Google celebrates 14th birthday with animated chocolate cake (by Dara Kerr of Cnet)

Let Google eat cake. Today, the Web giant turns 14 years old, and to celebrate, it's serving up an animated chocolate cake filled with Google-colored candles on its homepage.

It seems like just yesterday that the tech company was born, and now it's old enough to go to high school.

Last year when Google officially became a teenager, it celebrated with a doodle that showed a cake, some balloons, candles, and a few party hats -- but it wasn't animated. Apparently, this year it has upped its sophistication.

Google Doodles are an integral part of the company's Web design. It has made drawings for Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. The doodlers are Google's band of artists who have the job of translating special events into colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo.

Now that Google is 14, let's hope that going forward it doesn't turn into one of those rebellious teens.

Battered Dollar Slides to Four Month Lows Vs. Euro

Battered Dollar Slides to Four Month Lows Vs. Euro By: Reuters

The dollar fell against most currencies on Friday, hitting a four-month low versus the euro, a day after the Federal Reserve announced a fresh round of monetary stimulus to boost a still lackluster U.S. economy. 

Despite the move away from the safe-haven dollar, the yen fell broadly on speculation Japanese authorities could intervene to cap its recent gains against the dollar. Expectations that the Bank of Japan could ease policy next week in response to the Fed's action will also likely undermine the yen, some traders said.

The dollar [JPY=  78.21    0.73  (+0.94%)   ] rose 0.9 percent against the yen to 78.15 yen. Commodity currencies including the Australian and Canadian dollars also rallied against the greenback, pushing the dollar index to 78.729, its lowest level in more than four months.

Some market players said the Fed's announcement on Thursday that it will pump $40 billion a month into the U.S. economy until the jobs market shows a sustained upturn, along with the European Central Bank's plan agreed last week to lower peripheral euro zone borrowing costs, could see an the euro extend its rally toward $1.35 in the near term.

"Recent moves by both the Fed and the ECB to bolster growth have helped usher in a wave of risk-taking which has seen demand for lower-yielding, safer investments such as the dollar evaporate," said Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solutions in Washington.

The euro [EUR=  1.3138    0.015  (+1.15%)   ] hit a peak of $1.3120 and was last at $1.3099, up 0.8 percent on the day, as a drop in peripheral bond yields prompted investors to buy the currency. The euro rose to an eight-month high against theSwiss franc [EURCHF=  1.2157    0.0007  (+0.06%)   ] of 1.2178 francs on trading platform EBS and hit a four-month high against the yen of 102.37 yen [EURJPY= 102.77    2.13  (+2.12%)   ].

The dollar [CHF=  0.9252    -0.0097  (-1.04%)   ] fell to 0.9265 Swiss francs, its lowest level since mid-May. The Australian dollar [AUD=  1.0557    0.0016  (+0.15%)  ] hit a one-month high of US$1.0605 as riskier assets rallied. Risk-taking was also helped by better-than-expected U.S. retail sales last month, which rose 0.9 percent, the largest gain since February.

Chart of the Day: The drain on Spain...

Credit: Mike Foster / Financial Times

Whisper it softly, but accelerating capital flows out of southern Europe probably gave Mario Draghi all the excuse he needed to authorise the European Central Bank’s use of unlimited monetary firepower to purchase stressed sovereign bonds in the eurozone.

Darren Williams, senior European economist at asset manager AllianceBernstein, has pointed out in his latest strategy note that this year Spain alone has suffered a €220bn capital outflow.

Of this total, €84bn comprised the sale of Spanish securities by foreigners; €91bn was withdrawn from loans or deposits by overseas banks, and banks in Spain shifted a further €61bn.

The sums involved are equal to 41% of Spain’s gross domestic product, seriously eroding the cumulative inflows Spain has enjoyed since 1999, as the attached graph illustrates. Spain was heavily depended on inflows prior to the credit crisis to pay its way in the world. To make good the loss, the Bank of Spain has been forced to borrow €237bn. Private sector risk has shifted decisively onto the public sector balance sheet.

The terrible thing about capital flight is that it almost invariably accelerates unless action is taken to restore confidence. Which was why the UK government had to step in to rescue Northern Rock as soon as customers started queueing to withdraw funds. And so on, and so forth.

As Williams says: “It is hard to see how policymakers can prevent past capital flows into Spain from reversing and spilling onto their own balance sheets, except by soothing investor concerns. Perhaps this is one reason the ECB is now ready to intervene more aggressively."

Q&A: Spain's banking bailout

Is this a bailout of Spain?

Mariano Rajoy is determined to portray the €100bn as a cash injection for Spain's banks and not a bailout of his country. However, the funds are being made available because Spain cannot afford to prop up its banks with its existing resources and its cost of borrowing on the markets is too high to raise the funds. Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, reckons Spain will need more help. "The poor economic outlook will also maintain concerns that Spain will at some point require a government bailout too," Loynes said.

Who is providing the €100bn?

The cash-strapped eurozone nations themselves, although details are hazy as there are two bailout funds: the existing European Financial Stability Fund, and the European Stability Mechanism, which launches next month. If Spain borrows money from the ESM it has to repay these loans ahead of its bond holders, making the markets less willing to lend to Spain. The EFSF allows Spain to honour its own debts first. On Monday an EU official told Reuters the EFSF would provide the cash but these could be transferred to ESM at a later stage – crucially without the requirement that Spain repay its eurozone debts first.

How does the Spanish government get the money?

It will be handed to the government's Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring which passes it on to the banks. But this does not insulate the public purse from the bailout as Spain's public debt to GDP ratio will rise from 68.5% to a potential 90%.

How does the bailout differ from the rescue of Greece, Portugal and Ireland?

The money is only coming from the euro area and not from the IMF (which includes contributions from the UK) and is just for the banks. There is also much debate about the lack of fresh austerity measures being imposed on the Spanish government, which argues that it has already embarked on tough budgetary measures. Unlike in Greece, losses have not been imposed on holders of Greek government debt although it is not yet clear what the impact will be on holders of bonds issued by Spanish banks.

Does this mean Spain will not be subjected to supervision from the so-called troika – the IMF, EC and ECB?

Spain reckons not. But the IMF and EU officials think otherwise. EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said the IMF would be involved, while Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said there would be a supervision programme. Amid the confusion, it appears that the supervision focus on restructuring the banks – rather than the economy as has been the case with the other three countries. In other bank rescues the EU has imposed conditions to prevent dividend payments and force big reductions in the size of banks.

Where does this leave the eurozone?

The bank bailout for Spain is a sticking plaster and does nothing to solve the long-term issues about stronger fiscal union. Italian bond yields have started to rise and Cyprus may soon need international help. On the positive side, the absence of extra austerity may indicate that politicians are coming round to the view that it has been ineffective. A new government in Athens on Sunday night may feel empowered to renegotiate more relaxed terms for its bailout – a move that might help keep Greece inside the eurozone.

Read more about this here The Guardian!

Great article I found:

Fixing this US immigration policy folly

His mother and father brought him to the US in 1996. They entered legally on a tourist visa, then overstayed, settling outside Tampa. They had been professional people back in Mexico, a dentist and a veterinarian, but that didn't mean they earned enough to feed their family. 

Godínez-Samperio says his parents were "escaping economic disaster". He was nine years old.
Godínez-Samperio learned English in a year and became an honors student, an Eagle Scout, valedictorian of his high school and winner of a scholarship to study anthropology at university. Unlike his colleagues, who liked to kick back with a few beers at the local dive, he spent weekends reading. 

"I didn't have the luxury of being an average student," he says. "I worked all the time because I never knew if it would be my last semester." 

That's not an exaggeration: technically, Godínez-Samperio could be subject to detention and deportation. Yet he's never tried to conceal his status. 

His law school application essay was pointedly titled "The Consequences of My Criminal Childhood". He even appeared before a committee of Florida senators to testify in favor of the Dream Act, which would allow the undocumented immigrant children brought to the US as minors to be given permanent residency if they either join the military or enroll in higher education. He told the senators: "I am undocumented, unapologetic and unafraid." His mentor (and now his lawyer), a former American Bar Association president, Talbot D'Alemberte, says he's "just the kind of person we want to be a citizen and a lawyer". 

Godínez-Samperio's career is now on hold, waiting for the Florida supreme court, the state's ultimate legal arbiter, to decide his fate. 

He's not alone. As Congress and the courts try to untie the Gordian knot of immigration policy, other young people find themselves stuck: 28-year-old New Yorker César Vargas, who has been in the US since he was five, has passed the bar exam but does not yet know if he'll get a license. In California, Sergio Garcia – who crossed the border at the ripe old age of 17 months – has been certified to practice law. But California's supreme court, which recently announced it would hear his case, will ultimately decide the question of whether an undocumented person who has been allowed to take the bar exam in the first place and passed a"determination of moral character" test to boot, can be denied a chance to put those hard-won qualifications to work. 

You would think (hope, even) that though it's an election year, the untenable position in which talented young people such as Vargas, Garcia and Godínez-Samperio find themselves might spur a grown-up conversation about what to do concerning the 10-11 million undocumented people already in the US working and paying taxes, and the children they carried with them – children who grow up as American as everyone else. 

Alas, you would be disappointed. The right continues to raise the Spanish-speaking spectre of "an invasion force from Mexico that'll take over the country", as one radio demagogue put it, never mind that illegal immigration has been in decline for the last couple of years, and deportations in the Obama administration have increased. Trumped-up fears of brown hordes taking our jobs and indoctrinating our children in the revolutionary ways of Emiliano Zapata, Hugo Chávez and Che Guevara are bread and butter to the Republican party, especially its Tea Party tendency....

Read the rest here!

Video: Amazing Coating For Bottles' Interiors Lets Ketchup Flow Like Water

Way too cool to pass it up!

LiquiGlide, developed by a team at MIT's Varanasi Research Group, is a surface coating that liberates the notoriously non-Euclidean fluid ketchup from its glass- or plastic-walled prison. The research came in second in MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Challenge, and is almost certainly destined for a bottle near you. Watch its graceful performance below in a video from Fast Co.Exist.


Watch the video, here!

Un intento de comprender el dilema económico

Excelente artículo del períodico el País de España por Gabriel Jackson:

"Si nos atenemos a criterios de libertad política, oportunidades educativas y de trabajo, la mejora de la sanidad y la variedad de las actividades de ocio, el periodo entre 1945 y 1990 fue seguramente el mejor de la historia para Europa occidental, Escandinavia, los países de habla inglesa, Japón y un puñado de países asiáticos más pequeños. Además, el recuerdo reciente de las atrocidades cometidas por nazis y japoneses en la guerra, los bombardeos masivos angloamericanos sobre las ciudades alemanas y los desplazamientos de masas de poblaciones civiles desarmadas a manos de los alemanes y los soviéticos generó un poderoso sentimiento de que jamás debía volver a producirse un comportamiento de ese tipo. Después de los horrores de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, tanto los dirigentes conservadores como los liberales y los socialistas pensaron que era no solo posible sino necesario proporcionar una vida con condiciones económicas decentes y una situación de paz y justicia social."...

Lo pueden leer completo acá Link!.