Bernanke: 6% unemployment still years away

Reuters With CNBC.com ? ? ? 1 hr.

Unemployment probably won't reach the 6 percent level until 2016, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday.

Bernanke, who is delivering a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, continued to defend the central bank's easy monetary policy and warned Congress against letting looming spending cuts take place.

"There still seems to be quite a bit of unused resources, people that could be working, capital that could be used and is not being used," Bernanke said of the economy. "We believe the monetary policies that we've conducted have helped get stronger recovery and more jobs than we otherwise would have had."

Bernanke said that based on Fed estimates, "we've helped create many private sector jobs, government jobs to support the economy quite significantly."

With the jobless rate in January at 7.9 percent, Bernanke said his "reasonable guess" would be that it will take three more years before the unemployment rate reaches 6 percent. Late last year, the Federal Reserve said it would keep interest rates low until unemployment reached about 6.5 percent.

Bernanke also sees little risk of a spike in interest rates in the near term but did warn of the potential economic damage from the automatic spending cuts that go into effect on Friday.

Read More: Americans Call Sequester a 'Bad Idea': NBC/WSJ Poll

The Fed chairman advocated a gradual approach to dealing with the country's fiscal problems. "The more gradual this is, as long as there is offsetting changes in the further horizon, the less the immediate impact will be on jobs and growth in this recovery in 2013," he said.

"I think there is some cost to the economy of these repeated, I won't say 'crises,' but these repeated episodes where Congress is unable to come to some agreement and therefore some automatic thing kicks in, I think that's on the whole not a good thing for confidence."

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/bernanke-6-unemployment-still-years-away-1C8592802

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Most Venezuelans think Chavez will recover: poll

CARACAS (Reuters) - Most Venezuelans expect President Hugo Chavez to recover from cancer and return to active rule even though he has been in hospital and virtually unseen for two-and-a-half months, a poll showed on Tuesday.

Local pollster Hinterlaces said 60 percent of interviewees believe Chavez will be cured and back to governing, while 14 percent think he will recover but be unable to rule again, and 12 percent view his state as incurable.

Chavez, 58, underwent a fourth operation for cancer in Cuba on December 11. Last week he returned to Venezuela and was whisked to a military hospital in Caracas.

Apart from four photos of him in hospital in Havana, the socialist president has not been seen or heard in public, with even friend and ally Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, unable to enter his room on two hospital visits.

The surprisingly optimistic view of Venezuelans - in contrast to a more pessimistic consensus among diplomats and analysts that Chavez's 14-year rule is probably nearing its end - came in the presentation of two recent surveys by Hinterlaces.

"Far from weakening 'Chavismo,' far from reducing the popular support for President Chavez, his absence and illness have strengthened the bonds of affection and identification with the president's ideals," Hinterlaces head Oscar Schemel said.

Previously released results from the same surveys showed that if Chavez is forced out, his vice president and preferred successor, Nicolas Maduro, is favored to win an election in a possible match-up against opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Hinterlaces gave Maduro 50 percent of potential votes, compared with 36 percent for Capriles.

The opposition leader has publicly accused Hinterlaces of pro-government bias, and political polls in Venezuela are notoriously controversial and divergent.

The survey also showed that 60 percent of people view the devaluation of the bolivar currency earlier this month as negative for Venezuela. But the government otherwise scored high marks for its social welfare policies and ability to improve lives.

Accused by the opposition of lying and putting a gloss on Chavez's state, officials are urging Venezuelans to be patient.

"The president has the right to take whatever time he needs to recover ... We have the patience to wait for him, to understand him and to accompany him in his battle for life," Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said on Tuesday.

"We can't succumb to the blackmailing of the right-wing - and its cruelty and inhumanity - which is clamoring for the president to appear, to intervene, to be sworn in right now."

Chavez missed his scheduled January swearing-in for the new, six-year term he won in last year's presidential poll.

(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/most-venezuelans-think-chavez-recover-poll-201202334.html

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Review: Keith McMillen QuNeo Pad Controller

With the ability to process three parameters at once, this iPad-sized MIDI controller adds an extra dimension to your electronic music production rig.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/757yrIt6ByU/

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Preorders For TheGaming-Focused Razer Edge Tablet Start March ...

Surface Pro fanboys,?Take notice. Your hot little tablet will soon be the runner-up in the ever-growing category of ?incredibly expensive Windows 8 tablets aimed at a tiny, but rabid demographic?.

Razer just announced that the Edge and Edge Pro gaming tablet will ship in late March, with the startup accepting orders starting on March 1st.

All joking aside, the Razer Edge is pretty damn exciting. Born from the minds of Razer?s fans, the Edge is a hardcore gaming tablet ? no tired Fruit Ninja demo here. With a dedicated GPU and either a Core i5 or Core i7 CPU, the Edge can power through nearly any PC game on the market.

What?s more, Razer designed modular accessories for the Edge. There?s a large gaming pad, keyboard, and dock, allowing the Edge to essentially morph into different products as needed.

I spent sometime with the Edge at CES 2013 and was instantly impressed. It ran Dirt 3 seemingly as good as my monster desktop. But, also like my gaming PC, the Edge is expensive.

The Core i5 Razer Edge costs $999 while the Core i7 Razer Edge Pro costs $1299. Plus, each one of the accessories are sold separately. Just the Gamepad Controller is $249. A fully decked-out Razer Edge Pro with Gamepad Controller rings up for $1,698. Ouch.

The Microsoft Surface Pro has so far won over some Windows loyalists. They like the full computing power combined with the svelte form factor. The Surface Pro, with its Core i5 CPU, can power through most daily tasks and even handle some games, but, quite frankly, the husky Razer Edge is fully capable of beating it up and stealing its lunch money.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/26/the-gaming-focused-razer-edge-tablet-preorders-start-march-1st-ships-later-in-the-month/

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PFT: Packers torn on keeping TE Finley

Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd said last week at the NFL Scouting Combine that he?s ?been getting ready to put on a show here.?

He did just that this morning, running a pair of sub-5.0 second 40s at nearly 300 pounds. The question now becomes, would it qualify as a show he wants to watch?

While Floyd?s ability to rush the passer and his athletic talent will make him a high pick, he raised more than a few eyebrows during his media interviews, when he admitted he wasn?t much of a football fan.

Asked the fairly standard question of which player he modeled his game after, Floyd replied: ?I haven?t really watched the league in a long time. I first started watching it in 2007, but I did get to know Ndamukong Suh in 2010 so we have a good relationship and I?ve watched him play a couple of times.?

That?s right, a possible Top 10 pick in the NFL Draft only started watching football six years ago. And it?s not as if he?s one of the foreign-born players from a land where football wasn?t readily available around the clock. He grew up in Philadelphia, a place where there seems to be some degree of interest in the NFL.

Asked to elaborate on the fact he didn?t watch football until recently, Floyd said ?The first game I ever watched was the Super Bowl when the Colts won it in 2007.?

?It wasn?t that there was no interest, I just didn?t know nothing about it, so there was no reason to watch it,? he continued. ?Even when I started playing there was no?interest in watching it because I liked to play it instead of sitting down and being still and watching a game while all my friends were jumping around and getting excited for no reason.

?It just wasn?t a preference of mine, but now it is so I watch it and play it now.?

Asked what he was watching instead, Floyd talked about the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network.

Don?t get me wrong, as the parent of young children, there?s a good bit of Looney Toons on hand in my home as well. And away from work, I respect people who are well-rounded, and can talk about something other than football.

But a team is about to invest millions of dollars in a man who may or may not like the game he?s about to turn into a career.

We know he?s motivated now, having trained specifically for the Combine to put on the kind of show that would boost his draft stock and make him financially secure.

But how motivated will he be come the dog days of training camp, or a Wednesday practice in November when his team might be out of the playoff hunt?

Will he be watching film of his next opponent, or catching up on That?s So Raven re-runs?

It?s possible to be great at football without being absorbed by it, but it?s probably not the kind of thing you want to admit at a job interview, either.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/25/report-packers-torn-on-keeping-jermichael-finley/related/

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'Sequester' scare tactics? White House details 'devastating' 50-state impact. (+video)

A White House report stresses the huge impact the sequester spending cuts would have on states. For some states, that might be true. But for others, the cuts might just be a blip.

By Mark Trumbull,?Staff writer / February 25, 2013

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia (l.) and Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland speak on CBS's 'Face the Nation' in Washington Sunday. McDonnell joined with O'Malley to call for Congress to prevent impending defense cuts that would hit their states hard.

Chris Usher/CBS News/AP

Enlarge

A White House report released Sunday is designed to send a clear message: If automatic spending cuts take effect, your state will be affected.

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Correspondent Liz Marlantes with insights into the politics behind the impending spending cuts.

The report on the "sequester" includes 50 state documents ? plus one more for the District of Columbia ? to show ?the devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families across the country if Congressional Republicans fail to compromise to avert the sequester by March 1st.?

But, rather than making the case that the cuts will be devastating, the 51 reports suggest the sequester?s impact would vary widely by state, depending largely on the degree of activity related to the US military. And in many states, defense plays a small role in the economy.

Consider one large Midwestern state, Ohio. The White House report for this state finds that 26,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department would be furloughed, with a new work schedule that reduces their gross pay by $161.4 million during the fiscal year that ends in September.

That sounds large. But, when coupled with $5 million in expected cuts to Army and Air Force operations in Ohio, that amounts to about $14 for each of Ohio?s 11.5 million residents, spread over half a year. Ohio would take an additional hit from a decline in defense contractor work, but that industry (not analyzed in the White House estimates) makes up only about 2 percent of the state?s economy.

By contrast, some states would see much larger defense-related impact from the sequester, either because they have lots of civilian defense workers (Virginia, Maryland) or lots of military operations (Hawaii, Alaska) or lots of defense contractors (Washington, Connecticut) relative to their overall population.

The sequester would also affect a host of non-defense federal activities across the 50 states. Those, also, would be somewhat unevenly dispersed among states. But only in Maryland, Virginia, and New Mexico does non-defense federal spending account for more than 5 percent of economic output, according to research by forecasters at the banking firm Wells Fargo.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/GksIATCnf1g/Sequester-scare-tactics-White-House-details-devastating-50-state-impact.-video

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Crowdsourcing Developers To Connect Apps Using Appirio Cloudspoke

Appirio has launched a new partner program for connecting cloud apps through CloudSpokes, its 72,000 member developer community. Apps increasingly need to connect to offer a workflow that can appeal to an application's user base.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DH-kbVRGYrM/

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