Focus Your Internet Marketing Efforts Using These Tips | Welcome ...

Even those with little knowledge of personal computers have established successful businesses online, so you can do the same. In this article, you will learn how to start marketing your business on the Internet.

Learning about basic elements of good web page design will be time well spent. There is a wealth of information on the Internet to help you learn CSS, HTML, and other web design specifics. It is good to use thirty minutes a day to improve your webpage.

The tag you choose for your site should clearly define you. This tag is a huge factor in how your viewers see your site, since it is visible above the browser window. Misinformation or confusing information will cause readers to leave your website.

There are many resources about web design psychology that can help you. Psychology can play a part in the way someone looks at your site, depending on a lot of different factors. Acting on this information can help you maximize your potential profits.

Look into doing your own marketing online, there are many resources available and you can save a great deal of money not using high-priced consultants. Check out online communities for business owners, start following marketing blogs, download free e-books, and check out free seminars.

Every signature you have on the Internet should have a link of your website?s URL. Are you registered at online forums? Add your site to your signature, so that people can see it every time you post. Every email you send out should have a link to your site within your signature. This is a way to subtly advertise your website and could increase your ratings in search engines too. Make sure to include a line of catchy text that encourages viewers to follow the link.

Your website should be comprehensive and should focus on creating quality content. Your goal is to tell your customers what they need to know about the products they?re looking at in as few words as possible. Avoid providing useless data and repetitive, bland descriptions. This is a surefire way to bore your customers.

Strategically placed user polls can help you to get a better idea of how your users feel about different parts of the website. Not only will this help you adjust the type of content that you include, it will also make your users feel like you care about their opinions.

Study the most successful techniques that your competitors are using, then expand on them and use them with your website. If they are succeeding, you need to analyze what they are doing.

If you want more sales, it is important to be positive and show it. Explain the benefits of your product to your potential clients. Your encouragement and positive attitude toward the capability of your audience will be enthusiastically contagious.

By placing surveys and polls throughout your website, you can solicit feedback from site users. This will make readers feel included, and it will also help you maintain popular content on your site.

You can also sell the product at a hugely discounted price by bundling it with a complementary product. Advertisements for sales or promotions must be detailed and contain the exact conditions of the offer.

Make your website unique when using Internet marketing. Making your site stand out is what drives visitors towards your site, and there are a lot out there so this is a good strategy. A good method for doing that is showing off a service you offer that others do not.

Have you considered offering a reward or prize in an alternative manner to the norm? An excellent example is a word search in an article you have written where clients could win a surprise for completing the puzzle. When they can find all the words, award them with a small prize or discount. Getting customers involved in your site will make it more personable and fun, allowing them to feel comfortable purchasing from you.

An excellent strategy for operating a profitable online business is to look at your competition. Peruse your competitors? websites, noting what they could be doing better. When you spot services that are lacking on other websites, emphasize these services on your website so you can stand out among your competition.

Use emotional descriptions in your advertising to facilitate attachment to products. This also helps build brand recognition. Using words like ?protection? or ?relief? will make a customer feel a sense of security from your product and a desire to purchase it.

Use high resolution images to showcase your products on your website. It is important for customers to see a detailed photograph of a product, so they know what to expect if they decide to purchase it. Considering including a section that allows customers to upload their own photos of your product. Showcasing ?before and after? photos can also be an effective marketing technique.

?Guarantee? is a great word to use in internet marketing. Your customers like to know that they are not going to lose money by buying your product. There are many various guarantees that can be offered. Try both short-term and long-term guarantees. The guarantee you choose to offer should be based off the type of product it applies to.

Ponder the option of providing incentives to your customers for ordering more products faster. This could include free shipping, faster shipping or free gift wrapping. For instance, you could work it so that a certain number of people that order a specific product are provided a free shipping incentive. This is an effective strategy for generating more sales.

As has been revealed earlier, internet marketing is an amazing way to reach out to customers and to bring attention to your business and products. The opportunities are endless and the benefits are immense. By utilizing the information in the article, you can build your customer base and bring new recognition to your company.

Facts related to the author: Nowadays he is working on the actual website called lee mcintyre. The guy is certainly a very passionate online business person and also he generates full time income on the internet.

Source: http://www.thevoicenow.info/focus-your-internet-marketing-efforts-using-these-tips/

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Amazing to Internet Website Marketing Accomplishment | How To ...

Article b? Wendy Eidson

In ??r business, internet marketing ?t n?t ???t powerful ?t ?? vital

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Source: http://www.howtodeleteyahooaccount.com/amazing-to-internet-website-marketing-accomplishment/

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Obama says his policies are extension of his faith (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Blending politics and religion, President Barack Obama said his Christian faith is a driving force behind his economic policies, from Wall Street reform to his calls for the wealthy to pay higher taxes.

Obama's remarks Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast were his most explicit account of how his personal religious beliefs factor into his decision-making on the nation's pressing problems. The comments came amid election-year criticism from Catholic groups and some Republicans that the president is waging a war on religion following his decision to require church-affiliated institutions to cover free birth control for employees.

Speaking to more than 3,000 people at the annual breakfast, Obama said "faith and values" should play as much as role in tackling the nation's challenges as sound decision-making and smart policies.

He said, for example, that his own call for fairness in the tax code ? a central tenet of his State of the Union address and his 2012 campaign ? is both economically sound and consistent with the teachings of Jesus.

"If I'm willing to give something up as somebody who's been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that's going to make economic sense," he said. "But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that `for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.' It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who've been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others."

He also said the Wall Street reform he championed both "makes the economy stronger for everyone" and abides by God's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself" because it helped people who had been hurt or treated unfairly by financial institutions.

And Obama said he believed in a "biblical call" to care for the poor and to follow "the responsibility we're given in Proverbs to `Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.'"

The president's remarks came one day after Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, created a flap with clumsy comments about the poor.

Romney said wasn't concerned about the "very poor" because they have a safety net. He also said he wasn't concerned about the very rich and intended to focus his campaign on the middle class.

"You can focus on the very poor; that's not my focus," Romney said.

While the White House said the president's remarks were not meant to be political, his comments did fit neatly into the Obama campaign's effort to draw sharp contrasts between the president and Romney.

The former Massachusetts governor is among Republicans who have criticized the president for not exempting religious organizations from a requirement in the 2010 health care law that requires insurers to cover birth control for their employees. Romney said this week that the president was ordering "religious organizations to violate their conscience."

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Obama has "declared war on the Catholic Church," and House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday the mandate violates the Constitution.

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum castigated the policy and Obama's remarks during a campaign stop in rural Fallon, Nev.

"He made the claim that his policies of taxing the rich is authorized by the Bible, that he is doing what is biblically called for by taxing the rich, by having the government tax the rich. Now, I've read the Bible, and I must have missed that passage," Santorum told reporters.

"This is an administration that attacks religion, and then tries to cloak itself in religion in order to take your money."

Obama never mentioned the health care controversy in his remarks Thursday, nor did he reference his Republican rivals by name. But his broader defense of his policies was a rare interjection of politics into the annual prayer breakfast. The breakfast is organized by bipartisan congressional lawmakers, but speakers often avoid overt political references beyond calling for civility and respect in Washington.

While Obama speaks often about his faith, he prefers to worship in private. He said Thursday that he starts each morning with a brief prayer, then spends time reading scripture. Sometimes, he said, pastors come to the Oval Officer to pray with him, for his family and for the country.

He also described his own religious transformation in deeply personal language Thursday, from growing up in a non-religious home to finding Christ later in his life. He recalled a visit a few years ago with the evangelist Rev. Billy Graham, which ended with the president feeling compelled to pray for the aging Graham.

Obama said when he found himself at that moment not knowing what to say, the Holy Spirit interceded.

"I have fallen on my knees with great regularity since that moment, asking God for guidance not just in my personal life and my Christian walk, but in the life of this nation and in the values that hold us together and keep us strong," he said.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120203/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_prayer_breakfast

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Source: http://lifestyle.ezinemark.com/the-green-smoke-e-cigs-a-legendary-product-for-quality-reliability-and-versatility-7d33a86594c2.html

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Muntari swaps Inter for AC Milan in loan move

By DANIELLA MATAR

Associated Press

Associated Press Sports

updated 11:31 a.m. ET Jan. 31, 2012

MILAN (AP) -AC Milan signed Sulley Muntari on loan from bitter rival Inter Milan until the end of the season on the last day of the winter transfer market on Tuesday.

Muntari will provide much needed midfield cover for Milan after Alexander Merkel joined Mathieu Flamini, Gennaro Gattuso and Alberto Aquilani on the sidelines.

Inter signed Muntari from Portsmouth in 2008 in a deal worth ?14 million and while he initially impressed, scoring the winner in his first derby match against Milan, he has slowly slipped down the pecking order.

Muntari spent last season on loan at Sunderland but failed to earn a permanent deal.

The Ghana international, who is currently at the African Nations Cup, becomes a free agent at the end of the campaign.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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No big deadline-day signings

??European football's January transfer window is closing with the leading clubs appearing to avoid any lavish outlays in the first season of UEFA's strict new financial controls.

Mike Zarrilli / Getty Images Contributor

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46204936/ns/sports-soccer/

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Insight: From darkest India, an enlightened leader (Reuters)

PATNA, India (Reuters) ? There's an apocryphal story about Bihar, a sprawling state on the Gangetic plains of eastern India that for decades held the dubious honor of being the most violent, poverty-stricken and corrupt in the land.

A Japanese minister visiting in the 1990s, shocked at the decrepit buildings, the darkness at night even in the centre of town and the crumbling roads, declared that it was all solvable.

"Give me three years," he told a state leader, "and I can turn Bihar into Japan."

"That's nothing," came the laconic reply from his host. "Give me three days and I will turn Japan into Bihar."

Bihar is no longer the butt of jokes, however, not since Nitish Kumar took charge of the ruined state in 2005 and began to turn it around -- winning such respect that he stands a decent chance of one day becoming prime minister of India.

"My first priority was governance, my second priority was governance and my third priority was governance," Chief Minister Kumar told Reuters at his office in the state capital, Patna, a dusty city where property prices have soared to levels paid in far away New Delhi, even as its streets teem with the desperately poor.

"Bihar suffered not because of bad governance but because of a lack of governance."

When India launched reforms to open up its state-stifled economy 20 years ago, many states surged ahead, leaving behind the 3.5 percent "Hindu rate of growth" that had plagued the decades after the country's independence from Britain in 1947, and with it Bihar.

Bihar is still India's most impoverished state: landlocked, not blessed with resources and prone to catastrophic flooding, its annual per-capita income of about $400 is just a third of the national average. Its 104 million overwhelmingly farm-dependent people have India's worst literacy rate and the lowest proportion of households with electricity, and the state scores miserably on the U.N.'s Human Development Index.

It's hard to imagine that in ancient times Bihar was the centre of the flourishing Magadha empires and the region where the Buddha lived and attained enlightenment.

And yet the state's dismally low income level has grown 250 percent since Kumar took the helm, more than double the national average. The growth of its economy has surged into double figures to become India's second-fastest growing state, driven by hefty public spending on roads and buildings and rapid expansion in services such as hotels and restaurants.

RESTORING FAITH

Kumar has done much more than bring growth. Working until midnight most days for the past six years, he has declared war on crime and corruption, introduced an act that gives citizens the right to efficient public services, launched a frenzy of road-building, empowered women and promoted education, offering a free bicycle to every girl that registers in a Grade 9 class.

"Everything had gone to the dogs," said Prakash Jha, one of Bihar's favorite sons, a Bollywood film-maker who has chronicled many of the state's ills, including the once-thriving industry of kidnapping businessmen.

"What Nitish Kumar has been able to do is restore faith in the society of Bihar. We had almost given up, but now you feel you can do things in Bihar," said Jha, who has put his money where his mouth is, spending $12 million on a shopping mall and cinema multiplex in Patna, the state's first.

Kumar is not without detractors: critics say he is poor at delegating, causes bottlenecks by amassing all decision-making in his office and accomplishes far less than he claims.

"This is a government of denting, painting and decorating," said state opposition leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui. "It's all on the surface. Nitish Kumar will hold a ceremony to inaugurate the ditch and then another for the bridge built over it."

Still, the contrast between the hyper-active chief minister of Bihar and the central government in New Delhi could hardly be more stark after months of drift and policy paralysis under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that have contributed to a slowdown in the country's stellar economic growth.

AN IDEOLOGY OF HUMANISM

A vegetable garden borders the path that leads to the simple Patna bungalow where the chief minister has his office. On a shelf inside his sparsely furnished room, there are several trophies awarded by media groups for "Indian of the Year." There is just one picture on the wall, an image of Mahatma Gandhi, father of independent India.

Kumar's father was a freedom-fighter during British rule, but the son has always been implacably opposed to the Congress party that led the struggle for independence and its Nehru-Gandhi dynasty of leaders, defining himself more by his vision of social justice than any political group.

"His is not an ideology of a political party, it's an ideology of humanism," said M.J. Akbar, one of India's best-known newspaper editors and a former member of parliament for a Bihar constituency.

Meticulously turned out in a creaseless cream tunic, sleeveless Nehru jacket and a grey scarf, 60-year-old Kumar smiles gently as he explains his style of governance: "pro-poor and pro-people."

An engineering graduate, Kumar first got a toehold in state politics and then in New Delhi, where he was a member of parliament and the country's railways minister in a coalition led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He won elections in Bihar for his Janata Dal (United) party six years ago and, in a ringing endorsement of his policies, he was voted back to power in 2010.

Kumar's party is still aligned with the BJP, and popular wisdom has is that if their coalition wins the general election in 2014 he could be a strong contender to become prime minister.

Does he dream of leading the country one day?

"Not really," he says diffidently. "Serving my own people gives me satisfaction. I don't have any ambition. I don't have that kind of desire."

Not content to sit in Patna for long, Kumar gets around Bihar's 38 districts, talking to people on streets and in village squares to find out what they want fixed. These audiences are followed by meetings with district officials at which he prods the state's bureaucracy to respond.

"Why is there darkness around the lamp?" he asked at one such meeting in Patna recently, when he was informed that a scheme to provide free meals for schoolchildren was least effective in and around the city. "This is the capital, you all live here, we have to improve this."

Later, when told of plans to hire more land records staff, he instructed officials to make sure there were desks and offices ready for them. "We don't want them loitering in the corridors," he said, his voice restrained but still dominating the room filled with more than 100 bureaucrats.

This direct and no-nonsense delivery belies his apparent bonhomie.

"He is a very confident person who disguises his confidence with a great amount of modesty," said Akbar.

VOTES ARE 'CASTE'

It is sometimes said that in Bihar people "don't cast their votes, they vote for their caste."

That is because, besides being blighted by poverty, its people have long been sharply divided by Hinduism's social hierarchy. In the fairly recent past, upper and lower caste groups kept private armies, and pitched battles between them or massacres by one side or another were common.

Fanning the caste-based politics of Bihar in the 1990s was Lalu Prasad Yadav, now a lawmaker in New Delhi. A charismatic leader from a "backward" caste whose trademark humor can make a budget speech sound like a stand-up routine, Yadav's reign was dubbed the "Jungle Raj" as the rule of law broke down.

Kumar also belongs to a minority "backward" caste and was aligned with Yadav for years before they parted ways. One factor behind his rise has been his resolve to woo voters not by social blocs but on the basis of his government's performance.

"Caste is the reality in the Indian system, but I have proved that caste does not decide the outcome of an election," he said.

Corruption is still endemic despite Kumar's crackdown. He has confiscated the houses of two corrupt officials to turn them into schools, and many others face the same fate, but critics say he is actually too tolerant of the graft around him.

Law and order remains a serious problem, too. In 2010, Bihar ranked second among the country's states for the number of people killed in violent crimes, and police seize tens of thousands of illegal firearms every year.

Still, many feel that Bihar is a safer place since Kumar launched an anti-crime drive. Residents now feel less frightened to drive at night in rural areas, where roadside hold-ups and kidnappings were once routine.

"Five years ago, if we had to travel from Gaya to Patna, we would leave by 3 in the afternoon so we could get to the city before dark," said Navendu Kumar Thakur, who runs a construction company in the state. Gaya is about 100 km (60 miles) south of the state capital. "Now, it doesn't matter if we leave at 9 at night, there's no problem on the road."

Kumar says restoring faith in the police and judiciary was a top priority.

"A reign of terror used to prevail in the society, Bihar used to be in the news for all the wrong reasons," he said. "My first task was to ensure rule of law and trust in the system."

WEAK ECONOMIC BASE

With the improvement in law and order, there has been tentative interest in setting up industries in Bihar, which is 90 percent dependent on agriculture after the mineral-rich region of Jharkhand was hived off into a separate state in 2000.

New industries in Bihar can receive up to 300 percent of capital invested in VAT refunds over 10 years, in addition to a host of other incentives.

"He (Kumar) has shown that grass can grow in a desert," said Prem Kumar Agrawal, part-owner of a biscuit-making plant in the Hajipur industrial park near Patna, where half a dozen factories have opened in the past six months. With 300 workers, his enterprise produces 70-75 tonnes of biscuits per day.

"I give Nitish 9 out of 10 in terms of industrial policy," Agrawal said. "Bihar is now on the map."

But the new factories are only part of the story: abandoned buildings litter the rest of the industrial park, the metal fences on road dividers are rusty and the link to the nearby highway is a potholed and narrow road.

Manufacturing has in fact contributed very little to the surge in the economy's growth: with power cuts common, highways often jammed and graft still thriving, few investors are willing to brave Bihar yet. No surprise, then, that Bihar was ranked bottom last year in a state-by-state survey of economic freedom.

Official figures show that even agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, has contracted for the past six years, suggesting that the Bihar boom has been far from inclusive. Much of the growth has instead been generated by hefty public spending on construction, which means the Bihar boom may not have a solid enough base to be sustainable.

Indeed, Bihar is Exhibit A for the case that India is a two-track economy, with industry-friendly seaboard states rushing ahead as others grow from extremely low bases.

Shaibal Gupta, secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, reckons that even if Bihar's growth continues at its current double-digit clip it would take 18 years to catch up with the present-day wealth of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai.

"We can't call it a miracle," Gupta said. "It's some change at an initial level that should have happened 60 years ago."

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120131/wl_nm/us_india_bihar

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Good housing legislation could save the economy

Housing is the one area of policy with the greatest potential to actually move the needle on the economy

I don?t know if the President will say much about housing, but there are some important and potential helpful policy choices percolating in the background.

Skip to next paragraph Jared Bernstein

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Before joining the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as a senior fellow, Jared was chief economist to Vice President Joseph Biden and executive director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class. He is a contributor to MSNBC and CNBC and has written numerous books, including 'Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?'

Recent posts

I?ve long held that of all the stuff on the White House?s ?we-can?t-wait? list?things they can do to help the economy and jobs without going through that legislative death trap formerly known as Congress?housing policy is the one with the greatest potential to actually move the needle.

And the most helpful policy in housing is the reduction of mortgage principal for underwater homeowners.?? Research has clearly revealed that owing more than the value on your home is the strongest predictor of foreclosure, and housing finance analysts widely agree that principal reduction is the best medicine to avoid this outcome.

But what does any of this have to do with stuff we could actually do right now?? Good question.? The answer is that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could quickly reduce the principal on millions of home loans they own or insure, without going through Congress.

So, why haven?t they done so?? Another fine question.?? First, you need to recall that Fan and Fred are 80% owned by the US gov?t right now, and FHFA, as conservator, wants to protect the taxpayer.? That?s fine?we thank you, FHFA.?

But?and news accounts have been getting this quite wrong?FHFA believes that loan forgiveness (principal reduction) would only save the taxpayers $20 billion while loan forbearance would save $24 billion (the latter modifies the loan, it does not reduce it).??

In other words, the FHFA agrees that both types of loan adjustments would reduce defaults and thus reduce losses to taxpayers, with a slight advantage to forbearance, which, as I?ll argue in a moment, is very likely incorrect.? I think if you did the analysis right, forgiveness would trump forbearance by a long shot.? But given the fact that reduction would clean this mess up a whole lot faster and more reliably than just changing the terms of the loans, and that taxpayers save either way, the path ahead?toward forgiveness, not forbearance?should be clear.

Unfortunately, the FHFA is placing landmines in that path.? Based on a letter reviewing all this by FHFA acting director Ed DeMarco, news accounts like this or this are reporting that if Fan and Fred were to reduce the principal on a subset of the mortgages they own or insure, it would cost?taxpayers $100 billion.

This $100 billion (it?s actually $102bn), however, is a gross number?it is the losses to the agencies, and the taxpayers, from all the mortgage defaults that FHFA expects to occur if they neither forbear nor reduce principal.? The relevant numbers, however, are the difference between the losses under a forbearance program ($78 billion), or a reduction program ($82 billion) and the cost of doing nothing.

The punch line, then, is that by their estimates, forgiveness saves the taxpayer $20 billion; forbearance, $24 billion.

But for a number of reasons, FHFA?s methods make forbearance look better than it really is.? This is some weedy stuff, but it matters:

?they use a state level price index rather than a localized price level.? This approach averages across cities with huge price drops and those with normal price declines, and thus reduces the number of the deeply underwater borrowers.*?? That in turn understates the impact of the policy most helpful to those borrowers: principal reduction.

?they use FICO credit scores and debt-to-income ratios at the time of loan origination rather than where those measures are today.? Obviously, they?re worse today, so this makes the agencies? book look better than it really is, and again, understates the benefits to principal reduction.? In other words, the way they do it artificially lowers their expected default rate, and so the policy that?s most effective against defaults for those with lower FICOs and higher DTIs gets less credit than it should.

?they assume that all of their debt forgiven in their forbearance programs is repaid?100% of it.?? That?s not realistic and it significantly reduces the cost of this option. ? Simply building in a realistic default rate for debt that?s been pushed back to the end of the loan would raise the cost of forbearance relative to principal reduction.

Any one of these changes will sop up the $4 billion difference in an NY minute, showing forgiveness to dominate forbearance.? But even if the FHFA wants to stick with their numbers, reductions will go to work much more quickly and effectively to prevent defaults.?

If they keep coming up with reasons not to do the right thing, the White House should do the right thing and replace DeMarco?a perfect good guy who believes he?s doing the right thing here but isn?t?with someone who gets the urgency of the situation.

*Imagine a) that anyone with a home price decline of 30% is underwater and needs a loan mod, and b) a state has two homeowners in two different cities.? Homeowner A?s price went up 30%, homeowner B?s price went down 30%. Average them together across the state and no one needs a mod; use the local price index, and B should get one.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on jaredbernsteinblog.com.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/REkhgMN9CWg/Good-housing-legislation-could-save-the-economy

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