Welcome to the Curious Cat Investing, Economics and Personal Finance Carnival: find useful recent personal finance, investing and economics blog posts and articles. The carnival is published twice each month.

The new year starts with markets still highly uncertain due to the after affects of the too-big to fail credit crisis and the Euro-zone crisis. Job markets leave many people’s personal finances is trouble and those that are in good shape have a much greater challenge determining what are optimal personal financial strategies.

And markets embody the uncertainty. Investing strategies are also made more difficult by the current uncertainties. Continuing with long held strategies seems wise, but less comforting in these troubled times.

• 32 Best Dividend Stocks for 2012 by Shailesh Kumar – “The following table lists the best dividend stocks for 2012 based on dividend yields, dividend growth rate and dividend sustainability. All the stocks in this list have a P/E ratio of 15 or below.”
• How I Switched to Long Term Thinking – “I started spending some time each day thinking about the decisions I made that day, particularly ones I would often see myself repeating. Outside of the moment, I’d look at the short term benefits of my options as well as the long term benefits and I’d decide independently what the best long-term choice was.”
• A Country In Denial About Its Fiscal Future by Robert Samuelson – “Political leaders assume that financial markets won’t ever choke on U.S. debt and force higher interest rates, stiff spending cuts and tax increases. At best, this is wishful thinking. At worst, it’s playing Russian roulette with the country’s future.”
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  Top 10 Countries for Manufacturing Production in 2010: China, USA, Japan, Germany… by John Hunter. China took over first place from the USA in manufacturing output in 2010. From 1980 to 2010 China increased output 1345%. The total top 10 group of countries increased output 302%. From 1995 to 2010 China increased output 543%. The group increased 64%.

• The Year In 4 Charts – The anomaly was the decade after the euro was introduced, when lenders treated Greece and the rest of the euro zone as identical to Germany.
• How my blog earned $10,000 this year – Gross income 2009: $4,760 – 2010: $5,693 – 2011: $10,044 “Recently, I shopped my blog around to see if I could find a buyer… Alas. I cannot. This blog is worth more to me than it is to a buyer.”
• Why Is There a “Zero Lower Bound” on Interest Rates? by Todd Keister – “the potential for negative interest rates to disrupt financial markets limits the extent to which policymakers can stimulate economic activity by lowering interest rates. This limit is known as the zero lower bound.”
• Double-digit unemployment? These firms can’t find workers by Arezou Rezvani – “Part of the problem stems from the fact that few Americans are trained in sewing skills. That has left factories dependent on immigrants who learned the trade in their home countries. When sewing jobs began to dry up a decade ago, many talented workers left as well.”

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