US recovery still in early stages

U.S. credit appears to be on the mend, but the recovery is still in its early stages. That is the key message of a report released today by TD Economics highlighting a number of positive developments in U.S. credit markets over recent months.

In October, responses to the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Survey showed that commercial banks' willingness to lend to consumers is hovering around its highest level in the last five years. The easing of credit standards has coincided with a drop in delinquency rates, signalling a general improvement in credit quality. Although delinquencies on real estate loans remain elevated, delinquencies on unsecured loans to consumers and businesses have seen a steady, downward trend since 2009.

Give the gift of books

There are so many great books and eBooks out there that one way to make sure you are buying someone the right gift is to give them the gift of books. If you can't personally check out their library to see what they enjoy reading or what book in a series they may be missing, there are always gift cards to both online and offline bookstores. If they are not into books, there are always magazines.

:-)

The story behind Frankenstein...

Recommended piece in Newsweek Their Love is Alive where the mystery of Mary Shelley then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin has a bit more light shed on it. One small part:

Few people did more to promote the archetype of the independent Romantic hero than Percy Shelley. It turns out, though, that he was a conscientious helpmate. By examining Mary's original drafts, Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson identified Percy's contributions to Frankenstein and, in 1996, edited a reproduction of Mary's notebooks for scholarly audiences. Now he has published The Original Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley). The first part of the new book highlights Percy's edits and the second reveals Mary's lone voice. "The novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley," Robinson writes in his introduction, but he estimates that Percy wrote "at least" 4,000 to 5,000 words of the 72,000 total. Many of -Percy's fixes are minor. Some are good, some bad. Percy may have corrected Mary's parallel constructions, but he also mucked up her more straightforward language. "Smallness" became "minuteness." "I did not despair" became "I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed." Frankenstein was already turgid; Percy made it more so.