HBO Talks 'Game Of Thrones' Piracy

EW.com:

How does HBO feel about having the most pirated show on TV?

Read the whole story at EW.com

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/hbo-talks-game-of-thrones_n_2988654.html

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Your Afternoon Cry: Photographer Hauntingly Documents Late ...

If you only read one wrenching, touching, tearjerker of a story today, please make it this one.

Five months after New Yorkers Angelo and Jen Merendino were married, Jen was diagnosed with breast cancer. As the next four years of treatment and medications passed, which left then-39-year-old Jen fatigued, in a walker, staying for long stints in the hospital.

With each challenge we grew closer. Words became less important. One night Jen had just been admitted to the hospital, her pain was out of control. She grabbed my arm, her eyes watering, "You have to look in my eyes, that's the only way I can handle this pain." We loved each other with every bit of our souls.

Jen taught me to love, to listen, to give and to believe in others and myself. I've never been as happy as I was during this time.

Angelo, a photographer, began to document her (and their) trials with intimate, powerful shots initially meant for their friends and family. The result is a chronological series of photographs of Jen throughout the course of her illness: laughing, sleeping, grimacing with pain, pushing the painkiller drip, putting on makeup, swimming in the ocean.

My photographs show this daily life. They humanize the face of cancer, on the face of my wife. They show the challenge, difficulty, fear, sadness and loneliness that we faced, that Jennifer faced, as she battled this disease. Most important of all, they show our Love. These photographs do not define us, but they are us.

Jen passed away a year and a half ago of Stage IV breast cancer. If you're not already crying, this blog post about an alert Jen set on Angelo's phone for the 22nd of every month, just a short time before she passed away ("Jennifer thinks Angelo is hot!"), should do you in. Fucking devastating.

The Battle We Didn't Choose [My Wife's Fight With Breast Cancer]

Source: http://jezebel.com/5993000/your-afternoon-cry-photographer-hauntingly-documents-late-wifes-battle-with-breast-cancer

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Bathroom Decorating | Grand Eren Contre Home Improvement Site

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://granderencontre.com/bathroom-decorating.html

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Eat Drink Better | Oklahoma Governor Signs Bill to Allow Horse ...

On Friday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed a bill to allow horse slaughter within the state.

House Bill 1999 prohibits the sale of horse meat for human consumption, but allows for the opening of horse slaughtering facilities in the state of Oklahoma. Forty-six other states already have laws allowing horse slaughter. Only Texas, California, and Illinois still have laws against horse slaughtering.

Horses in the U.S. are nearly always kept as pets, although there are some that work. Because they are not raised for meat, there are few limitations on the drugs that are given to the horses during their lives, even up to the moment of their deaths. Many of those drugs are dangerous for humans, rendering horse meat unfit for human consumption.

Currently, horses are purchased in the U.S. and shipped abroad for slaughtering. Supporters of horse slaughter in the U.S. claim that aging and unwanted horses will be abused if there are no slaughterhouses. In the statement from the governor?s office, Gov. Fallin said:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also noted that over 166,000 horses were sent to Canada and Mexico for processing just in 2012. These animals traveled long distances, in potentially inhumane circumstances, only to meet their end in foreign processing plants that do not face the same level of regulation or scrutiny that American plants would.

Simply making the slaughter of horses legal in the state doesn?t mean a slaughterhouses will open there any time soon. USDA meat inspectors have to be on the premises for slaughter to be legal. With the recent sequester, the beef industry has lost 8% of their inspection days. I doubt they will want to share the limited inspectors with an industry that isn?t even popular here in the U.S.

Neglected horse photo Patricia Evans, Utah State University

Source: http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2013/03/30/oklahoma-governor-signs-bill-to-allow-horse-slaughter/

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Giant panda artificially inseminated at U.S. National Zoo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Veterinarians at the National Zoo artificially inseminated the zoo's female giant panda Mei Xiang on Saturday after natural breeding failed to occur, zoo keepers said.

Mei Xiang was put under general anesthesia and inseminated with a combination of fresh semen and frozen semen collected from the zoo's male giant panda Tian Tian. The scientists said they planned a second insemination later on Saturday.

Veterinarians detected a rise in hormone levels on Tuesday, indicating Mei Xiang was ready to breed but said "no competent breeding" between the panda pair had occurred.

"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far," said Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Scientists will continue to monitor Mei Xiang's hormone levels in the coming months and conduct ultrasounds to determine whether she is pregnant. A pregnancy lasts between 95 and 160 days, they said.

Mei Xiang has given birth to two cubs. One died a week after its birth last year. The other was born in 2005 and is now at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; editing by Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/giant-panda-artificially-inseminated-u-national-zoo-173415545.html

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EPA Finds Sweet Spot to Release Controversial Gas Rule

After facing election-year delays, the Obama administration on Friday announced a controversial rule that requires cleaner gasoline.

The environmental regulation, which seeks to reduce toxic air pollution by requiring lower levels of sulfur in gasoline, had all but disappeared from the regulatory process for most of last year as President Obama sought reelection: He didn?t want to be perceived as imposing regulations that could raise prices at the pump--one of the most potent political risks a campaign can face.

The administration finally found a political sweet spot to release the rule. It?s the Friday before Easter weekend, a time when few people are paying attention to the news. Gasoline prices have fallen over the last few weeks. A month ago, the average was $3.79 per gallon, according to AAA. Today it is $3.64. And perhaps most important, the administration is releasing the rule before the 2014 midterm election season (where 20 Democratic seats are up) gets under way.

Congressional Republicans and industry groups are blasting Obama for the rule nonetheless.

?With $4 dollar a gallon gas the norm in many parts of the country, we cannot afford policies that knowingly raises gas prices,? House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement.

Industry groups such as the American Petroleum Institute have charged that the rule could increase gas prices about 25 cents per gallon. The Environmental Protection Agency maintains that the increase will be no more than 1 cent.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/epa-finds-sweet-spot-release-controversial-gas-rule-122857363--politics.html

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For gay rights activists, partial victory more likely than sweeping

U.S. Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in a case that could overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) for a second day on Wednesday. Potential swing vote, Justice?Anthony Kennedy warned the law may infringe on states' rights to define marriage.?

By Lawrence Hurley,?Reuters, David Ingram,?Reuters / March 27, 2013

Solicitor General Donald Virrilli (R) argues in front of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (L) and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy about the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Justices indicated interest in striking down the law denying federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

REUTERS/Art Lien/Handout

Enlarge

The?U.S. Supreme Court?seemed to be leaning on Wednesday toward striking down a law that denies federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples in a move that would reflect a shift in Americans' attitudes about gay marriage.

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In a second day of oral arguments on same-sex marriage, a majority of the court raised serious concerns with the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, enacted in 1996 under President Bill Clinton.

Arguments over the last two days on the DOMA?case and a separate one challenging?California's ban on gay marriage marked the high court's first foray into a delicate and divisive political, religious and social issue in the?United States?as polls indicate growing public support for same-sex marriage.

In theory, the cases have the potential for the court to take a significant step toward endorsing gay marriage as it gains support in some parts of the country. Based on the arguments, however, a partial victory for gay rights activists seems more likely than the sweeping declaration of same-sex marriage rights they had hoped for.

As demonstrators rallied outside the?Supreme Court building?for a second day, Justice?Anthony Kennedy, a potential swing vote, showed a willingness to invalidate DOMA, which denies married same-sex couples access to federal benefits by defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

He warned of a "real risk" that the law infringes on the traditional role of the states in defining marriage.

A conservative, Kennedy is viewed as a key vote on this issue in part because he has twice authored decisions in the past that were viewed as favorable to gay rights.

In contrast to the ambivalent approach they displayed on Tuesday in arguments about?California's Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, the nine justices seemed willing to address the substantive issue in the DOMA?case, while also eyeing procedural questions.

The court is not expected to rule on the two cases until the end of June. If the justices were to strike down DOMA, legally married gay couples would be winners because they would have improved access to federal benefits, such as tax deductions.

Justices gave a strong indication they might resolve the Proposition 8 case on procedural grounds, but even that would be viewed as a win for gay rights activists as same-sex marriages in?California?would likely resume.

What appears highly unlikely is a sweeping declaration of a right for gay people to marry, a possible option only in the?California?case.

Overall, a majority of the justices made it clear that, while they might not impede the recent movement among some states toward gay marriage, they were not willing to pave the way either.

Nine states now recognize gay marriage, while 30 states have constitutional amendments banning it and others are in-between.

On several occasions over the two days, the justices' own remarks illustrated how quickly attitudes have changed in favor of gay marriage.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/DgiD59VDbNk/For-gay-rights-activists-partial-victory-more-likely-than-sweeping

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Obese airline passengers should pay extra, economist says

(Reuters) - Airlines should charge obese passengers more, a Norwegian economist has suggested, arguing that "pay as you weigh" pricing would bring health, financial and environmental dividends.

Bharat Bhatta, an associate professor at Sogn og Fjordane University College, said that airlines should follow other transport sectors and charge by space and weight.

"To the degree that passengers lose weight and therefore reduce fares, the savings that result are net benefits to the passengers," Bhatta wrote this week in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management.

"As a plane of a given make and model can accommodate more lightweight passengers, it may also reward airlines" and reduce the use of environmentally costly fuel.

Bhatta put together three models for what he called "pay as you weigh airline pricing."

The first would charge passengers according to how much they and their baggage weighed. It would set a rate for pounds (kg) per passenger so that someone weighing 130 pounds (59 kg) would pay half the fare of 260-pound (118-kg) person.

A second model would use a fixed base rate, with an extra charge for heavier passengers to cover the extra costs. Under this option, every passenger would have a different fare.

Bhatta's preferred option was the third, where the same fare would be charged if a passenger was of average weight. A discount or extra charge would be used if the passenger was above or below a certain limit.

That would lead to three kinds of fares - high, average and low, Bhatta said.

Airlines have grappled for years with how to deal with larger passengers as waistlines have steadily expanded. Such carriers as Air France and Southwest Airlines allow overweight passengers to buy extra seats and get a refund on them.

Asked about charging heavier passengers extra, Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said: "We have our own policies in place and don't anticipate changing those."

United Air Lines Inc requires passengers who cannot fit comfortably into a single seat to buy another one. A spokeswoman said the carrier would not discuss "future pricing."

About two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight.

In a 2010 online survey for the travel website Skyscanner (www.skyscanner.net), 76 percent of travelers said airlines should charge overweight passengers more if they needed an extra seat.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; editing by Andrew Hay)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obese-airline-passengers-pay-extra-economist-says-221406056--finance.html

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Deep freeze: Home sales to barely budge this spring

Diana Olick , CNBC.com ? ? ? 7 hrs.

The U.S. housing market will see no surge at the start of spring, as fewer buyers signed contracts to purchase existing homes in February. An industry index of so-called pending home sales fell 0.4 percent from January but is up 8.4 percent from February of 2012.

While the number of for-sale listings increased more than the seasonal norm, realtors still say a lack of supply is keeping many potential buyers from desired deals. Pending home sales are a one to two month forward indicator of closed sales.

"Only new home construction can genuinely help relieve the inventory shortage, and housing starts need to rise at least 50 percent from current levels," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors in a release. "Most local home builders are small businesses and simply don't have access to capital on Wall Street. Clearer regulatory rules, applied to construction loans for smaller community banks and credit unions, could bring many small-sized builders back into the market."

Sales of newly built homes fell nearly five percent in February, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Inventories did rise, but only slightly, as the nation's home builders struggle with labor and land shortages, as well as higher costs for materials.

Pending home sales fell 2.5 percent month-to-month in the Northeast, rose 0.4 percent in the Midwest, fell 0.3 percent in the South and rose 0.1 percent in the West, according to the Realtors.

"The volume of home sales appears to be leveling off with the constrained inventory conditions, and the leveling of the index means little change is likely in the pace of sales over the next couple months," Yun added.

A better sign for March, after two weeks of declines, mortgage applications to purchase a home jumped 7 percent during the past week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. This as interest rates fell slightly, due to concerns over the banking crisis in Cyprus.

"The rebound in mortgage applications is a small piece of a brighter housing outlook," says Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans. "Interest rates are still at record lows despite their upward trend, and consumers are taking advantage of record home affordability. Look for more buyers to enter the market this spring and a more robust housing recovery to occur."

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a0e46eb/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Ceconomywatch0Cdeep0Efreeze0Ehome0Esales0Ebarely0Ebudge0Espring0E2B910A4579/story01.htm

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UK scientists develop safer foot-and-mouth vaccine

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON | Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:35pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have developed a new vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease that is safer and easier to manufacture, an advance they believe should greatly increase production capacity and reduce costs.

The technology behind the livestock product might also be applied to make improved human vaccines to protect against similar viruses, including polio.

The new vaccine does not require live virus in its production - an important consideration as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is extremely infectious and vaccine facilities handling virus samples are difficult to secure.

"It spreads like wild fire," said David Stuart, a professor of biology at the University of Oxford, who led the research.

A 2007 outbreak of FMD in southeast England, for example, was traced to a nearby vaccine site. The same facility, ironically, is home to some of the researchers behind the new vaccine.

In contrast to standard FMD livestock vaccines, the new product is made from synthetic empty protein shells containing no infectious viral genome, scientists reported in the journal PLOS Pathogens on Wednesday.

This means the vaccine can be produced without expensive biosecurity and does not need to be kept refrigerated.

"One of the big advantages is that since it is not derived from live virus, the production facility requires no special containment," Stuart said.

"One could imagine local plants being set up in large parts of the world where foot and mouth is endemic and where it still remains a huge problem."

Worldwide, between 3 billion and 4 billion doses of FMD vaccine are administered every year but there are shortages in many parts of Asia and Africa were the disease is a serious problem.

Current standard vaccines are based on 50-year-old technology, although U.S. biotech company GenVec last year won U.S. approval for a new one.

The purely synthetic British vaccine has so far been tested in small-scale cattle trials and found to be effective.

Stuart said the research team from the universities of Oxford and Reading and two state-funded bodies - Diamond Light Source and the Pirbright Institute - would now conduct larger tests while discussing the vaccine's commercial development.

"We are talking to a potential commercial partner," Stuart told Reuters, adding that it would probably take around six years to bring the new vaccine to market. He said it was too early to give an indication of how much the vaccine would cost.

He declined to name the company involved but said it was not Merial, the animal health division of Sanofi that shares Pirbright's site in southeast England.

Stuart and his colleagues were able to produce empty protein shells to imitate the protein coat that surrounds the FMD virus using Diamond's X-ray system to visualize images a billion times smaller than a pinhead.

The same approach could in future be used to make empty shell vaccines against related viruses such as polio and hand-foot-and-mouth, a human disease that mainly affects infants and children, the researchers said.

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/axRtswNhW4w/story01.htm

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Better-educated parents feed children fewer fats and less sugar

Mar. 27, 2013 ? The level of education of parents has an influence on the frequency with which their children eat foods linked to obesity. The children of parents with low and medium levels of education eat fewer vegetables and fruit and more processed products and sweet drinks.

An international group of experts from eight European countries have analysed the relation between parents' levels of education and the frequency with which their children eat food linked to overweight.

The Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants (IDEFICS) study includes data from 14,426 children aged between two and nine from eight European countries: Italy, Estonia, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Germany and Spain.

The results published in the journal Public Health Nutrition confirm that parents with a lower level of education feed their children food rich in sugars and fats more often than those parents with a higher level of education, who feed their children more products of a higher nutritional quality, including vegetables, fruit, pasta, rice and wholemeal bread.

"The greatest differences among families with different levels of education are observed in the consumption of fruit, vegetables and sweet drinks," explains Juan Miguel Fern?ndez Alvira, the author of the work and researcher from the University of Zaragoza to SINC.

For the authors, this implies a greater risk of developing overweight and obesity in children from less advantaged socio-cultural groups. "The programmes for the prevention of childhood obesity through the promotion of healthy eating habits should specifically tackle less advantaged social and economic groups, in order to minimise inequalities in health," concludes Fern?ndez Alvira.

Childhood nutrition

Childhood, from two to fourteen years old, is a growth period during which the requirements for energy and nutrients increase. Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation warns of the importance of monitoring the diet of the youngest members of society, as almost 40 million children under the age of five suffered from overweight in 2010.

In fact, recommendations for children over two do not differ greatly from those for adults. Their diet should include cereals, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, lean meats, fish, poultry, eggs and nuts.

Dieticians and nutritionists recommend that parents offer children a wide variety of foods and avoid using food as a method to award or punish behaviour. Experts believe that this age group can decide how much to eat, provided the food is always healthy and nutritious.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Plataforma SINC, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Juan Miguel Fern?ndez-Alvira, Theodora Mouratidou, Karin Bammann, Antje Hebestreit, Gianvincenzo Barba, Sabina Sieri, Lucia Reisch, Gabriele Eiben, Charalampos Hadjigeorgiou, Eva Kovacs, Inge Huybrechts, Luis A Moreno. Parental education and frequency of food consumption in European children: the IDEFICS study. Public Health Nutrition, 2012; 16 (03): 487 DOI: 10.1017/S136898001200290X

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/iB5hZbA7BQU/130327092742.htm

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Google Play Movies & TV adds in-content 'Info Card' search

Update brings Google Play Moves & TV to India as well!

Google has just updated its Play Movies & TV app to include what it calls "Info Card" search, giving you information about the movie you're watching when you pause. Similar to what Amazon offers on its Kindle Fire tablets, Info Cards give you contextual information about the movie when you pause it, listing the actors in the scene, related movies and the soundtrack playing at the time. The cards are of course in the new "Google Now" card style, overlaid on the movie along the right side and look like what you'd get if you performed a Google search on the actor from a device.

Info Cards are available for only certain movies -- and certainly a limited selection -- that have an Info Cards "badge" on them, so be on the lookout next time you're renting or buying something from Google Play. Also included in this update is Play Movies & TV content for India, which is again a huge deal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/7ePsdbpjsBY/story01.htm

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Is Michael Bloomberg the Right Person to Lead the Gun-Control Fight?

During the last major push for gun-control legislation, Jim Brady, the former White House press secretary who was shot during an assassination attempt on President Reagan, led the charge. Today, it?s New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who might have a tougher time connecting with voters across the country.

While Gabrielle Giffords, the former representative who was shot in Tucson two years ago, has been one of the leading voices in the current debate, her group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, has lacked the funding and high profile to match the National Rifle Association?s reach.

Enter Bloomberg and the gun-control group he cofounded, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He has pledged millions of dollars in an effort to sway public opinion toward stricter gun laws. The aim is to boost momentum for a Senate bill that would require background checks on all gun purchases and impose harsher penalties on illegal gun trafficking. This week, the group launched a 13-state, $12 million ad blitz aimed at putting a spotlight on the issue in the states while senators are back home for a recess. Congress returns to Washington next month.

But the criticism for this new effort goes beyond just the policy. NRA head Wayne LaPierre took to the Sunday talk shows to criticize the man behind the ads.

Bloomberg "can?t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public,? LaPierre said on NBC?s Meet the Press. ?They don?t want him in their restaurants, they don?t want him in their homes, they don?t want him telling what food to eat. They sure don?t want him telling what self-defense firearms to own. He can?t buy America.?

Fresh off a court setback in his controversial ban on large soda drinks in New York City, a move that has been mocked by conservatives, a bruised Bloomberg might not be the best person to carry the mantel for gun-control advocates. The blunt-spoken billionaire mayor may be popular in Washington and New York, but that popularity might not extend to other areas of the country.

?He has zero effectiveness, he has none,? said one Republican strategist who asked to remain anonymous because of his ties to Bloomberg. ?It?s a twofer: He?s a big-city mayor?and not just any big-city mayor, New York?and you have the nanny-in-chief of America.... He is so antagonistic that he?s probably displacing Dianne Feinstein amongst NRA loyalists.?

Billionaires financing initiatives aren?t new to the national political scene. From the Koch brothers to Sheldon Adelson, billionaires have been able to wield influence among voters for years. But that doesn?t mean their actions are popular.

?It?s always potentially impactful when a person threatens to spend $12 million, but I?ve noticed that Americans seem to be a bit resistant to these billionaires who think they can buy whatever they want, think they can purchase the direction of America to suit their own needs,? said Curt Anderson, a Republican strategist in Washington.

Mark Glaze, executive director of the mayors' coalition, Bloomberg?s group, said personality should not be relevant to the debate. The argument should not be about the mayor but about gun violence in the United States.

?If the NRA wants to make this about Mike Bloomberg, that?s their right,? Glaze said. ?If they want to talk about politics and tactics, that?s their business. But it seems like a waste of the moment.?

While a better-funded Giffords or possibly a former law-enforcement official might have more success connecting with voters across the country, Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, believes voters will react to the policies and not the man pushing them.

?In the end, these activities will occur without everything being seen as Bloomberg,? Mann said. ?In any case, it?s less trying to pressure a member of Congress to change his vote than it is making it easier for someone who?d like to vote this way to do so.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/michael-bloomberg-person-lead-gun-control-fight-162710662--politics.html

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Rethinking Bernanke, and the Fed's Power

I recently found out that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will be speaking at my youngest child's college graduation ceremony. If I can get over the relief of having written my last college tuition check--there were four sets--I'll be listening especially closely for a hint of how monetary policy may evolve and how investors should prepare. Of course, I won't get any. Instead, I expect to hear the exhortation to public service that befits a senior government official but doesn't reveal anything that the latest "Fed speak" hasn't already covered, however obliquely, about the course of the central bank's actions. If, however, Professor Bernanke decides to use the occasion to reflect on what the Fed has done and what it might need both to do and to say it's doing, I have a few suggestions.

First I'd like to hear the Chairman's thoughts about the implications of the vastly enlarged role the central bank now plays in the economy. In the wake of the 2008 serial collapses and threatened collapses of marquee global financial institutions, the Federal Reserve went to the very edge of (and maybe beyond) its legal authority and became the financial system's lender or purchaser of last resort. In its size, if not entirely in its substance, the Fed's large-scale asset purchase program (better known as quantitative easing) was a bold and unprecedented policy move.

Is now the time right to rethink whether the more routine regulatory and money-supply responsibilities of the central bank ought to be separated from the kind of emergency powers the Fed seized in late 2008 and early 2009 when Congress, facing a stock market meltdown, passed TARP? More broadly, does such a crisis require an "undemocratic" institution like the Fed to act when political gridlock blocks Congress and the executive? If so, with what level of accountability?

A second question is what happens if things go too well? Recent economic reports have been consistently surprising on the upside, and markets are generating much better returns than most observers would have forecast a few months ago. Those two sets of positives tend to reinforce each other: a sounder economy builds confidence in the stock market and increasing wealth motivates both businesses and households to spend and invest. While we're far from overheating, we are also far from the monetary policy conditions that underlay past economic expansions.

For most of the post-World War II era, the Fed has relied on one or two policy instruments--setting short-term interest rates or changing bank reserve requirements--to pursue its dual mandate to promote economic growth and keep prices stable. It didn't always do the best job employing even those relatively simple tools, and when it erred most egregiously, as during the 1970s or the mid-decade 2000s, its mistake was to leave monetary conditions too easy for too long. It failed, in the famous phrase of its longest-serving chairman, to take away the punchbowl before the party got too raucous. But now the Fed has a shed full of policy tools to use: setting interbank interest rates, adjusting interest the Fed pays banks to keep extra reserves in the Federal Reserve system, deciding when to sell a vault full of securities, using arcane money-absorbing devices such as reverse-repo instruments, and probably a few more that we haven't yet heard about.

It's not the tools, though, but the willingness to use them as well as the continued political support necessary to keep them employed that will be the difference between what 1970s Fed Chairman Arthur Burns called "The Anguish of Central Banking" and his successor's successor Paul Volker's legacy of slaying the inflation dragon. Can Chairman Bernanke describe how he and his colleagues will sort out all those complicated tools and figure out which ones to use and when? How will he maintain the support of Congress and the administration when the bank's decisions have painful consequences?

Granted, if he really gives this sort of address, I may be one of the few proud parents who'll still be awake when he finishes. Maybe he really ought to talk about public service. At a time when a mere 19 percent of the public reports trusting government most or all of the time, we might learn something from someone who's spent the past decade away from the groves of academia and in the turmoil of Washington politics, enduring all the abuse Congress and the media can inflict (though my own experience suggests that faculty politics might have made Congressional hearings seem tranquil). I doubt it's the $200,000 salary he's been paid or even the speaker fees that he'll command after leaving the Fed. So why do it?

However large or small you think government ought to be, we all want capable, honest individuals to accept its assignments. In today's environment of gridlock, recrimination, and blame, what will motivate these new graduates to devote some portion of their careers to proving the critics wrong? Answering that question meaningfully might even be more important than clarifying the relative efficacy of reverse-repo and interest paid on excess reserves in managing the money supply.

Jerry Webman is the author of MoneyShift: How to Prosper from What You Can't Control and Chief Economist at OppenheimerFunds.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rethinking-bernanke-feds-power-155026058.html

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Cyprus clinches last-ditch bailout deal

EU and IMF officials struck a last minute deal with Cyprus, which includes a levy on uninsured deposits over 100,000 euros in the nation's second largest bank. CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera reports.

By Annika Breidthardt and Jan Strupczewski, Reuters

BRUSSELS - Cyprus clinched a last-ditch deal with international lenders on Monday for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout that will shut down its second largest bank and inflict heavy losses on uninsured depositors, including wealthy Russians.

The agreement emerged after fraught negotiations between President Nicos Anastasiades and heads of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - hours before a deadline to avert a collapse of the banking system.

The plan, swiftly endorsed by euro zone finance ministers, will spare the east Mediterranean island a financial meltdown by winding down Popular Bank of Cyprus, also known as Laiki, and shifting deposits below 100,000 euros to the Bank of Cyprus to create a "good bank".

Deposits above 100,000 euros, which under EU law are not guaranteed, will be frozen and used to resolve debts, and Laiki will effectively be shuttered, with thousands of job losses.

An EU spokesman said no levy would be imposed on any deposits in Cypriot banks. A first attempt at a deal last week collapsed when the Cypriot parliament rejected a proposed levy on all deposits.

Related: Crisis in tiny Cyprus creates big mess for Europe

A senior source involved in the talks said Anastasiades had threatened to resign at one stage if he was pushed too far.

Police in Cyprus say masked men tossed a small bomb into a bank that damaged the entrance. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

EU diplomats said the president, flown to Brussels in a private jet chartered by the European Commission, had fought to preserve the country's business model as an offshore financial centre drawing huge sums from wealthy Russians and Britons.

The key issues in dispute were how Cyprus would raise 5.8 billion euros from its banking sector towards its own financial rescue, and how to restructure and resolve the outsized banks.

The EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said there were no good options but "only hard choices left" for the latest casualty of the euro zone crisis.

With banks closed for the last week, the Central Bank of Cyprus imposed a 100-euros per day limit on withdrawals from cash machines at the two biggest banks to avert a run.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici rejected charges that the EU had brought Cypriots to their knees, saying it was the island's offshore business model that had failed.

"To all those who say that we are strangling an entire people ... Cyprus is a casino economy that was on the brink of bankruptcy," he told Canal Plus television.

The euro gained against the dollar on the news in early Asian trading.

Analysts had said failure to clinch a deal could cause a financial market selloff, but some said the island's small size - it accounts for just 0.2 percent of the euro zone's economic output - meant contagion would be limited.

The abandoned levy on bank deposits had unsettled investors since it represented an unprecedented step in Europe's handling of a debt crisis that has spread from Greece, to Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Anxious mood
In the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, on Sunday the mood was anxious.

"I haven't felt so uncertain about the future since I was 13 and Cyprus was invaded," said Dora Giorgali, 53, a nursery teacher who lost her job two years ago when the school she worked at closed down.

"I have two children studying abroad and I tell them not to return to Cyprus. Imagine a mother saying that," she said in a central Nicosia square. "I think a solution will be found tonight but it won't be in the best interests of our country."

Virginia Mayo / AP

Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris, left, yawns as he listens during a media conference after an emergency eurogroup meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Cyprus's banking sector, with assets eight times the size of its economy, has been crippled by exposure to Greece, where private bondholders suffered a 75 percent "haircut" last year.

Without a deal by the end of Monday, the ECB said it would cut off emergency funds to the banks, spelling certain collapse and potentially pushing the country out of the euro.

Conservative leader Anastasiades, barely a month in office and wrestling with Cyprus' worst crisis since a 1974 invasion by Turkish forces split the island in two, was forced to back down on his efforts to shield big account holders.

Anticipating a run when banks reopen on Tuesday, parliament has given the government powers to impose capital controls.

Parliament
About 200 bank employees protested outside the presidential palace on Sunday chanting "troika out of Cyprus" and "Cyprus will not become a protectorate".

In a stunning vote on Tuesday, the 56-seat parliament rejected a levy on depositors, big and small. Finance Minister Michael Sarris then spent three fruitless days in Moscow trying to win help from Russia, whose citizens and companies have billions of euros at stake in Cypriot banks.

On Friday, lawmakers voted to nationalize pension funds and split failing lenders into good and bad banks - the measure likely to be applied to Laiki. The plan to tap pension funds was shelved due to German opposition, a Cypriot official said.

The revised bailout plan many not require further parliamentary approval since the idea of a levy was dropped.

The tottering banks hold 68 billion euros in deposits, including 38 billion in accounts of more than 100,000 euros - enormous sums for an island of 1.1 million people which could never sustain such a big financial system on its own.

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This story was originally published on Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:59 PM EDT

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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