but it’s a great way to get content. You can even take it a step further and give away prizes for the “best suggestion of the month” to encourage participation.

IdeaScale is an example of a virtual suggestion box platform. According to the website, they help you “bring out the best ideas from your customers and stakeholders by giving them a platform to share, vote, and discuss feedback.”

I’m still on my high from Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs. The high is so great that I decided to buy his book on Albert Einstein. Currently, I’m not done with the book yet (I’m only on page 110). I’m an SEO guy; I keep getting lost when they try to explain what the difference between blackbody radiation and the invisible ether.

My heart goes out to this guy [Einstein]. He was no older than 25 years old, couldn’t get a job, graduated at the bottom of his class, and couldn’t get any of his papers published. In a way, this reminds me of me.

Back then (1910-ish), in order for you to be someone, your work had to be published. The communication of your brilliance was limited by the media outlet that would publish your work. In fact, I think Einstein only had a handful of outlets to submit his papers to. If he burned one bridge at a media publisher, his chances of getting published severely decreased. As a child of social media and WordPress, I can’t imagine what this must feel like.

So there he was, 25 and unpublished, getting rejected at every turn of his career. A few years down the road, his papers started getting published, and we all know what that led to … He changed the world! But, what if all his ideas were not blocked by the media publishers. What if every time Einstein had an idea, he could tweet about it or conduct a TED Talk? What if Einstein had his own blog, Facebook fan page, and Twitter following…

Follow Me on This One (Theory)

How much innovation is lost because the thought leaders of our time are not using social media correctly? How many CEOs, educators, scientists, doctors, politicians, and leaders are losing out because they don’t “Get It.”  Who is losing out, the professional who doesn’t get it or the collective globe that will never hear the idea?

Tweeting, blogging, and Facebooking is still mystery to most industry professionals, innovators, up-and-coming Einsteins, and community leaders. I’m lucky to be knee-deep in this innovation on a daily basis. Again, I’m lucky to be blessed with the ability to allow companies and individuals harness the true power of content and social media.

Keep Following Me on This One (Theory Continued…)

How many students are in our universities RIGHT NOW with the answers to today’s world problems? These students are studying physics at Kenyon College in Ohio and have ideas of great importance circling around their head. They spend most their time working on college papers and ignoring the true genius that’s inside of them. They are not building social following or blogging. Heck, some of the science “geeks” still don’t have Facebook accounts. (They should! My FB stock is still falling. Come on, people, get on it and click on some ads!)

What if these students knew how easy it was to start a blog? What if they understood that all it takes is one blog post to get picked up? Do you think that one blog post can change the world?

I fear that our educational system is slow to teach out youth the importance of social media. Our generation has busted down the idea that media publishers control the power of voice. Do our students understand this? Sure, there will be one Einstein in every generation. But, I have a gut feeling that there are 10,000 Einsteins out there right now, and their ideas are being silenced by the noise of today.

My Challenge To You

Brilliant people are one of two things: They are either stubborn or have big egos. You don’t have to ask a person with big ego to be a guest poster or to blog, they get the idea and love it! But, let’s focus on the stubborn people and the students.

Do you know any brilliant people who are thought leaders and will not admit it? These are the people that you talk to every day and are inspired by. Do you know students or professors that have groundbreaking ideas but keep them to their selves? If so, it’s up to us to change this.

I challenge you to push them, get them to write blog content. Get these people to publish their ideas on the Web and the open world. Also, I challenge you to ask the educators of your students, “How are you teaching our kids the importance of social media?”

Einstein challenged authority every chance he had. He did this through his reasoning, thought experiments, and his drive to question what has already been accepted by the masses. If Einstein was alive today, I bet he would utilize social media to the extreme. He would create an army of people that shared his vision … to further mankind.

Do you think it’s possible to build a billion dollar online business? Yes, I believe even if you have doubt in your mind.

The richest super marketers today didn’t start making millions their first month, they did with consistency and hard work. If you want to raise a beautiful family, build a good house and send your relatives to good schools with your online business then you have to start thinking like a billionaire.

Building a billion dollar business begins with a billion dollar idea!

You don’t need money  to start up ‘’that’’ business, all you need is an idea. If you must make money online, then you must devote your time in meeting the needs of people.

Building a successful business online demands hard work. In fact you will face challenges and there are times you’ll feel like giving up; but listen, don’t give up, don’t give in!

Learn from successful online entrepreneurs

Zac Johnson

Zac Johnson started his business fifteen years ago. He started his blog ( Johnson.com) not because of the profit behind it, but because of his passion and desire for upcoming affiliate marketers to succeed.

His desire and vision brought him the fame and money he has today.

Michael Chibuzor

Michael chibuzor is a young guest posting Ninja who started blogging two years ago. His passion and drive to teach upcoming freelance writers how to succeed makes him thousands of dollars today from freelance writing.

What are you thinking, how far can you see?

I used this two successful entrepreneurs not because I felt like promoting them, but to encourage and tell you that it’s possible for you to make billions online. All you need is focus and direction.

Want to build a billion dollar online business? Read this…

How far can you see? Think big!

The universe does not help people with small ideas ( I mean, small vision). It helps people who can see far, people who can see into the future.  It helps people who can see and think big despite the challenges around them.

You need to think big!  Erase  those negative thoughts and take up the helmet of success. You need the right mentality if you want to build a billion dollar business online.

Believe in yourself, and most importantly your idea!

If your belief is not strong, you’ll affect others around you. How do you want to get people trust you if you don’t believe in yourself? Close your eyes, refuse to listen to friends who hate you for your belief and make you think you cannot be rich.

Don’t procrastinate– focus

Do one thing extremely well until you’re good at it.

The power of focus is important if you must succeed online. Don’t allow distractions, stay away from them. Focus on your goals, work hard to achieve them and celebrate your victories.

It may take long, but don’t give up, don’t give in!

Every successful online entrepreneur produced results after plowing through difficult times and failures. If you’re afraid of failing then it means you’re not ready to be rich!

Over to you, my last words…

Remember, nobody is going to build your business for you. You are responsible for the upkeep of your business therefore, learn from this successful online entrepreneurs and apply the tips stated in this article.

All things are possible.

There are so many incredible social media channels from which to choose. Of all of them, one will stand out above the rest and will be the most effective of all for your business. Choosing is easier than you think.

Many business people today are very busy. In fact, they are so busy that they don’t have time to waste on social media strategies for their business. Choosing the best channel for your business is critical to your success. However, it isn’t as difficult as it may seem when it comes to choosing the most effective and appropriate channel for your particular business. It isn’t necessary to start from scratch when it comes to establishing your online presence. It is perfectly appropriate to examine what other business owners are doing with social media and follow their approach (as long as it works well for your business).

How social media is being used

It goes without saying that not all business people use social media in exactly the same way and it is worthwhile to get a good sense of exactly how social media is being used so that you can learn from those people and apply what they are doing to your own business. A very large concern, when it comes to social media choices, is about return on investment (ROI). You are making a great  deal of effort when it comes to your online campaign and you would like to know that your efforts are paying off. Not only that but you also want a way to measure your business’s success as a result of your efforts. Another important issue is your target audience and how you go about identifying and targeting them. These are important concerns and before you can get much further, you need to start to gather data in those areas first.

Choosing an effective social media channel for your business

Of course, there are several social media channels that people discuss on a regular basis and choosing one of them (after you have been able to make an informed, educated decision) will most likely be what occurs. When choosing the right social media channel, there are a few ideas that you must consider. You should consider the time that you will need to invest, your focus in the market, and your experience.

• The time that you will need to invest: The larger the amount of time that you are able (and willing) to invest, the more interesting and effective your social media repository will be. This will also help you to determine which channels are right for your business. For example, a great number of business owners spend a large amount of time per week on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blog writing. The more serious you are about your social media efforts and how they will affect your business, the more you will get out of your social media efforts.
• Your focus in the market: If you are most involved with B2B marketing, you will probably get involved most with LinkedIn and then Twitter, blog writing and finally, Facebook. Of course, each channel has its own merits and each one has something unique to offer. It is up to you to choose which one(s) fit your business needs the most closely.
• Your experience: If you don’t have a great deal of experience with social media for your business yet, Facebook may be the social media channel for you. After that, you may want to consider Twitter. As you become more experienced, you will have to look closely at channels that you have not yet chosen and evaluate if they are right for your business.

Use what is already out there

When you are trying to determine what to choose, look at the brilliance of others and bask in their brightness. When it comes to top-quality social media channels, you have so much available to you that you should take advantage of whatever you can. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting help from other people who have already been through what you are struggling with now. It is a very smart business approach. However, always remember how important it is to do your homework and truly educate yourself about what is out there. What may be good for one business won’t necessarily be good for another. Your social media interactions should be compelling, exciting and most of all, educational. After all, your constant goal is to help other people and to help them to solve their problems.

I saw this Harvard Business Review blog post about why some ads go viral and others don’t, and it made me start thinking about why some Tweets go viral.

Accidental Nudity: Actress Allison Pill accidentally tweeted a nude photo of herself, and after seeing the short headline in my morning Metro paper, I decided to explore a little more why some tweets go viral. I’ve also previously seen and captured one of the CBC Dragon’s Den tweeting something unbelievable, but within minutes it was deleted and they made the claim it was a friend sitting at their computer tweeting inappropriately. I might face that Dragon some day soon, asking for a business investment, so I also have ‘lost’ the image of the tweet.

The Facebook Factor Affecting Viral
Facebook has a significantly larger audience and many of the people I know who are influential (to me) on Facebook are also very active on Twitter. I admit that I miss most of the Tweets from the 28,000+ people I follow on all my accounts and client accounts (I’m really NOT on Twitter all the time), so I rely on the people I respect and appreciate to “alert” me to Tweets that need some attention, before they go viral. Also, often to learn about a platform, you have to have some distance from it to observe the full scale of it and this is exactly how I developed my reputation as an expert on Twitter – by sharing facts, tidbits of conversations and insights about Twitter – on facebook. Usually, surprisingly, the Tweets that people point out on facebook that are teachable are not “funny” tweets but examples of what not to do. So I watch for them.

The Geekalanche / Geeks With Heart
Since social media is social, people are on the lookout to protect & inform. On the morning of Friday July 20 I saw the new headlines on the subway platforms cc screens: Mass shooting at the Dark Knight movie premiere in Aurora, Colorado. It was shocking but there wasn’t any more news of it in my hands / in front of me and I went on to work that morning preparing for the upcoming Olympics in London.

Shocking Bad Tweets
A few hours later, on Facebook I saw Julie Tyios, a team member at Jugnoo and one of my early social media teachers, post to Facebook something a little out of character, she was obviously incensed. Her update was a link and something along the lines of “Wow. You people are f*#&ing idiots.” And it clicked through to a link on a UK based clothing retailer @celebBoutique Twitter account that tweeted something happy, light, totally insensitive and capitalizing on the #Aurora trending hashtag.

When I searched their Twitter handle to see who else was talking about them, I found a whole barrage of hundreds of Tweets from people immediately expressing their disgust over the Tweet, encouraging, demanding and insisting @celebBoutique delete it and apologize, with a few even calling for a complete boycott of their business. A number of people took screenshots of the tweet, to memorialize it, which sat on their account for more than an hour before they deleted it and issued an apology. I for one believe they were simply idiots for not checking what the trending #Aurora hashtag was about before tweeting into that stream. Bad social media policy, overall.

They thought they were being funny, but because they hadn’t researched the Tweet first, the humour totally fell flat and instead of surprising people and making them laugh over a happy coincidence, they found themselves in the middle of an angry horde of Tweeters.

Surprising Good Humor
What makes the humour work and encourages sharing is when it’s surprising, relatable but not shocking. Surprising humour gets retweeted and has a chance to go viral, shocking may go viral, but you’ll alienate your audience in the process. Most people generally don’t want to be associated with shocking content, but surprising is a form of giving – unexpected humour. No matter what the content is, shocking or surprising, the person who shares it will have their community associate them in that way. We all like a surprise, but a shock – not so much. Since sharing is not actually altruistic (I’m sharing this because I think you’ll enjoy it) but self-serving (I’m sharing this so you’ll see me as “in the know” and the person who finds cool things for you), as in the HBR video

The U.S. has settled once again into a pattern of lackluster growth, but one part of the economy stands out: housing.

To be sure, the real-estate market hasn’t come close to recovering from its worst slump in modern times. Sales of new and pre-owned homes and construction on new units are still far below the historical norm. Yet like the turtle in the tale of The Tortoise and the Hare, the market continues to inch forward.

Home sales and new construction are among the key economic reports this week in a light slate of data. Also on the docket are several surveys of U.S. manufacturing that are expected to show business has flat-lined.

MarketWatch consensus

See economic calendar

date	report	Consensus	previous
Sept. 17	Empire state index	0.0	-5.9
Sept. 18	Home builders’ index	38	37
Sept. 19	Housing starts	775,000	746,000
Sept. 19	Existing home sales	4.60 mln	4.47 mln
Sept. 20	Weekly jobless claims	375,000	382,000
Sept. 20	Leading indicators	-0.1%	0.4%
Sept. 20	Philly Fed	-4.0	-7.1

/conga/economy-politics/calendars/preview widget.html 225961

What investors want to know is whether the housing market can maintain its upward momentum even as the U.S. economy plods along.

The number of new homes on which construction has started, known as housing starts, is forecast to rise to 770,000 in August from 746,000 in June, according to economists surveyed by MarketWatch.

While that would not be a big increase from one month to the next, home builders are clearly more busy now than they were a year earlier. Housing starts have jumped 21.5% in the past 12 months.

Of course, the housing market had to rise sooner or later. The sale of new homes fell to 306,000 in 2011, the lowest on record since the government began keeping track in 1963.

A bottomed reached, home sales have improved in 2012 amid somewhat faster growth and hiring, pent-up demand and declining interest rates. A 30-year fixed mortgage, for example, fell to 3.55% last week, compared to 4.12% one year ago, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac

The Federal Reserve’s decision on Thursday to buy billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities could put further pressure on already-low home rates to fall, stoking even more sales. Read more on Fed decisions.

ECONOMY AND POLITICS
Confidence boost
A gauge of consumer sentiment reaches its best level in four months, led up entirely by brighter expectations.
• Industrial production slumps
• Consumer inflation jumps
• Retail sales pumped by gas, auto purchases
• Fed launches QE3
• Political Watch blog
• U.S. economic calendar
• Global economic calendar
• Columns: Nutting | Delamaide
• Follow @MKTWEconomics

/conga/story/misc/dc.html 225899

“Mortgage rates are still coming down,” noted Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

He said higher home prices — a result of increase demand and short supply — could finally spur lenders to loosen tight loan standards and approve more mortgages.

Although sales and construction of new homes have picked up, the bulk of the action is still in the pre-owned market. Prices on these homes, some of which had been foreclosed and offered at below-market rates, are priced more attractively.

The latest report on existing home sales in August, released Thursday, is expected to show a 2.9% increase to an annual rate of 4.60 million. Existing home sales have climbed more than 10% over the past year.

The recovery in sales of new and used homes has been especially beneficial to the stocks of home builders. Most of these stocks have doubled or tripled in price in 2012 and sit near multi-year highs.

Take PulteGroup (NYSE:PHM) . Shares of the Michigan-based home builder have surged above $16 after languishing under $7 to start the year. And the stock traded at a scant three dollars and change last fall.

The same huge bump has occurred to the stocks of Meritage Homes (NYSE:MTH) , M/I Homes (NYSE:MHO) (NYSE:MHO) , KB Home (NYSE:KBH) and D.R. Horton (NYSE:DHI) .

At the same time the housing market is mending, the U.S. manufacturing sector has cooled off. A slew of data, including last week’s report on industrial production, show that manufacturers are expanding at a slow clip after growing like gangbusters for most of the past two years.

Two surveys the measure the outlook of manufacturing executives, the Empire State and Philadelphia Fed indexes, are not expected to show much improvement in September.

Yet the stocks of most manufacturers, like home builders, have risen over the past few months along with the broader U.S. market. A big part of the reason: The expectation that the Fed would try to goose the economy.

The willingness of the Fed to try anything to lift growth has allowed investors to benefit whether the economic news is good or bad.

“If the data are stronger than expected, it’s a buy signal for stocks, commodities and related currencies because economic stimulus is working,” said economist Avery Shenfield at CIBC World Markets. “If the data are weaker, it’s also a buy signal for those same assets, because more stimulus will be on the way.”

Armonk NY Real Estate Report   –    RobReportBlog   –   Sept 2012

Sales over the past six months

2012

57   homes sold

$850,000   median price

2011

44  homes sold

$1,092,000  median price

Homes sales jumped 29% as the median sales price fell 22%.  

Chappaqua NY Real Estate Report   –    RobReportBlog   –   Sept 2012

Sales over the past six months

2012

70   homes sold

$919,000   median price

2011

69  homes sold

$850,000  median price

Homes sales up 1.4% as the median sales price jumped 8.1%.

Pound Ridge NY Real Estate Report   –    RobReportBlog   –   Sept 2012

Sales over the past six months

2012

43   homes sold

$680,000   median price

2011

32  homes sold

$732,500  median price

Homes sales jumped 34% as the median sales price fell 7%.