tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59295314811656257902024-03-21T09:51:07.678-07:00Business Newsmajorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.comBlogger1940125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-90897406638532615442011-08-18T23:56:00.000-07:002011-08-18T23:59:51.887-07:00First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Will be in Texas<h5 class="tagline">by <a rel="author" href="http://www.treehugger.com/author/brian-merchant-brooklyn-new-yo-1/">Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York</a></h5>
<br /><p><img alt="offshore-wind-farm-reflection.jpg" src="http://www.treehugger.com/offshore-wind-farm-reflection.jpg" class="mt-image-none" style="width: 399px; height: 290px;" />
<br /><em>Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/slaunger/">Slaunger</a> via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/slaunger/5483311060/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Flickr</a>/<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC BY-SA 2.0</a></em></p> <p>The mostly highly publicized offshore wind farm in the U.S. is undoubtedly Cape Wind, which <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/cape-wind-final-federal-approval.php">was finally approved for construction in Cape Cod</a> after a decade-long battle and the protestations of wealthy NIMBYs and grumpy Kennedys. But it still has a ways to go before it will be going online -- and it looks like another 12 megawatt project in Texas will swoop in and grab the distinction of being the nation's first offshore wind farm.</p> <a name="more"></a> <p>Here's <a href="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/german-american-chamber-of-commerce-inc-6496/news/article/2011/08/texas-to-get-the-nations-first-offshore-wind-farm">Renewable Energy World</a>: </p><blockquote>Texas has pulled ahead in the final stretch of getting the nation's first offshore wind farm and will win the race against long-announced project, Cape Wind. After achieving a major milestone in 2010 with more than 10,000 MW of installed onshore wind energy capacity, the state will now erect the first offshore production wind turbines in the U.S. this year off the coast of Galveston. The 12 MW project must clear one final hurdle in obtaining a Purchasing Power Agreement, but with all the designs and permits already in hand, the installation could go up as soon as late 2011.</blockquote>So by the end of the year, there could be a sizable wind farm just off the coast of Galveston, setting the precedent for a sector that should have gotten a jump start long ago. One interesting side note to the story of how a small project in Texas has quietly vaulted past the major one in a liberal east coast state, according to REW, is that: <p>"Offshore wind has undoubtedly benefited from the state's distinctive business environment. With stable, long-term policies, and its own transmission network, Texas offers unrivaled business opportunities for the offshore wind industry."</p> <p>Stable, predictable long-term policies (tax rebates, etc) are, of course, what we need on a national level to encourage similar projects elsewhere.
<br /></p><p><a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/first-us-offshore-wind-farm-texas.php">Original here</a>
<br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-2720212088740284032011-07-11T01:58:00.000-07:002011-07-11T02:00:32.048-07:00How Dracula Hedge Funds Are Sucking Us Dry<div class="teaser"> What notion of economics or ethics justifies the fact that it would take the average family more than 35,000 years to earn as much as the top hedge fund managers earn in one year? </div> <div class="story-date"><em></em><br /></div> <div class="story_images_top"> </div> <div class="story_images" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px ! important;"> <img src="http://images.alternet.org/images/managed/storyteaser_money5551220.jpg_310x220" style="" class="story-image" /> </div> <div class="article_insert_separator"> </div> <div class="article_insert_separator"> </div> <div class="article_insert_container"> <div class="insert_border_top"> </div> <div id="insert_advertisement" class="insert_advertisement"> <div style="width: 300px; height: 250px;" id="change_AdContainer29" class="change_AdContainer"><div style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(220, 176, 0); display: block; height: 22px; width: 300px; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;" class="change_TopBar" id="change_TopBar29">TAKE ACTION</div><div class="insert_border_bottom"><span class="change_Start" id="change_Start29"></span>The official June unemployment rate is 9.2 percent. The real rate is 18.5 percent (which includes involuntary part-time workers and the unemployed who haven’t looked for jobs in the past 4 weeks.) Nearly 30 million Americans are unemployed and we need more than 21 million jobs to get back to full-employment (defined as 5 percent). </div></div></div>Meanwhile, the top 10 hedge fund elites make on average nearly $1 million an HOUR. We’ll never find the resources to solve the unemployment crisis until we redistribute some of this obscene wealth. </div><p name="paragraph3" id="paragraph3">It starts by putting to rest the notion that hedge fund elites are just like any other. They are not. They make more money than everyone else, including our top movie stars and athletes...and they pay lower taxes. </p><p name="paragraph4" id="paragraph4">While working on my next book on financial elites, we dredged up a variety of “Top Ten Income Lists” (from sources like Forbes and Equilar) for just about every kind of high-rolling celebrity and CEO imaginable. Here are previews: </p><ul><li>Oprah led the pack by hauling in an incredible $290 million in 2010.</li><li>U2 at $190 million was the top pop musical group.</li><li>Leonardo DiCaprio ($77 million) is the leading Hollywood star.</li><li>Tiger Woods ($75 million) remains the highest paid athlete even though he doesn’t play much golf these days.</li><li>Half of the highest paid non-financial CEOs are in the entertainment business, led by Phillipe Dauman of Viacom (<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>$84.5 million).</li><li>Only six out of the 100 highest income Americans on these lists are women. </li></ul><p name="paragraph6" id="paragraph6">You also might find it interesting that the top Wall Street bankers are keeping a low-income profile these days. Maybe it’s an attempt to avoid stricter regulatory curbs on their financial casinos. Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase led the bank/insurance top 10 list with an income of $20 million (which, by the way, is half as much as Glenn Beck’s 2010 income). Lloyd “Doing God’s Work” Blankfein of Goldman Sachs was 10th on the banker list with an income of $14.1 million. </p><p name="paragraph7" id="paragraph7">All in all, we’re talking about serious money --- except for the fact that hedge funds make 100 times more than bankers. </p><p name="paragraph7" id="paragraph7"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/151569/how_dracula_hedge_funds_are_sucking_us_dry_">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-68615758376204611582011-07-11T01:55:00.000-07:002011-07-11T01:58:06.656-07:00Chase Bank Is Finally Very Sorry for Having Man Thrown in Jail for No Reason<span class="bylineAuthor">By <a href="http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/author.php?author_id=2346">Curtis Cartier</a><br /><br /></span><table class="image right" border="0" width="150"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="chase arrest01.jpg" src="http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/chase%20arrest01.jpg" height="107" width="150" /></td></tr><tr><td class="caption">Ikenna Njoku</td></tr></tbody></table>There are tales of corporate arrogance and idiocy. And then there's this. <a name="more"></a> <p>As KING 5 <a href="http://www.king5.com/news/125105599.html" target="_blank">reported</a> this week, 28-year-old Ikenna Njoku went to a Chase Bank inside a Fred Meyer in Auburn on June 24 of last year with a $8,463.21 tax-refund check. This check was actually issued by Chase itself, as it had been deposited in Njoku's closed Chase account by the government and had fees deducted by the bank for past overdrafts. Finally the difference was mailed to him in the form of a bank-issued cashier's check.</p> <p>So Njoku apparently went into the bank to cash this check, and the teller immediately became suspicious of him. She supposedly started asking things like what he did for a living and where he got the check, and "looking [him] up and down."</p> <p>The teller was so suspicious, in fact, that she refused to cash the check and instead had it held. Njoku eventually got frustrated and left the bank, then he called a customer-service agent who told him to come back the following day to get his money.</p> <p>But when he showed up at the bank the next day, the police were waiting, and he was quickly arrested for a felony charge of trying to cash a forged check.</p> <p>The check wasn't forged, of course, but nonetheless Njoku was taken to jail.</p> <p>The next day--a Friday--Chase apparently realized it had made a big mistake and had someone put a call in to the Auburn Police detective handling the case. But the detective was off that day and didn't get the message until Monday morning. </p> <p>The agent never bothered to call anyone else at the police station.</p> <p>So for four nights and five days total, Njoku stayed in jail. His car was towed and impounded. And he was fired from his job for not coming in.</p> <p>When he finally got out, Chase still wouldn't give him his check immediately, which he needed to cover things like the impound and tow fees that his car had racked up. So when he couldn't afford to get the car from the impound lot, it was auctioned off.</p> <p>Worst of all, for a solid year, Njoku apparently tried to get an answer or some compensation from Chase, and for the whole year the bank ignored him.</p> <p>That is, until he finally lawyered up and talked to the press.</p> <p>Now, Chase is suddenly very apologetic. The bank <a href="http://www.king5.com/news/Chase-apologizes-to-customer-for-wrongful-arrest-125182154.html" target="_blank">issued this statement</a> on Thursday:</p> <blockquote>"This is a very unfortunate and unusual situation. We apologize to Mr. Njoku and deeply regret what happened to him. We are working quickly to understand all the details so we can reach a fair reso<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>lution.</blockquote> <p>Working quickly on month 13. Waydago, guys.</p> <p>Now here's Njoku's lawyer's letter to Chase.</p> <p><a title="View Chase Letter on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59584672/Chase-Letter" style="margin: 12px auto 6px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Chase Letter</a></p> <p><em>Follow The Daily Weekly on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/dailyweekly" target="_blank">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/SeattleWeekly" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.<br /></em></p><p><em><a href="http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/07/chase_bank_is_very_sorry_for_h.php">Original here</a><br /></em></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-61471683658639285792010-02-11T21:02:00.000-08:002010-02-11T21:04:30.693-08:00Markets force Merlin to postpone £2bn flotationBy Helia Ebrahimi<br /><br /> <div class="slideshow"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="display: block;" class="ssImg"><div style="text-align: center;"> <img style="width: 398px; height: 248px;" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01576/londoneye_1576514c.jpg" alt="The London Eye, on the bank of the River Thames, is one of the assets owned by Merlin" /> </div><div class="imageExtras" style="width: 460px;"> <span class="caption">The London Eye, on the bank of the River Thames, is one of the assets owned by Merlin</span> </div> </div> </div> <p> The theme park operator, which is backed by private equity firm Blackstone Group and Dubai International Capital, was due to press the go button on a formal stock market process next week. </p> <p> However, Blackstone’s decision to pull the listing of airline and hotels business Travelport last night after institutional investors failed to support it at the required price has meant Merlin’s IPO is no longer viable. A source close to Merlin added that the company was still evaluating all its options. </p><br /><p> Merlin’s strong 8pc annual growth and its £230m of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) made it a rare jewel in the crown amongst a long pipeline of private equity IPOs. </p> <p> Its decision not to seek a market listing despite performing strongly in the face of the recession underlines a growing crisis in the IPO market where a long pipeline of private-equity owned businesses have been clamouring for a financial exit. </p> <p> Retailer New Look – owned by Permira and Apax – has already filled its intention to float and sent out research to perspective investors but is now considering whether to progress with its plans. </p> <p> At a crisis meeting held by the company’s board yesterday the company decided not to pull plans and to continue to try to make the flotation work. </p> <p> However, insiders say that it will become increasingly difficult to press forward given the market’s loss of appetite for new listings. </p> <p> In the end, Travelport was derailed not only by market fluctuations that stemmed from sovereign default fears, but also from company specific issues. These were a mixture of the company’s heavy debt levels and the emergence of a controversial incentive plan for the company’s executives. </p> <p> Travelport’s larger rival Amadeus is also believed to be reviewing its plans to raise €3bn on the Spanish stock exchange in a listing that could value the group at €8bn. </p> <p> The company, owned by Cinven and BC Partners, had been on course for a flotation in the first half of this year and was seen as a comparable business to Travelport. </p> <p> Earlier this week BC Partners successfully floated its French healthcare business Medica in Paris. Despite the float price being lowered before the IPO, the shares have since risen about 10pc. </p> <p> Fund managers, which have been very cautious about debuts by private-equity backed companies, say that not enough equity is left on the table when the debt levels are brought down to fit with the stock market. </p> <p> “We have pumped £80bn into the stock markets already – but these were for companies where we already owned equity,” said Andy Brough, a fund manager at Schroders. </p> <p> “In these private equity floatations, where is the upside for investors if all we are doing is re-financing the companies where the PIK notes are eating up everything in sight?” </p> <p> With a debt to Ebitda ratio of five times, Merlin is among the most under-geared companies in the leisure sector. </p> <p> Sources say there is no immediate need to refinance the business, which gives its backers the option of taking their time in looking for the deal that gives the group the best long term returns. </p> <p> Blackstone bought Merlin in 2005 for £102.5m in the buy-out house's smallest financial investment. It backed chief executive Nick Varney’s ambitious plans to consolidate the theme park sector and within three years it had added the £1bn Tussauds Group, Legoland and Italian theme park Gardaland to its London Dungeons and Sea Life portfolio. </p> <p> In the process it grew the £7m of ebitda to £230m, giving the group eight years of double digit growth. </p> <p> Earlier this year the group paid $22.3m (£13.8m) for Cypress Gardens, a US theme park close to Orlando, where it is looking to invest more than $100m to convert it into the the world’s biggest Legoland. </p> <p> Visitors to attractions Merlin has owned for more than a year rose 17pc in 2008 to 38 million, just as the industry worldwide saw attendance fall by 0.4pc.<br /></p><p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/privateequity/7213509/Markets-force-Merlin-to-postpone-2bn-flotation.html">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-62363640813476358182010-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:002010-02-11T21:02:19.446-08:00Tycoon trades high life for bedsit<h5><span style="font-size:85%;">HENRY SAMUEL </span></h5><br /><div class="cT-imagePortrait"> <img src="http://images.theage.com.au/2010/02/09/1106680/karl-rabeder200-200x0.jpg" alt="Giving it all away ... Karl Rabeder." /> <p>Giving it all away ... Karl Rabeder. </p> </div> <p><b>PARIS: </b>An Austrian tycoon is giving away every penny of his £3 million ($5.3 million) fortune, having realised that his riches made him unhappy.</p> <p> Karl Rabeder, 47, a businessman from Telfs, near Innsbruck, is selling his villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.</p> <p> Also for sale is his old stone farmhouse in Provence, on the market for £613,000. Already gone is his collection of six gliders valued at £350,000.</p> <p> Mr Rabeder has also sold the interior furnishings and accessories business - from vases to artificial flowers - that made his fortune.</p> <p> ''My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Money is counter-productive - it prevents happiness.''</p> <p> He will move out of his Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck, surviving on £800 a month while the proceeds go to a charity he set up in Latin America. He will draw no salary from it.</p> <p> ''For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness. I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years.''</p> <p> But over time a conflicting feeling developed. ''More and more I heard the words: 'Stop what you are doing now - all this luxury and consumerism - and start your real life'. I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.''</p> <p> For many years, he said, he was not brave enough to give up his comforts. The tipping point came during a three-week holiday with his wife in Hawaii.</p> <p> ''It was the biggest shock in my life when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five-star lifestyle is.</p> <p> ''In those three weeks we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time we had the feeling we hadn't met a single real person - that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important, and nobody was real.''</p> <p> Mr Rabeder decided to raffle his Alpine home, selling 21,999 tickets at £87 each. The Provence house, in the village of Cruis, is on sale at the local estate agent.</p> <p> All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans and advice to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.</p> <p> Since deciding to sell up, Mr Rabeder said he had felt ''free, the opposite of heavy''. But he did not judge those who chose to keep their wealth. ''I do not have the right to give any other person advice. I was just listening to the voice of my heart and soul.''</p> <p><b>Telegraph, London</b></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-88395634365746988882010-02-11T20:56:00.000-08:002010-02-11T21:00:00.934-08:00European Swift bank data ban angers US<div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47280000/jpg/_47280694__46121349_cashberlingetty226body.jpg" alt="Berlin cashpoint" border="0" height="170" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="226" /> <div class="cap">Tracking funding has been a priority for the US since 9/11</div> </div> <!-- E IIMA --> <!-- S SF --><p class="first"><b>The European Parliament has blocked a key agreement that allows the United States to monitor Europeans' bank transactions - angering Washington.</b></p><p>The US called the decision a "setback for EU-US counter-terror co-operation". </p><p>The vote was a rebuff to intensive US lobbying for EU help in counter-terrorism investigations. </p><p>EU governments had negotiated a nine-month deal which would have allowed the US to continue accessing the Swift money transfer system. </p><!-- E SF --><p>Top US officials - including Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - had contacted MEPs in recent days to urge them to consider "the importance of this agreement to our mutual security", the Associated Press news agency reported. </p><p>But Euro MPs said the deal provided insufficient privacy safeguards. </p><p>Lawmakers in Strasbourg voted 378-196 against the deal, with 31 abstentions. </p><p><b>Secret access</b></p><p>The US started accessing Swift data after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. </p><p>But the fact that the US was secretly accessing such data did not come to light until 2006. </p><p>Last week the Greens' home affairs expert, Jan Philipp Albrecht MEP, said that in backing the new deal the European Commission and EU governments had "not respected the fundamental criticism about the lack of sufficient protections with regard to privacy and the rule of law". </p><p>The leader of the Socialist group, Martin Schulz MEP, said: "We want a new and better deal with proper safeguards for people's privacy." </p><p>Tracking the funding of terror groups globally has been a priority for Washington since the 2001 attacks. </p><p>Swift handles millions of transactions daily between banks and other financial institutions worldwide. It holds the data of some 8,000 banks and operates in 200 countries.<br /></p><p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8510471.stm">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-13544007021465711542009-12-20T00:22:00.000-08:002009-12-20T00:26:27.185-08:00Brands We Loved and Lost in 2009<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoFM3lgj_nTc2D4wVh1KvsAV4r_z5xuUCj5HBhbDrcab2wBXaN3YClHwweGtNFsO8bGiaES8CmTRVuBprQQ9WLadKyNWbsu3drtQh_YrrLCI5aceJSje_y9dNd4OelePyOswM5MbfOZM/s1600-h/49.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoFM3lgj_nTc2D4wVh1KvsAV4r_z5xuUCj5HBhbDrcab2wBXaN3YClHwweGtNFsO8bGiaES8CmTRVuBprQQ9WLadKyNWbsu3drtQh_YrrLCI5aceJSje_y9dNd4OelePyOswM5MbfOZM/s400/49.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417231527661595234" border="0" /></a><br /><cite>by Ben Rooney<br /><br /></cite><cite class="provider">provided by</cite><a href="http://www.cnnmoney.com/" class="logo"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/i/cz/legacy/cnnmoney_170x33.gif" alt="CNNMoney.com" title="CNNMoney.com" /></a><p><style type="text/css"> <!-- .style1 {font-size: 9px} --> </style></p><p><strong>Popular auto makes, magazine publishers and retailers were among the businesses laid to rest in 2009. Here's a list of familiar names you won't see in the future.<br /></strong></p><p><strong>1. Circuit City Retail Stores</strong></p><p>Circuit City became one of the largest retailers to go out of business this year, after the 60-year old electronics chain declared bankruptcy at the end of 2008.</p><p>The fall of Circuit City was mainly a result of the prodigious belt tightening that took place in households across America during the depths of the recession. But the company's demise had its roots in poor management decisions dating back several years.</p><p>In 2007, for example, Circuit City laid off several thousand experienced sales people and replaced them with cheaper but less knowledgeable workers. That took a toll on customer loyalty, and ultimately benefited rivals like Best Buy.</p><p>Circuit City also found itself in the unfortunate position of having to compete with Wal-Mart as the world's largest retailer aggressively moved into the electronics market with low prices.</p><p>Meanwhile, the Circuit City brand has been resurrected online. Systemax Inc., a direct seller of consumer electronics, acquired the trademark and Internet domain name for Circuit City in April.</p><table style="margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 3px;" align="left" width="205"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 5px;"> <p align="right"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/p/fi/26/49/55.jpg" alt="CNNMoney121709_Saturn.jpg" height="150" width="200" /><br /> <span class="style1"><small>Courtesy: General Motors</small></span></p></td> </tr></tbody></table><p><strong>2. Saturn</strong></p><p>GM dubbed Saturn "a different kind of car company" when it launched the brand in 1990. Alas, it was not different enough.</p><p>Saturn was one of four GM brands orphaned when the largest U.S. automaker went bankrupt early this year. The brand was originally intended to help GM compete with smaller, imported cars. But sales were generally tepid and the Saturn languished as Americans became increasingly fond of big SUVs.</p><p>After a protracted, and ultimately futile, courtship with car dealership operator Penske Automotive Group, GM announced in October that the 2010 model year would be Saturn's last.</p><table style="margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 3px;" align="left" width="205"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 5px;"> <p align="right"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/p/fi/26/49/54.jpg" alt="CNNMoney121709_Pontiac.jpg" height="150" width="200" /><br /> <span class="style1"><small>Courtesy: General Motors</small></span></p></td> </tr></tbody></table><p><strong>3. Pontiac</strong></p><p>Gear heads across the nation mourned the loss of Pontiac, when a bankrupt General Motors decided to discontinue the long-standing brand earlier this year as part of a restructuring plan.</p><p>Pontiac, best known for muscle cars such as the GTO and Firebird, had been a staple of GM's product line since it began production in 1926. But it didn't make the cut when the automaker emerged from bankruptcy in July with a new focus on its "core" brands.</p><p>In April, after an effort to salvage it as a "niche brand" failed, GM officially announced that Pontiac would be dropped, and that all remaining models would be phased out by the end of 2010.</p><table style="margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 3px;" align="left" width="205"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 5px;"> <p align="right"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/p/fi/26/49/53.jpg" alt="CNNMoney121709_Kodak.jpg" height="150" width="200" /><br /> <span class="style1"><small>Courtesy: Kodak</small></span></p></td> </tr></tbody></table><p><strong>4. Kodachrome</strong></p><p>When Kodak introduced Kodachrome in 1935, it became the first commercially successful color film.</p><p>But demand for traditional films evaporated over the last decade as digital photography became increasingly available. At the time it was retired in June, sales of Kodachrome were less than 1% of Kodak's still picture film revenue.</p><p>Kodachrome was also difficult to manufacture and process. In fact, there was only one processor left in the United States that still developed Kodachrome when it was discontinued.</p><p>The Kodachrome brand, however, may be best remembered as the subject of a 1973 song in which Paul Simon begged, "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away."</p><table style="margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 3px;" align="left" width="205"><tbody><tr> <td style="padding: 5px;"> <img src="http://l.yimg.com/a/p/fi/26/49/50.gif" alt="CNNMoney121709_HomeDepot.gif" height="150" width="200" /></td> </tr></tbody></table><p><strong>5. Home Depot Expo</strong></p><p>Home Depot, the No. 1 home improvement chain, announced plans early this year to shutter its Expo Design Centers as demand for granite countertops and custom window treatments withered.</p><p>Launched in the early 1990s, Expo offered a variety of upscale home decor items and custom-installation services. The brand was aimed at homeowners who wanted a luxury remodel without having to hire an interior designer.</p><p>Home Depot officially pulled the plug on Expo in January as part of a plan to focus on its "core" stores. While the weak economy, sluggish housing market and lack of available credit were the final nails in Expo's coffin, the company acknowledged that it had never performed well financially.</p><p><a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/108421/brands-we-loved-and-lost-in-2009">Original here</a><br /></p> <p align="right"><br /><span class="style1"><small></small></span></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-20140483890420570752009-12-20T00:20:00.000-08:002009-12-20T00:22:29.231-08:00No Checks Please, We’re British<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkp-RqBHhA78yAWauyV2mW689zT9mOncquFKjy1Ryf4mbpDNGfdnx1eq8XWR2TVuEP5YrD1NmEtVEQc8cNU4-zf3PAL2HYbuvgs5fOQSJkDywzsw7YRRV9yjIq5wf_AhM-AOnOgezOQpk/s1600-h/3767313977_7284c97a43.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 303px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkp-RqBHhA78yAWauyV2mW689zT9mOncquFKjy1Ryf4mbpDNGfdnx1eq8XWR2TVuEP5YrD1NmEtVEQc8cNU4-zf3PAL2HYbuvgs5fOQSJkDywzsw7YRRV9yjIq5wf_AhM-AOnOgezOQpk/s400/3767313977_7284c97a43.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417230649641679074" border="0" /></a><br /><h3>UK Banks Vote to Phase Out Paper Checks—Will the US Follow?</h3> <p>Somewhere in my files, there are photos of me holding up those giant checks that foundations love to hand out to charities. It was 1995 and I was raising money in Los Angeles for victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that leveled Kobe in Japan. Over the course of a few weeks, I lugged shopping bags full of checks—more than 10,000 donations amounting to millions of dollars—over to our accounting firm. The giant checks were great, but the bags of small, individual donations were like offering of personal prayers written on each slip of paper.</p> <p>I’m not sure I would have felt the same sentimental satisfaction holding up a printout of a large electronic debit.</p> <p>This week, the British banks governing the UK Payments Council decided to phase out their check clearing system by October 2018. In effect, they set an expiration date for the use of paper checks (or “cheques” as they prefer). In a statement, the group’s chief, Paul Smee, noted: “There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement.”</p> <p>Like letters of credit, demands for payment and bills of exchange, bank drafts can trace their history to Roman times, when checks were known as “praescriptiones.” Paper drafts analogous to today’s checks were in use in the Islamic world in the 9th century and as early as the 12th century Templars honored pilgrims’ checks from one chapter house to the next. In England, clearing houses have had responsibility for settling checks since the early 1800s (before that they were often cashed in coffee houses). </p> <p>Bankers complain that many British retailers don’t accept checks anymore, that young people don’t even have checkbooks, and that it’s costing them as much as a pound (about $1.63 today) to process every check. But the decision certainly has its critics—especially advocates for the elderly and small business owners. On one hand, a generation uncomfortable with electronics will be forced to risk carrying and handling more cash. On the other, mom and pop stores have one more disadvantage against giant competitors (some of whom are starting to act as banks themselves). The move will also put the “unbanked”, who have to pay fees to cash checks but also lack access to accounts capable of electronic payments.</p> <h3>Will the US Follow?</h3> <p>The cost of cash keeps going up while the cost of using credit cards and electronic payments keeps going down. More retailers accept credit cards than checks these days. But while US banks also worry about the costs of handling cash and checks, they aren’t likely to echo the UK decision any time soon. Yes, paper checks are increasingly rare in high-tech countries—whether advanced Scandinavian nations or developing/modernizing regions such as Africa—but the US doesn’t rate as high-tech when it comes to personal finance (present company excepted of course). It has lagged dramatically in the modernization of its financial traditions, such as implementing electronic payments, even compared to Britain. </p> <p>Instead, US banks such as Bank of America and Chase have been investing in new ATMs that make it easier for customers to deposit checks without envelopes, deposit slips or extra keystrokes. In fact, a law known as “The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act,” which took effect in 2004, made it easier for banks themselves to settle checks by exchanging scanned images electronically instead of physically managing and transporting paper.</p> <p>The use of paper checks in the US may have peaked, but they aren’t evaporating in proportion to the explosive rise of electronic payments. According to Federal Reserve statistics, the number of checks written in the US has fallen—but only slightly—from an average of 112 per person in 1971 to 102 in 2006. While the number of checks written in the UK is only a third today of what it was in 1990, the decline isn’t quite as stark here in the USA. British check-writing peaked in 1990 at about 10.8 million drafts. Compare that to some 70 billion written annually in the US by 2001. </p> <p>Perhaps one reason they aren’t falling more significantly here in the colonies is that we all seem to have so many more monthly bills and accounts these days? Inevitably some of those new store credit cards, nifty home utilities and specialist medical providers still have to be paid by check. And credit cards, electronic debits and automatic payments are easier but often come with service fees, interest charges or “gotcha” surprises. Also, many government institutions, landlords, utility companies and others still preclude (or penalize) electronic payments. It can cost hundreds of dollars to use a credit card to pay your income taxes. Meanwhile, many of us hate walking around with cash anymore, and wouldn’t want to keep more around for house cleaning and home repairs. </p> <p>The federal government isn’t likely to encourage a return to an uncounted cash economy, either.</p> <h3>A Generational Issue</h3> <p>Using paper, plastic or electronics instead of cash is a generational issue, too. McKinsey & Co. found in a 2006 study that 54% of consumers still pay most of their bills by putting checks in the mail. Another study by Forrester Research found that 71% percent of people who don’t like to pay bills online would rather write checks and receive paper statement for their record keeping. The biggest group of such “traditionalists” is retirees, but regardless of age, most people consider paper to be safer for both security and accounting reasons. (Although a younger sampling might point out that a paper check reveals a lot of personal information, such as address and driver’s license number.) </p> <p>The idea that electronic fund transfers are more prone to fraud may be more than just perception. As of last year, 76% of US banks reported losses due to debit fraud compared to only 56% losing money to check fraud. </p> <p>Once, crossing a downtown parking lot on a rainy night, my eye caught two pieces of paper blowing across the concrete. They were checks, that appeared to have been endorsed, deposited and apparently in the process of being transferred from one institution to another. One was for only pennies, but the account belonged to a well-known celebrity. I didn’t recognize the name on the other, but the amount was for something like $55,000. The security department of the bank where the checks had been cashed took little interest, so…</p> <p>Steve Barth blogs about work, play, society and politics at <a href="http://reflexions.typepad.com/">Reflexions</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/british-banks-end-checks/">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-36778691282950909902009-12-20T00:17:00.000-08:002009-12-20T00:20:38.416-08:00Bank of America names Moynihan next CEO<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9xID7bY_PaF-pLUbdMVB0N38iH7FiNxmKuFhFHPgqNzYhX5eDlIUvy31YgdEMXJ7ZPb84vHsE3fPW0MQqARJFtnnAfiONpVI315GguRE23sAj6gehbnnX052cebWO_fXI9yb1k2INCQ/s1600-h/www.reuters.com.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9xID7bY_PaF-pLUbdMVB0N38iH7FiNxmKuFhFHPgqNzYhX5eDlIUvy31YgdEMXJ7ZPb84vHsE3fPW0MQqARJFtnnAfiONpVI315GguRE23sAj6gehbnnX052cebWO_fXI9yb1k2INCQ/s400/www.reuters.com.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417230164089876882" border="0" /></a><span id="articleText"><span class="focusParagraph"> <p>NEW YORK/CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp on Wednesday tapped insider Brian Moynihan as its next chief executive, ending months of speculation about who would succeed Kenneth Lewis to lead the largest U.S. bank.</p></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>Moynihan, who heads the lender's retail bank, will take over as CEO and join the board after Lewis' retirement on December 31. He will move to Charlotte from Boston, easing fears raised during the search that the bank's headquarters might move.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>Moynihan said in an interview with Reuters late Wednesday his primary mandate is to carry out the business plan arranged by his predecessor, and the Charlotte, North Carolina-based banking giant must block out the distractions created in the wake of the financial crisis.</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>"We need to put the last 18 months behind us," Moynihan said. "Now is the time to execute."</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>Analysts said the new CEO is well positioned to turn around Bank of America, whose massive acquisitions in recent years became a millstone.</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>"Brian has been a fixer. He's good at getting everyone moving in the right direction," said Nancy Bush, a bank analyst at NAB Research, in Annandale, New Jersey.</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>Many of Wall Street's elite, including Bank of New York Mellon Corp Chief Executive Robert Kelly, had been widely considered to be prospects for the post after Lewis announced plans in late September to retire.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>Speculation about Moynihan's ties to the soon-to-be open CEO post ebbed and flowed with the two-month search.</p><span id="midArticle_8"></span> <p>Initially considered a strong contender by analysts and other bank outsiders, he was considered by some outside observers as a long-shot choice after his U.S. Congressional committee testimony on November 17 about Bank of America's Merrill Lynch purchase was widely criticized by analysts and even the committee's chairman.</p><span id="midArticle_9"></span> <p>U.S. House Rules and Oversight Committee chairman Edolphus Towns, D-NY, said after the hearing that Moynihan "didn't show the kind of leadership a company would seem to need."</p><span id="midArticle_10"></span> <p>Investors appear relieved to have the matter of Lewis' successor settled.</p><span id="midArticle_11"></span> <p>"I'm sure there will be a lot of people that would have preferred to see them go outside the company, to see them have a clean break from everything that happened," said Walter Todd, portfolio manager for Greenwood Capital Management.</p><span id="midArticle_12"></span> <p>"At the end of the day, I think it is good they have got somebody in place."</p><span id="midArticle_13"></span> <p>Moynihan takes over a company that is the largest retail bank in the United States -- with 6,000 branches, 18,000 ATMs and nearly $1 trillion in total deposits -- but is undergoing sweeping changes in its other businesses.</p><span id="midArticle_14"></span> <p>As the new CEO, he must finish the integration of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and investment bank and wealth manager Merrill Lynch into the company.</p><span id="midArticle_15"></span> <p>He must also steer the bank -- which has reported two quarterly losses within the last year, after posting nothing but profits for the last two decades -- back to profitability.</p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>Moynihan offered the advantage of "a smooth transition," Bank of America Chairman Walter Massey, who led the search for the new CEO, said.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>"The board decided after listening to shareholders, regulators and others that Brian's experience was commensurate with or better than any of those candidates," he said in a statement.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>Moynihan said he believes the bank's so-called financial supermarket model -- offering a cornucopia of financial services to consumers and businesses -- will work, as some are calling for the break-up of the biggest U.S. banks.</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>"The way we're arranged, we can do a better job for our customer," he said. "To me, its logical."</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>FINDING A SUCCESSOR</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>Bank of America publicly identified the heads of each of its five major businesses, and its chief risk officer, as potential successors, with no external candidates ever formally named.</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>Yet according to some media reports, the bank struggled to field enough interested outside candidates -- Kelly said on Monday he would not take the job -- while some investors chafed at the possibility of an internal candidate replacing Lewis.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>The bank missed one self-imposed deadline of naming a new chief by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on November 26.</p><span id="midArticle_8"></span> <p>During the search, the bank's board relaxed a requirement that the CEO be based in Charlotte, and considered retaining Lewis beyond his December 31 retirement date if a successor could not be found.</p><span id="midArticle_9"></span> <p>Moynihan will move to Charlotte to assume the top job, which has brought some relief to a Southern U.S. city anxious about the possibility of losing a key point of prestige.</p><span id="midArticle_10"></span> <p>"This sends the signal that a short-term candidate was not an option, and the board clearly wants someone to lead the bank in a post-TARP world," said Bob Morgan, president of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, who added he planned to meet with Moynihan as soon as possible.</p><span id="midArticle_11"></span> <p>FALLEN STAR</p><span id="midArticle_12"></span> <p>Lewis, whose acquisitions transformed Bank of America into one of the dominant U.S. banks, was heralded in 2008 as one of the saviors of the financial system as the bank agreed to purchase Merrill Lynch after a whirlwind negotiation.</p><span id="midArticle_13"></span> <p>But he became a CEO under siege at the end of his tenure, as critics berated the bank's deal to buy Merrill Lynch in September 2008.</p><span id="midArticle_14"></span> <p>Bank of America and some of its executive team and board from that time, including Lewis, are the subject of probes by regulators and state attorneys general concerning billions in bonus payments made to Merrill Lynch employees before the deal closed and billions in fourth-quarter losses run up by the investment bank.</p><span id="midArticle_15"></span> <p>Neither was disclosed to shareholders before the deal was consummated, critics argue, while the bank states nothing improper was done in the course of the deal.</p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>Lewis did meet one of his primary goals, however, repaying $45 billion in aid Bank of America received from the government, as he had said he aimed to do before he left.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>Earlier this month, Bank of America sold $19.3 billion of shares and repaid the United States.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>(Reporting by Paritosh Bansal, <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=dan.wilchins&">Dan Wilchins</a>, Joe Rauch, <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=steve.eder&">Steve Eder</a> and <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=clare.baldwin&">Clare Baldwin</a>; Editing by Gary Hill and Muralikumar Anantharaman)</p><p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BG0AG20091217">Original here</a><br /></p></span>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-56535172757079142452009-11-22T01:57:00.000-08:002009-11-22T02:06:10.304-08:00Canada money launderer shows holes in Vegas casinos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrtK6-PEzmveqoraf5OAbwRuQXujDFykvDtoeOTeUACC68CT739nKuOBOvgCWce_2yvP2aYVhf_kn7dLzZk7lcvrPnkHOlN9oHR34LW2VkxDK2NMN1Whf5X5sDD3HQ4rPUKEn_BJc-oqg/s1600/www.reuters.com.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 192px; height: 130px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrtK6-PEzmveqoraf5OAbwRuQXujDFykvDtoeOTeUACC68CT739nKuOBOvgCWce_2yvP2aYVhf_kn7dLzZk7lcvrPnkHOlN9oHR34LW2VkxDK2NMN1Whf5X5sDD3HQ4rPUKEn_BJc-oqg/s400/www.reuters.com.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406866841634564082" border="0" /></a><br /><p>By <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=dan.whitcomb&">Dan Whitcomb</a> and Deena Beasley<span id="midArticle_byline"></span></p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Las Vegas has cleaned up since its days as a magnet for ill-gotten mobster gains, but a Canadian insider trading scam has exposed the smaller-scale money laundering still going on in the desert city's casinos.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>Canadian Stanko Grmovsek admitted in a Toronto court earlier this year to making $9 million with a law school buddy in a 14-year illegal scheme. Court documents show he said he laundered some of it by gambling wads of cash on games like blackjack in Vegas's world-famous casino strip.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>His confession was a flashback to an era when Las Vegas's "Sin City" image made it a playground for gangsters offloading their loot in glittering gambling parlors.</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>But strict controls have slashed financial crime in Vegas casinos to a fraction of what it once was, and most organized criminals use less scrutinized industries to convert illegal profits into clean money, experts say.</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>"In a currency intensive industry it's virtually impossible to eliminate entry points for money laundering," said Paul Camacho, special agent in charge for the Las Vegas Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation arm.</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>But he said regulators and police were keeping financial crime to a minimum. "We work hand-in-hand with the casinos. We want legitimate folks coming here and having a good time. Nobody promotes this as a den of thieves."</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>Grmovsek's admission that he laundered chunks of money in Las Vegas came despite efforts to keep gambling parlors clean with strict controls by casinos and authorities.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>Many Las Vegas casinos are publicly listed and, with their licenses at stake, they watch closely for any shenanigans at the tables. Internal Revenue Service regulations requiring cash transactions involving more than $10,000 to be reported make large-scale crime difficult.</p><span id="midArticle_8"></span> <p>Criminal gangs can launder money more cheaply and less conspicuously in cash-rich <a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/smallBusiness" title="Full small business coverage">small business</a>es like used-car lots and family restaurants, yet the Grmovsek case shows casinos can still work for sums small enough to pass under the radar.</p><span id="midArticle_9"></span> <p>"In theory, if you employed numerous people and broke down the transactions into much smaller amounts," laundering can be done, said David Salas, deputy chief of enforcement at the Nevada Gaming Control Board.</p><span id="midArticle_10"></span> <p>RED FLAGS</p><span id="midArticle_11"></span> <p>Grmovsek said he and his friend Gil Cornblum, a Toronto lawyer, made their money from Grmovsek buying stocks based on acquisition tip-offs from Cornblum, who committed suicide as the case was pending.</p><span id="midArticle_12"></span> <p>After cooperating with investigators, Cornblum jumped off a highway bridge and Grmovsek faces three years in jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.</p><span id="midArticle_13"></span> <p>Grmovsek said he transferred profits from offshore accounts to casinos in Las Vegas and the Bahamas where he would bet on sporting events or play blackjack and cash in piles of chips.</p> Experts say that in a typical scheme, a money launderer approaches the cashier's cage with cash and converts it into chips using a players card to establish his identity.<br /><br /><p>He later returns without his card to exchange the chips for cash, leaving no named record of the transaction and creating the impression he has gambled away thousands of dollars.</p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>The scheme works in reverse if he takes out a small amount of chips, establishing his identity with a players card, and returns with a large stack, withdrawn anonymously, that he claims to have won at the tables.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>David Stewart, an attorney with Ropes & Gray LLP who advises casinos on money laundering, says such behavior is a red flag.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>"The biggest suspicious activity you can engage in is if you go to a casino, present a fair amount of money and you don't gamble," he said. "These are publicly traded companies. No single gambler is worth losing their license."</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>SMALL FRY</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>Commercial casinos in the United States, not including those run by Indian tribes, took in $32.8 billion in gaming revenue last year, the American Gaming Association says.</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>Commercial and Indian casinos filed nearly 500,000 reports of currency transactions of $10,000 or above in 2008 and some 11,000 reports of suspicious activity, according to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>That marks a rise from 6,000 reports in 2004 but is a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of annual transactions.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>Casinos are required to file such reports for transactions totaling at least $5,000 when there is suspicion the funds were acquired illegally, the intention is money laundering or that the casino is being used to facilitate criminal activity.</p><span id="midArticle_8"></span> <p>Camacho said casinos tend to be scrupulous about these reports as weeding out illicit activity is in their interest.</p><span id="midArticle_9"></span> <p>"If a casino willfully avoids these forms it can be subject to criminal fines, so there is a huge penalty. Not only a financial penalty but also somebody can go to jail," he said.</p><span id="midArticle_10"></span> <p>Global intelligence consultancy Stratfor still sees money laundering in casinos as small fry compared to the billions of dollars organized crime gangs pass through <a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/smallBusiness" title="Full small business coverage">small business</a>es, especially along the border with Mexico.</p><span id="midArticle_11"></span> <p>"There's pretty good oversight generally at the U.S. casinos," said Stratfor expert Fred Burton. "I don't see this being any major shift or trend of Vegas being at the center of gravity for money laundering."</p><span id="midArticle_12"></span> <p>Another scheme used by small-time money launders involves betting money on both sides of a sporting event. If the gambler needs to document a source of income, he shows only the winning ticket, appearing to have won big on the game. If he needs to document a loss, he offers up only the losing ticket.</p><span id="midArticle_13"></span> <p>"I'll be honest, it's a challenge policing the financial highways of Vegas," said Camacho. "People involved in criminal activity ... usually don't save their money. They want to go spend it, they want to live large, and one of their goals is to go live large in Las Vegas."</p><p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AG5QH20091117?rpc=64">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-39408645749742070492009-11-22T01:55:00.000-08:002009-11-22T01:57:15.639-08:00Crispin Porter's Gap Ad Leads to Boycott for Not Using the Word "Christmas," Even Though It DoesBy Kyle Munzenrieder in <a href="http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/flotsam/">Flotsam</a><br /><br /><span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"><table class="image center" width="510" align="center" border="0"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="YouTube - Go Ho Ho - Gap 2009 Holiday Commercial.jpg" src="http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/YouTube%20-%20Go%20Ho%20Ho%20-%20Gap%202009%20Holiday%20Commercial.jpg" width="510" height="305" /></td></tr></tbody></table></span>It's almost time for the Holidays, which means it's time to cover your house in lights, find a present for your weird uncle Adolfo, and, oh right, the annual War on Christmas.<br /><br />The American Family Association kicked things off early this year<a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-neil17-2009nov17,0,2040716.story"> by calling for a two month boycott on Gap Inc.</a><br /><br />"The Gap is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple. Yet the company wants all the people who celebrate Christmas to do their shopping at its stores? Until Gap proves it recognizes Christmas by using it in their newspaper, radio, television advertising or in-store signage, the boycott will be promoted," <a href="http://action.afa.net/Detail.aspx?id=2147489466">reads their website</a> (which also has a page on how <a href="http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147489660">Nazis started the War on Christmas</a>).<br /><br />But Gap's Ad this year, done by our favorite Coconut Grove-based Ad Agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky actually does use the word Christmas, as in "Go Christmas, Go Channuka, Go Kwanza, Go Solstice."<br /> <a name="more"></a> <br />Though, we'll never understand why some groups absolutely insist on making sure their religions are exploited for commercial gain. If it makes the AFA feel any better, Gap also sells <a href="http://www.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=12332&vid=1&pid=684557">these "Merry Christmas" boxers</a>, so you can, uh, celebrate the Birth of Christ in your pants.<br /><br />Meanwhile, we're boycotting Gap's sister brand Old Navy because of their stupid Super Modelquins commercials. I swear, if I hear the phrase "party cardi" one more time...<br /><br /><object width="500" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oVMPWlWDvsI&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oVMPWlWDvsI&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="315"></embed></object><br /> <!--googleoff: all--> <div id="relatedInformArticles" class="relatedInformArticles"> <h2><br /></h2></div>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-1215114132435221952009-11-22T01:42:00.000-08:002009-11-22T01:55:51.204-08:00Techmeme's Gabe Rivera makes news aggregation profitable<span style="color: rgb(139, 4, 18);"></span> <div class="entry-content"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div class="entry-body"><div style="text-align: center;"> <!-- sphereit start --> </div><div style="padding-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; width: 600px; margin-right: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef012875b404f8970c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img style="width: 401px; height: 224px;" alt="Gabe rivera techmeme" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d8341c630a53ef012875b404f8970c image-full " src="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef012875b404f8970c-800wi" title="Gabe rivera techmeme" border="0" /></a></div> <div style="padding: 0px; margin-top: 5px; font-size: 11px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Gabe Rivera, founder of news aggregator Techmeme. Credit: Mark Milian/Los Angeles Times.</div></div>Don't tell News Corp.'s <strong>Rupert Murdoch</strong>, but technology news aggregator <a href="http://techmeme.com/">Techmeme</a> is raking in profits. <p>Rather than visiting the front pages of every newspaper or choosing a few out of brand loyalty, as Murdoch hopes consumers will do, aggregators put all of the Web's big headlines of the moment onto one page.</p> <p>There's no shortage in news aggregation. General news readers might go to <a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News</a>, a computer-generated engine that pulls in more than 25,000 newspaper websites and authoritative blogs. Left-leaning political consumers might visit the <a href="http://huffingtonpost.com/">Huffington Post</a>; right-leaning ones might go to <a href="http://drudgereport.com/">Drudge Report</a>.</p> <p>For tech news, Techmeme, with its smart computer algorithm for culling interesting links, is at the top. A space once dominated by sites like <a href="http://slashdot.org/">Slashdot</a> and <a href="http://digg.com/">Digg</a>, Techmeme is now the undisputed top influence for the Bay Area tech elite.</p> <p>Today Techmeme launched a <a href="http://techmeme.com/m">mobile site</a> that's formatted for smart phones to appease news junkies on the go.</p> <p>It sounds almost laughable that a 4-year-old property, being such a powerful voice in tech, took this long to build a phone-optimized interface. But Techmeme founder <strong>Gabe Rivera</strong> is not trying to build a trendy, cutting-edge site with its own comment system and social media share features.</p> <p>Rivera is, to an extent, mimicking the medium that loudly whines about his breed of aggregation. "It feels like a newspaper," Rivera said over lunch last week in San Francisco. "It feels like something you can rely on." </p> <!-- sphereit end --> </div> <a type="button_count" id="more" name="more"></a> <div class="entry-more"> <p>Techmeme became even more newspaper-like last year when Rivera hired his first editor. Fans groaned at the idea of trusting a human to select news in a fair and balanced way. But the site is doing just fine. Better, Rivera argues.</p> <p>Now, Techmeme has three full-time editors -- including Los Angeles-based <strong>Rich DeMuro</strong>, a former Cnet reporter -- with contributions from Rivera and a part-timer. "We have people who mostly cover, at least during the week, all 24 hours," Rivera said.</p> <p>However, Rivera's algorithm is still the backbone. It's the secret sauce that allows small, no-name blogs to reach the top of the pile every once in a blue moon. It does so based on a formula that takes into account who's linking to a page and how influential those sources are, Rivera vaguely explained.</p> <p>But rather than code in small tweaks to the system in order to fix mistakes, as he had been doing for years, Rivera went with the human touch. He realized that "the most cost-effective thing would be to hire an editor," he said.</p> <p>"The algorithmic changes continue," Rivera said. "But then once we started that, we discovered new opportunities for the two to work in tandem."</p> <p>Rivera has similar projects covering politics, celebrity gossip and baseball. But Techmeme is the flagship. </p> <p>"Techmeme is the product that is the most valuable, that I'm most proud of, that pays bills," Rivera said. Indeed, it's profitable and has never accepted an outside investor.</p> <p>But Rivera predicts that <a href="http://www.memeorandum.com/">Memeorandum</a>, "the unfortunately named political site," as he calls it, could be the next big thing. Watch out, Google News.</p> <p>-- Mark Milian</p><p><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/11/techmeme.html">Original here</a><br /></p></div></div>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-66519750864222907162009-10-04T02:46:00.000-07:002009-10-04T02:49:01.488-07:0011 Things Wal-Mart Has Banned<div class="blog_digg_container"> </div><br /><div style="padding: 0pt 0pt 10px; float: left; width: 85%;"><span class="posted_by">by <span class="author"><a href="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/author/ethan/" title="Posts by Ethan Trex">Ethan Trex</a><br /><br /></span></span><span class="posted_by"><span class="author"></span></span> <div class="blog_frontentry"> <p><img style="width: 395px; height: 193px;" src="http://wwwc.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/wmn.jpg" alt="wmn" title="wmn" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-34740" /></p> <p>Retail giant Wal-Mart is the world’s largest public company, and whether or not you’re a fan of shopping at the House that Sam Walton Built, you’ve got to admit that the store stocks just about everything. But not quite, though. There are a number of things that Wal-Mart has banned from its stores at some point. Let’s take a look at a few of them.</p> <h4>1. Barbie’s Pregnant Pal</h4> <p>In 2002 Wal-Mart cleared its shelves of Barbie’s pregnant friend, Midge. The doll, which featured a removable stomach complete with deliverable baby, was part of Mattel’s “Happy Family” set that also included her husband and son. However, customers complained about seeing pregnancy enter into Barbie’s universe, and Wal-Mart pulled all of the Happy Family sets from its stores.</p> <h4>2. This Underwear:</h4> <p><span id="more-34728"></span><img style="width: 400px; height: 231px;" src="http://wwwc.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/under.jpg" alt="under" title="under" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-34732" /></p> <p>That’s right: panties that say, “Who needs credit cards…” on the front and “When you have Santa” on the rear. The undergarments started showing up in Wal-Mart’s juniors departments in December 2007 and quickly started an Internet firestorm over the perceived message of using Kris Kringle as a sugar daddy. While the same joke would be fairly harmless on, say, a t-shirt, many women felt that its placement on underwear added a sinister sexual undertone aimed at adolescent girls. In response to the public outcry, Wal-Mart pulled the offending underthings from its shelves.</p> <h4>3. Confederate-Themed Barbecue Sauce</h4> <p>You may remember the raucous debate about whether the Confederate flag should be flown over the South Carolina State House in 2000, but you probably didn’t know the battle spilled over into Wal-Mart’s grocery aisles. At the time, 90 Southern Wal-Marts were marketing a mustard-based sauce created by Maurice Bessinger, an outspoken advocate of flying the Rebel flag over the State House and owner of eight Piggie Park restaurants. </p> <p>During the flag debate, Bessinger replaced all American flags at his eateries with Confederate flags, a move that Wal-Mart saw as objectionable and needlessly provocative, so the company yanked his sauces from its stores. (Don’t feel too bad for Bessinger, though; it took nothing less than a 1976 Supreme Court intervention to force him to serve African Americans in his restaurants.) </p> <h4>4. A Shirt That Read “Someday a Woman Will Be President”</h4> <p><img src="http://wwwc.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/margaret.jpg" alt="margaret" title="margaret" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-34744" width="250" /><br />In 1995 a Miami-area Wal-Mart pulled this shirt from its racks after consumer complaints. The shirt, which featured the character Margaret from <em>Dennis the Menace</em>, ran afoul of “the company’s family values,” so it went back to the stock rooms. Eventually more reasonable, non-Stone-Age heads prevailed, and the shirt made it back onto the shelves after three months in limbo. </p> <h4>5. Workplace Romance</h4> <p>In November 2005, German courts ruled that Wal-Mart could not ban all workplace romance at its German stores. The retailer had unsuccessfully tried to force all employees to sign off on a 28-page code of ethics that included prohibitions on “lustful glances and ambiguous jokes” and “sexually meaningful communication of any type.” </p> <h4>6. An Al Snow Action Figure</h4> <p>In 1999 Wal-Mart put the brakes on selling an action figure featuring WWE hardcore wrestler Al Snow. Snow’s wrestling gimmick at the time involved walking to the ring while carrying and talking to a mannequin head. Naturally, his action figure came with the head as an accessory, but two professors at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University saw the inclusion of the head as a problem. They told the press that by selling the action figure society was “normalizing violent treatment of women. We are telling little boys that this is acceptable behavior.” (Please, parents: don’t ever give your sons the impression that carrying and talking to part of a mannequin is acceptable.) Following this high-profile outcry, Wal-Mart quit stocking the Al Snow action figure.</p> <h4>7. Megan Fox</h4> <p><img src="http://wwwc.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/MF.jpg" alt="MF" title="MF" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-34736" height="150" width="150" /><br />The Wal-Mart in the starlet’s hometown supposedly banned her for life following a teenage shoplifting bust. A 2008 report on contactmusic.com alleged that Fox got the heave-ho after being caught swiping a $7 tube of lip gloss during a rebellious shoplifting spree, which earned her the lifetime ban.</p> <h4>8. Lad Mags</h4> <p>If you’re a frisky 17-year-old looking for the latest <em>Maxim</em>, <em>Stuff</em>, or <em>FHM</em>, don’t head to Wal-Mart. Since 2003 the store has banned the so-called “lad mags” due to their racy photo spreads and bawdy editorial content. </p> <p>It’s actually not all the uncommon for Wal-Mart to give a single issue of a magazine an ax, too. In the past, the store has refused to stock issues of <em>Sports Illustrated</em>’s swimsuit edition and a 2001 issue of <em>InStyle</em> that featured an artistic nude shot of Kate Hudson. </p> <h4>9. Music</h4> <p>Wal-Mart has long declined to stock any music bearing a parental advisory warning for explicit lyrical content, but the company’s fastidiousness with regards to music doesn’t stop there. When the store carried Nirvana’s album <em>In Utero</em>, it changed the song title “Rape Me” to the less offensive (and less coherent) “Waif Me.” Similarly, the store declined to carry Prince’s 1988 album <em>Lovesexy</em> because of a fairly tame cover that featured a nude photo of the artist. </p> <h4>10. <em>Superbad</em> DVDs</h4> <p><img src="http://wwwc.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mclovin.jpg" alt="mclovin" title="mclovin" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-34749" height="159" width="250" />When the comedy <em>Superbad</em> hit store shelves in 2007, it came with a little extra: a replica of the fake Hawaii driver’s license used by the self-dubbed “McLovin’.” Most movie fans would simply see this freebie as a little reminder of one of the movie’s funniest scenes, but Hawaiian authorities simply felt it was a fake ID. Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann requested that Wal-Mart pull the DVD from store shelves across the state, and the retailer quickly complied. </p> <h4>11. Cuban Pajamas</h4> <p>Wal-Mart’s Canadian stores found themselves in a pickle in 1997. The Canadian subsidiary had begun selling Cuban-made pajamas at eight bucks a pop across our neighbor to the North, which enraged both the company’s home office and the U.S. Treasury Department. </p> <p>The stores quickly pulled the offending PJ’s, which led to a second problem: this action may have violated a Canadian law that forbids abiding by the American embargo of Cuba. After the Ottawa government pointed out that Wal-Mart could face a million-dollar fine for pulling the sleepwear from its shelves, the Canadian Wal-Marts reversed the ban after one week. [Underwear & T-shirt images courtesy of Feministing.com.]</p></div><a href="http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/34728.html?cnn=yes?panties">Original here</a><br /></div>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-63908439521764183082009-10-04T02:44:00.000-07:002009-10-04T02:46:49.299-07:00Why the September Jobs Report Is So Brutal<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UDzusalcvXgPuT8mkNJ6I38q5AufYA9eazSJdu6HJBlvtbQs8GefghrzmqkNKa7tYxiUmmM8AUCuiTGfE2MSJ_ubT5npU8AL6NeeJrXjVREBUqUXzgt2lA02OhlVkhmjrSWJRc55Rg8/s1600-h/1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 152px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UDzusalcvXgPuT8mkNJ6I38q5AufYA9eazSJdu6HJBlvtbQs8GefghrzmqkNKa7tYxiUmmM8AUCuiTGfE2MSJ_ubT5npU8AL6NeeJrXjVREBUqUXzgt2lA02OhlVkhmjrSWJRc55Rg8/s400/1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388678773690429186" border="0" /></a><br /><cite class="vcard">By Liz Wolgemuth<br /><br /></cite>Employers in the United States continue to be more interested in cutting their payrolls than in keeping their existing employees, let alone adding new ones. Employers slashed another 263,000 jobs last month, the <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_0">Labor Department</span> reported today. That brings nonfarm employment down to the level of 2004, when there were about 7 million fewer U.S. workers.<br /><p><strong>Workers are dropping out:</strong> The <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_2">unemployment rate</span> edged up only slightly, to 9.8 percent, but the number of workers in the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_3">labor force</span> fell by 571,000, suggesting the unemployment rate could have been much worse. The ranks of the marginally attached--workers who have dropped out of the workforce because they believe they won't find jobs or because they have other responsibilities, such as school--have grown by 615,000 over the year.</p> <p><strong>There are not enough jobs:</strong> A bill that would provide another 13 weeks of federally funded <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_4">unemployment benefits</span> to hard-hit states sailed through the House last week but may be complicated by some senators' efforts to get benefit extensions for all states. In some states, eligible workers have already received as many as 79 weeks of benefits. Historically, spells of unemployment that lasted a year or more were very rare, says Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. These trends are the sorts that haven't been seen since the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_5">Great Depression</span>.</p> <p>Indeed, the number of workers who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more--called "long-term unemployed"--rose by 450,000, to 5.4 million. Last month, 36 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for at least six months. The unemployed face a market in which <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_6">job seekers</span> outnumber job openings by a ratio of 6 to 1.</p> <p>[See <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/usnews/ts_usnews/storytext/whytheseptemberjobsreportissobrutal/33601365/SIG=12d4llh25/*http://www.usnews.com/money/careers/slideshows/10-best-places-for-tech-jobs"><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_7">the 10 best places for tech jobs</span></a>.]</p> <p><strong>Governments are now feeling the heat:</strong> While most other industries slashed jobs throughout the recession, the government sector held up pretty well, helping cushion capital cities from the roughest economic patches. Last month, however, strains on <span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_8">local governments</span> started to show. Government employment fell by 53,000, with the largest drop--24,000 jobs--in the noneducation component of local governments.</p> <p><strong>Progress has slowed: </strong> September job losses were much worse than most economists expected--the median estimate was a loss of 175,000. The government also revised the prior data to show 201,000 jobs were lost in August, rather than the 216,000 originally reported, meaning the trend of narrowing job losses really shifted last month. "Today's report suggests that the progress toward a recovery in labor market conditions has stalled," Ted Weiseman and David Greenlaw, economists at <span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_9">Morgan Stanley</span>, said in a morning note. "We continue to expect to see some eventual follow through on the hiring side, given the recent improvement in production and demand, but the September data reinforce the fact that some important headwinds remain."</p> <p><strong>Hours fell back down:</strong> Along with payroll cuts, many employers have slashed their workers' hours to help lower expenses, and there are now 9.2 million "involuntary" part-time workers (those who would prefer full-time work). The average workweek edged up in August, but September erased the gain, and the workweek is again at a record low 33.0 hours.</p> <p>[See<a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/usnews/ts_usnews/storytext/whytheseptemberjobsreportissobrutal/33601365/SIG=12p53eaii/*http://www.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2009/08/28/americas-best-careers-2009.html"> <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_10">the best careers for 2009</span></a>.]</p> <p><strong>Construction and manufacturing are still hurting:</strong> Since the start of the recession, 1.5 million jobs have been erased in the construction industry. Employers in construction slashed 64,000 jobs last month, which, at least, was fewer than they were cutting late last year and earlier this year. The pain was greatest in nonresidential components, where 39,000 jobs were cut. Manufacturing lost 51,000 jobs. That's also fewer than were being cut earlier in the recession, but manufacturing payrolls have shrunk by 2.1 million since the start of the downturn.</p> <p><strong>The future is unclear:</strong> One of the most difficult things to understand about September's jobs report is how far the job market reality was from the government's stimulus forecast. The White House estimated that with the stimulus, the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1254649411_11">unemployment rate</span> would peak at 8 percent. Without a clear plan to stimulate future job growth, it's unclear how long it will take for the 15.1 million unemployed to gain re-employment in any significant volume. Employers tend to shy away from the risk of new hires until they are confident of the state of the economy. Even for the long-term unemployed, "when the economy is chugging along, firms are willing to take a chance" on hiring and training, says Katz.</p> <p>Still, the market is improving, as job losses are much less than they were last winter. "What is still very much open to question is how fast the move will be to stabilization of payrolls and eventually to job growth," says Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR. "We continue to believe that the process will be a slow one and that households will be contending with weak income growth and balance sheet issues for some time."</p><p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20091002/ts_usnews/whytheseptemberjobsreportissobrutal">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-46648676599917646152009-10-04T01:35:00.000-07:002009-10-04T02:44:50.557-07:00GM To Pull Plug On Saturn After Deal Fails<strong class="Dateline">DETROIT -- </strong>General Motors Co. said Wednesday it would shut down its Saturn division after an agreement to sell it to Penske Automotive Group Inc. fell apart. The Bloomfield, Mich. dealership headed by auto racing magnate Roger Penske walked away after it was unable to find a manufacturer to supply vehicles to it after a contract with GM runs out in 2011. A tentative deal for Saturn was announced on June 5. Penske was to get Saturn's 371 dealers and promised to retain the 13,000 Saturn employees. The proposed price was never disclosed. This marks an ignominious end for the brand that was supposed to revolutionize the way small cars were built and sold in America. GM Chairman Roger Smith first unveiled Saturn in November 1983, but the project was slow to develop and the brand did not officially launch until 1990. GM put more effort into making higher-profit SUVs and Saturn languished, never making money. Sales did spring up in 2006 and 2007 when gas prices rose, but then plunged along with other segments of the market last year. GM put the unit on the block this year as it battled the financial crisis that caused it to eventually file Chapter 11. GM CEO Fritz Henderson said in statement that Saturn and its dealership network will be phased out. "This is very disappointing news and comes after months of hard work by hundreds of dedicated employees and Saturn retailers who tried to make the new Saturn a reality," Henderson said in a written statement. Penske's announcement "explained that their decision was not based on interactions with GM or Saturn retailers." Shares of Penske fell $1.92 or 10 percent to $17.26 in after hours trading. They rose $1.32, or 7.4 percent to $19.18 in regular trading Wednesday. Penske said it negotiated with another manufacturer to make Saturn cars, but that company's board of directors rejected the agreement. Penske spokesman Anthony Pordon would not identify the other manufacturer. GM had agreed to keep building the Saturn Aura, Outlook and Vue models through 2011. After that Saturn would have to come up with its own products. Without another supplier in place before the deal was signed, Penske couldn't run the risk of taking on Saturn, Pordon said. It takes several years to design new vehicles or engineer foreign vehicles to meet U.S. standards. Penske would risk having no products to sell once the GM contract expired. "There's a pretty long lead time," Pordon said. "You've got to try to time this so as the supply of one ends and the other one comes on board." Pordon said there is little if any chance that the talks could be reopened. GM said Saturn vehicle owners can still go to their Saturn dealer for service and would be able to go to a certified GM dealer for service once Saturn dealerships are closed. It had been expected that GM would announce the completion of Saturn's sale to Penske in the coming days. The news left many of the 371 Saturn dealers across the country stunned and fearful of being left with nothing to sell. "I find this hard to believe," said Carl Galeana, owner of two Saturn dealerships in suburban Detroit. "Everyone's been saying we're right at the goal line." Galeana said he's heard nothing yet from GM or Saturn, but if the plan is to phase out the brand and cut the products, he'll have to come up with another options. "I assumed if you're at the goal line, those things would have been figured out," he said Wednesday. "We're going to try to put some plan Bs in place at this point." Galeana said he's concerned for his employees and still hopes the deal can be resurrected. "It's tough out there, but we'll keep fighting. That's all we can do." Saturn featured the iconic tag-line "a different kind of car company." GM's hope was that Saturn would attract younger buyers with smaller, hipper cars to better compete with Japanese imports. It built a new plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., devoted to Saturn production. Despite a cult-like following that drew thousands to annual reunions in Spring Hill, the brand never made money for GM. The factory stopped making Saturns in 2007 and currently builds only the Chevrolet Traverse crossover. Today, Saturn production is scattered at plants across North America. In the late 1990s, Saturn took a back seat as GM focused more on high-profit pickup trucks and SUVs. Then in 2006, car buyers began to find Saturn's new models more appealing. But after a good year in 2007, sales dropped 22 percent last year as the U.S. car market withered. GM has been trying to sell Saturn since earlier this year as part of its turnaround plan.<br /><br /> <!--stopindex--> <em>Copyright 2009 by <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ketv.com/news/2455821/detail.html">The Associated Press</a>.</em>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-23156219098981754962009-09-16T22:19:00.000-07:002009-09-16T22:21:28.847-07:00British unemployment hits 14-year high<cite class="vcard">by Roland Jackson<br /><br /></cite> <!-- end: .tools --> <!-- end: .hd --> <div class="bd" role="main" labelledby="yn-story-title"> <div id="yn-story-related-media"> <div class="primary-media"> <div id="yn-story-main-media" class="ult-section yn-style2"> <div class="photo-big"> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/File/photo//090916/photos_bs_afp/088b83e4cec730d3e65a626e22d2c9e1//s:/afp/20090916/bs_afp/britaineconomyunemployment" class="media " mapleultparams="sec=yn_r_top_photo;staid=/090916/photos_bs_afp/088b83e4cec730d3e65a626e22d2c9e1"> <img src="http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20090916/capt.photo_1253091207149-2-0.jpg?x=213&y=249&xc=1&yc=1&wc=350&hc=409&q=85&sig=mTp6ZATcBQE0BmvCLRb21Q--" alt="British unemployment hits 14-year high" height="249" width="213" /> </a> <cite class="caption"> AFP/File – People queue to enter a job centre in Bromley, Kent. Britain's recession-hit economy took another …<br /><br /></cite><p>LONDON (AFP) – Britain's recession-hit economy took another beating on Wednesday as official data showed that the labour market was in its worst state for 14 years, with companies slashing jobs to save cash.</p> <p> The number of unemployed climbed by 210,000 to 2.47 million people in the three months to July -- the highest level since May 1995 -- despite tentative signs of economic recovery.</p> <p> And the <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_0">unemployment rate</span> rose to 7.9 percent in the three months to July, hitting the highest level since November 1996, according to data released by the <span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_1">Office for National Statistics</span> (ONS).</p> <p> News of worsening <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_2">labour market data</span> comes despite growing expectations that <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_3">Britain</span> could soon follow France, Germany and <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_4">Japan</span> out of a deep recession that was sparked by the <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_5">global financial crisis</span>.</p> <p> "While the UK economy may now be growing again, the latest labour market figures showed little sign of improvement," said Vicky Redwood, economist at <span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_6">Capital Economics</span>.</p> <p> "Even if the recession is over, it will continue to feel like one for many people for a long time yet."</p> <p> However, other analysts sought solace from the fact that the pace of losses was receding.</p> <p> "The latest round of UK labour market numbers continued to point to a weak labour market. Albeit one that, at the margin, is getting less weak," said <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_7">Credit Suisse economist</span> <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_8">Neville Hill</span>.</p> <p> IHS <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_9">Global Insight</span> economist Howard Archer agreed -- but warned that unemployment was likely to climb even higher.</p> <p> "The overall impression that emerges is that the worst of the job cuts are probably over, but unemployment is still likely to rise markedly further."</p> <p> He added: "Unemployment jumped by 210,000 in the three months to July, thereby taking the number of jobless up to a 14-year high of 2.470 million and the unemployment rate up to a near 13-year high of 7.9 percent.</p> <p> "At least, though, this was down from increases of 220,000 in the three months to June and 281,000 in the three months to May."</p> <p> <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_10">Bank of England Governor Mervyn King</span> had said Tuesday that there were "signs" of a British economic recovery in the third quarter, following a prolonged recession.</p> <p> "Following a precipitate fall in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_11">economic activity</span> at the end of last year and the start of this, there are now signs that growth has resumed in the third quarter," King told lawmakers.</p> <p> However, he also warned that the effects of the <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_12">international financial crisis</span> would likely be "pervasive and long-lasting".</p> <p> Recent official data showed that Britain's <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_13">economic downturn</span> eased in the second quarter of 2009.</p> <p> <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_14">Gross domestic product</span> contracted 0.7 percent in the second quarter of 2009 compared with the first <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_15">three months of the year</span>, in the fifth quarterly drop in a row. That was a modest improvement on the previous estimate of a 0.8-percent contraction.</p> <p> On Tuesday, British defence equipment firm <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_16">BAE Systems</span> announced that it planned to axe 1,116 jobs in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_17">Britain</span> and close a key facility in northwestern <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1253102800_18">England</span> in response to falling orders.<br /></p><p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090916/bs_afp/britaineconomyunemployment">Original here</a><br /></p><br /> </div> </div></div></div></div>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-16099938712692153272009-09-16T22:18:00.000-07:002009-09-16T22:19:41.354-07:00Facebook 'finally making money'AP<br /><br /><p class="font-null"> Facebook says it is now bringing in more money than it is spending. </p> <p class="font-null"> The social networking site had previously said it expected to achieve this goal sometime next year. </p> <p class="font-null"> In a blog post on Facebook's website, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the company became "cash-flow positive" during the last quarter. </p> <p class="font-null"> "This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term," he wrote. </p> <p class="font-null"> This does not mean that Facebook is profitable by the measurements that most companies use, though. </p> <p class="font-null"> Cash remaining after expenses could be swallowed up by other costs like taxes, debt payments or other accounting charges. </p> <p class="font-null"> Zuckerberg also said that Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook now has 300 million users worldwide<br /></p><p class="font-null"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-finally-making-money-1788083.html">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-38764594958916154872009-09-16T22:15:00.000-07:002009-09-16T22:18:26.776-07:0025 and UnemployedBy Joseph Hooper<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifkHsMwDaN4yilnrC1l6wfesKmqLVA9EW7BYz-Mv5vZmCfN8H0-6xjuVGM5pMNEy0ObRZJmWki98WPDVTUk-Ly5jMMkugo2OzDtGhkZqPDSPI0aO_77PL0xUga66gZFwhrZNXC9dJ9AR4/s1600-h/25-and-Unemployed_articleimage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 325px; height: 385px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifkHsMwDaN4yilnrC1l6wfesKmqLVA9EW7BYz-Mv5vZmCfN8H0-6xjuVGM5pMNEy0ObRZJmWki98WPDVTUk-Ly5jMMkugo2OzDtGhkZqPDSPI0aO_77PL0xUga66gZFwhrZNXC9dJ9AR4/s400/25-and-Unemployed_articleimage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382301005447581314" border="0" /></a><br /><p>"I have this vivid memory of that Sunday,” Laurie Barnett, tells me over the disco music pumping into the midtown Manhattan restaurant where we meet, “when everyone figured out that Lehman was going bankrupt and Merrill was merging with Bank of America, and everything basically went to shit.” It’s hard to picture Laurie, 25, athletic and tomboyishly pretty, being a casualty of anything, but, as she’s eager to tell me, she was present at the destruction, an analyst at a distressed major investment bank, when on September 14, 2008, the illusion of Wall Street as an inexhaustible moneymaking machine ceased to exist. </p><p>“Just like everyone has their own story from 9/11,” Laurie says, “everyone has a Crash story. I was at home, hungover on a Sunday afternoon, and my friend who works at Lehman said, ‘I just got an e-mail from a managing director who says he’s packing up his stuff and I should too.’ She used to basically live in her office and had everything in her cubicle, like five changes of clothes. Later in the day, she called: ‘Can you actually come help me bring stuff home?’ I walked in the door with two rolling suitcases, and every single person was in the office, and there were news cameramen outside asking, ‘Do you have anything to say?’ All the tourists were looking on. And we had the suitcases with her clothes and company training books in them and she’s carrying her plant in her arm, and we turned to each other and said, ‘We’re going to remember this for a long time.’ It was an iconic moment.” </p><p>The story of how a handful of companies concocted exotic financial instruments that pumped up the housing bubble and their own profits, nearly bankrupting the entire country when it burst, has been front-page news for a year. But behind the headlines is another story about a generation of young women like Laurie. They’re the so-called Generation Y, programmed by their baby boomer parents for success, coming of age in an era of almost unprecedented affluence, landing choice corporate jobs, including on the male bastion of Wall Street, in record numbers. They now find themselves the expendable shock troops in a campaign of corporate “downsizing” that has reached its nadir in Manhattan. </p><p>The mass layoffs have occurred at a few investment banks that were swallowed by their healthier siblings. But in the ensuing stock market crash, the pain radiated out from Wall Street to the rest of the country as credit froze, consumer confidence plummeted, and businesses all over the country went belly-up, pushing the national unemployment rate to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since 1983. Also hard-hit, according to Batia Wiesenfeld, PhD, a professor of management at NYU’s Stern School of Business, was the lively mix of industries that feed off an idea of luxury bankrolled by the soaring stock market and those Wall Street bonuses: real estate and retail and art, and the media and PR companies that spread the good word— basically, those glamorous-sounding jobs for which <i>Sex and the City</i>–emulating, high-achieving young women have long flocked to Manhattan and other cosmopolises.</p><p>Now many of those women find themselves at a premature professional crossroads, their expensive and hard-won degrees languishing. Mandy Hill, 27, had been a fine-arts major at the University of Michigan, but she lucked into an entry-level job at a Manhattan hedge fund because the markets were booming and the finance companies were hungry for young talent with unconventional backgrounds. “As long as you were bright and willing to work,” Mandy says, “they were happy to teach you.” After nearly two years as an analyst, she left finance to get a master’s at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London so she could segue to a career in the art world. “I finished my dissertation last October,” she says, “when the world fell apart. Christie’s and Sotheby’s laid off something like 25 percent of their staff, so forget about applying for a job there.” She even struck out in an interview for a gallery assistant job with a family friend: “They got so many applicants, guys who could build the crates and hang the shows. It’s been a little discouraging,” Mandy says. (“People who take jobs for love, in fashion or art, for instance, now often find themselves in worse shape than the people in finance because those industries take longer to recover,” Wiesenfeld says.) Now Mandy is living at home in Wayne, New Jersey, with her schoolteacher mom, and commuting to the city by bus for sporadic auction-house work. Her trademark Gen Y self-esteem has been sorely tested. “I know I’m smart,” she says, “and I think I’ve got a lot to offer, so I figured I’d have no problem getting a job. And that was kind of my mistake.”</p><p>A varsity athlete with a nice GPA, Laurie was recruited by her firm when she was a junior at a top Northeastern college, lured into the fold with a well-paid and highly social summer internship.“You go to a lot of events, a lot of drinking,” she recalls. “It’s kind of like rushing a fraternity or sorority.” (That alone was a sign of gender progress on Wall Street—almost a third of her “class” were women.) Over the summer, she was exposed to all aspects of the investment business, including creative ways of slicing up, repackaging, and selling different grades of mortgage debt, the so-called Collateralized Debt Obligations. “CDOs are what got us into this mess in the first place,” she says, “but in the summer of ’06, it was blockbuster, with everyone making a ton of money. It was basically running a lot of quantitative models. I didn’t get it, and I was right not to get it. You didn’t actually make anything, you just found new ways to use money to make money.” </p><p>By the time Laurie took her place at the leveraged loan desk in fall ’07, credit had dried up nationwide and “my business had practically stopped being a business,” she says. “Some people came in at 10 a.m., left at 3 p.m. Others brought footballs to the office. And everyone went to the gym in the middle of the day.” Not that doing nothing and getting well paid for it added up to much fun. “There were definitely times when I had a pit in my stomach,” she says, “I figured there was a 50/50 chance I was going to make it.” She didn’t, washed out in a wave of October firings. </p><p>No one disputes that in this insecure economy, the psychological impact of women being laid off in finance and its dependent industries—the best and the brightest, the leading edge— reverberates loudly. So how will this generation of young female overachievers cope with an underachieving economy? Business consultant Judith Bardwick, PhD, author of <i>One Foot Out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business</i>, worries that too many young women are “hopelessly unprepared” for a job market that’s now in “a permanent wartime condition.” In part, she blames overinvolved boomer parents (“ ‘helicopter parents’ who swooped down on whatever activity their kids were involved in and insisted they were megastars”) who have left Gen-Yers with sometimes unrealistically high expectations.</p><p>“These were the incredibly bright young women who, as I like to say, built their first church in Nicaragua at the age of two and were working on their résumés before they could talk,” Janet Hanson, CEO of the women’s career networking group 85 Broads, says. Adds Judith Gerberg, a Manhattan executive coach and president of the Career Counselors Consortium, “These are people who’ve always succeeded at everything they put their mind to. And then their whole department gets laid off and they go into shock.” </p><p>I began to collect their stories, starting with the Wall Streeters whose fall from grace quickly came to define our new age of diminished expectations. A friend knew a friend who knew a young woman at Barclays or Citibank, and we’d meet after work. Typically, she’d be eager to talk about what she’d lived through but nervous about losing her job, if she still had one (which is why most opted to use pseudonyms and some workplace details have been blurred). “Wall Street is a scary little world,” Jennifer London, 25, a research analyst at a major Wall Street bank, told me over dinner in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. “If your name ever appears in print next to the firm’s name, even if you’re saying the nicest things in the world, you could be fired.” </p><p>Children of middle-class affluence, hardly trust-fund babies, women like Jennifer and Laurie saw finance as the hot ticket in a boom economy (“it became like the NBA draft,” Hanson cracks) and the entry pass to an independent life in the city. “You’re either on Wall Street and supporting yourself,” Jennifer says, “or you’re in a job you love and your parents are paying the rent.” When the crash came, simple survival at work, and being able to make monthly rent, became epic.</p><p>One thing Gen Y has in common with its older colleagues is having to deal with the downsizing fallout pretty much on its own without the outplacement help and emotional support provided by Employee Assistance Plans that even supposedly heartless Wall Street routinely offered in the 1980s and the ’90s. “In times of crisis,” Bardwick observes, “everything goes overboard.”</p><p>And 9/11 may play a role as well. In the wake of the attack, the Federal Reserve’s Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates to pump up the economy and morale, laying the groundwork for the housing bubble. But Shelley Reciniello, PhD, an organizational consultant who has worked with the major Wall Street firms since the early ’80s, believes that 9/11 was also the high water mark for companies taking responsibility for the emotional well-being of its employees. “We offered so much counseling,” she says, “the corporate powersthat- be came to resent it, unconsciously. They wanted to forget the vulnerability of that time, and the EAP budgets got trimmed.”</p><p>Those who remember feeling supported by their company in the wake of 9/11 (the bulk of Gen Y, the oldest of whom have hit their thirties—the youngest are still in high school—had not yet entered the workforce in 2001) experience the new corporate reality as a sad betrayal. Sarah Steiner, fortyish, then a legal counsel at Lehman, says the old guard that worked through the grief of 9/11 (Lehman’s offices were connected by a walkway to the World Trade Center) have had nowhere to take a different sort of pain, from diminished influence within the new Barclays regime, lost paper fortunes—the now worthless Lehman stock—and a complete lack of trust in their employer. What remains is a kind of corporate nihilism. “The guys who have been working here for 20 years while their wives were playing tennis in Connecticut, by and large, they’re not bringing these feelings back home,” she said last spring. “They’ll act out, come to work on Mondays with black eyes, from reckless skiing or even bar fights.” The women mostly vent among themselves. Both sexes have gotten sloppy, she said, in the matter of office affairs: “They used to be conducted with some discretion and now they’re completely flagrant.”</p><p>Business management experts have coined a term, “survivor’s syndrome,” to describe the Pandora’s box of bad emotions—depression, anger, guilt—that can attach to surviving employees in a downsizing office who are often as traumatized as their colleagues who actually got fired. “The research shows a spiraling sense of doom among those left behind,” says corporate coach Phillip Sandahl, cofounder of the Washington State–based Team Coaching International. In an influential book, <i>Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations</i>, consultant David Noer writes about what he calls “the metaphor of the surviving children”: You’re a child in a family. You come down to the breakfast table and see that your little sister is gone and you get the message from your parents that you’re not to talk about it, otherwise tomorrow, it could be you.</p><p>“I was sitting at my computer when people on both sides of me got either the weird call or the weird e-mail, and that was it, they were gone,” 25-year-old Rebecca Westphal, an analyst at a major investment bank, says. “Security literally appeared on the floor and escorted them out. You’re supposed to go back to work after that but you can’t, you’re so stressed out. And if you talk about it in the office, you feel you’re gossiping, which you’re not supposed to do.” Having shrewdly secured delayed admission to business school, Rebecca, after surviving six waves of layoffs, finally bailed. (The “time-out” option has become so popular, biz schools are glutted with qualified applicants. I was having coffee with one Merrill pink slip–ee when she got an e-mail saying she’d landed an interview at NYU. “Very good,” she murmured. “The opportunity cost of going to business school is never going to be lower.” In civilian English: When business is tough, it’s okay for the tough to go to business school.)</p><p>“It’s like the definition of a totalitarian state,” Jennifer says, putting her Ivy League education to good use. “It’s the not knowing that creates the terror. Like the day we were told that 20 percent of the research analysts wouldn’t be here tomorrow. Would that ripple out to us? We had no idea. It’s like a war and you’re sitting in a trench, and you watch one guy in your line get hit by a bullet and go down. Your odds of surviving are actually pretty good, but it’s just so stressful. For a period of a couple months, I would go home and I couldn’t eat. I just felt numb.”</p><p>Julie Randolph, a midthirties Manhattan PR executive (which puts her on the cusp of Gens Y and X) who outearns her husband and floats the expenses of their three kids and heavily mortgaged suburban house, feels she must hang on, though lately her jobresembles something out of <i>Ten Little Indians</i>. “You hear there’s a list and you never knew whether you’re on it or off it. The more your colleagues tell you that you’re safe, the more you think there’s probably a big bull’s-eye on your back.”</p><p>A gallows humor comes in handy. Julie’s recollection of being told by management that her boss was set to be fired has the ring of a Mafia hit: “I couldn’t have a normal conversation with this woman because I felt dirty. I knew exactly how it was going to go down. Meanwhile, she’s got a smile on her face and she’s saying, ‘Are you ready with the presentation? Do you think this is the right <i>font</i> to use?’ And I felt like screaming, ‘It doesn’t matter! You’re going to be gone before the meeting ever starts!’ ”</p><p>Julie’s experience may have overshot survivor’s syndrome and landed her in Stockholm syndrome territory. “You get in this weird place where you’re appreciative of the torture,” she says. “You think about your friends who’ve been laid off with no interviews, no callbacks, and you don’t want to talk to them about all the horrendous things you’re doing at work because you think, Maybe it’s better to be doing something horrible than nothing at all.”</p><p>Those without the kids and mortgage (and a reputation among their elders for being “entitled”) can feel almost as trapped, unwilling to give up even a loathsome job for an undignified return trip home or a gig waiting tables. “We’re type A women who are used to being in control of everything,” Wendy Rosen, a 26-yearold Manhattan business consultant, says, “and right now, in this economy, we’re really not. All you hear, like a broken record, is, ‘You’re lucky you have a paycheck.’ That doesn’t make you feel better when you’re miserable at your job.” With all the extra work she and her peers have picked up from their axed colleagues, they often feel stuck in their own life plan—in Wendy’s case, without sufficient leisure to marry the fiancé she moved to the city to be with. “I don’t want to with the way things are at work,” she says. “I can’t take the time to plan a wedding and go on a honeymoon because my utilization numbers [billable hours] would go down, and I’d be passed over for a raise or let go.”</p><p>A former sorority sister from a well-to-do Southern background, Wendy is appalled at the coarseness that has crept into recessionary corporate life. She tells me about colleagues who’ve been pressured by their bosses to travel late into their pregnancies. “The senior women will say things like, ‘Well, I worked up to the day before I had my children.’ I felt like telling these women, ‘And look at you, you’re miserable!’ ” Still, she expects to find a satisfying balance between family and work even if the precise blueprint for the future hasn’t revealed itself yet. “I expect I’ll choose a career with flexible hours,” she says, “or one or two days working from home—that’s the part of me that’s Generation Y. In consulting, you hear, ‘This is something to do until you have babies.’ But I’m not going to stay home and knit sweaters. I want to use my brain.”</p><p>When Wiesenfeld compares notes with her MBA grads in the workforce, she hears two common refrains. One group, the survivors under fire, are putting off marriage and family in the style of their boomer and Gen X elders. Another group, the layoff victims, will often take the pink slip as an invitation to get pregnant and immerse themselves in family life. “They’ll tell you that they’re off the corporate track and that it’s really for the best,” she says. “Part of it is PR framing, but they really do believe it as well.”</p><p>Bardwick makes the point that recent graduates, for all their ambition, lack a feminist ideology that might check a backslide to the days when women sought the security of marriage and a hubby’s paycheck. “For the first time since labor statistics have been kept,” Bardwick says, “we see that educated professional women are beginning to leave the labor force. The absolute numbers are small, but it’s a trend.”</p><p>None of my confidantes predicts an imminent return to the ’50s, but Jennifer admits, “I do think the recession has increased the pressure to find a rich husband. Girls get really aggressive about wanting to find a guy who will take care of them. It’s not a pleasant side of the city, the dating for money.” A lack of funds can change the domestic equation even for young women who don’t fit the gold-digger description. Until last February, Jennifer’s friend Eva, 29, a Parsons grad, worked as a retail analyst at a lingerie company. When the retail market contracted, she was let go. Unable to pay the rent, she moved in with her boyfriend, with misgivings. “I’d like to be living with someone because we wanted to,”she says, “not because I had to.”</p><p> Wiesenfeld admits she’s seen these sorts of trends in previous recessions and isn’t unduly worried. However dire any individual story, she says, historically, corporate downsizing has been good for young people, creating space for them to move up the ladder if they can focus on the work, not on the<br />emotions spinning around the workplace. What’s new this time around is the number of women in their twenties and early thirties who are availing themselves of another option, creating their own business: “Young women are looking for meaningful lives, and they’re willing to be quite entrepreneurial to find that.”</p><p>Jennifer says, “The gleam has definitely worn off Wall Street. These companies will fire you at a moment’s notice. That’s fine. But I’m hedging my bets with something on the side, a risk, but a very calculated risk.” In other words, don’t get emotional, get even. The new project that she hopes will lead her out of the corporate cubicle? She and a friend from Harvard Business School are launching an interactive health website for young women, ChickRx, that they plan to have up and running by late fall, which connects visitors to a team of doctors on health topics such as contraception, sexual health, diet, exercise, and emotional issues. Résumé-padding college interns are doing much of the grunt labor, and costs are kept bare bones: no loans, not from parents, not from the bank. “My parents have no idea how much I’ve spent on this,” Jennifer says. “I don’t need the added pressure.”</p><p>It’s a testament to their cleverness that the business model turns on their generation’s penchant for social networking, the very trait that some experts believe will save them from the long-term unemployment that many of their older colleagues may face. “Middle-aged people are often focused internally on their families,” human resources consultant Alicia Whitaker says, “but it’s the young people who can leverage their social networking skills in a downsizing environment.” They’re hardwired, as it were, to pursue contacts, leads, job openings. “We’re the ‘do you know?’ generation,” Laurie says, “like Facebook. ‘You work at this bank; do you know my friend so-and-so?’ ”</p><p>A few months after our first meeting, I catch up with Laurie, who’s sporty in a striped nautical tee and Ray-Bans, a feckless poster child for resilience in tough times. (“I’m young and only have my drinking and my rent to support.”) She leveraged some connections and landed a new job that paid barely half what the old one did, “an administrative assistant with a brain,” but at least she didn’t have to go on unemployment or move home. “If I hadn’t found a finance job,” she says, “I would’ve joined the Peace Corps or something.” Some of her peers haven’t been as lucky, the “next-step kids,” she calls them, trolling the financial website job listings day after day, trying to move on to the next step without taking any detours. By luck or moxie, she recently found a more rigorous and well-paid finance job. (So did the Lehman friend she helped rescue on September 14.) The finance details of what Laurie actually does are beyond me. “As long as it makes sense to you,” I say. “It doesn’t really make sense to anybody,” she laughs. “Trust me, all day long, everyone thinks about what they’d be doing if they weren’t in finance.”</p><p>Laurie gets points for her droll tenacity. But if Manhattan is to reclaim its status as the ultimate laboratory for self-invention, ambitious young women need to shoot higher than just hanging on to their corporate finance seats, however lucrative. Chick- Rx offers one example; so does Sunitha Jaikumar (her real name), 26, a vivacious Southern Californian who last year was laid off at Gateway Computers. “They brought in our whole department,” she says, “and told us they were giving us two months to train our replacements or we’d lose our severance. I was like, ‘Severance—sweet!’ It’d always been a dream of mine to live in New York, and now I could afford it. I had a sixmonth budget laid out on a spreadsheet.”</p><p>Two weeks after she moved to the city, she says, the market crashed. But before her money ran out, she found a job working for a “green” cosmetics company and, even more amazing to her friends, an affordable apartment on the island, in Spanish Harlem. Of course, in this economy dreams don’t always materialize quite that easily. In the face of declining sales in a tough retail market, last April, the cosmetics company let her go. “I’m going to come out of this,” Sunitha says, “and I’m going to be okay.”</p><p><a href="http://www.elle.com/Life-Love/Society-Career-Power/25-and-Unemployed">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-46516423285959449322009-09-16T22:14:00.000-07:002009-09-16T22:15:40.621-07:00Rupert Murdoch sees improving ad trendsBy Georg Szalai<br /><br />NEW YORK -- News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said Tuesday his conglomerate has seen advertising improvements in recent weeks.<br /><br />U.S. ad trends have been "very much better," he told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference here, adding, "It's a pretty healthy picture at the moment."<br /><br />The Fox network is "sold out solid" in the entertainment division until the end of the year, with ad rates down less than 1%, he said.<br /><br />The firm's TV stations, which have been trending down 20% year-over-year, are seeing September pacing down 8%, Murdoch said. Things seem to be "getting better every week," he said.<br /><br />Murdoch predicted a bump followed by a fairly slow economic recovery.<br /><br />News Corp. also is finally seeing the benefit of being the most global media giant, Murdoch said. "Everywhere around the globe there is a slight lift" despite different regions and media doing differently. "India is great," Australia is strong and the U.K. weaker, he said.<br /><br />Asked about the firm's cost base, Murdoch said "we've achieved a lot of efficiencies" amid the recession, but there is room for more.<br /><br />Murdoch said News Corp. wants online video service Hulu to add subscription services and/or a PPV offer. His vice chairman, president and COO Chase Carey, had recently signaled interest in paid-for services.<br /><br />Asked about the relationship between the Fox network and its affiliates, Murdoch said he is looking for network compensation from stations because network shows draw crowds and are costly. He didn't detail possible scenarios.<br /><br />Asked about his interest in rights to future Olympics, Murdoch initially said, "I wouldn't think so," but he then added that if Chicago gets the 2016 Summer Olympics, that "may be pretty tempting."<br /><br />Discussing the film business, he said he is "very confident" about Fox's outlook despite a weak market for catalog and smaller movies. Asked about Redbox, he only said that "some of us will try and window it."<br /><br />He also said the recent return of Carey allows Murdoch to concentrate on bigger ideas. "I trust him 1,000%," he said.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal will start charging for mobile access on the Blackberry in the coming months, he said. He mentioned a price of $2 per week for nonsubscribers and $1 for print subscribers.<br /><br />"News is more valuable than it's ever been" as the digital age provides new opportunities, Murdoch contended, shrugging off the suggestion his firm should change its name to Entertainment Corp.<br /><br />"If we were Newspaper Corp., I'd say yes, we'd definitely change that," he said. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ibe685b1031a7a6fc9d314fa935ee893e">Original here</a>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-46997144820978538032009-09-16T21:56:00.000-07:002009-09-16T22:13:25.447-07:00The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All TimeBy Inside CRM Editors<br /><br /><div id="content_body"> <p>Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn't mean that investors won't pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea <span style="font-family: Arial;">—</span> or even a good idea gone bad. Whether they crashed and burned or sucked investors dry, these ventures just didn't work out. Check out our graveyard of dreams and money to get a look at VC (venture-capital) investments that just weren't wise.</p> <ol><li><strong><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/07/20/what-were-they-thinking-ampd-mobiles-mad-credit-strategy/" target="_blank">Amp'd Mobile</a></strong>: Amp'd Mobile takes the crown for money-burning, with $360 million that ended in bankruptcy. The company's major problem was its customers' ability to pay. While other mobile providers check for an ability to pay bills within 30 days, Amp'd let it go to 90 days and marketed to these risky customers. It has been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amp%27d_Mobile%22">reported</a> that 80,000 of the company's 175,000 customers were unable to pay their bills.</li><li><strong><a href="http://www.news.com/Is-Prockets-science-strong-enough/2100-1033_3-871206.html" target="_blank">Procket</a></strong>: Networking company Procket was once one of the most highly valued telecom startups in the U.S. It had $272 million in venture-capital funding and a valuation of $1.55 billion but was ultimately sold to industry behemoth Cisco Systems Inc. for a disappointing $89 million. </li><li><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan" target="_blank">Webvan</a></strong>: Webvan was a grocery-delivery business that served nine metropolitan areas. Once valued at <a href="http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html?tag=bottom" target="_blank">$1.2 billion</a> with plans to expand to 26 cities, the company went bankrupt in 2001. Despite millions in sales, the company's demise was brought on by a money-burn that exceeded sales growth. Major purchases included $1 billion for warehouses, enterprise servers and more than 100 Aeron chairs. Additionally, it <a href="http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,27911,00.html" target="_blank">acquired</a> HomeGrocer just a few months before going under. This fast expansion proved to be too much for Webvan. This company that <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/09/MN196371.DTL" target="_blank">once had</a> about $800 million in venture capital ended up with $830 million in losses, with about $40 million on hand. </li><li><strong><a href="http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=103777&WT.svl=news1_1">Caspian Networks</a></strong>: Caspian Networks, originally founded as Packetcom Inc., had a number of ups and downs, including a washout in 2002; the company finally shut down in 2006. Caspian Networks fluctuated from more than $300 million in funding and 323 employees to less than 100 employees and closed doors. </li><li><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com" target="_blank">Pets.com</a></strong>: This icon of the dot-com bubble died out in November of 2000, going from a listing in NASDAQ to liquidation in just nine short months. The site sold pet supplies and accessories online. Once backed with $50 million by <a href="http://www.insidecrm.com//" target="_blank">Hummer Winblad Venture Partners</a>, <a target="_blank">Bowman Capital</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com" target="_blank">Amazon.com Inc</a>., Pets.com had promise and even bought out competitor Petstore.com. But in the end, its stock bottomed out at 19 cents per share. Remembered for its sock-puppet ads, the expense of its $1.2 million Super Bowl ad, as well as large infrastructure investments, proved to be too much. Pets.com's sock puppet lives on as the icon of <a href="http://www.barnone.com/" target="_blank">BarNone Inc</a>.</li><li><strong><a href="http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/04/14/optiva_liquidates_nanotechs_first_big_fameout.html" target="_blank">Optiva</a></strong>: Optiva, a nanotech company that laminated flat-screen TV sets, had to shut down after it failed to continue to raise funding. It initially raised and ran through $41.5 million in venture capital. The problem was that it took too long to release its product, which was obsolete by the time it came to market. </li><li><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com" target="_blank">Kozmo.com</a></strong>: Kozmo.com's small-goods delivery service, while a recipient of around $250 million in investment, and popular with students and young professionals, ultimately met its end and liquidated in 2001. Its business model was criticized as unprofitable because it didn't charge for deliveries. Kozmo.com's demise is profiled in the documentary film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Dreams">e-Dreams</a>.</li><li><strong><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114424637699117715-OO16F7Ov3DMZcs1xpbu5ksPDTl0_20070503.html">CueCat</a></strong>: This much-mocked pen-sized bar-code scanner was designed to make finding information about ads easier. Instead, Digital Convergence Corp., CueCat's creator, burned through $185 million from investors like The Coca-Cola Co. and General Electric Co. The device simply failed to catch on, and it was plagued with security problems.</li><li><strong><a href="http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/10/23/lexington_software_firm_shuts_down/" target="_blank">DeNovis Inc</a>.</strong>: DeNovis software once attempted to change the medical-claims world but ended up shutting down instead. It raised $125 million in venture capital and had 110 employees. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough, and this promising solution simply didn't have the cash to hang on until the software could be launched.</li><li><a href="http://www.insidecrm.com//" target="_blank"><strong>PointCast</strong> <strong>Inc</strong></a>.: After tens of millions of dollars in venture capital and a $400 million buy offer, PointCast was finally sold for $7 million. It was originally touted as the next big thing, but failed to live up to its hype when its software and downloads irritated customers.</li><li><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EToys.com" target="_blank">eToys</a></strong>: Despite being measured as the "benchmark against which all other sites are measured," eToys ended in bankruptcy. The company was largely edged out by Amazon.com, which formed a partnership with Toys 'R' Us, but ultimately, customers just weren't willing to wait a few days for their Legos. It was backed by VC firms Idealab, Highland Capital Partners LLC and Sequoia Capital Partners.</li><li><strong><a target="_blank">AllAdvantage</a></strong>: AllAdvantage offered Internet users 50 cents per hour to watch banner ads on a "Viewbar." Of course, the problem with their business model was that advertisers didn't see the appeal of the low-pay demographic AllAdvantage offered. This company represents $135 million in venture capital down the drain.</li><li><strong><a href="http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2004/04/05/story1.html" target="_blank">FastForward</a></strong>: FastForward's software and design took a nosedive due to faltering profits. Investors sunk $54 million into the company, which ended with bankruptcy and a selloff designed to raise funds to pay around $2 million in debts.</li><li><strong><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/business/yourmoney/11xoma.html?ex=1328850000&en=796e829e8a4b2635&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss" target="_blank">Xoma</a></strong>: While many pharmaceutical companies enjoy <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/magazine/0503_bigfix.cfm" target="_blank">soaring</a> profits, Xoma isn't one of them. This 26-year old company has not earned a profit since its inception in 1981. In fact, it has run through more than $700 million. Its stock has gone from highs of $32 per share to $3.04. Of course, this company's future is much more promising than many of the other companies profiled in this article. There's still a chance that Xoma will see success, even this far down the road. Perhaps you'll see Xoma on a future list of VC turnaround stories.</li><li><strong><a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114424637699117715-OO16F7Ov3DMZcs1xpbu5ksPDTl0_20070503.html" target="_blank">Flooz.com</a></strong>: Flooz was a digital currency that could be bought online and used somewhat like a gift certificate for online retailers. The company raised more than $50 million in support but, despite backing from big names like Whoopi Goldberg and J. Crew, went broke in 2001 after revenue slowed down. The company also suffered because thieves charged around $300,000 in Flooz to stolen credit cards.</li><li><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_7_34/ai_n6065782" target="_blank"><strong>Vanguarde Media</strong> </a><strong><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_7_34/ai_n6065782" target="_blank">Inc</a>.</strong>: Vanguarde Media, publisher of Savoy, Heart & Soul and Honey, couldn't stay afloat, filing for bankruptcy in 2004. Even after $60 million in VC funding, the company simply wasn't able to sustain its business model with advertising revenue. Vanguarde Media also had troubles with real estate and Web sites.</li><li><strong><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20000510152036/http://www.pixelon.com/" target="_blank">Pixelon.com</a></strong>: Although Pixelon's money-burn of $16 million isn't remarkable in comparison to the other all-stars on this list, the way it was burnt certainly is. Pixelon's founder, "Michael Fenne" was more con man than entrepreneur, spending most of the company's investment on a Las Vegas launch party peppered with stars like Tony Bennett, Kiss and The Who. Eventually, it came out that Mr. Fenne was actually David Kim Stanley, a man on the run from the law and living in his car, who previously pleaded guilty to swindling $1.5 million from friends and neighbors.</li><li><strong><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/08/16/roundup-sprints-wimax-bet-twitku-vmwares-750m-mistake-bolt-dead-and-more/" target="_blank">Bolt Media Inc</a>.</strong>: Bolt Media survived the dot-com era but finally met its end. This video site, launched in 1999, had more than $60 million in venture backing, and even went through a number of trials like a management buyout in 2004. In the end, Bolt's lawsuits kept it from being bought out by <a href="http://pr-gb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9406&Itemid=9" target="_blank">GoFish Corp.</a>, and the company has since shut down.</li><li><strong><a href="http://www.internetretailer.com/internet/marketing-conference/42715-digiscents-runs-out-cents.html" target="_blank">DigiScents</a></strong>: Would you like to "smell" the Internet? Yeah, we didn't think so. Neither did potential investors for DigiScents. After $20 million in investment, this smelly company was shut down because it couldn't come up with additional cash to go on.</li><li><strong><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010927092825/http://boo.com/" target="_blank">Boo.com</a></strong>: Boo is a prime example of dot-com excess, with $120 million burned on apartments, gifts and a huge site that left dial-up modems struggling. The company had Miss Boo, a sales-assistant avatar, and loads of JavaScript and Flash. Essentially, the site lacked usability. The book "<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boo-Hoo-Dot-Com-Story/dp/0099418371" target="_blank">Boo Hoo: A Dot Com Story</a>," chronicles the company's boom to bust.</li></ol> <p><em>The original source of this article is <a href="http://www.insidecrm.com/features/20-worst-vc-investments-111907/" target="_blank">InsideCRM.com</a> , part of the Focus network of sites.</em></p> </div>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-83660614816091954362009-08-14T10:24:00.000-07:002009-08-14T10:28:30.111-07:0012 Economic Bubbles That May Burst<p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 399px; height: 112px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzbubble.png" alt="zzbubble" title="zzbubble" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13066" /></p> <p><strong>What’s the next big bubble?</strong> Green energy? Gun sales? Food? Nobody knows for sure. </p> <p>Based on our research, 12 new bubbles already show potential to make and ruin investors. The markets listed below range from bubble-in-the-making to ready to pop:</p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">1. Gun sales</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 310px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzgun-600x465.jpg" alt="zzgun" title="zzgun" class="alignright size-large wp-image-13069" /></p> <p>Anticipating anti-gun legislation, certain Americans are snapping up guns to hoard, collect, or safekeep. Some are even stockpiling for investment purposes. </p> <p>According a gun buyer mentioned in<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984046627223159.html"> this Wall Street Journal article</a>, a collection of “assault weapons” could triple in value if the federal government re-enacts a ban on their sale. Background checks on potential gun buyers increased by 27% in the past year, according to the article. </p> <p>Some guns have already appreciated. For example, European-made AK-47s doubled in price between September-December 2008. For savvy buyers, the right to bear arms is also bearing fruit. The question is: When’s this bubble going to burst?</p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">7. Option ARMs</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 398px; height: 253px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzoptionarm-600x381.jpg" alt="zzoptionarm" title="zzoptionarm" class="alignright size-large wp-image-13075" /></p> <p>Starting in May 2009, option adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) have been causing “more delinquencies and foreclosures than subprime mortgages,” according to a Wall Street Journal article <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124744382165530247.html">written in July</a>. </p> <p>Option ARMs allow homeowners to pay partial interest on their home loans for a predetermined period of time. In some cases, the unpaid amount of interest is added to the loan’s principal. Once the partial interest window expired, homeowners are left with potentially unaffordable payments. </p> <p>Combine that will falling property values, and you see yet another loan-inspired disaster. According to the Wall Street Journal,</p> <p><em>As of April, 36.9% of Pick-A-Pay loans were at least 60 days past due, while 19% were in foreclosure. In contrast, 33.9% of subprime loans were delinquent, with 14.5% of those loans in foreclosure.<br /></em><br />Option ARMs are concentrated in California, Florida, and other hard-hit housing regions, writes the WSJ. Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, and the FDIC’s insurance fund hold a large proportion of option ARMs, so a burst bubble will hit them especially hard. </p> <p>It’s just a matter of time. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">3. Cap & Trade</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 399px; height: 337px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzcaptrade.jpg" alt="zzcaptrade" title="zzcaptrade" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13070" /></p> <p>In September, the Senate will vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which should really be called the Clean Energy Securitization Act. The act will create a cap-and-trade market that will create new derivative-friendly asset classes, according to <a href="http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/07/10/could-cap-and-trade-create-another-economic-bubble/">this Christian Science Monitor article</a>. </p> <p>The government will, if the act passes, activate a market for carbon allowances and carbon offsets. The former are permits allowing companies to pollute; the latter, pollution permits that require companies to offset their carbon emissions elsewhere. </p> <p>That, writes Mother Jones reporter <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/could-cap-and-trade-cause-another-market-meltdown">Rachel Morris</a>, is just the beginning. Once permits hit the market, financial experts will convert them in derivatives with names like “offset futures” and “allowance swaps.” </p> <p>Bubblemania will ensue if the government shies away from regulation and enables the same kind of chaotic, over-the-counter system that enabled the mortgage-backed securities crisis. </p> <p>The financial industry is currently lobbying for minimal regulation. If the bill goes through in September, and the government steps back from applying regulation, subprime carbon might not be too far away. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">4. Incandescent Light Bulbs (EU)</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzbulbs.jpg" alt="zzbulbs" title="zzbulbs" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13071" width="335" height="600" /></p> <p>A pending EU-wide ban on incandescent (traditional) light bulbs is causing consumers to hoard the soon-to-be unlawful products. Manufacturers are enjoying massive sales as a result. </p> <p><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,638494,00.html">The Spiegel article</a> covering this bright bubble news didn’t mention anything about people hoarding for investment purposes, as they are for guns, but that certainly remains an option. The bubble will burst in September, when stores no longer sell incandescent lighting, and it will really burst when CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulb) technology improves enough to make people toss out their old incandescent. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">5. China</span> </p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 319px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzchina-600x479.jpg" alt="zzchina" title="zzchina" class="alignright size-large wp-image-13072" /></p> <p>Chinese stock markets have been surging, fed by easy credit from government-linked banks. The Shanghai Composite<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/29/markets/thebuzz/?postversion=2009072913"> rose 16% in July alone</a>. Banks extended $1.1 trillion in new loans during the first six months of 2009. </p> <p>What’s more, a Chinese company enjoyed the biggest global IPO of the year. China State Construction Engineering Corp. <a href="http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1016723&lang=eng_news">raised $7.3bn</a> in one day. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 5% as a result: Investors feared that the same speculation that had increased CSCEC’s stock value by 56% was also <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8173746.stm">overheating the market</a>. </p> <p>Unfortunately, China’s economy remains export-driven. The numbers are a smokescreen. The Chinese government is powerful enough to “make the right numbers appear” if it thinks the country’s economy needs stimulating, according to <a href="http://contrarianedge.com/2009/04/24/the-next-great-bubble-china/">Contrarian Edge’s Vitaliy Katsenelson</a>. “(T)he government is more than willing to artificially stimulate the economy, in the hopes of buying time until the global system restabilizes,” he says. </p> <p>China is experiencing “asset bubbles that look like economic growth,” writes Bloomberg’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=awbeFpo0K1kw">William Pesek</a>. Will China’s market manipulation survive the recession, as the government has planned, or will the bubbles all burst?</p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">6. Gold </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 398px; height: 299px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzgold.jpg" alt="zzgold" title="zzgold" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13073" /></p> <p>To many investors, “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing">quantitative easing</a>” is synonymous with “buy gold as fast as you can!” </p> <p>The problem is that more money in the mint doesn’t necessarily mean inflation. What if the Fed printed less money than was lost in the financial crisis? What if consumer demand remains low and producers can’t increase their prices? Or if, after banks recapitalize, there isn’t any extra money left? Or <a href="http://www.thedailybell.com/bellPage.asp?nid=374&fl=0?">electronic money messes up</a> the whole notion of quantitative easing?</p> <p>Gold will spike when in inflation hits, but if there’s no inflation, speculators will be left empty-handed. Then again, if–as some goldbugs claim–the dollar weakens further, global financial systems collapse, and governments fail, it’ll be nice to have some bullion on hand. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">7. Higher Education</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 399px; height: 228px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzhigheredu.jpg" alt="zzhigheredu" title="zzhigheredu" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13074" /></p> <p>Elite schools like Harvard and Yale have frozen some faculty salaries. What gives? It’s a widespread endowment dry-up, according to The New York Times’ <a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/harvard-private-equity-and-the-education-bubble/">Steven M. Davidoff</a>. He explains that in recent years, endowments and tuition hikes have enabled universities to expand buildings, programs, and faculty, as well as increase salaries.</p> <p>With the economic crash, however, endowments have shriveled. The Harvard endowment, on which certain parts of the university heavily rely, used to enjoy handsome portfolio returns: Its private equity portfolio gained 28% during the past decade. Now, it is facing more than 30% losses, according to Davidoff’s calculations. He estimates that up to 40% of Harvard’s assets are illiquid, meaning that it will have to aggressively raise donations or increase its liquid returns to fund itself and its private equity obligations. </p> <p>“This results in a spiraling decline in Harvard’s liquid assets as each year they go lower to meet these needs and more and more assets become tied up in private equity,” writes Davidoff. Ouch. Overdependence on endowments and private equity is bursting the higher education bubble, especially at the top tiers. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">8. Trustafarianism</span></p> <p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 598px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzzparishilton-600x900.jpg" alt="zzzparishilton" title="zzzparishilton" class="alignright size-large wp-image-13077" /><br /></div><p> Photo By Charles Sykes / Rex</p> <p>Bubbles can be cultural, too. Just ask the hipsters featured in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/nyregion/08trustafarians.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=williamsburg&st=cse">this New York Times article</a>, who freeze in shock after being informed that full-time jobs last eight hours a day. For many, the parental bailout is a bubble that has either deflated or burst. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">9. Alternative Energy</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzzgreenenergy.jpg" alt="zzzgreenenergy" title="zzzgreenenergy" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13078" width="310" height="387" /></p> <p>The next decade marks the rising of a Brave Green World. Governments are limiting carbon emissions and pushing large alternative energy subsidies. Peak oil <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/1/3402/63420">makes the search</a> for alternative energy sources more pressing. Cap-and-trade, if it passes, will create a new market for energy-related derivatives, enabling speculation and asset price inflation. </p> <p>“There must be significant government involvement designed to focus energy and capital on the specific industry — and clearly that’s already happening,” writes Jeff Brady in <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103631430">this NPR article</a>. </p> <p>A few pieces still have to fall in place for a bubble to form. These include a massive update of the national energy grid, as well as a new source of credit for green ventures, according to Brady. He says that a grid update is in the works. A new source of credit, in my opinion, is just a matter of time. When that happens, brace yourself for the green market overvaluation—err, revolution. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">10. Junk Bonds</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 396px; height: 446px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzzjunkbonds.gif" alt="zzzjunkbonds" title="zzzjunkbonds" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13083" /></p> <p>In late July, average junk bond yields fell into the single digits for the first time in more than a year, according to the <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/07/wall-streets-rally-of-the-last-two-weeks-also-has-stoked-more-buying-in-the-junk-corporate-bond-market----enough-so-to-s.html">LA Times’ Tom Petruno</a>. The KDP Investment Advisors’ index, which covers 100 junk issues, hit a high of nearly 18% returns last December, Petruno reports. Record bond defaults haven’t deterred investors from loading up on the risky bonds, but they have returns on their sides. Petruno says that “the average junk fund is up 27.2%.” </p> <p>Those returns out-entice the prospect of massive defaults, which are bound to occur eventually. 42% of junk bond issuers have “highly leveraged balance sheets—much more than in previous years,” according to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/22/news/economy/fpa_new_income_mutual_fund.fortune/?postversion=2009072312">this CNNMoney article</a>. It’s a good time to be in junk bonds—if you can get out before the bubble bursts. </p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">11. ETFs</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzzpreservation.jpg" alt="zzzpreservation" title="zzzpreservation" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13080" width="300" height="300" /></p> <p>Vanguard’s John Bogle calls <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund#Criticism">exchange-traded funds</a> (ETFs) a “disaster waiting to happen.” The reason? Short-term traders are using ETFs to pursue short-term gains, according to <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/144254-jack-bogle-etfs-not-without-their-flaws">this Seeking Alpha article</a>. Passive investors try to jump on the bandwagon by buying into high-performing ETFs, not realizing that they chasing performance could spell speculative doom to their savings accounts. They’re good for long-term investing, Bogle says, but only if you use them right. </p> <p>Bogle isn’t the only one wary of the ETF craze. The genre is facing oversupply to the point of redundancy. Early ETFs tracked “only the broadest indexes,” according Safe Haven’s <a href="http://www.safehaven.ca/showarticle.cfm?id=11158&pv=1">Tyler Mordy</a>. </p> <p>Things have changed. “The first ETFs…were rather difficult to push around, and so not much given to speculative excess,” write <a href="http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/comin.htm">William J. Bernstein</a> of Efficient Frontier. He cites a “mind-boggling” variety of new ETFs—the HealthShares Infectious Disease Index is one example of how specialized the breed has become—as evidence that a new bubble may be on its way. “With each new wave of yet-more-improbable products, the danger grows,” he writes. </p> <p>“Do we really need nine ETFs that essentially track the same thing?” Asks HS Dent’s <a href="http://www.hsdent.com/blog/2009/05/01/the-etf-bubble/">Charles Sizemore</a>. He says that specific supply and demand conditions created previous high returns. These returns caused competitors to enter the market, increasing supply, but diminishing the very returns that drove them into the market in the first place. At that point, “weaker competitors and products leave the market. We would expect there to be some kind of shakeout in the ETF sector in the months or years ahead.”</p> <p><span style="font-size:+3;">12. Food</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/zzzfarmland.jpg" alt="zzzfarmland" title="zzzfarmland" class="alignright size-full wp-image-13076" /></p> <p>Peak oil is so passé. Peak grain, on the other hand, could be the next big thing. Consider these facts:</p> <p><em>-The planet doesn’t have enough high-quality arable land to keep up with the growing population. (The world has already consumed more grains than farmers produced during five of the past six years, according to <a href="http://www.ifpri.org/2020/BRIEFS/NUMBER05.HTM">this IPS article</a>.)</em></p> <p><em>-The amount of clean water in the world is decreasing, meaning less water for edible crops. </em></p> <p><em>-Fossil fuels—commonly used as fertilizer—are getting more expensive.</em></p> <p><em>-Climate change will affect crop production. </em></p> <p><em>-The UN expects 12 billion people to inhabit the world by the end of the century. </em></p> <p>It’s a simple supply and demand equation. Big demand for food and water, but little supply, means that prices will increase. It’s just a matter of finding the right agricultural niche to invest in. Right?</p> <p>Not so fast. A bubble needs more than just supply and demand to foment. In 2008, a commodities bubble came and went. An increase in oil prices—caused by speculation, no less—drove up transportation prices, which in turn <a href="http://www2.weed-online.org/uploads/weed_food_speculation.pdf">drove up food prices</a>. Investors went on an agriculture/commodities binge, only to find their returns destroyed by falling prices, courtesy of the financial crisis. </p> <p>This short, dramatic spike was of limited significance. A more sustained food bubble could be a ways off, especially if the government starts regulating commodities speculation. Look for persistent news of food shortages, rumors that you can make money by investing in agricultural stocks based on those shortages, and increasing food prices. At that point, a bigger bubble could be in the making.<br /></p><p><a href="http://www.businesspundit.com/12-economic-bubbles-that-may-burst/">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-24447474176332965552009-08-14T10:22:00.000-07:002009-08-14T10:23:58.151-07:00Congratulations Americans, We Pay The Most For Cellphone ServiceBy <cite><a rel="nofollow" href="http://consumerist.com/people/cwalters/posts/" title="Click here to read posts written by CHRIS WALTERS">Chris Walters</a><br /><br /></cite><span id="editor_controls"></span> <div style="position: absolute; right: 0px; margin-top: -20px;"> </div> <p><img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/consumerist/2009/08/081209-002-phone-eating-money.jpg" class="left" alt="RAAGRR I EAT YOUR MONEY" width="158" height="158" />A new survey from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) compared annual costs around the world for consumers who have <a class="tagautolink autolink" title="Click here to read more posts tagged CELLPHONES" href="http://consumerist.com/tag/cellphones/">cellphones</a>, and the U.S. is in the top three for most expensive. How expensive? <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Consumers-In-US-Canada-Pay-More-For-Wireless-103905">DSLReports notes</a> that "on average, the OECD found that Americans pay $635.85 on cell phone service, compared to $131.44 per year in the Netherlands or $137.94 per year in Sweden."</p> <p>The carriers disagree that we're getting screwed, of course: </p> <blockquote> <p>As you might expect, the wireless industry issued a press release proclaiming the study was based on "flawed assumptions" that "just don't make sense." If you look at the data the way carriers would like, you're getting quite the bargain. The CTIA does have a point that the OECD's usage categories seem low — particularly when it comes to MMS use. Another reason U.S. prices seem high? Carriers charge a hell of a lot of money for service. They also spend millions on lobbyists who tirelessly work to eliminate consumer protections and price controls.</p> </blockquote> <p>Additionally, this dumb study isn't taking into account the cutting-edge technology our carriers employ, which is so far ahead of other countries that it's nearly lapped them and is now <i>behind</i>, or something like that. (I'm trying to think like a cellphone executive; it hurts.) As an example of what more than $600 a year buys you, just look at <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351460,00.asp">today's column from PC Magazine's editor in chief, Lance Ulanoff</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p>Back at home, some calls did get through, but all were so poorly connected-with frequent drop-outs-that I had to hang up and try again. I looked at my phone and noticed that 3G connectivity was hovering around a half of a bar. Every once in a while, the tiny bar would disappear. It was replaced by a bar and a half of Edge Network connectivity. I wasn't even moving and the phone was busy dancing around, trying to get me a reasonably good connection. At one point, I even moved outside to try and get a better connection. This helped a tiny bit: I think I got one more bar. Still, the call connection and quality remained unreliable-at best. The other problem was that I wasn't receiving calls. Everyone was getting bumped to voicemail. (I do give AT&T credit for delivering voicemail in a timely fashion. Sprint messages could take days to arrive.)</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Consumers-In-US-Canada-Pay-More-For-Wireless-103905">"Consumers In U.S., Canada Pay More For Wireless"</a> [dslreports via <a href="http://twitter.com/elforesto">Jesse Harris</a>]<br /><a href="http://www.oecd.org/document/20/0,3343,en_2649_201185_43471316_1_1_1_1,00.html">"Mobile phone calls lowest in Finland, Netherlands and Sweden, says OECD report"</a> [OECD]<br /><a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351460,00.asp">"Love My BlackBerry Bold, Hate AT&T 3G"</a> [PC Magazine]<br />(Photos: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3184339886/">thisisbossi</a>, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/3366720659/">AMagill</a>)</p><p><a href="http://consumerist.com/5335809/congratulations-americans-we-pay-the-most-for-cellphone-service">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-88475638677556189442009-07-20T12:33:00.000-07:002009-07-20T12:34:34.967-07:00The Internet Is Dead (As An Investment)<h3 class="byline">By James Altucher | A Dow Jones Newswires Column</h3><p>I can live all day inside the Internet. I can talk to my friends, listen to music, watch TV, trade stocks, play games, do work - all on the Internet. From 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day I can spend on the Internet and it would be a day well spent.</p> <p>But run for the hills when it comes to advising clients to invest in the Internet.</p> <div class="insetContent insetCol3wide embedType-video"><div class="insetTree" id="articlevideo_1"> <object data="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf" id="MicroPlayer_6883" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="272" height="180"><param value="always" name="allowscriptaccess"><param value="opaque" name="wmode"><param value="objName=dummy&videoGUID={A74922E5-981F-4B7A-93F0-6290991FD743}&allowPlayerPopup=1&plyMediaEnabled=1&movieWidth=272&movieHeight=180&host=online.wsj.com" name="flashvars"></object><p class="targetCaption">Columnist and portfolio manager James Altucher explains to Simon Constable why Google, Facebook and other internet plays are dead from an investment standpoint. Plus what stocks are hot in the rest of the economy.</p></div></div><p>The days of infinite margins, 1,000% productivity gains, and growth of market throughout the universe are long over. Internet companies now should be treated, at best, like utility companies that get bought at about 10 times earnings and sold at 13 times earnings. Even then, I'm not sure I would give the Internet sector the same respect as the monopoly-protected utility sector.</p> <p>Don't just ask me. Ask the best. Nobody can figure out a business model.</p> <p> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=twx" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Time Warner</a> would rather keep their legacy old-media businesses like People magazine than hold onto one of the biggest Internet companies out there, AOL. And <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=nws" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">News Corp.</a> is shaking up its MySpace business as it figures out its next steps. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire.) <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=msft" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Microsoft</a> has spent billions on Internet strategy without a dime of profit. And even Google can't seem to find any other business model other than the one they stumbled into when they bought Applied Semantics in 2001 that had a little piece of software called AdSense. And the new guys: Twitter and Facebook are still scrambling for profits despite blistering usage growth.</p> <p>What about the nuts-and-bolts guys? <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=csco" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Cisco</a>, at 15 times earnings, trades in line with the S&P 500. Buy them when they start giving a steady dividend.</p><p>Let's face it. Electricity greatly improved our quality of life. But I'm not going to get excited about buying a basket of utility companies. Same for the Internet. Can't live without it, but can't live with it (in my portfolio).</p> <p>So what do we do?</p> <p>In this economy, it's back to the basics. Regardless of how you feel about $1 trillion in stimulus (with more probably on the way), the best growth is going to come from the companies that help us spend that stimulus.</p> <p>Check out LNN, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=lnn" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Lindsay Corporation</a>, that does boring stuff like highway repair (they make those orange cones) and helps upgrade water infrastructure. With half of all hospital beds in the world filled by people with dirty water-related illnesses, this one is a good bet.</p> <p>Or little known <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=cfx" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Colfax Corporation</a>, CFX. At nine times forward earnings, this company is in the "fluid handling" business. Boring. But in a resource-starved world we need them to get oil quickly through the pipelines and into the refineries. And we can't forget about ASTE, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=aste" class="companyRollover link11unvisited">Astec Industries</a>, which is like the "Amazon of Asphalt" and is a major player in highway repair (think stimulus again).</p> <p>The exciting plays right now are the companies that are rebuilding the country along with the economy. Save the Internet for your iTunes downloads. But focus client portfolios on the future. Next article: my favorite biotech plays.</p> <p> <em>James Altucher is a managing partner of Formula Capital, an alternative asset management firm, and an author on investment strategies. Unlike Dow Jones reporters, he may have positions in the stocks he writes about.<br /></em></p><p><em><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124784696163158721.html">Original here</a><br /></em> </p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-85364753097946057142009-07-20T12:31:00.000-07:002009-07-20T12:33:12.578-07:00Embattled organic sector worries about regulation<span id="midArticle_start"><div class="inlineRelatedContent"><table style="float: left;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="articlePhoto" id="articlePhoto" valign="middle" align="center"><a href="javascript:launchArticleSlideshow();"><img src="http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20090717&t=2&i=10906747&w=192&r=2009-07-17T181709Z_01_BTRE56G12R000_RTROPTP_0_CHINA" alt="Photo" border="0" /> </a> </td></tr></tbody></table> <script language="javascript"> drawControls(); </script><div class="inlineSlideControls"><span id="slideshowStatus"><br /></span><span id="slideshowLaunch"><a href="javascript:launchArticleSlideshow();"></a></span></div> <span id="trackingEnabledModule" name="trackingEnabledModule" modulename="Related Video" moduleid="3098094"> <script language="javascript">addImpression("3098094_Related Video");</script> <script type="text/javascript">removeImpression();</script> </span> <span id="trackingEnabledModule" name="trackingEnabledModule" modulename="Related News" moduleid="3098095"> <script language="javascript">addImpression("3098095_Related News");</script> <script type="text/javascript">removeImpression(); </script> </span> <div class="linebreak"><!-- No Data Found, skipping --></div><div> <div class="NONE" style="margin-bottom: 0px;"> <!-- BEGIN:: Shared Module id=86284 --> <!-- END:: Shared Module id=86284 --> </div> </div> </div> </span> <p>By <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=Mari.Saito">Mari Saito</a><span id="midArticle_byline"></span></p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California farmer Tom Willey was first attracted to organic farming 21 years ago after noticing how many chemicals he was using in conventional farming.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>As a certified organic farmer selling everything from artichokes to zucchinis from his 75-acre farm in the San Joaquin Valley in California, Willey has become a respected pioneer in the organic farming community.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>But now with the deep recession in the United States, farmers such as Willey are worried about the future of organic farming that grew sharply during the boom times.</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>The industry, which prides itself on delivering wholesome and safe products, also is worried and even a little angry about new food safety rules emanating from Washington.</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>"There is a lot of transparency in the organic food system and we've had it in place for several decades and we do so willingly," said Willey. "The lack of that is what characterizes industrial producers."</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>The global market for organic food has grown sharply over the past decade, with the United States accounting for about 45 percent of the global share.</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>Sales of organic food have soared from $1 billion in 1990 to an estimated $20 billion in 2007 and by 2006 became the fastest growing sector in the industry, according to the Organic Trade Association.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>But now growth is coming to a halt as Americans tighten their purse strings and opt for cheaper alternatives.</p><span id="midArticle_8"></span> <p>"Millions of people who were occasionally buying organic products have cut back to save money and we're seeing the real decrease in growth in the last nine months," said Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the Organic Consumers Association.</p><span id="midArticle_9"></span> <p>Whole Foods Market Inc, a chain that sells organic and luxury grocery items, reported in May that quarterly sales fell nearly 5 percent from its stores opened at least one year. Profits also fell but the company said it avoided going into the red by cutting prices to keep consumers coming back.</p><span id="midArticle_10"></span> <p>Neil Currie, an UBS analyst said consumers are seeking lower prices and staying clear from luxury food products.</p><span id="midArticle_11"></span> <p>"Organic food comes at a premium price and Whole Foods sales have been quite negative," said Currie.</p><span id="midArticle_12"></span> <p>Growth in the organic sector dwindled to 12.5 percent last year compared to the 20 percent it used to enjoy.</p><span id="midArticle_13"></span> <p>"We might not see that kind of growth again," said Cummins.</p><span id="midArticle_14"></span> <p>An added worry for organic farmers is a new food safety legislation that passed last month in the Energy and Commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that would be the most sweeping reform of the food safety system in close to 50 years. </p><p>The U.S. food supply system has been battered by a series of food recalls -- covering a range of products including lettuce, spinach, peanuts and most recently, cookie dough -- since 2006 that have eroded consumer confidence.</p><span id="midArticle_0"></span> <p>Under the new legislation, the industry would have to pay a $500 registration fee per facility to pay for more plant inspections. Farms, restaurants and retail food establishments that sell their products directly to consumers, not businesses, are exempt from this fee. There would be a $175,000 cap on such fees.</p><span id="midArticle_1"></span> <p>Organic farmers still say the definition of a facility is unclear in the legislation and they worry about additional costs that might be incurred on <a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/smallBusiness" title="Full small business coverage">small business</a>es. Inspections will be more frequent, taking place every six to 12 months at high-risk facilities and between 18 months and three years for lower-risk locations.</p><span id="midArticle_2"></span> <p>As part of a broader food safety overhaul, the Obama administration recently announced the creation of a new post of deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The position would oversee all food safety activities within the agency.</p><span id="midArticle_3"></span> <p>Most organic farmers believe food safety reforms are necessary, but they worry small and medium organic farmers will be unfairly targeted.</p><span id="midArticle_4"></span> <p>"Based on the escalating cost that would be involved in conforming to this legislation -- administrative fees, record keeping and internal labor requirements -- we can force out of business some of the highest quality practitioners," said Mark Kastel, an analyst at the Cornucopia Institute in Wisconsin.</p><span id="midArticle_5"></span> <p>Kastel said organic farmers are tempering their enthusiasm for food safety reform with some skepticism.</p><span id="midArticle_6"></span> <p>"The same players who helped create the problems that exist today are enthusiastically embracing what they say is the answer," he said.</p><span id="midArticle_7"></span> <p>"It's unsettling when grocery associations and major processed food producers get together and agree with the government that they're going to do this without any regard to the high quality organic practitioners."</p><p><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE56G47Z20090717">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5929531481165625790.post-34693578170248949182009-07-20T12:28:00.000-07:002009-07-20T12:31:32.546-07:00Exxon faces $1 billion fine for sabotaging Texas oil wells<span class="author">By <a href="http://rawstory.com/08/news/author/danielt/" title="Posts by Daniel Tencer">Daniel Tencer</a><br /><br /></span><p><img src="http://rawstory.com/images/new/oildrill4.jpg" vspace="5" align="right" border="1" hspace="5" />ExxonMobil’s sabotage of some 100 Texas oil wells in the past 17 years — going so far as to plug up some wells with explosives — means the world’s largest oil company could be liable for penalties of up to $1 billion, the Texas General Land Office says.</p> <p>Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the state’s land office, released a report earlier this week asking the Texas Railroad Commission — which regulates the state’s oil industry — to investigate “ExxonMobil’s intentional sabotage of oil wells in Refugio County as well as the company’s fraudulent reports covering up the damage.”</p> <p>“Exxon committed irrefutable, intentional and flagrant violations of state rules regulating the oilfield,” Patterson said in a <a href="http://www.glo.state.tx.us/news/docs/2009-Releases/07-15-09-Exxon-sabatoge.pdf">statement</a> (PDF).</p> <p>The allegations stem from a lease the company signed with a Texas family, the O’Connors, back in the 1950s to exploit oil fields on the family’s land. When the relationship “went sour,” Patterson states, the energy giant had the oil wells plugged up in such a way that no one else could use them.</p> <p>Patterson says the company’s reports on the sealing of the oil wells was “fraudulent.”</p> <p>“When the relationship turned sour in the 1990s, Exxon-Mobil terminated the lease and plugged the wells,” states Patterson’s report. “As per state rules, Exxon filed paperwork with the Railroad Commission outlining its well-plugging procedures and filed sworn affidavits as to the final condition of the wells. The O’Connor family soon learned those reports to the Railroad Commission were fraudulent.</p> <p>“When an independent producer, Emerald Oil, attempted to capitalize on new legislative incentives to reopen abandoned wells, they found the old Exxon-Mobil wells hadn’t been plugged but sabotaged — filled with junk, cut well casings, contaminated oil tank sludge and even explosives. Many of the wells were left unrecoverable.”</p> <p>Under Texas state rules, ExxonMobil could be fined as much as $10,000 per sabotaged oil well per day, or some $1 billion in all.</p> <p>“The allegations paint a false and misleading picture of Exxon Mobil’s involvement in the O’Connor oil and gas leases,” ExxonMobil spokeswoman Margaret Ross stated in a Bloomberg <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aH4MoH2m4Z0w">article</a>. “The area in which the wells are located has a water table very close to the surface. It was critical that Exxon protect the groundwater by plugging the wells solidly and thoroughly.” </p> <p>The <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090717-713568.html">reports</a> that the Texas Railroad Commission’s attorney “sent a letter to Exxon Mobil’s attorney, asking the company to reply to the complaint by July 31 and stating that the agency would take no action pending receipt of the response.”</p><p><a href="http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/18/exxon-faces-1-billion-fine-for-sabotaging-texas-oil-wells/">Original here</a><br /></p>majorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17066002388984004614noreply@blogger.com0