Stagflation: A possibility?

In 1970s, when stagflation occurred in America, there was an oil supply shock sending its prices up leading to inflation when the employment rate was low.

This time around  there are several factors that might contribute to stagflation -
1) Decrease in oil supply due to the civil unrest in middle east - US and its clan have already done about 100 air strikes on Libya. Saudi army personnel are in Bahrain and  shootings occurred in Saudi due to protests.
         - Oil is already at the $105 level
         - Airline prices are soaring.
2) The Tsunami and earthquake in Japan and its after effects - Japan is very critical in the global supply chain and many of the semiconductor companies in Japan are affected. This would most probably increase the prices of all the consumer electronics.
         - I wouldn't bet my money to find a lot of cheap deals on laptops.
3) We are still slowly coming out of the recession from the employment rate perspective. Unemployment rate is currently 8.9%.
4) The monetary easing that seemed to be a good idea until now might suddenly become a burden fueling inflation.

We might be caught in a rock and hard place. If Feds tightens the interest rates, GDP might falter. If Feds maintain the low interest rates, inflation would spike up.

Facebook- Twitter - Groupon - Economic Recovery

Can Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and Foursquare lead our economic recovery?

These new web2.0/mobile technology companies are bringing the customers close to the business and is creating increased consumerism.
Groupon has made the discount deals and coupons more trendy.
Twitter has created a giant marketing platform. It provides marketing tool for the the businesses to create market awareness about its products.It provides a CRM tool for the businesses with real time feedback.
Facebook puts social in everything  - sell things that are both physical and virtual socially, like and recommend things socially, play socially - No need for websites.. Facebook business pages should do.
Foursquare makes it fun for customers to check-in businesses.

Consumers get the best deals and what they really want - Businesses get increased sales - A win-win.

There are of course a lot more companies like them that follow this trend.

These technologies enable small, medium and large businesses to better understand the customers and provide tools to cater to the customer needs more effectively. Previous economic upswings might have been enabled by the increase in productivity due to the increased efficiency brought about by various manufacturing and IT technologies. This time it is going to be due to the increased effectiveness of the business in reaching the customers - innovations in marketing using the new technologies. This will tremendously increase the consumerism in US and there will a bigger economic upswing.

Even though there are other factors that influence the economy, Technology is the most important factor and these new technologies will definitely fuel our economy.

chrome Laptop - Tablet - WebStore - ChromeOS

I have been increasingly using Chrome browser's webstore. It is interesting to see how Google has cleverly metamorphosized chrome extensions into web apps. The number of web apps has been increasingly steadily. Whenever a new tab is opened in Chrome, it takes to the apps page and the webstore.

I could see how this fits well with Google's plan for Chrome WebOS. With HTML5 becoming more prominent and people using more cloud based apps, the reality of a light weight tablet powered with Chrome WebOS and Chrome webApps does not seem that far away. I would expect such a tablet to be inexpensive and could be less than $200. A Low end ARM or MIPS processor+ WiFi+3G+ Cloud Apps => Very less internal memory +Touch Screen+Camera. With 3G bringing money for the phone carriers like ATT and Verizon, it could be offered free of charge.

This would put a tablet in the hand of every person in US.


The only important bottleneck is - 3G/4G Network Coverage.