Purls of Wall Street

Day One of blogging!!

Investing and knitting... Abstract and concrete...As a long term investor and knitter I thought it would be fun to start to talk about the two at the same time...

The "developed" world has been very self satified up until our financial crisis. We know what we are doing, how to run monetary(interest rates) and Fiscal(budget deficit) policy for our countries. You emerging economies need our help and advice on how to become more like us.

In the USA-for every dollar of GDP (stuff we make) we have borrowed $3.50. This is more than double the normal number. "neither a borrower nor a lender be" an old time expression might be extreme advice to give, but given we are way OVER borrowed it is time to think hard about the way we run our countries policies and our personal finances as well. When interest rates are very low or when borrowing is TOO EASY to get people spend today and dont save.

This is our monetary policy. We move our spending UP... and push our savings out until later...

We buy a car or a pool or a deck or yarn(credit cards count!)

If you NEVER want to stop working or you have a rich parent or spouse.. this is fine..otherwise...You have to save! The same is true for a country.

Our current situation is very tricky, we overspent and over borrowed and now to fix this we are keeping interest rates low and hoping this will keep our economy from grinding to a halt. As far as I can tell the best thing for the US is that China and Brazil and many other emerging countries have less debt and have population growth and can keep the world economy growing....

Right now they are helping us...who really knows what is the right policy???

I am knitting a stretchy skirt for my teenage rocker daughter. It is made from Cascade fixation.

I am holding a black and pink together to make it "cool"

Using sized 10.5(us) circular needles I cast on 120 stitches(gauge 4stitches per inch) to hange between waist and hips. After 4 inches in stockinette I increased 12 stitches 1 every 10 for one row. Now i have 132. Bizarrely, i was holding one black and one pink and the black ran out 6 rows before the pink. I took this opportunity to hold 2 pink together for 6 rows and will revert to the black and pink again now...

great think about rocker kids..doesnt have to be boring!

have a great day!

was inspired and finished this pretty quickly!

sjs