Hannah Hart is funny when she's drunk. She's funny when she's sober too, but when she's drunk her eyes get all droopy and she asks questions like, "Do you ever notice that when someone makes something from scratch, that suddenly means they're better than you?" Hart poses this question while clutching a glass of rosé on the most recent episode of her Web-video cooking series, My Drunk Kitchen. The rest of the episode features Hart drinking the wine; mixing milk, sugar and vanilla in a Ziploc bag; drinking more wine; wondering how to turn the bag into ice cream; dropping the bag on the floor; drinking more wine and then eating store-bought ice cream from the carton. "I made this from the freezer," she explains at the end.

Hart, 24, has been posting My Drunk Kitchen videos for less than three months. So far, there are eight episodes. The concept is pretty simple. "In the beginning of the video, I'm sober," explains Hart. "And in the end, I'm drunk. Maybe if I'm lucky, I've cooked something too."

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2079263,00.html

The Pleasures of Cooking While Drunk with Hannah Hart - My Drunk Kitchen

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute, discusses Federal Reserve monetary policy and U.S. fiscal policy. He speaks from Tokyo with Mark Barton on Bloomberg Television's "First Look."

Koo Says U.S. Must Increase Borrowing, Spending

The high court has given investors one more reason to ignore a fund’s documents, ruling that a fund’s investment adviser may not be sued for securities fraud due to misstatements made in a fund’s prospectus.

In a 5-4 decision last week, the high court tossed a lawsuit against Janus Capital Group Inc. JNS +0.44% , the sponsor of Denver-based Janus mutual funds. The court ruled that Janus Capital and a subsidiary that advises the funds could not be sued for supposedly misleading statements in the prospectuses of the Janus funds.

The court reasoned that because the parent company is a separate entity from the funds themselves, only the fund can be held to the Securities & Exchange Commission’s standard that “any person, directly or indirectly … [making] any untrue statement of material fact” in the buying or selling process of a security is breaking the law.

Supreme Court leaves fund investors hanging

There's a "perfect storm" of threats brewing, and it could slam the global economy as soon as 2013, according to Nouriel Roubini. Roubini believes that a slowdown in China, the damage done to Japan, the current debt crisis in Europe, and the emerging one in the U.S. have a one third chance of damaging the global economy.

Roubini, from Reuters:
“There are already elements of fragility,” he said. “Everybody’s kicking the can down the road of too much public and private debt. The can is becoming heavier and heavier, and bigger on debt, and all these problems may come to a head by 2013 at the latest.”

Roubini still believes we may escape the worst of this scenario, with the global economy bumping along, with weak growth. One of the big threats Roubini believes the world is facing is a hard landing in China. He sees that country's non-performing loan problem expanding, if it does not quickly reshape its economy around domestic demand.

Nouriel Roubini: This "Perfect Storm" Of Threats Could Slam The Economy By 2013

"We averted Depression in 2008/2009 by acting decisively. Now we can avert a lost decade by recognizing economic reality," Larry Summers wrote.

"The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending, it is resolved only by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending," he wrote in both columns.

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Larry Summers: More stimulus needed

The research analyzes the causes of slow job creation in the period before the recession and during the recovery and the implications of these forces for future job growth. The research projects how the US labor force will evolve over the next ten years and creates different scenarios for job growth based on extensive analysis of sector trends. MGI's central finding is that a return to full employment will occur in only the most optimistic job growth scenario. This will require not only a robust economic recovery, but also a concerted effort to address other factors that impede employment, including growing gaps in skill and education.

The report offers a range of illustrative solutions based on lessons from US states and other countries that MGI hopes will add to the national conversation on jobs.
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Interesting findings in the white paper.

An Economy that Works: Job Creation and America's Future

In 1937, on the eve of a major policy mistake, U.S. economic conditions were surprisingly similar to those in the nation today. Consider, for example, the following summary of economic conditions: (1) Signs indicate that the recession is finally over. (2) Short-term interest rates have been close to zero for years but are now expected to rise. (3) Some are concerned about excessive inflation. (4) Inflation concerns are partly driven by a large expansion in the monetary base in recent years and by banks’ massive holding of excess reserves. (5) Furthermore, some are worried that the recent rally in commodity prices threatens to ignite an inflation spiral.

While this summary arguably describes current trends, it is taken from an account of conditions in 1937 that appears in “The Mistake of 1937: A General Equilibrium Analysis,” an article I coauthored with Benjamin Pugsley. What we call “the Mistake of 1937” was, in broad terms, a decision by the Fed and the administration to implement a series of contractionary policies that choked off the recovery of 1933-37 and brought on the recession of 1937-38, one of the worst on record. What is particularly noteworthy is that the inflation fears that triggered the Mistake of 1937 were largely driven by a rally in commodity prices. These circumstances invite direct comparison with our own time, when a substantial recent rise in commodity prices (which now seems to be abating somewhat) stoked inflation fears and led some commentators to call for an increase in the federal funds rate.

The question for the contemporary reader is this: If we could transport a modern-day economist back to 1937, would he or she have made the same mistake?

Commodity Prices and the Mistake of 1937: Would Modern Economists Make the Same Mistake?

"Double-dip concerns are well founded," says Jack Ablin chief investment officer of Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "The government changed a flat tire in 2008 and now we're driving around without a spare."

Some have decided to exit ahead of September, the market's worst-performing month.

Quote of the day

Despite acting boldly to address the economic crash, the voters lost confidence in the Democrats
on the economy in the years since the heady days of the 2008 presidential election -- and that is
mostly still true. That loss of confidence is the principal reason why Democrats lost control of
the House in 2010 and why the election for President and the Congress in 2012 could be
competitive. This wave of research shows a path for Democrats to gain the ascendancy on the economy.

No incumbent President since Roosevelt has won reelection with greater than 8 percent
unemployment. Current Democratic narratives too often fail to meet voters where they are in
how they perceive and experience the economy and, even more importantly, do not speak to
voters‘ aspirations and goals when thinking about the economic future. They do not take the
voters economic understanding seriously when indeed, they are dead serious.

A Path to Democratic Ascendancy on the Economy Report on the Economy Projec

Some hackers in the U.K. pulled off a cyber attack on an al Qaeda website, replacing bomb recipes with cupcake recipes

Hackers replace bomb recipes with cupcake recipes on al Qaeda website