5 Simple Office Policies That Make Danish Workers Way More Happy Than Americans

From FastCompany


5 Simple Office Policies That Make Danish Workers Way More Happy Than Americans
Americans think it's normal to hate their jobs. Let us introduce you to the Danish concept of arbejdsglæde. It means happiness at work. Here's how Danish offices make sure it's happening.

WRITTEN BY Alexander Kjerulf

You will often see Denmark listed in surveys as the “happiest country on the planet." Interestingly Danes are not only happy at home, they're also happy at work. According to most studies of worker satisfaction among nations, the happiest employees in the world are in Denmark. The U.S.? Not so much. Here's just one data point: a recent Gallup poll found that 18% of American workers are actively disengaged, meaning they are “emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.” The same number for Danish workers is only 10%.

But why are Danish workers so happy compared to their American counterparts? Here are five fundamental differences.

1: REASONABLE WORKING HOURS

I once talked to an American who had gotten a job as a manager at a Danish company. Wanting to prove his worth, he did what he had always done and put in 60 to 70 hours a week. After a month, his manager invited him to a meeting. He was fully expecting to be praised for his hard work, but instead he was asked “Why do you work so much? Is something wrong? Do you have a problem delegating? What can we do to fix this?”

Some non-Danes wonder if Danes ever work. Not only do Danes tend to leave work at a reasonable hour most days, but they also get five to six weeks of vacation per year, several national holidays and up to a year of paid maternity/paternity leave. While the average American works 1,790 hours per year, the average Dane only works 1,540, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) statistics. Danes also have more leisure hours than any other OECD workers and the link between sufficient leisure and happiness is well established in the research.

The difference in the U.S. is stark, and many American companies celebrate overwork as a sign of commitment. “You have to put in the hours” is the message in the mistaken belief that the more hours you work, the more work you get done. We call this “The Cult of Overwork.” Danish companies, on the other hand, recognize that employees also have a life outside of work and that working 80 hours a week is bad for both employees and the bottom line.

2: LOW POWER DISTANCE

In the U.S., if your boss gives you an order, you pretty much do what you're told. In a Danish workplace, extremely few direct orders are ever given and employees are more likely to view them as suggestions.

Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede has quantified the business culture in more than 100 countries on several parameters, one of which is "power distance." A high power distance means that bosses are undisputed kings whose every word is law. U.S. workplaces have a power distance of 40 while Danish workplaces--with a score of 18--have the lowest power distance in the world.

Read more from FastCompany >>

Negative Real Interest Rates Are Just Income Redistribution Disguised As Monetary Policy

From Forbes

Negative Real Interest Rates Are Just Income Redistribution Disguised As Monetary Policy

Jeffrey Dorfman  |  Contributor  8/28/2014

As Keynesian economists and Democrats continue to fret about the imagined lack of demand in the economy, describing our current situation as “secular stagnation,” many are calling for even more extraordinary monetary policies. We already have negative real interest rates at the short end of the yield curve, but some want to consider even negative nominal rates. However, such policies will not stimulate the economy, but are just a backdoor way to accomplish even more income redistribution.

Interest rates have been pushed down to historic lows by the Federal Reserve. Nominal interest rates are economic jargon for the actual interest rates people face. For short term deposits and bonds, they are already approximately equal to zero. Real interest rates are economist-speak for interest rates minus the inflation rate. Most savers have been stuck with negative real interest rates on their CDs, savings, money market, and checking accounts for five years now and even many short and medium-term bonds are paying negative real interest rates.

What negative real interest rates do is steal wealth from people who are savers. People with money in the banks or bonds paying them negative real interest rates are really losing money over time in terms of the purchasing power of their savings. In contrast, negative real interest rates essentially provide borrowers with partial loan forgiveness. They are paying back a loan with less money (in purchasing power) than they originally borrowed.

These historically low interest rates are not stimulating the economy because while they may encourage people and businesses to borrow money, they discourage those same people and businesses from saving money. Money can only be borrowed after somebody saves it, and low interest rates encourage spending, not saving. While savers around the world are sending their money to the U.S. for safety, offsetting the negative effect of low interest rates on saving, all that foreign money and more would have come to the U.S. if interest rates had been higher.

The federal government currently redistributes seven dollars for every three it spends. Income redistribution is now the main purpose of our federal government, not the provision of public goods and promotion of the general welfare. Negative real interest rates are just another way to expand the amount of income redistribution. It is creative in that it won’t show up in any budget document and no politicians have to cast a vote on the matter.

Read more from Forbes >>

Stanford researchers create 'evolved' protein that may stop cancer from spreading

From Stanford News


Stanford Report, September 21, 2014

Stanford researchers create 'evolved' protein that may stop cancer from spreading
Experimental therapy stopped the metastasis of breast and ovarian cancers in lab mice, pointing toward a safe and effective alternative to chemotherapy.

BY TOM ABATE

A team of Stanford researchers has developed a protein therapy that disrupts the process that causes cancer cells to break away from original tumor sites, travel through the bloodstream and start aggressive new growths elsewhere in the body.

This process, known as metastasis, can cause cancer to spread with deadly effect.

"The majority of patients who succumb to cancer fall prey to metastatic forms of the disease," said Jennifer Cochran, an associate professor of bioengineering.

A paper describing the research was published online Sept. 21 in Nature Chemical Biology. Cochran and Amato Giaccia, professor of radiation oncology, share senior authorship of the paper. The lead author is Mihalis Kariolis, a former Bio-X graduate fellow who is now a postdoctoral scholar in Giaccia's lab.

Today doctors try to slow or stop metastasis with chemotherapy, but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects.

The Stanford team seeks to stop metastasis, without side effects, by preventing two proteins – Axl and Gas6 – from interacting to initiate the spread of cancer.

Axl proteins stand like bristles on the surface of cancer cells, poised to receive biochemical signals from Gas6 proteins.

When two Gas6 proteins link with two Axls, the signals that are generated enable cancer cells to leave the original tumor site, migrate to other parts of the body and form new cancer nodules.

To stop this process Cochran used protein engineering to create a harmless version of Axl that acts like a decoy. This decoy Axl latches on to Gas6 proteins in the bloodstream and prevents them from linking with and activating the Axls present on cancer cells.

In collaboration with Giaccia, who co-directs the Radiation Biology Program in the Stanford Cancer Institute, the researchers gave intravenous treatments of this bioengineered decoy protein to mice with aggressive breast and ovarian cancers.

Mice in the breast cancer treatment group had 78 percent fewer metastatic nodules than untreated mice. Mice with ovarian cancer had a 90 percent reduction in metastatic nodules when treated with the engineered decoy protein.

"This is a very promising therapy that appears to be effective and nontoxic in preclinical experiments," Giaccia said. "It could open up a new approach to cancer treatment."

Read more from Stanford News >>

Calcium Supplements Are . . . Safe?

From Berkeley Wellness

Calcium Supplements Are . . . Safe?
by BERKELEY WELLNESS  |  SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

If you take calcium supplements and are concerned about their safety, here’s good news:

A Harvard study of 75,000 female nurses has linked the supplements to a reduced risk of heart attacks. In recent years several studies suggested that calcium pills increase the risk of coronary artery disease, which has caused some people to stop taking them. This potential risk has been much debated, however, and many other studies have not supported it.

The new observational study, in Osteoporosis International, found that women who took 1,000 milligrams or more of calcium a day had a 29 percent lower risk of heart attack over a 24-year period than nonusers; age, weight, dietary calcium, vitamin D, and various cardiovascular risk factors were controlled for.

Clinton: Profits won't be priority No. 1 in future

From Yahoo Finance

Clinton: Profits won't be priority No. 1 in future
"We're going to share inequality, misery and conflict, or we're going to share prosperity, responsibilities and a sense of community,"

In the future, corporations will care less about maximizing profits and more about employees and society, President Bill Clinton told listeners on Tuesday.

Speaking at the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Clinton predicted that American corporations will see a repudiation of the bottom line-focused business philosophy that now dominates. This change will happen, he said, without significant government involvement.

"I think the government can have incentives that will encourage it, but I think by and large it will happen, if it does, because of proof that markets work better that way," Clinton said, adding that companies will see overall greater success by taking care of their employees and doing good for more than only their shareholders.

This corporate change, Clinton said, will be one of the most important keys to building a better future.

"We're going to share inequality, misery and conflict, or we're going to share prosperity, responsibilities and a sense of community," Clinton said.

Those predictions were echoed by a panel of business leaders who followed the former president.

Tony James, Blackstone Group's (BX) president and COO, highlighted Costco (COST) as a company that already embodies Clinton's vision, saying the retailer "never tried to squeeze profits out of its employees," but has still seen tremendous success along the way.

In addition to increasing long-term employee satisfaction, putting workers ahead of shareholders will also help attract the best and brightest to a company, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said. She echoed Clinton's prediction.

"People want to work for a company that they believe is socially responsible, and business owners are well aware of that," Pritzker said. "It's necessary to attract the kind of talent that you want to attract in the long haul-I believe we're going to see a moving back to a more positive and more virtuous cycle."

Outside the American sphere, Clinton's prediction may already be coming to fruition.

Read more from Yahoo Finance >>

The Easy Way to Profit From Falling Currencies

From Wealth Daily


The Easy Way to Profit From Falling Currencies
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Are you worried about the government printing trillions of dollars and creating inflation?

Then it may surprise you to hear that deflation is a greater threat than inflation today to institutional investors.

According to a recent Bloomberg poll of institutional investors in Europe, "77% viewed disinflation or deflation as a greater threat than inflation."

This is the big story...

So what should you be worried about? Inflation or deflation?

There are good arguments on both sides. But I expect that, ultimately, inflation will win out. Governments are bad at a lot of things... but one thing they do well is print money.

Governments are deathly afraid of deflation... They much prefer inflation for many reasons. For example, inflation makes people feel like they're making more money each year, and when a government prints money, it makes its existing debts "cheaper" to repay.

Right now in Europe, Mario Draghi (the head of Europe's Central Bank) is fighting deflation with all he has... In a historic move, he cut interest rates to BELOW zero. And just last month, he announced he wants to "give" $1 trillion to the banks – he wants to print money.

In short, Draghi wants to follow the U.S.'s script of the last few years – by cutting interest rates to record lows and printing money. He wants to create the "Draghi Asset Bubble," and he doesn't mind if the euro currency falls while he's doing it.

You can see Draghi's plan at work in the one-year chart of the euro. As I told you yesterday, it has followed our "script" and plummeted in value. This is going to stimulate the European economy... and drive European stocks higher.




Read more from Wealth Daily >>

A 7.5 minute speech that leaves you smiling.....

Listen and walk away with a smile....

Jack Ma Started with a dream, so did JR Ridinger 22 years ago

Jack Ma Started with a dream, so did JR Ridinger 22 years ago
It Started with a dream - Today Jack Ma is the richest person in China.

Fifteen years ago, Jack Ma started his company Alibaba. At the time, he only made $15 a month as an English school teacher. Today, he is the richest man in China with the historic IPO of his company Alibaba at the NYSE, New York Stock Exchange.

He said it started with a dream and worked hard with his team towards realizing it. He knew then that internet will change China and change the world. He learned that helping others resulted in helping himself.

I have to assume each one of us have dreams but what differentiate dreamers from doers?

We all know dreamers will only be happy when they are dreaming but doers not only dream but are willing to work hard towards their dreams. Doers or entrepreneurs know early on that there will be failures and are determined to overcome and learn from mistakes and failures. No one will truly appreciate success without struggles and obstacles.

To do what Jack Ma did requires true grit and many others who believed in him to pool their resources together to build Alibaba. It is an inspiring rags to riches story like many American success stories except this is made in China and culminated in the canyons of Wall Street.

But fortunately today, you do not need to go through all the hoops and hurdles like Jack Ma to start an internet company.

JR Ridinger and his wife Loren, themselves a rags to riches story, 22 years ago had a dream and a vision to help others build their own business with minimal start-up cost. Today thousands have embraced his model and are successful entrepreneurs because JR leveled the playing field for each one of them.

Thanks to JR and Loren you too can become an entrepreneur just as Jack Ma was an entrepreneur and follow JR's unfranchise path to time and financial independence.

Check out Market America.
Check out Shop.com.

You will be glad you did!

400% Gains When the Fed Hikes Rates

From DailyWealth


400% Gains When the Fed Hikes Rates
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
Friday, September 19, 2014

The last time the Fed hiked interest rates, the investment I'll share with you today soared nearly 400%.

Most people think that you can't make money once the Fed starts raising interest rates.

They're wrong...

The last time the Fed hiked rates was from 2004 to 2006... Interest rates went up from 1.00% to 5.25%.

While most people thought higher rates would kill U.S. stock prices, the opposite happened, as I explained in this DailyWealth.

In short, the U.S. stock market soared from below 1,000 in 2003 to more than 1,500 in 2007 – a move of more than 50%.

Of course, stocks eventually crashed as the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2008. But importantly, stocks did NOT crash when the Fed started raising rates. The crash happened years later. From 2003 to 2007, smart U.S.-stock investors stayed in stocks when the Fed was raising interest rates, and they reaped big rewards.

However, the biggest gains didn't come here in the U.S...

They came overseas. More specifically, they came from emerging-market stocks.

Most investors aren't aware of it, but emerging-market stocks dramatically outperformed U.S. stocks from 2003 to 2007 – a period that included the rising interest rates of 2004 to 2006 – rising by nearly 400% percent:




Read more from DailyWealth >>

Study: The Secret To Ending Procrastination Is Changing The Way You Think About Deadlines

From Forbes


Study: The Secret To Ending Procrastination Is Changing The Way You Think About Deadlines

Amy Morin | Contributor

Quite often, the biggest obstacle to reaching our goals is our lack of motivation to get started. Whether we want to launch a new marketing campaign, get more organized, or lose weight, there’s often a long pause between thinking about change and actually creating change. This may be largely due to the fact that we put things off until “someday.”  Since “someday” never appears on the calendar, our good intentions don’t turn into action until we create deadlines .

Research Shows We Categorize Time Illogically

A new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research reveals our natural inclination to categorize time. Researchers explain that we have a tendency to view things in terms of “present” and “future.” When we categorize a deadline as being in the present, we’re likely to start working on the goal. When we decide something falls into the “future” category, we simply file it in our “someday” archives and it’s easy for those goals to be neglected.

The most interesting aspect of the study is its revelation about the inaccurate and illogical ways we categorize time. For example, researchers gave study participants six months to complete a task (open a bank account and receive a reward). When participants were given the task in June with a December deadline, they were more likely to complete the task.

Participants who were given a task in July – and their six month deadline was in January – were more likely to put off doing the task. Since the task fell in the next calendar year, participants categorized the task as something that could wait until later. Even though both groups had six months to meet their goals, they treated the urgency of the job differently depending on the calendar dates of the deadlines.

Similarly, when participants were given a task that needed to be completed within seven days, they were more likely to begin working on it immediately. When the task was given on a Tuesday, for example, and the deadline was the following Tuesday, participants categorized the task as something they should begin working on now. But, if the deadline wasn’t until the following Wednesday, the task was categorized as a “future” project and they were more likely to procrastinate.

Read more from Forbes >>

How to throw away a fortune

From YahooFinance

How to throw away a fortune
Smart moves to neglect and stupid ones to make

The Wall Street Journal | By Jonathan Clements

Today's topic: How to throw away a fortune—in seven easy steps. Ready to waste money? Here are some surefire strategies:

1. Delay saving.

Suppose you work for 40 years, save $250 a month, your investments earn a 5% pretax annual return and you lose 25% a year to income taxes.

If you start saving as soon as you enter the workforce, you will have roughly $279,000 at retirement. But if you delay by just 10 years, you'll amass $167,000, or 40% less.

2. Shun retirement accounts.

OK, maybe it's worth saving for 40 years. But is it really worth locking up money in retirement accounts, with a 10% tax penalty to discourage withdrawals before age 59½?

Let's use the assumptions above. But suppose you skip the taxable account and instead fund a Roth individual retirement account, which can deliver tax-free growth. After 40 years, you'd have $383,000, with no taxes owed.

What if, instead, you had opted for a tax-deductible IRA? You might lose 25% to taxes when you cash out your IRA in retirement. But if you'd invested the tax savings from the initial tax deduction, you could sock away $333 every month, rather than $250. Result: After taxes, the tax-deductible IRA should give you $383,000, just like the Roth.

3. Forfeit the employer match.

Roughly 20% of eligible employees don't salt away money in 401(k) plans, including plans with matching employer contributions, according to a survey by Chicago's Plan Sponsor Council of America.

Are you among those who don't contribute—or don't contribute enough to get the full match? You could be missing out on a heap of dough.

Let's assume your employer matches 401(k) contributions at a rate of 50 cents for every $1 you contribute. If you saved $333 a month for 40 years and collected the match, you'd have $575,000 at retirement, even after paying all taxes.

4. Buy active mutual funds.

Read more from YahooFinance >>

3 Good Reasons To Sit Down, Shut Your Eyes And Meditate

From HuffingtonPost


3 Good Reasons To Sit Down, Shut Your Eyes And Meditate
Posted: 09/09/2014

By Sarah Z. Wexler for Men's Journal

Meditating isn't easy. Instead of sitting on the floor cross-legged for half an hour, you probably want to be tweaking your fantasy football team, working through your Netflix cue, crossing things off the to-do list. Yet, new studies show that meditating could be just as good for you as those obviously relaxing and productive activities, plus offer surprising, cool mind, body and health benefits. Take a few minutes a day to focus on one thing -- a mantra, a word, or your own breath; basically, anything but that to-do list -- and you'll benefit in these ways.

Feel Less Pain 
Researchers put healthy participants in an MRI to see how their brains light up when they experience pain, and how meditation could change their evaluation of that pain. After only four days, meditation during pain was found to reduce the participants' rating of unpleasantness by 57 percent, and also decreased the intensity by 40 percent. How? Meditation-induced reductions in pain were associated with increased activity in the areas involved with cognitive processing and reframing the contextual evaluation of sensory events -- meaning the pain you feel can be reframed in your brain as less terrible and more tolerable.

Control Anxiety
Meditate, and you'll stress less in the moment, and you may be able to also stop yourself from worrying about the future, according to recent research. Nearly a hundred patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (a disorder characterized by chronic worry and physiological hyperarousal symptoms), were trained in a type of meditation called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. After eight weeks, without adding any traditional cognitive therapy, their anxiety and distress levels went down. The study's takeaway: If you can learn from mediation that thoughts are just thoughts, and physical sensations are just physical sensations, you can more easily shut down the anxiety-causing negative self-talk about those feelings.

Furthermore, participants in the study who had to do public speaking (perhaps the world's greatest anxiety-inducer) even showed more confidence, saying things more often like "I can handle everything" rather than the self-sabotaging, "I'll probably bomb anyway."

Be Happier
This year, a Johns Hopkins professor did an analysis of 47 of the best existing mediation studies on more than 3,500 participants. He found that meditation provided as much relief from depression symptoms as antidepressants. And unlike drugs, which can come with a host of unpleasant side effects -- drowsiness, reduced sex drive -- meditation has never been shown to have any risk or negative side effects. Well, other than a little flack from your friends.

Read more from HuffingtonPost >>

The American Diet: A Prescription for Ill Health

From Foodday.org

This is the interest rate you should care about

From MarketWatch


This is the interest rate you should care about

By Chuck Jaffe
Published: Sept 12, 2014

For all of the talk about how low interest rates are and how long they will stay low, Americans have mostly missed the fact that the interest rate that may be most important to them isn’t low at all.

BankRate.com this week pegged the average variable credit-card interest rate at 15.66%, the highest level since it started surveying variable rates in 2005. Variable card rates didn’t burst through the old record with some big jump, they simply continued inching up, continuing a slow, inexorable trend that started with the passage of the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009.

The timing of the new highs could not be much worse for consumers. Americans added $28.2 billion to their credit card balances during the second quarter of 2014, the largest quarterly amount in the last six years, according to CardHub.com. That debt expansion nearly erased the $32.5 billion that consumers paid off during the year’s first quarter.

With the average credit-card debt per U.S. adult — excluding zero-balance cards and store cards — now standing at just under $5,000, according to TransUnion, and with the Federal Reserve saying there’s nearly $900 billion in outstanding revolving debt and well over $3 trillion in outstanding consumer debt, little moves up in credit-card rates add up. The average household credit-card balance has fallen from nearly $8,500 around the time of the financial crisis in 2008 to about $6,800 today.

While most consumers haven’t necessarily noticed the rate creep because it has been so gradual, the situation causing the increase also should guide consumers on how they might respond to it, because it’s harder to evade high rates now than it was in the past.

One facet of the CARD Act is that it prevents card issuers from raising rates on an existing balance until the cardholder becomes 60-days delinquent.

Before that provision was put into place, consumers faced a landscape where the moment a payment was late, the card issuer would jack up rates. Thus, a consumer who signed on for a deal at, say, 9%, would come up a day late and see their tariff double to 18%, a steep price to pay.

Read more from MarketWatch >>

Government Debt Isn't the Problem—Private Debt Is

From the Atlantic

Government Debt Isn't the Problem—Private Debt Is
The Roaring Twenties, the Japanese boom of the '80s, and the U.S.'s in the early 2000s have one thing in common: They were debt-fueled binges that brought these economies to the brink of ruin.

RICHARD VAGUE | SEP 9 2014

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, discussing the financial crisis of 2008, wrote that “financial bubbles occur from time to time, and usually with little or no forewarning.”

That’s misleading at best. The 2008 collapse was predictable. And, more generally, major financial crises of this type can be seen well in advance—and prevented—if you know what to look for. In fact, there’s a fairly simple formula that predicts such crises with a high amount of confidence. And it suggests that the world economy remains in more peril than is generally appreciated.

This conclusion comes from an examination of financial crises around the world, dating back to the 19th century, that I conducted with my colleagues and summarize in my new book The Next Economic Disaster. The logic behind our conclusion can be seen in the diagrams below.

Take a look at this graph:

Crisis of 2007-2008: U.S. GDP, Public Debt, and Private Debt (in Billions)

GDP data comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, private-debt data from the Federal Reserve, and Federal-debt data from the Treasury. (Richard Vague)

Note that, in the years prior to the crisis, the line representing federal government debt roughly parallels the line representing GDP; federal debt wasn’t growing dramatically as a fraction of GDP. So the big post-crisis standoff between Democrats and Republicans over the federal debt wasn’t focused on the big problem.

What was the big problem? Look at the line representing private debt. It clearly is not parallel to the GDP line and, indeed, reflects a rapid growth of private debt relative to GDP.

By itself this isn’t shocking. We all know that a growth in home mortgages preceded the crash, and home mortgages are one kind of private debt—along with other consumer borrowing and borrowing by businesses. What’s more surprising is what we found when we looked at lots of other financial crises around the world, dating back to the 19th century: Though most of these crises aren’t thought of as being fundamentally caused by excessive private debt, the fact is that they were preceded by the same kind of runup in private debt that the U.S. saw prior to 2008. 

Just to take one example, look at this data from Japan prior to its financial crisis of 1991. 

Read more from the Atlantic >>

HEALTH BENEFITS OF COCONUT

From AboutNutritionFacts.com


Health Benefits of Coconut 1 – Coconut for Weight Loss
Coconut oil promotes weight loss. Researchers have discovered that besides coconut oil not increasing body fat, it in fact produces a reduction in white fat stores.

In a study of obese mice that received a diet rich in either coconut or safflower oil, mice that received the coconut oil were found to have made much less fat cells than mice that received the safflower oil.

Due to the fact that the medium-chain fats found in coconut are absorbed easily and made use of as a source of energy by the body preferentially, the body’s metabolic rate is actually increased.

Health Benefits of Coconut 2 – Coconut for Fungal Infections
The lauric acid found in coconuts as well as its derivative monolaurin which is converted from lauric acid in the body, is effective in eliminating various fungi, such as Candida albicans and ringworm.

Health Benefits of Coconut 3 – Coconut for AIDS
Research recently carried out has revealed that coconut oil reduces viral load in AIDS patients.

Nutrients in Coconut
The fat in coconut is nearly all the immune boosting medium chain saturated fat.  The flesh of a coconut consists of around 50% water and about 35% coconut oil, 10% carbohydrates, and 3.5% protein. Coconuts are a great source of molybdenum, manganese and copper. Coconut also is a good source of zinc and selenium.

History of Coconut
The coconut palm is believed to have come from someplace in the Malayan archipelago and was soon spread by nature and man. Herb infused coconut has been made use of in Ayurvedic medicine for nearly 4,000 years as an effective parasitic skin disease treatment.

Approximately 20 billion coconuts are harvested every year, and even though the Philippines, Indonesia and India are the major producers, the coconut palm also grows in the tropical regions of Asia, Latin America, the Pacific Islands and East Africa.

World Bank warns of global jobs crisis

From Yahoo Finance


World Bank warns of global jobs crisis

The world is facing a global jobs crisis that is hurting the chances of reigniting economic growth and there is no magic bullet to solve the problem, the World Bank warned on Tuesday.

In a study released at a G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting in Australia, the Bank said an extra 600 million jobs needed to be created worldwide by 2030 just to cope with the expanding population.

"There's little doubt there is a global jobs crisis," said the World Bank's senior director for jobs, Nigel Twose.

"As this report makes clear, there is a shortage of jobs -- and quality jobs.

"And equally disturbingly, we're also seeing wage and income inequality widening within many G20 countries, although progress has been made in a few emerging economies, like Brazil and South Africa."

He said that overall emerging market economies had done better than advanced G20 countries in job creation, driven primarily by countries such as China and Brazil, but the outlook was bleak.

"Current projections are dim. Challenging times loom large," said Twose.

The report, compiled with the OECD and International Labour Organisation, said more than 100 million people were unemployed in G20 economies and 447 million were considered "working poor", living on less than US$2 a day.

It said despite a modest economic recovery in 2013-14, global growth was expected to remain below trend with downside risks in the foreseeable future, while weak labour markets were constraining consumption and investment.

The persistent slow growth would continue to dampen employment prospects, it said, and warned that real wages had stagnated across many advanced G20 nations and even fallen in some.

"There is no magic bullet to solve this jobs crisis, in emerging markets or advanced economies," said Twose.

"We do know we need to create an extra 600 million jobs worldwide by the year 2030 just to cope with the expanding population.

Read more from Yahoo Finance >>

Exclusive: Mobile now the primary way consumers shop online

From Internet Retailer

September 4, 2014, 12:58 PM
Exclusive: Mobile now the primary way consumers shop online

BY BILL SIWICKI Managing Editor, Mobile Commerce

Guess what? You now work in an industry dominated by mobile devices.

Branding Brand, the technology vendor with the most clients (57) in the newly published 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500, today has revealed exclusively to Internet Retailer that last month mobile traffic to the 26 retailer clients it has benchmarked for years surpassed 50%—50.7%, to be precise. These 26 retailers, out of the vendor’s more than 200 clients, generated $180 million in web revenue in August 2014, 27.3% of which stemmed from smartphones and tablets.

Further, web and mobile measurement firm comScore Inc., which uses the “time spent” metric to gauge online retail activity by consumers, tells Internet Retailer that in July 2014, 56% of time spent with U.S. online retail occurred on a mobile device.

And if that weren’t enough, earlier this week, technology consultancy Capgemini and U.K. e-retail association Interactive Media in Retail Group , or IMRG, reported that in the second quarter of 2014, mobile traffic to U.K. retailers for the first time surpassed 50%—52%, to be precise.

“Mobile is now the primary access point to online retail for most consumers,” says Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore. “As a result, retailers really need to rethink how they deliver their online shopping experience.”

Even aggressive growth estimates did not correctly calculate how fast this mobile majority would occur, says Chris Mason, CEO and co-founder of Branding Brand.

“And it comes right before the 2014 holiday shopping season, and right before Apple releases two new iPhones, so this holiday season, unlike any before it, is going to be extremely focused on mobile,” Mason says. “Retailers can no longer have a single view of a customer starting with a desktop web site or a store. Just like what happened with usage of Instagram and other social media players, retailers now have customers who only know the merchants from mobile. Mobile-first and mobile-only customers represent a significant pivot in online retail.”

Indeed, Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which facilitates retailer sales through Amazon.com and other web marketplaces, recently told Internet Retailer that retailers need to prepare for the mobile-only customer.

Read more from Internet Retailer >>

To your health and wealth!

The $20 book that companies are betting could save them $100,000 or more

From Fortune

The $20 book that companies are betting could save them $100,000 or more
People want to live the life they choose today and worry about the consequences later.

CBS, Michael Dell, and others are giving David Agus’s A Short Guide to a Long Life to their employees to encourage good health.

by  Caroline Little  @FortuneMagazine  JANUARY 17, 2014

Dr. David Agus admits he is not good at treating advanced diseases. A cancer doctor and author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller The End Of Illness, Agus says he is tired of telling patients that he has run out of ways to combat their chronic condition. Instead, Agus would like to prevent these diseases from happening in the first place. His new book A Short Guide to a Long Life explores the simple idea that a healthy tomorrow starts with good habits today.

His message, it appears, is resonating in corporate America. Companies such as CBS  CBS -0.05% , Paramount, and Anthem Blue Cross, along with Dell CEO Michael Dell, are buying the guide en masse for their employees in the hopes that improving employees’ health today could save the companies money down the road.

The illustrated health book offers 65 tips — ranging from getting a flu shot to eating more fish to working on your posture — that Agus suggests can delay, and in some cases entirely prevent, chronic diseases ranging from obesity to diabetes to dementia.
You’ve probably heard most of the suggestions at least once from your mother, a concerned friend, or a busybody colleague. But most of us haven’t incorporated them into our lives. As Agus explains, preventive health care can be a hard sell. People want to live the life they choose today and worry about the consequences later.

That outlook is partly to blame for not only the prevalence of chronic disease in America, but also for problems in the health care system. Roughly 75% of health care dollars are spent treating chronic diseases, which are the cause of death for seven out of every 10 Americans. In total, such diseases cost the economy $1 trillion annually both in medical costs and lost productivity, creating a significant issue for employers providing health insurance for their employees.

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To your health and wealth!

SHOP.COM Ranked Among Internet Retailer’s 2015 Top 500 Mobile Retailers

From MarketAmerica Blog

SHOP.COM Ranked Among Internet Retailer’s 2015 Top 500 Mobile Retailers
on September 5, 2014

Retail sales from mobile devices and tablets have been a powerhouse in recent years for e-commerce retailers. Market America and SHOP.COM were so excited to enter the mobile commerce world with the launch of the SHOP.COM Mobile App (which was originally the Market America App) in 2009 and the mobile friendly website launched at World Conference back in February. This year, the SHOP.COM Mobile App was fully redesigned, adding exciting new features and taking mobile commerce for SHOP.COM to a whole new level. It is no surprise that Internet Retailer took notice of the new developments for SHOP.COM.

Thanks to the hard work of Steve Ashley and the Mobile Team, SHOP.COM was ranked #18 on Internet Retailers 2015 list of Fastest Growing Mobile Internet Retailers in the World! This is an indication that the tremendous efforts from the Market America Mobile Team and well as our dedicated UnFranchise Owners and their efforts towards building a substantial residual income, have truly paid off.

Because of you, mobile sales on SHOP.COM have more than doubled since 2013 and mobile growth in 2014 grew by 111%. SHOP.COM and Market America continue to strive to be the best and are improving and growing at a rapid pace. SHOP.COM is a leader in the online shopping revolution thanks to your efforts. This is a testament to our people power, the innovation of our Mobile Team, the incredible products we sell, and the power of the UnFranchise opportunity.

Congratulations to our amazing UnFranchise Owners on helping SHOP.COM and Market America race to the top! Comment below to help us share a big thank you and spread the word about the leaps and bounds of this amazing organization! 

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Vitamin Chart Infographic

From Health Blog

Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is often prescribed to help treat depression.

The top food sources of vitamin B3 are beef liver, beets, brewer’s yeast,  

swordfish, tuna, salmon, sunflower seeds and peanuts.

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To your health & wealth!

Tips for Incorporating Wellness into Every Day

From HuffingtonPost


Tips for Incorporating Wellness into Every Day
Posted: 09/02/2014

By Sarah Kalamchi for Next Jump

I have always been a healthy and active person, but it wasn't until several years ago when I began facing some of the most challenging moments in my life and my career that I realized how valuable proper nutrition and exercise can be for stress reduction and energy management. As many people do, I allowed wellness to be an afterthought. It was easy to not take care of myself and it was no surprise that I eventually found myself physically depleted and emotionally drained.

I began investing in my health and after experiencing my own personal wellness turnaround, I knew I wanted a career that would allow me to help others do the same. Working as the Director of Wellness at Next Jump has afforded me that privilege.

In my role, I take the health and wellness of Next Jumpers seriously. The physical vessel matters -- healthier employees perform better, are more present and are happier overall -- a practice Next Jump has spent 20 years iterating on and improving upon as a company. It's no secret that human beings require energy to perform well. When tired or under pressure, we need good energy from proper fitness and nutrition to execute sound judgment and stay committed.

Some of the wellness practices that Next Jumpers have found to be most impactful are:

• Starting with Breakfast: The most important meal of the day! By stocking the kitchen with nutritious breakfast foods, employees know they will have healthy options to start their day with.

• Fitness is Fun: Participating in the company-wide fitness competition allows everyone to bond in new ways and ensures that I always have a friend to hit the gym with!

• Exercise is Strategic Disengagement: Exercise as an integral component of the productivity equation, I find workouts provide stress relief, a boost in energy and a way to step away from a problem and come back with a fresh perspective.

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Power Profile - Amber Yang, Market America International Conference 2014, Greensboro, NC

"Be the person you always want to be." - Amber Yang, a compassionate Entrepreneur

Fed: US consumers have decided to 'hoard money'

From YahooFinance

Fed: US consumers have decided to 'hoard money'

September 2, 2014

One of the great mysteries of the post-financial crisis world is why the U.S. has lacked inflation despite all the money being pumped into the economy.

The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks it has the answer: A paper the central bank branch published this week blames the low level of money movement in large part on consumers and their "willingness to hoard money." The paper also cites the Fed's own policies as a reason for consumers' unwillingness to spend.

Though American consumers might dispute the notion that inflation has been low, the indicators the Fed follows show it to be running well below the target rate of 2 percent that would have to come before interest rates would get pushed higher.

That has happened despite nearly six years of a zero interest rate policy and as the Fed has pushed its balance sheet to nearly $4.5 trillion.

Much of that liquidity, however, has sat fallow. Banks have put away close to $2.8 trillion in reserves, and households are sitting on $2.15 trillion in savings-about a 50 percent increase over the past five years.

"So why did the monetary base increase not cause a proportionate increase in either the general price level or (gross domestic product)?" economist Yi Wen and associate Maria A. Arias asked in the St. Louis Fed paper. "The answer lies in the private sector's dramatic increase in their willingness to hoard money instead of spend it. Such an unprecedented increase in money demand has slowed down the velocity of money."

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The Enormous Cost of Unhappy Employees

From Inc.

The Enormous Cost of Unhappy Employees

Most business owners know that unhappy employees cost them money, but you'll be shocked at how high that cost actually is.

BY ARIANA AYU  @ARIANAAYUTOPIA

A few weeks ago, we talked about why happiness at work matters; this week I'd like to share the flip side of that: the gigantic cost of unhappy employees.

Employee engagement has been a hot topic for several years now, but what does it really mean and how do you know whether your employees are engaged at work? And why does it matter?

Gallup's State of the Global Workplace reported on employee engagement in more than 140 countries and divided employees into three categories. Below is an excerpt from Gallup's study:

• Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.
• Not Engaged employees are essentially "checked out." They're sleepwalking through their workday, putting time--but not energy or passion--into their work.
• Actively Disengaged employees aren't just unhappy at work; they're busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged co-workers accomplish.

It's easy for us to think the problem lies with others, but the statistics give us a disturbing truth. Through its research, Gallup found that 87 percent of workers worldwide and 70 percent of employees in the U.S. (84 percent in Canada, 83 percent in the U.K.) are either not engaged or actively disengaged. That means only 30 percent of U.S. workers are driving their organizations forward.

If you're one of that 30 percent (or 13 percent worldwide), you know how frustrating it is when the majority of your co-workers are less committed to their jobs. In companies with low engagement, this frustration often causes swift turnover of top talent, since these people quickly realize they're carrying the weight alone.

The costs of low engagement aren't limited to turnover and recruitment. Gallup found that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. $450 billion to $550 billion per year; that number doesn't even take into account the "not engaged" employees. (Hello, Congress? We've found a way to fix the economy.)

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A Simple Way to Beat the Market, Year after Year

From the DailyWealth

A Simple Way to Beat the Market, Year after Year
By Brett Eversole, analyst, True Wealth Systems
Tuesday, September 2, 2014

There's nothing better than a simple, stupid investment idea.

Most folks think you have to reinvent the wheel to beat the market. They think the only way to produce outsized returns is with complex strategies. The kind the average person can't follow.

They're wrong.

Today, I'll show a simple way to beat the stock market. Importantly, this idea makes intuitive sense. And there's an easy way to make the trade today.

This simple idea beats the market by 1.8% a year. That might not sound like much, but over time, it leads to hundreds of percent in excess returns.

Let me explain…

Today's simple market-beating strategy requires us to rethink what "the market" actually is.

In the U.S., our benchmark for stocks is the S&P 500. This index holds the largest 500 companies that trade in the U.S.

That makes sense. If you want to own the U.S., own the biggest and the best. But there's a problem with this approach. As my colleague Porter Stansberry points out…

• S&P organizes its index by giving the biggest, most expensive stocks more "weight" in the index. Thus, the companies least likely to perform well for investors end up collecting the largest amount of investment capital from index funds. 

• That index isn't designed to help investors. It's designed to help sell S&P's bond ratings to issuers – i.e. large public companies.

Porter's describing "market cap weighting." It puts more of the index value into the largest companies, and less into the smaller companies.

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Prevalence of Partially Hydrogenated Oils in US Packaged Foods, 2012

From Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Prevalence of Partially Hydrogenated Oils in US Packaged Foods, 2012
Our analysis demonstrates that industrial trans fat is still common in US packaged foods, particularly in some food categories. 

Jenifer Clapp, MPA; Christine J. Curtis, MBA; Ann E. Middleton, MPH; Gail P. Goldstein, MPH

Abstract
Although there is evidence that consumption of trans fat has declined in the United States, limited documentation exists on current levels of industrial trans fat in foods. We estimated the prevalence of partially hydrogenated oils in 4,340 top-selling US packaged foods. Nine percent of products in the sample contained partially hydrogenated oils; 84% of these products listed “0 grams” of trans fat per serving, potentially leading consumers to underestimate their trans fat consumption. Government efforts to eliminate partially hydrogenated oils from packaged foods will substantially reduce exposure to this known cardiovascular disease risk factor.

Objective
Trans fat consumption is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (1). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has tentatively determined that partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), the main dietary source of industrial trans fat, are not “generally recognized as safe” for consumption (2). The FDA is considering public comments on this determination. If FDA finalizes the proposed change, products containing PHOs will not be allowed as ingredients in packaged or restaurant food unless the FDA makes a determination that they are safe. This study estimates the prevalence of PHOs in US packaged foods to better understand the implications of the proposed restriction of PHOs.

Methods
To estimate the prevalence of industrial trans fat in the packaged food supply, we used a cross-sectional database of brand-name products developed for the National Salt Reduction Initiative (NSRI) in 2012 (3). The NSRI Packaged Food Database (NSRI database) includes products in 61 commonly consumed food categories including baked goods, frozen foods, and snacks (4) that represent many of the top contributors of dietary trans fat (5).


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