FS's- October 19th Check out this trick! They say that people are in a better mood at times when the DOW is high, well what is the DOW anyway? Its the trading index of the top 30 "publically traded" companies in the US, that is, its a yardstick for OLIGOPOLY, there is no corresponding index which measures the unequal distribution of wealth within the DOW or outside of it. To say that happiness precedes corporate wealth consolidation in essence is saying that happiness or (good mood, an irrational state permitted by the repression of reality) is part of the problem, the study also needs to be scrutinized for the software it used to analyse 10 million tweets with, and the demographics of the population tested not mentioned. FROM PHYSORG Analyzing almost 10 million tweets, research finds public mood can predict Dow days in advance Researchers at IU Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing found the correlation between the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and public sentiment after analyzing more than 9.8 million tweets from 2.7 million users during 10 months in 2008. Using two mood-tracking tools to analyze the text content of the large-scale collection of Twitter feeds, Associate Professor Johan Bollen and Ph.D. candidate Huina Mao were able to measure variations in public mood and then compare them to closing stock market values. One tool, OpinionFinder, analyzed the tweets to provide a positive or negative daily time series of public mood. The second tool, Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS), measured the mood of tweets in six dimensions: calm, alert, sure, vital, kind, and happy. Together, the two tools provided the researchers with seven public mood time series that could then be set against a similar daily time series of Dow Jones closing values. The researchers then correlated the two sets of values -- Dow Jones and public mood -- and used a self-organizing network model to test a hypothesis that predicting stock market closing values could be improved by including public mood measurements. "We were not interested in proposing an optimal Dow Jones prediction model, but rather to assess the effects of including public mood information on the accuracy of the baseline prediction model," Bollen said. "What we found was an accuracy of 87.6 percent in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average." By implementing a prediction model called a Self-Organizing Fuzzy Neural Network (SOFFNN) similar to one already used to successfully forecast electrical load needs, the researchers were able to demonstrate that public mood had the ability to significantly improve the accuracy of the most basic models currently in use to predict Dow Jones closing values. Bollen described this particular SOFFNN as a five-layer hybrid neural network with the ability to self-organize its own neurons during a learning process that included information of past Dow Jones and public mood time series values. "Given the performance increase for a relatively basic model such as the SOFNN, we are hopeful to find equal or better improvements for more sophisticated market models that may in fact include other information derived from news sources and a variety of relevant economic indicators," he said. READ MORE Add Comment From COUNTERCURRENTS 40 Bizarre Statistics That Reveal The Horrifying Truth About The Collapse Of The U.S. Economy By The Truth 15 August, 2010 Thetruthwins.com Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon. Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth. What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP. At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop. As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable. Already, things are really, really, really bad out there. Unemployment is at shockingly high levels. Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records. Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed. There is no use sugar-coating it. The U.S. economy is collapsing. The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy.... 1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job. 2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began. 3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check. 4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. 5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007. 6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier. 7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour. 8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. 9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession. 10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record. 11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009. 12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010. 13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low. 14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. 15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008. READ MORE The Pursuit of Profit 03/27/2010
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