The M.B.A. Degree Blog

1 in 2 Americans are poor

2011-12-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income
Nearly half of Americans are low-income as rising expenses, unemployment shrink middle class
By Hope Yen, Associated Press | AP – 15 December 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

"There's no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen," Rector said. "As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work."

Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold — roughly $45,000 for a family of four — because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of a family's income.

States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million.

The struggling Americans include Zenobia Bechtol, 18, in Austin, Texas, who earns minimum wage as a part-time pizza delivery driver. Bechtol and her 7-month-old baby were recently evicted from their bedbug-infested apartment after her boyfriend, an electrician, lost his job in the sluggish economy.

After an 18-month job search, Bechtol's boyfriend now works as a waiter and the family of three is temporarily living with her mother.

"We're paying my mom $200 a month for rent, and after diapers and formula and gas for work, we barely have enough money to spend," said Bechtol, a high school graduate who wants to go to college. "If it weren't for food stamps and other government money for families who need help, we wouldn't have been able to survive."

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income — about 57 percent — followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting.

Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.

Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder — 6.9 million — earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level.

The majority of low-income families — 62 percent — spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

A survey of 29 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors being released Thursday points to a gloomy outlook for those on the lower end of the income scale.

Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs.

Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to increases in the cost of food and declining food donations, while Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan.

Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless.

"People who never thought they would need food are in need of help," said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors' task force on hunger and homelessness.

China's $300 billion fund a wake-up call to U.S.

2011-12-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

By Nick Edwards | Reuters – 14 December 2011
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's plan for a new $300 billion sovereign wealth fund is as much a warning to Washington as it is a body blow to Brussels.

It's the clearest sign yet of Beijing's waning faith in bonds issued by Europe and the United States. Europe's festering debt debacle, record low yields on U.S. Treasuries and a depreciating dollar all add weight to the view in China that the time is ripe to change investment tack.

"China has decided that real assets are better than broken debt fix promises and low interest rates," says Paul Markowski, president of MES Advisers and a long-time external adviser to China's monetary policymakers on global financial markets.

Beijing has watched for two years as Europe's crisis has choked growth and demand in China's biggest export market and stoked default risks on the near $800 billion of euro zone government bonds it is estimated to own.

It has been a painful lesson.

After all, China had actively bought euro assets to guard its $3.2 trillion reserve pile against over-exposure to U.S. dollars, which have lost about a third of their value in the last 10 years as U.S. Treasury yields have sunk to record lows.

Reuters reported last week that the People's Bank of China plans to create the new vehicle with two funds, one for Europe and one for the United States, making China in aggregate the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund investor. The plan originated before Europe's debt crisis, sources said.

That gels with comments from investment sources with links to China's monetary authorities and foreign reserve managers who detect a clear desire in Beijing to acquire real assets in return for supplying fresh funds to bridge U.S. deficits and recapitalize European financial institutions and governments.

HAPPIER RETURNS

The $300 billion figure is consistent with the sum that Markowski and others calculate China has in excess reserves -- the amount beyond what Beijing would need to tackle a balance of payments crisis or a domestic funding emergency.

"They want underlying assets. Equities, corporate bonds, real estate -- anything that governments want to flog," said one source involved in foreign exchange trading for official institutions such as central banks.

The source singled out bidding for the Portuguese government's stake in utility firm Energias de Portugal, which would net roughly 2.5 billion euros for Lisbon, as typical of the path indebted countries will have to follow in future to persuade reserve managers to part with additional cash [ID:nL6E7NC0UN].

Granted, Chinese investors won't be warmly received everywhere -- a sovereign wealth fund showing up in Paris or Madrid with an offer to buy up public infrastructure would probably come away disappointed.

"It's easier said than done," said one Hong Kong based investment banker who has advised Chinese clients on overseas acquisitions. "One idea is that China could buy up agricultural land. They've also eyed ports in the past. They just don't want to do anything that's politically unpopular."

There are domestic pressures, too. China Investment Corp (CIC), the country's existing sovereign wealth fund, was sharply criticized within China for money-losing investments in U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley and private equity firm Blackstone Group in 2007.

But with a European debt crisis and the U.S. triple-A rating no longer a given, China's state investors have good reasons to push into new kinds of assets.

"There is a great deal of discomfort (among reserve managers) over what the concept of a risk-free asset is," said Gary Smith, the London-based global head of official institutions at BNP Paribas Investment Partners.

Doubts about the safety of government bonds in developed markets where fiscal balance sheets are battered and inflation risks are high in the face of exceptional monetary stimulus have seen Smith's clients allocate new cash to inflation-linked bonds this year and even move into higher risk emerging markets.

"Of course your risk goes up if you invest in emerging markets, but if your risk has already gone up in what you previously considered risk-free assets, then the relative disadvantage of emerging markets has gone down."

That analysis speaks volumes to reserve managers and wealth funds, opening up a raft of new investment opportunities that developed economies had not previously had to compete against.

Data shows China's shift into real-world assets is under way.

China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) hit $68 billion in 2010 after more than doubling in 2008 to $52 billion from $23 billion in 2007, according to Karl Sauvant, executive director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment at Columbia University and an expert on global FDI.

Sauvant's institute estimates China will strike $1-2 trillion in FDI deals over the coming decade, adding to its existing portfolio of over $300 billion.

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

Whether China's change of focus is all borne of European debt and dollar debasement or a desire to move China's economy up the value chain, a new mood in Beijing is evident to many.

"Many foreign firms have advanced technology and they are having business difficulties and at the brink of bankruptcy. This is the opportunity that occurs only once in a thousand years," Zheng Xinli, an influential government adviser, was quoted as saying last week by Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper.

It's at least the best time in 15-20 years to buy European listed equity, even adjusting for the tattered price-tags on European financial stock, says JP Morgan analyst Mislav Matejka.

Euro zone shares are trading at a 46 percent price-to-book value discount to the United States, making it the cheapest region in the world for a global equity investor, says Matejka.

Independent China policy expert Andy Xie agrees.

"European stocks are cheap," said Xie. "Many European companies earn profits all over the world. It makes sense for Asian central banks to shift their reserves from overpriced government bonds like US Treasuries into such stocks. It would pump money into the euro zone through a channel that benefits Asian countries over time."

More than $6 billion lost in Iraq. Where did that money go?

2011-10-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

$6.6 billion in lost Iraq cash now accounted for, inspector says
By Laura Rozen | The Envoy – 27 October 2011
It's a rare day when positive news surfaces from the frontlines of Iraq's post-occupation government--or from its troubled economy. However, a U.S. Iraq inspector general report that concluded this week that $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped cash the U.S. government previously feared had gone missing in the chaotic early days of the Iraq occupation has in fact been safely accounted for.
"The mystery of $6 billion that seemed to go missing in the early days of the Iraq war has been resolved, according to a new report," CNN national security producer Charles Keyes reported Wednesday. "New evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR."
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, had previously testified that as much as $6.6 billion of the $10 billion the United States shipped to Iraq had disappeared due to "weaknesses in [the Department of Defense's] financial and management controls," Keyes wrote, citing the bureaucratese from a previous SIGIR report.
The cash had in part been drawn from Iraq's own international assets, accrued during the pre-war, UN-run Oil for Food program. It was flown to Iraq in the wake of the U.S. 2003 invasion; the idea was that it would help pay for the Iraq reconstruction and development efforts under the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation outfit that dissolved in 2004. The original idea was to store most of the money in accounts in the Central Bank of Iraq; U.S. occupation authorities also apparently stored a few hundred million in a vault at one of Saddam Hussein's palaces they used as their headquarters for various cash needs.
After the Coalition Provision Authority dissolved in 2004, however, it wasn't clear where the funds had gone, the previous SIGIR report said. But apparently, the money was properly transferred to accounts held at the Central Bank of Iraq, the new SIGIR report found.
"But the inspector general's new report says almost all the $6.6 billion was properly handed over to Iraq and its Central Bank," Keyes writes. "'SIGIR was able to account for the unexpected [Development Fund of Iraq] funds remaining in DFI accounts when the [Coalition Provisional Authority] dissolved in June 2004,' the new report says. 'Sufficient evidence exists showing that almost all of the remaining $6.6 billion remaining was transferred to actual and legal [Central Bank of Iraq] control.'"
This is not to say that the mystery of all the billions and billions the U.S. spent in Iraq has been entirely resolved. The SIGIR report says that inspectors are still trying to piece together the fate of some of the few hundred million that U.S. officials stowed at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.
"While the bulk of the money was transferred to the Central Bank of Iraq, $217 million remained in a vault in a former presidential palace and was held by the U.S. Defense Department and most was doled out for a variety of projects and payrolls, the report says," Keyes reported. A February 2008 SIGIR audit found that $24.45 million of the $217 million stored at the palace vault remained, and was later turned over to Iraq.
The next SIGIR report on DoD spending on contracting projects in Iraq is expected in January 2012--after the formal withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from the country.

Jamie Campany: a gold scammer

2011-10-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Confessions of a Gold Scammer
By AVNI PATEL | Good Morning America – 27 October 2011
A federal judge next month will sentence the man who authorities say took advantage of the booming gold market, by scamming more than 1,400 people out of tens of millions of dollars.
But before he goes to prison, the mastermind of the scheme, Jamie Campany, sat down with ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross to reveal how he tricked his hundreds of victims out of nearly $30 million.

The most promising victims of the gold scam, Campany said, were spotted through Google earth satellite images. Campany and his team matched phone leads to addresses to find victims with the biggest homes, and therefore the most money to invest in gold and silver.
But in reality, there was no gold despite the legitimate-looking transaction papers from the Global Bullion Exchange -- a company that Campany said was "completely bogus."
The Global Bullion Exchange was an invention of Campany's, who took ABC News back to the now-empty telephone boiler room in Florida where his telemarketers worked their victims, mostly upper middle class business people who Campany said let their egos get the best of them.
"Quite frankly, little old ladies are a lot more astute and a lot more skeptical about making investments with people they don't know," he said.
The pitch worked off the falling stock market and the rising price of gold as Campany recalled his lines for ABC News.
"Come on. Everybody knows what's going on in the markets today. Are you living in a cave?" he would say.
There was an answer for everything -- even if victim's protested by saying they didn't have any money.
"Sure you do," Campany or one of his telemarketers would say. "You've got a 401k, you have a stock portfolio... You have dead dogs that are not performing."
Dave Blomberg of Hialeah, Fla., said he was caught up in the scam after he received those calls.
"I did end up giving them a considerable amount of money, cause I thought if I invested more, I would get the money back," Blomberg said.
He never will, losing $75,000, and nor will the other investors. By the time the scheme collapsed and this place was shut down, all the money was long gone.
"I think about it every day. These people have to live with the pain that I caused them," Campany said. "It's going to hurt them for the rest of their lives. Hopefully this is one way I can stop it from happening to anybody else."
Campany faces up to 25 years in prison and told ABC News he's hoping his public confession will show the judge that he's truly sorry for his crimes.

Obama moves to boost economy

2011-10-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Obama to tout housing aid on western campaign swing

By Jeff Mason | Reuters – October 24, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will tout newly unveiled measures on Monday aimed at aiding struggling homeowners and easing the housing crisis on the first leg of a campaign-style swing through western states crucial to his re-election in 2012.
Stymied by Republican resistance to his $447 billion jobs package and tapping into public displeasure with Congress, Obama is rolling out a series of economic remedies that do not require approval from a fractious Congress, a White House official said.
A leading U.S. housing regulator on Monday announced changes to a government refinancing program that could help up to one million homeowners classified as "underwater" because their mortgages cost more than their homes are worth.
The plan for homeowner relief will be the centerpiece of Obama's visit on Monday to Nevada, the state with the highest foreclosure rate in the country.
It is the latest White House effort to deal with a key factor stalling the economy -- a crippled housing market -- and adding to political liabilities for Obama, whose re-election bid is already imperiled by stubbornly high U.S. unemployment.
It remained unclear whether the Obama administration's revised approach, which falls short of an overarching plan that some experts have said is needed, will provide enough of a boost to the battered housing market to spur the stagnant U.S. economic recovery.
Earlier federal programs to curb housing foreclosures have failed to yield the benefits initially promised. An estimated 11 million U.S. homeowners hold properties that are worth less than their mortgages.
Seeking to show he is ready to take unilateral action to confront economic problems, Obama will also unveil a student loan initiative on a visit to Colorado. He will attend fundraising events in both states plus California during the three-day trip.
The states on Obama's tour were chosen deliberately.
Each has large populations of Hispanics, a voting bloc Obama's campaign is eager to win over. Nevada and Colorado are "swing states" that alternate allegiance between Republicans and Democrats, making them valuable political prizes in presidential elections. Both could prove critical to Obama's chances in the November 2012 election.
He will use them as a backdrop to make his latest push to boost the weak economy, which remains the biggest obstacle to his hopes of retaining the presidency. According to the White House official, he will also try out a new slogan to put pressure on Congress: "We can't wait."
'SAVE HIS OWN JOB'
Republicans, choosing among a field of presidential candidates currently led by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and businessman Herman Cain, accused Obama of focusing more on fundraising than helping the unemployed.
"The president is back to doing what he does best -- raising money to save his own job," said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a new advertisement. "Instead of focusing on getting the 14 million unemployed Americans back to work, he's focusing on protecting his own."
Housing is one area that has dogged Obama's efforts to improve the economy.
His administration has been working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to find ways to make it easier for borrowers to switch to cheaper loans even if they have little to no equity in their homes.
Obama will highlight the result of that work during his stop in Nevada, the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.
Before Obama left Washington, the FHFA announced it was easing the terms of the two-year-old Home Affordable Refinance Program, which helps borrowers who have been making mortgage payments on time but have not been able to refinance as home values have dropped.
To help underwater borrowers, FHFA said it will scrap a cap that prohibits any homeowners whose mortgage exceeds 125 percent of the property's value from participating in HARP, which is targeted at loans backed by Fannie and Freddie.
Regulators are revamping the refinancing program to ensure banks are protected from having to buy back HARP loans. The requirements now state they will only have to verify that borrowers have made at least six of their last mortgage payments and in most cases, eliminate the need for appraisals.
FHFA said that Fannie and Freddie will waive certain fees for borrowers that refinance into loans with a shorter term, aiming for homeowners to pay down the amount they owe at a faster rate.
HARP, one of the Obama administration's anti-foreclosure efforts, was unveiled in March 2009 and expected to help as many as 5 million borrowers. So far, 893,800 borrowers have refinanced their loans through August by using HARP. FHFA said it will extend HARP until December 31, 2013.
With mortgage rates currently near record lows, allowing these underwater borrowers to refinance could help stave off a wave of foreclosures and free up cash for other spending that could help underpin the economy's recovery.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, JoAnne Allen and Margaret Chadbourn; editing by Will Dunham)

Steve Jobs predicted Obama would be a one-term president

2011-10-23T12:10:00.000-07:00

By Rachel Rose Hartman | The Ticket – Fri, 21 Oct, 2011

Steve Jobs, known for his aggressive and sometimes prickly personality, didn't hold back when he met President Obama in 2010: The Apple CEO warned Obama he wasn't going to win re-election.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," Jobs said during a meeting with the president that took place a year prior to Jobs' death related to pancreatic cancer, according to his upcoming biography as reported by the Huffington Post.

Walter Isaacson, who wrote the forthcoming Jobs bio, reportedly reveals that Jobs argued that Obama was jeopardizing his re-election prospects because of what Jobs took to be a pervasive anti-business climate in his administration. Jobs cited excessive federal regulations and operating costs for businesses as harmful legacies of the Obama White House.

Also, Jobs nearly missed the meeting in the first place.

From the Huffington Post:

Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.

After laying into the White House's purported anti-business outlook, Jobs offered to help Obama repair the rift by arranging meeting between the president and a group of CEOs. When the guest list began to grow, Jobs reportedly resolved to back out of the gathering. Instead, he attended, though he poo-pooed the fancy menu. "But he was overruled by the White House, which cited the president's fondness for cream pie," Huffington Post writes.

Jobs also offered to to help create political ads for the president in 2012. Jobs had scotched a similar effort to craft Obama ads in 2008, when Isaacson claims that Jobs was unhappy that Obama strategist David Axelrod showed insufficient deference to the Apple honcho.

This and other political news is just the latest information to leak from the hotly anticipated book.

Another revelation that Isaacson has teed up for a "60 Minutes" interview featuring the biography this Sunday is that Jobs wished he had chosen sooner to undergo cancer surgery.

5 Ways the World Will Change Radically This Century

2011-10-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

By Natalie Wolchover | LiveScience.com – Thu, 20 Oct, 2011

In terms of evolution, the species Homo sapiens is extremely successful. The populations of other species that are positioned similar to us on the food chain tend to max out at about 20 million. We, by contrast, took just 120,000 years to achieve our first billion members, and then needed only another 206 years to add 6 billion more. According to the United Nations Population Division, our population will hit 7 billion on Oct. 31, and though fertility rates have begun to decline across much of the globe, we're still projected to reach 9 billion by mid-century and level off at around 10 billion by 2100.

A panel of academics met at Columbia University's Earth Institute on Monday (Oct. 17) to discuss the impacts of the human population explosion, including the ways in which it will change the face of the Earth this century. Here are five striking changes you — or your kids or grandkids — can expect to see.

Shifting people

Currently, it's a well-known fact that China is the most populous country in the world, and that Africa, though riddled with problems, is not necessarily overpopulated considering its size. These facts will drastically change. China's one-child policy has significantly curbed its growth, while in some African countries, the average woman gives birth to more than 7 children. [How Many People Can Earth Support?]

According to Joel Cohen, a population biologist at Columbia University and the keynote speaker at Monday's conference, India's population will overtake China's around 2020, and sub-Saharan Africa's will overtake India's by 2040. Furthermore, "In 1950, there were three times as many Europeans as sub-Saharan Africans. By 2100, there will be five sub-Saharan Africans for every European. That's a 15-fold change in the ratio," Cohen said. "Could you imagine that that might have an impact, geopolitically and on international migration?"

Jean-Marie Guehenno, former UN Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations and director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, said the migration of people from Africa to Europe will present a major challenge in the near future. "You can look at it as an enormous potential from a European standpoint … or you can say, '[Africa] is a continent that still has 15 percent that are not going to school,' and that can be seen as a threat," Guehenno said. "How are you going to manage that immigration so that this aging continent of Europe benefits from it while managing it? That is going to be a huge question."

Urbanization

Globally, the number of people living in urban areas matched and then overtook the number of rural people sometime in the past two years. The trend will continue. According to Cohen, the number ofpeople living in cities will climb from 3.5 billion today to 6.3 billion by 2050. This rate of urbanization is equivalent to "the construction of a city of a million people every five days from now for the next 40 years," he said.

Of course, new cities don't tend to get constructed; instead, cities that already exist tend to balloon. Guehenno argues that megacities become chaotic. "Urbanization is going to change the face of conflict in a big way. When you live in small towns and rural areas, there are all sorts of traditional conflict- resolution mechanisms. They are not all nice, but they create a sort of stable equilibrium," he said. "With the megacities that you see now in Africa, such as Monrovia (Liberia) and Kinshasa (Republic of Congo), we see cities where the dynamics are no more under control or have been lost. We are, I think, heading toward new types of conflicts — urban conflicts — and we haven't really thought through the implications of that."

Water wars

Not only has the human population exploded in the past two centuries, but the per-person consumption of resources — especially in industrialized nations — has grown exponentially. Scientists think that resource shortages will cause an escalation of conflicts during this century, and will widen the gulf between the rich and the poor — the haves and the have-nots.

No resource is more precious and vital than water, and, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, there are already parts of the world that, because of the rapidly changing climate, are at a severe crisis point. "Take the Horn of Africa for example: Somalia's population has risen roughly fivefold since the middle of the 20th century," Sachs said. "Precipitation is down roughly 25 percent over the last quarter century. There's a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change."

Conflicts over water shortages will probably play out as class warfare, said Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center. "Wealth inequality tends to grow as a country's population grows, and this is a very important point to note because per capita consumption of resources has been increasing dramatically. Couple that with inequity in income and couple that with [the issue of] the availability of water," Lall said. [How Much Water Is On Earth?]

When you add it all up, you get this dire picture: As the population grows, there is less water per person. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the poor widens, and the rich demand more resources to accommodate their lifestyles. Inevitably, they will commandeer the water and other resources of the poor. In all likelihood, Lall said, this will lead to challenges, and perhaps class conflict.

Future energy

Currently, there isn't enough energy being extracted from known sources of fossil fuels to sustain 10 billion people. This means that humans will be forced to turn to a new energy source before the end of the century. However, it's a mystery what that new source will be.

"Energy is the basic resource which underlies every other," said Klaus Lackner, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy. "And actually, technology is not quite ready to solve the [energy] problem. We know there's plenty of energy in solar, in nuclear, in carbon itself — in fossil carbon — for probably 100 or 200 years (if we are willing to clean up after ourselves and pay the extra to make that happen). But none of these technologies are quite ready. Solar has its problems and is still too expensive."

Carbon storage — a technology that prevents carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from escaping into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned — is still on the drawing board, though it looks possible, he added. "And lastly, nuclear energy: if we were betting on that, we may have just lost that one," Lackner said, referring to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, earlier this year.

"Let me just give you a feeling how big today our energy consumption is: In New Jersey, the energy consumption exceeds the photosynthetic productivity of the same area if it were left pristine," Lackner said. "We have to have technology help us out. I am optimistic … that the technologies can be developed to solve these problems … but I am a pessimist because we lack the societal structures which would enable us to employ these technologies, and we could very well fall on our own faces."

In short, the future will match one of these two pictures: Either some new, superior form of energy extraction (such as highly efficient solar panels) will be widespread, or the technology, or its implementation, will fail, and humanity will face a major energy crisis.

Mass extinctions

As humans spread, we leave scant room or resources for other species. "There is good evidence that we are in the sixth massive species extinction of the history of the planet, because of the incredible amount of primary production that we take as a species to maintain 7 billion of us," Sachs said.

Aside from the lack of land and resources left for other species, we've also caused rapid changes to the global climate, with which many of them cannot cope. Some biologists believe that with the current rate of extinction, 75 percent of the planet's species will disappear within the next 300 to 2,000 years. These disappearances have already begun, and extinction events will become more and more common over the course of the century. [10 Species Our Population Explosion Will Likely Kill Off]

Al Gore has harsh criticism for U.S. capitalism

2011-10-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

Al Gore lampoons 'insane' Wall Street
AFP – Fri, 21 Oct, 2011
Former US vice president Al Gore on Friday said he understood the Occupy Wall Street movement's anger at some of the "insane" elements of US corporate and political culture.
The Nobel Prize winner, Apple board member and environmental activist provoked guffaws at a digital technology conference in Hong Kong with a withering attack on the worst side of US capitalism.
"What were they thinking?" he said of the bankers involved in the sub-prime mortgage bubble that burst in 2008, triggering a financial downturn that is still playing out in the form of economic turmoil around the world.
He said investigations showed that many of the traders and bankers whose decisions led to the disaster knew that what they were doing was "toxic", but they didn't care as long as they made a "quick buck".
They exchanged emails with acronyms such as LQTM, standing for "laughed quietly to myself", and IBGYBG, or "I'll be gone you'll be gone", in reference to the risks they were taking, he said.
Gore has previously thrown his support behind Occupy Wall Street, writing a blog earlier this month calling it a first step toward fixing a democracy in crisis.
He repeated the "broken democracy" argument in Hong Kong on Friday, but said capitalism remained the "best system".
"If we are going to be committed to capitalism, as I am, we have to make it sustainable," he said.
Gore served as vice president from 1993 to 2001 under Bill Clinton, then remained in the public spotlight through his environmental activism, including a starring role in the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
He shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

How old is the "Occupy Wall Street" movement?

2011-10-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

'Occupy' Global Protests Were Years in Making
By Joe Deaux
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Communities that felt the impact of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the globe on Saturday were experiencing the product of unrest that has been mounting since the 2008 bailouts.

A scroll through the Occupy Wall Street Web site showed mass protests in Madrid, Hong Kong, London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam and Los Angeles as the world responded to a "call to action" from lower Manhattan "occupiers."

"On October 15th the world will rise up as one and say, 'We have had enough! We are a new beginning, a global fight on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid, and dignity,'" a message on occupywallst.org said.

Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan marched from its makeshift home at Zuccotti Park up to Times Square, where supporters lined streets of the historic location, but the daylong march was the result of years of building resentment.

"We [United States] have marketed ourselves as the financial geniuses of the world; we're spreading capitalism, we're spreading our understanding of finance," Arnie Arnesen, former Democratic nominee for New Hampshire governor, told TheStreet. "Well you know what, it's not surprising that if there's unhappiness here that it is going to spread everywhere, because they look to us for leadership." READ MORE >>

This demand is part of Occupy Wall Street protest

2011-10-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street: Complaints Include Rising Student Loan Debt, Insurance Costs
By CANDICE CHOI and EILEEN AJ CONNELLY 10/14/11 04:13 PM ET
Huffington Post
NEW YORK -- The Occupy Wall Street protests are hitting a nerve.

A dearth of jobs, overwhelming student loans and soaring health-care costs are just three major issues protesters have targeted. And regardless of politics, economic data suggests they're not alone in their frustrations.

It may be why the protests have spread to other cities – including Boston, Cincinnati, Seattle and Washington, D.C. – after taking root in downtown New York nearly a month ago.

Take for example the unemployment rate, which has been stuck near 9 percent since the recession officially ended more than two years ago. When counting those who settle for part-time work or have quit looking, that rate rises to about 16.5 percent.

A crippled labor market also shifts bargaining power to employers, giving workers less leverage to seek raises. That could help explain why pay was nearly 2 percent less in August than it was a year earlier when adjusted for inflation.

Student loans are another common rallying point for protesters – as expressed in one sign that read "Want demands? How about student loan bailouts?"

The struggle to keep up with payments is clear; about 320,000 borrowers who entered repayment in 2009 defaulted on their student loans by the end of 2010, according to the Institute for College Access & Success. That's up about 33 percent from the previous year.

Meanwhile, the cost of annual health insurance premiums for family coverage rose 9 percent this year and surpassed $15,000 for the first time, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust. Some don't have to worry about the uptick; an estimated 16 percent of the population does not have health insurance.

It's that economic backdrop that has driven a diversity of protesters to the streets

While a few hundred have been camping out in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, many more join in for a few hours or a day to add their voices. Here's a look at some of the protesters who ventured by in the past week, and the financial issues they're dealing with: Read more...

Reports Examine Grade Nondisclosure Policies in MBA Degree Programs

2011-10-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

By Catherine Groux
Posted October 06, 2011 03:11 PM
US NEWS
A 2011 survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council shows that when searching for potential hires among Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates, recruiters look for many qualities. For example, about 77% of employers want job applicants who show initiative and professionalism, while 76% look for motivation and integrity. Other traits that recruiters find desirable among MBA degree holders are creativity, efficiency, goal orientation and adaptability.

For graduates of certain MBA programs, these characteristics can be more important than their grades, as some business schools encourage students not to show employers their grade point averages or grades until they are offered a full-time position. This policy is known as grade nondisclosure. Typically, business school students vote to implement grade nondisclosure rules upon themselves, and these guidelines are rarely enforced by deans and other academic leaders. Still, most recruiters will honor these policies if students decide to follow them. Read more >>

Places to Live the American Dream Abroad

2011-10-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

by Kathleen Peddicord
Tuesday, October 11, 201
US News
Del Webb understood. When he conceived Sun City in Arizona, he realized that an important part of the appeal behind this retirement option would be the promise of community. Retiring to Sun City meant retiring among like-minded folks and never having to look too far to find company for dinner or someone to share a round of golf with you.
About 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire every day for the next 19 years. Nearly 12 percent of these (about 26 million would-be retirees) are considering retiring overseas.

If you're among that group, one thing to recognize is that there's no such thing as Sun City in most of the rest of the world. The formalized U.S. retirement communities that many of our parents opted for at this point in their lives don't exist in the countries that today offer the greatest retirement advantages and benefits.

That is not to say, however, that it's not possible to retire overseas among like-minded folks.

A friend who relocated his family from the United States to the south of France about the same time that we moved from the States to Ireland (some 13 years ago) once remarked, "You know, I think we're doing this the hard way. Here in France, we're scrambling to learn French so we can figure out what's going on, because we're always confused. We're trying to make friends and to find a place for ourselves in a French country community where families have known each other for generations. We don't understand French cultural nuances yet, so we're committing one faux pas after another. And we don't have any other Americans around to commiserate with, no one to show us the ropes. We've really jumped into the deep end of this living overseas thing.

"And you have, too, in Ireland. You aren't struggling with a new language [in fact, my husband and I would have argued that we were!], but you're on your own in a foreign community. You're living and working and sending your children to school among the Irish. You've plopped yourself down and are trying to fit in among the local community. Read more >>

Watch out for these popular scams

2011-10-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

Top 10 avoidable scams
CBC - Wednesday October 5, 2011, 10:17 pm EDT
The Vancouver Police Department and the Better Business Bureau of B.C. have released their annual list of the Top 10 scams that consumers can avoid, and it includes a few new ones and few old cons that have been around for a while.

The computer virus scam

This is a relatively new scam in Canada that has been active in the U.K. for a number of years, say police.

The victim gets a phone call from a major computer company offering to fix a virus on the victim's computer. Once the victim logs on to a website, the screen goes black and the scammer, who is often based in India, charges the victim $150 to make the computer work again.

Police recommend simply hanging up on the caller and avoiding the websites they recommend.

The fake lottery scam

The victim, who is often elderly, is sent an email saying they have won a lottery, but they are told they need to send money before they can claim their prize. The lottery is a fake and the money is lost forever.

Police recommend warning elderly friends and relatives about this common scam.

Example

Concert or sports ticket reselling scam

The victim pays cash for an authentic ticket to a concert or sporting event from a reseller who was advertising online.

When the victim tries to use the ticket to enter the event they are denied entry because the ticket has been bought with a stolen credit card by the fraudster, and cancelled by the original company once they discover the fraud.

Police recommend only buying tickets from established ticket resellers and only to using a credit card to buy them so you can cancel the payment if the tickets are invalid.

The grandson in trouble overseas

Type 1 - The victim, often an elderly person, gets a call from some saying they are their grandson or another family member, and they are in trouble overseas and desperately need money to get home. The scammer also tells the victim to wire them the money, but not to tell anyone, because they want to keep the situation secret.

But victim later discovers the grandchild is fine and was never in trouble, and it was just an imposter who got their phone number by digging through their garbage.

Type 2 - The scammer gains access to the victim's email or Facebook account and sends a distress email to all of the victim's email contacts.

The email states that the victim is in distress in a foreign country and to keep the information confidential. As in the first type, the victim is asked to wire money to the foreign country, later discovering their friend was never in trouble.

Police recommend you don't put personal information in the garbage and protect your passwords online.

Fake property rental

In this scam the victim appears to find a great deal on a rental property and meets with the landlord online or in a coffee shop to close the deal.

After paying a damage deposit in cash or by wire service, when the victim tries to move in, they discover the landlord was a fake and somebody else might even be living in the home.

Police recommend you inspect all property in person and ask the landlord for photo identification, and pay with a post-dated personal cheque.

Example

Counterfeit currency used to buy electronics online

In this scam the victim posts an ad online to sell an item, often a popular valuable electronic item.

But the scammer pays for it with counterfeit currency and takes off before the victim notices the fraud.

Police say watch out for fake money when selling electronic items such as iPhones, Xboxes or PlayStations, and know at least three security features to ensure bills are not fake.

How to detect a counterfeit bill

The secret shopper scam

The victim gets a job from an online ad to be a mystery or secret shopper. The fake employer sends them a bank cheque and asks them to cash it, keep some for themselves and wire the rest back to test out a service such as Western Union.

But when the bank determines the cheque was a fake, the victim is charged for the money they sent the scammer.

Police say whenever you are asked by a stranger to wire money based on a cheque deposit, it is normally a scam

Example

The Nigerian Scam

This well-known scam is also known as the 419 scam after Section 419 of the Nigerian Penal Code that prohibits this activity. The victim gets a letter from an official in a foreign country asking for help getting a large amount of money out their country in exchange for a share of the loot.

The victim wires money to the scammer, but they get nothing in return.

Police warn that all advanced fee requests are scams and if you receive a letter in the mail or via fax, simply ignore it

Example

Fake bank security scam

The victim gets an email that appears to be from their bank asking them to open an attachment and enter their bank information in order to protect or verify their account. But the message is a clever fake and the scammer uses the information to access the victim's bank accounts.

Police warn no bank will email you regarding security issues and any requests should be deleted and ignored.

Example

The fake charity collector, home or fire inspector

In this scam, someone knocks on the victim's door claiming to be collecting for a charity or claiming to be a fire or building inspector. The victim feels pressured and donates or pays the person with cash.

Police say real charities and inspectors don't collect money door to door and you should lock the door and call police if anyone suspicious comes knocking asking for money.

What really made Steve Jobs successful

2011-10-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

iCame, iSaw, iConquered: By understanding human desire, Steve Jobs changed the world
Ted Anthony, The Associated Press, On Wednesday October 5, 2011, 11:50 pm EDT
CUPERTINO, Calif. - In dark suit and bowtie, he is a computing-era carnival barker — eyebrows bouncing, hands gesturing, smile seductive and coy and a bit annoying. It's as if he's on his first date with an entire generation of consumers. And, in a way, he is.

It is Jan. 24, 1984, and a young Steve Jobs is standing at centre stage, introducing to shareholders of Apple Computer Inc. the "insanely great" machine that he's certain will change the world: a beige plastic box called the Macintosh.

Here is the Wizard of Cupertino at the threshold of it all, years before the black mock turtleneck and blue jeans. He is utterly in command — of his audience and of his performance. All of the Jobs storytelling staples are emerging.

The hyperbole: "You have to see this display to believe it. It's incredible."

The villain: "And all of this power fits in a box that is one-third the size and weight of an IBM PC."

The tease: "Now I'd like to show you Macintosh in person. All of the images you are about to see on the large screen will be generated by what's in that bag."

He retreats into the shadows, pulls the inaugural Mac out of its satchel. He inserts a disk and boots up. Suddenly, on the screen — roughly pixelated by today's standards but, for 1984, stunning — a typeface rolls by to the theme from "Chariots of Fire." A picture of a geisha appears. Then a spreadsheet. Architectural renderings. A game of video chess. A bitmapped drawing of Steve Jobs dreaming of a Mac.

The computer speaks. "Hello. I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag," it says. "It is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who's been like a father to me: Steve Jobs ."

Applause shakes the place. Steven Paul Jobs, basking in it, tries not to grin. He fails. The future, at this moment, is his.

___(equals)

It is 27 years later now, and Steve Jobs has exited the stage he managed so well. We are left with the talismans of his talent, a tech diaspora: the descendants of that original Mac. The iPod and iTunes , Nanos and Shuffles and Classics and Touches. The Apple Store. The iPhone and the App Store and the iPad 2. They are part of the cultural fabric — tools that make our lives easier and, some insist, sexier and more streamlined.

But taken together, what do they mean? Are they merely gadgets and services that sold well, that answered the market's needs for humans of the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Did Jobs' prickly perfectionism — born, some said, of outsized ego — merely create a whole run of really useful tools? Or is something more elemental at play here?

Jobs the CEO, Jobs the technologist and futurist, Jobs the inventor and innovator and refiner of others' ideas: All of them, in the end, relied upon another Steve Jobs who sewed the others together and bottled their lightning: Steve Jobs the storyteller, spinning the tale of our age and of his own success, and making it happen as he went.

From his earliest days with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak , he was a half step ahead of the rest of us, innovating and inventing and creating and doggedly marketing it all by building a lifestyle around it. From Apple's personal computers, he harnessed the new and repackaged the existing to create something fresh, something more.

Beyond his measurable successes, though, Steve Jobs claims one spot in history above all others: He realized what we wanted before we understood it ourselves.

We wanted easy to use. We wanted to lose ourselves in what our gadgets did. We wanted sleek, cool, streamlined — things that weren't always associated with consumer electronics. We wanted the relationship between object fetish and functionality to be indistinguishable. We wanted to touch the future without seams that would yank us out of our communion with our machines. We wanted, in short, intricate simplicity.

To Jobs, the above sentences might have been commandments. They were used to denounce — in a friendly manner, but always pointed — what Apple cast as the corporate, bland chaos of the PC culture that IBM and Microsoft were creating.

In Jobs' hands those principles were potent weapons. Apple's successes and missteps are well known, but things seemed to accumulate voltage when they passed through the switching station of Jobs' brain.

"There are two sides of it. One is the interface design side. The other is his ability to persuade major media outlets and others to work with him," says Edward Tenner, a technology historian and author of "Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity."

"His personal mystique," Tenner says, "became a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Some of it is the American penchant for big personalities. Microsoft had Bill Gates, Facebook Marc Zuckerberg. A dominant human face focuses things. Think of IBM, one of the 20th century's most influential companies: It dominated as the computer age dawned but lacked a defining figure; does it hold the same place in popular culture as an Apple or a Facebook ? The Hollywood storytelling tradition, built on the American cult of individual achievement, feeds the belief in a national history of invention and innovation.

Progress by committee? Not so compelling a script, even though Apple succeeds on the hard work of thousands. But the American inventor mystique — the notion that one guy armed with a combination of a good idea, hard work, challenging conditions and a bit of snake oil, can still change the world? That's been a big seller since Eli Whitney and the cotton gin.

When it comes to Jobs, comparisons are legion. Like Edison? A little, but not really; Edison didn't understand the elegance of interfaces. Like Barnum, selling the sizzle? Except that Jobs had the steak, too. Perhaps more like broadcast pioneers David Sarnoff and Bill Paley, who realized they must harness the pipeline — the airwaves, in their case — so that the content could flow through.

In a world of corporations and committees and consultation and collaboration, Jobs personified the power of the individual to effect an outcome — or at least the appearance of it. He was nothing if not cinematic. He projected his own image onto giant screens behind him as he rolled out product after product like some microchip Merlin. He was not merely a technologist; he was a stylemaker.

Jobs "saw there was this personal quality to computing," says Paul Levinson, author of "Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything."

"The attractiveness of the product . They're gleaming, beautiful objects that are physically attractive," Levinson says. "iPods are almost worn as jewelry. Who would have imagined it would have been cool to see wires coming out of somebody's ear?"

___(equals)

Every medium, of course, needs messages. Every container needs content. Every gadget, to endure, needs to transcend itself and become what the people who use it dream it could be.

Imagine, in the Foghat and Starland Vocal Band days of 1976 when Apple came into existence, if someone said you could acquire all the music you could listen to in a lifetime, from the best bands, in a matter of moments — and not by ordering 10 eight-track tapes for a penny from Columbia House . Unthinkable.

Imagine if, on the day Jobs introduced the Mac, someone said: Hey, wanna watch "Risky Business" on this screen that looks like a thick piece of paper? And we can read magazines and newspapers AND play Missile Command while we're waiting for it to — what's the word? — "download." Preposterous.

Sure, we had downloaded music and even movies before iTunes ; yes, we had been digital when it came to reading before the App Store. But again Apple stood in the intersection of utility and desire. Those services helped free content from physical format and let it go where people were.

When Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, his sexy-beast patter made a great point of identifying the three fundamental gadgets that people sought out: the music player, the cellphone and the Internet-access device. The iPhone , he made great hay of saying, was all three.

Apple didn't just want to make money from things it made; it wanted to make money from things others made — to be a distributor of content through its devices. So if you want The New York Times on your iPad, Apple gets a cut. If you want premium Weather Channel maps, Apple gets a cut. If you want the Beatles or "Harry Potter" and you get 'em on iTunes , Apple gets a cut.

Put another way: Jobs built a tech company, then left. When he came back, the landscape had changed enough that he decided, hey— this should be a media company, too. The Internet era had arrived and the two notions had grown together. And there Steve Jobs stood in the middle, getting it — and controlling the conditions of distribution to benefit Apple, much to content companies' irritation.

"Asking if something is a media company or a tech company is now irrelevant. Media is technology. Technology is media," says Dale Peskin, a principal at We Media, a Virginia firm that studies how media, technology and society are changing each other.

"The distinction," he says, "has become nonsensical."

___(equals)

In one episode of " Mad Men ," the ad-exec main character, Don Draper, builds a campaign around Kodak's slide projector, which the company calls the "photo wheel." Draper understands that what resonates is not what the gadget does; it's what it means that's important.

"There's the rare occasion," he says, "when the public can be engaged beyond flash — if they have a sentimental bond with the product." And lo: Draper rechristens the photo wheel the Carousel — because, he says, "it lets us travel the way a child travels — round and round and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved."

What Don Draper did with the slide projector in fiction, Steve Jobs did with technology in the real world. He constructed meaning from desire.

"What are we, anyway? Most of what we think we are is just a collection of likes and dislikes, habits, patterns. At the core of what we are is our values, and what decisions and actions we make reflect those values," Jobs said in a Playboy interview in 1985.

For Jobs, it was about harnessing the here and now with devices that propelled you into the future — the one " Star Trek " and "The Jetsons" promised, where gadgetry lived alongside us without devaluing humans in the process.

As eulogies pour in, it's easy to conclude that Apple was Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs was Apple. The reality is far more complex. Teams upon teams of creative people built the company's dreams and hid its seams.

But on the inside, dictatorship, however benevolent, tends to be more efficient than democracy. And looking from the outside, the charismatic front man trumps communal, incremental progress. Genius may indeed be 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration, but selling genius to the masses — well, that ratio is probably far more balanced.

There is criticism that Jobs was an amplifier, a conduit of others' originality. But he understood how to turn raw ideas into applied, coveted tech. "People always knock him for building off other people. But he knew what to do with it," says Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of the tech blog Cult of Mac.

He made people believe his reality was the one they desired. He convinced us of what we couldn't live without, then packaged it and sold it to us. With a sales sensibility drawn from the 19th century, he sold us the 21st. Which did he do more of — nuts and bolts or smoke and mirrors? Does it matter? Aren't both necessary for what he and Apple accomplished?

In the end, these things are true: a beige plastic cube with a grey screen and a slot in it changed computing. A tiny box that stored bits and bytes, helped along by a virtual store that sold digital files for 99 cents each, changed music. Another tiny one-button box that did hundreds of things changed phones and media. And a flat, paper-sized slate, a latter day tabula rasa, is still changing all of the above in ways we haven't yet measured.

David Gelernter offers insight into the Jobsian personality in "Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology," his 1998 book. "We believe implicitly that the scientist is one type, the artist a radically different one," Gelernter writes. "In fact, the scientific and artistic personalities overlap more than they differ, and the higher we shimmy into the leafy canopy of talent, the closer the two enterprises seem."

On a recent lunch hour in Cupertino, de Anza Boulevard, which runs right through the campus of Apple headquarters, is full of pedestrians — the acolytes of Jobs. Stop at a red light and watch as they cross. Invariably, each one carries a device. A woman is engrossed in what's on her iPad. A young man is chatting on an iPhone . Three people wear earbuds with white cords snaking into various pockets. One is singing.

Here's the funny thing. Three days later and 3,000 miles east, an urban crosswalk produces the same sight — human beings interacting with the fruits of the Apple tree, doing what they do with Jobs' vision of progress, integrating his gadgets and their contents into everyday life.

Was he inventor? Salesman? Entertainer? Visionary? Those questions miss the point. Like his devices, Steve Jobs was a medium that led us to other destinations — the ones of our own choosing. That's what made him different. He's gone, but the future he saw is still, quite literally, in our hands.

___(equals)

EDITOR'S NOTE — Ted Anthony writes about American culture for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/anthonyted

Debit Card Fees: Bank of America Made the Right Decision

2011-10-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

By Marianne Bickle
Robert C. Gallagher said “Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.” And so too change is coming from the banking industry. Bank of America’s announcement last week of the $5.00 monthly charge for debit cards users drew outrage from consumers. The media jumped on the story with vigor. The bank is being examined under a microscope by a bevy of news analysts.

You may be wondering why I, as retailer, would write on BofA. This topic fascinates me because as a retailer I have have long understood that once you offer a product or service for free to customers, the process of raising prices can be a very loud and painful experience.

Based on recent news media, I’m not sure consumers remember that they have choices. I am always amazed when people complain about a product or service and then say they can’t live without the stated service. Let me clarify – - I don’t mean health care; I mean everyday product and services (e.g., fashion clothing, cosmetics or banking services). Everyone has choices. We all have the right to say “Yes I chose to purchase this product or service” or “No take business and its services to the curb and dump it.”

Let’s examine several scenarios – - a “what if” game if you wish.

Scenario 1: The banks could back down from public pressure. BoA apologizes for any miscommunication and the debit cards may be used without a fee. Reality 1: This will never, ever happen. BoA has carefully considered all scenarios. Some consumers may switch banks. In actuality more banks will probably follow with the monthly fees. Large banks are strong, tough and run a tight ship. Top executives don’t make a decision and public announcement without carefully analyzing all scenarios. I just included this as an option because it is possible, but not probable. Read more

Reebok to pay $25M over toning shoe claims

2011-09-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

SARAH SKIDMORE, AP Business Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Reebok will need to tone down advertising for its shoes that claim to reshape your backside.

The athletic shoe and clothing company will pay $25 million in customer refunds to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that it falsely advertised that its "toning" shoes could measurably strengthen the muscles in the legs, thighs and buttocks. As part of the settlement, Reebok also is barred from making some of these claims without scientific evidence.

"Settling does not mean we agree with the FTC's allegations," Dan Sarro, a Reebok spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday. "We do not. We have received overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback from thousands of EasyTone customers."

It's the latest controversy surrounding so-called toning shoes, which are designed with a rounded or otherwise unstable sole. Shoemakers say the shoes force wearers to use more muscle to maintain balance and consumers clamored for them, turning toning shoes into a $1.1 billion market in just a few years. Companies such as Reebok, New Balance and Skechers have faced lawsuits over their advertising claims. But the FTC settlement, announced Wednesday, is the first time the government has stepped in.

Reebok International Ltd. makes a range of toning products, including its RunTone running shoes, EasyTone walking shoes and flip flops and some clothing. The company, which is owned by Adidas AG, said that its toning shoes were one of its most popular product launches ever when they debuted in 2009. The company marketed them heavily with ads featuring women in short shorts and with shapely bottoms; one ad even said the shoes would "make your boobs jealous".

The FTC took issue with Reebok's ads that claimed its EasyTone footwear had been proven to lead to 28 percent more strength and tone in the buttock muscles and 11 percent more strength and tone in hamstring and calf muscles than regular walking shoes. The FTC said it could not disclose if it was pursuing similar actions against other shoe makers.

"We think this is a real victory for consumers," said Dana Barragate, an FTC attorney involved in the case. "We hope it sends a message to businesses that if they are going to make claims they must be justified."

Shoe makers, including Reebok, have funded studies and say they have anecdotal evidence that proves they are effective. Several experts have questioned their validity and the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit fitness organization, conducted a study that found toning shoes failed to live up to the claims of shoe makers. However, the council said the shoes could be beneficial to one's health if they motivate people to get moving.

Christopher Svezia, with the Susquehanna Financial Group, said many shoemakers have changed their advertising approach as criticism has mounted. "The emphasis has moved to fitness instead of making these kinds of claims and promises," he said. "The question is who is next and how much is it going to cost them." Read more

Hope for women in end of career - a re-entry is possible

2011-09-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

How middle-aged women re-entering workforce can land dream jobs
Washington, Sept 24 (ANI): A new study has found that higher education coupled with vocational or computer training could benefit middle-aged women who are planning to return to the workforce after a long absence

The study found that the top characteristic that resulted in job interviews for middle-aged women seeking an entry level job was vocational or computer training...Read more

Housing market in bad shape

2011-09-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Big housing blow: New home sales fall, again
By Derek Kravitz, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Sales of new U.S. homes fell to a six-month low in August. The fourth straight monthly decline during the peak buying season suggests the housing market is years away from a recovery.
The Commerce Department said Monday that new-home sales fell 2.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 295,000. That's less than half the roughly 700,000 that economists say must be sold to sustain a healthy housing market.

New-homes sales are on pace for the worst year since the government began keeping records a half century ago.

High unemployment, larger required down payments and tougher lending standards are preventing many people from buying homes. Plunging stocks and a growing fear that the U.S. could tip back into another recession are also keeping people from entering the housing market.

Pierre Ellis, an analyst at Decision Economics, said that until wages increase and hiring picks up, home sales will languish.

The "bad news is the evident absence of optimism that sales will pick up to any degree," Ellis said.

While new homes represent less than one-fifth of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Last year was also the fifth straight year that sales have fallen. It followed five straight years of record highs, when housing was booming. Read more

Obama deficit plan aimed at Democratic base

2011-09-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

By Alister Bull and Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON | Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:02am EDT

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama will lay out a plan on Monday to cut the U.S. deficit that will raise taxes on the rich, striking a populist tone to motivate his Democratic Party base before the November 2012 election.

Obama will vow to veto any cuts proposed for the government-run Medicare health program for the elderly unless Congress agrees to lift taxes on companies and the wealthy.

His plan, which has little chance of getting through Congress in one piece, sets up the congressional and presidential elections as an ideological battle over taxes and spending.

With opinion polls showing most Americans disillusioned with his economic leadership, winning re-election may hinge on his success in painting Republicans as the party of the rich.

Republicans have consistently opposed any measures resembling tax hikes, saying they will hurt the struggling U.S. economy. "It is disappointing the president has nothing but a fresh slogan for the same job-killing small business tax hikes opposed by bipartisan majorities in Congress," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for top House Republican John Boehner.

The president's recommendations to a congressional "super committee" would deliver deficit savings of more than $3 trillion over the next decade, his aides said, with roughly half of those savings coming from higher tax revenues. Read more

Obama calls on Congress to act on jobs bill

2011-09-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

By ERICA WERNER - Associated Press,JULIE PACE - Associated Press | AP – 12 septembre 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama bluntly challenged Congress Monday to act immediately on his new jobs plan, brandishing a copy of the legislation in the Rose Garden and demanding: "No games, no politics, no delays."

Surrounded by police officers, firefighters, teachers, construction workers and others he said would be helped by the $447 billion package, the president said the only thing that would block its passage would be lawmakers deciding it wasn't good politics to work with him. "We can't afford these same political games, not now," Obama said.

The president said he was sending the package to Congress later Monday, after unveiling it last week in a speech to a joint session of Congress. Then he's heading out to try to sell it to the public, on Tuesday in Ohio — home state of House Speaker John Boehner — and Wednesday in North Carolina.

At the same time, the Democratic National Committee is backing up the effort with a new ad campaign in politically key states from Nevada to New Hampshire.

The centerpiece of the plan cuts payroll taxes that pay for Social Security, giving a tax break to workers and businesses. There's also new spending for teachers and school construction, and an extension of jobless benefits, among other elements. Republican lawmakers who control the House have promised quick review of the legislation and seem open to the tax-cutting elements, but some have already rejected new spending.

Obama has said the plan could be passed without adding to the nation's deficit, and on Monday, the White House detailed the specifics of how the legislation would be paid for. It would rely on a series of tax hikes that have all previously been proposed by the White House and rejected by Republicans. They are:

—$400 billion from limiting the itemized deductions for charitable contributions and other deductions that can be taken by individuals making over $200,000 a year and families making over $250,000;

—$40 billion from closing loopholes for oil and gas companies;

—$18 billion from requiring fund managers to pay higher taxes on certain income;

—$3 billion from changing the tax treatment of corporate jets.

White House budget director Jacob Lew said that Obama will also include those tax proposals in a broader debt-cutting package he plans to submit to a congressional supercommittee charged with finding $1.2 trillion in savings later this year. He said that the supercommittee would have the option of accepting the payment mechanisms for the jobs bill proposed by Obama, or proposing new ones.

Boehner's initial response to Obama's comments Monday morning was measured, with the Ohio Republican pledging to review the bill carefully. But a Boehner spokesman was less enthusiastic about the White House proposal after the administration released the details on how it planned to pay for the measure.

"We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit," Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., one of the president's fiercest foes on Capitol Hill, also appeared to foreshadow the possibility of a fight ahead.

"For the president to sit here and say, 'It's pass my bill all or nothing,' that's just not the way things are done anywhere in Washington," he said.

In his Rose Garden comments, Obama adopted a newly sharp tone that has pleased dispirited Democrats, deriding Republican opposition at a time when the economy has stalled and unemployment stands at 9.1 percent.

"Instead of just talking about America's jobs creators, let's actually do something for America's jobs creators," Obama said. "We can do that by passing this bill."

But despite his suggestion that the GOP is playing politics, Obama himself has a huge political stake in success of the legislation. The 2012 presidential campaign is ramping up with Republican hopefuls attacking Obama at every turn over his stewardship of the economy, and polls showing deep public unhappiness with his economic leadership.

The new DNC ad campaign was to air beginning Monday in eight swing and early voting states, urging viewers to "Read it. Fight for it. ... Pass the President's Jobs Plan."

Bank of America to Cut $5 Billion in Costs by End-2013

2011-09-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

By DAVID BENOIT

NEW YORK—Bank of America Corp. will cut $5 billion in annual costs by the end of 2013 and slash 30,000 jobs out of its consumer-oriented businesses, part of an important trimming program at the bank.

Chief Executive Brian Moynihan, speaking at the Barclays Capital financial conference in New York, reiterated promises to trim excess expenses and businesses to reshape the nation's biggest bank by assets and put behind it a series of missteps. Mr. Moynihan has sold off businesses and investments and is now working on the final details of what has been dubbed "Project New BAC."

Mr. Moynihan said Monday that the planning for the first phase of Project New BAC has been completed. The bank will take the $5 billion, or about 18%, in annual expenses out of $27 billion in consumer and small banking expenses, card costs, global technology and other areas. Read more

What can Greece do to avoid debt default ?

2011-09-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Greece Takes Step to Avoid Debt Default
By ALKMAN GRANITSAS

THESSALONIKI, Greece—The Greek government said Sunday it will impose a new property tax to cover a €2 billion ($2.7 billion) shortfall in budget targets this year, which it has promised its international creditors in exchange for receiving fresh aid.

In a news conference, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the property tax, which will be imposed over the next two years, was decided by an extraordinary cabinet meeting and comes amid growing fears of a Greek default in the weeks ahead.

"We need about €2 billion and a bit for us to cover our goals" for this year, Mr. Venizelos said, insisting the government would meet its deficit goals of €17.1 billion in 2011 and €14.9 billion next year.

"We have to find something that is fair, something that will be accepted by the community…something that can be implemented quickly, that will produce results immediately," he added. "The only measure that has all those characteristics, that can be universally applied, but which is just with social characteristics, is a special property tax."

He said the tax, which will be collected through monthly electricity bills, would average about €4 per square meter and range between 50 cents and €10 depending on the neighborhood.

His remarks come as Greece's embattled government scrambles to cut public spending and step up its reform drive amid ultimatums from other euro-zone governments that further rescue money will be withheld if Athens doesn't deliver on promises.

Earlier this month, talks between Greece and officials from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank—which assess the country's eligibility for fresh aid—were suspended in a dispute over whether Greece would need to take further measures.

Without the aid, Greece is expected to run out of money within weeks, according to senior Greek officials. Read more

Obama and his new $300 Billion Jobs Package

2011-09-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Obama Said to Seek $300 Billion Jobs Package
By Albert R. Hunt - Sep 7, 2011
Source: Bloomberg
President Barack Obama plans to propose sparking job growth by injecting more than $300 billion into the economy next year, mostly through tax cuts, infrastructure spending and direct aid to state and local governments.

Obama will call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising tax revenue in later years. This would be part of a long-term deficit reduction package, including spending and entitlement cuts as well as revenue increases, that he will present next week to the congressional panel charged with finding ways to reduce the nation’s debt.

Almost half the stimulus would come from tax cuts, which include an extension of a two-percentage-point reduction in the payroll tax paid by workers due to expire Dec. 31 and a new decrease in the portion of the tax paid by employers.

Obama is set to lay out his plans in an address to Congress tomorrow as unemployment remains at 9.1 percent more than two years after the official end of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Payroll growth stalled last month.

The unemployment rate and the sluggish recovery will be central issues as Obama runs for re-election next year. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a leading Republican seeking the party’s nomination to face Obama in November 2012, yesterday offered his own 59-point economic plan, including tax cuts for those making $200,000 or less a year. He and seven other Republican candidates are scheduled to debate tonight in California.
Plan Previewed

The main components of Obama’s jobs plan, though not its scale, have been largely telegraphed by the administration. For weeks, people familiar with deliberations have said the White House is considering tax incentives, infrastructure and assistance to local governments. Obama has stressed construction and tax cuts in recent public speeches...Read more...

The US postal service in great financial turmoil

2011-09-05T05:32:00.000-07:00

Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
September 4, 2011
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.

The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.

As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees. Read more...

Tough economic climate as Obama seeks 2nd term

2011-09-05T05:28:00.001-07:00

By CHARLES BABINGTON - Associated Press | AP – 5 septembre 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama faces a long re-election campaign having all but given up on the economy rebounding in any meaningful way before November 2012. His own budget office predicts unemployment will stay at about 9 percent, a frightening number for any president seeking a second term.

Obama's prospects aren't entirely grim, however. The GOP, heavily influenced by the tea party, may nominate someone so deeply flawed or right-leaning that, Democrats hope, Obama can persuade Americans to give him a second chance rather than risk the alternative.

Democrats say the man who ran on hope and change in 2008 will have to claw his way toward a second term with a sharply negative campaign.

The strengths and weaknesses of his prospects seem clear.

Next year's unemployment rate is likely to be the highest in a presidential election since 1940. But the leading Republican contenders have denigrated Social Security, switched positions on critical issues and done other things that might make them ripe targets for Obama's well-funded campaign.

Democratic strategist Doug Hattaway says GOP candidates, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, may turn off independent voters with their embrace of tea party stands on taxes, spending and program cuts.

Obama "should lump them all together and make them answer for their slash-and-burn politics," said Hattaway, a former top aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

To do so, Hattaway said, Obama must link the candidates to congressional Republicans, blamed by Democrats for the nation's stalled job growth and recent downgrade of U.S. creditworthiness.

Making the connection might not prove easy.

Obama's potential challengers have avoided getting dragged into details of the bitter Capitol Hill fights over deficit spending. At least for now, they can lob criticisms at the president while offering few specific, measurable alternatives.

"President Obama oversaw an economy that created zero jobs last month, and that is unacceptable," Romney said Friday.

But the influence of the tea party and other conservative groups may give Obama some openings, by pushing the GOP field so far to the right that the candidates risk alienating vital independent voters.

In a debate last month, the top contenders pledged to oppose a deficit-reduction plan even if it cut $10 in spending for every $1 raised by new taxes. Perry, who entered the race after that debate, also has taken a tough stand against higher taxes.

Obama's team says independents, who might pay scant attention to ideologically driven primaries, will find such positions extreme when they compare the eventual GOP nominee and the president.

Political aide David Axelrod hinted that Obama will try to sharpen his differences with Republicans who insist on spending cuts in virtually every area and who refuse to let tax cuts expire, as scheduled, for the wealthiest.

It's hard "to create an economy in which people can get decent jobs and raise a family at the same time we're cutting back on our commitment to spending on education and research and development that will create innovation and jobs," Axelrod said in an interview.

The Republicans' "essential message is, let's go back to the policies that helped get us in this mess," he said, citing Wall Street deregulation and corporate tax breaks.

If GOP lawmakers, backed by the presidential hopefuls, continue to thwart Obama's bid to mix targeted spending cuts with tax increases, Axelrod said, "we're going to take our case to the American people."

Recent polls underscore Obama's challenge. A Pew Research poll found that 39 percent of independents approve of his job performance, while 52 percent disapprove.

An AP-GfK poll showed a sharp erosion of support for Obama among white voters and women. Less than half of all women and less than half of all men approve of the job he's doing, and only 50 percent of women say he deserves re-election.

But the same polls show that far more voters blame former President George W. Bush more than Obama for the nation's economic woes. Whether that sentiment lingers for 16 more months could prove crucial.

Hattaway said Obama must start by winning back moderates and motivating "millennials," voters in their 20s and early 30s.

"The economy is not going to come roaring back before the election, so he has to give them a vision" for a future with jobs and with social justice for groups, including gays, Hattaway said.

Obama also must try to minimize the frustration among his liberal base supporters, many of whom feel he is too quick to compromise. Some complained loudly Friday when Obama yanked a proposal to tighten federal smog standards.

Questions about the environment, war and foreign affairs will figure into the 2012 race. But all parties agree jobs are the overriding issue.

Analysts differ on what level of unemployment is politically fatal.

President Ronald Reagan handily won re-election in 1984 with unemployment at 7.2 percent, which was down slightly from the rate at the start of his term. President Jimmy Carter lost when unemployment was at 7.5 percent and President George H.W. Bush lost with a similar level, but both faced other problems as well.

Hopeful Democrats say Obama can survive next year if people feel growth is coming soon. Another way to survive is uglier: admitting the economy is a mess, but pressing the case that the GOP alternative is so unacceptable that the incumbent should stay in office, even with no recovery in sight.

Obama's aides say the election will be "a choice, not a referendum." That hints at a bruising effort to divert attention from the president's record and focus on what the Obama campaign believes are the GOP nominee's chief shortcomings.

Democratic optimists feel the GOP nominating process will play into that strategy. The Democratic National Committee issues a steady stream of statements and videos with headlines such as "Romney makes move to embrace Tea Party."

Several Republican candidates, including Romney, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Perry, are proven vote-getters at the state level. Soon they will show whether they can handle the scrutiny and grind of a presidential campaign.

Democrats say their records provide much to use against them.

Perry, for instance, has called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme," and said climate change is a "contrived phony mess."

Romney switched his position on abortion, gay rights and gun control after leaving the Massachusetts governor's office and seeking the Republican presidential nod. He also is criticized for his role in Bain Capital, a corporate takeover firm that eliminated jobs in some cases but expanded them in others.

Bachmann has spent only three terms in the House; the last member to go directly to the White House was James Garfield, elected in 1880. If Sarah Palin decides to run, she will be asked why she quit her job as Alaska's governor with more than a year left in her term.

U.S. Is Set to Sue a Dozen Big Banks Over Mortgages

2011-09-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: September 1, 2011
The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter.
The suits stem from subpoenas the finance agency issued to banks a year ago. If the case is not filed Friday, they said, it will come Tuesday, shortly before a deadline expires for the housing agency to file claims.
The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value.
Fannie and Freddie lost more than $30 billion, in part as a result of the deals, losses that were borne mostly by taxpayers. Read more...

Rupert Murdoch receives $12.5m bonus

2011-09-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

News Corp chief's total pay package soars 47% to $33m, though his son James has declined $6m bonus
Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, received a $12.5m (£7.7m) cash bonus for the last financial year, while his total remuneration rose 47% to $33m, according to the company's annual statement to shareholders.

His son James Murdoch – who is deputy chief operating officer, with responsibility for News Corp's business in Europe and Asia – was awarded a $6m cash bonus as part of an $18m pay package – a 74% rise on his 2010 take-home pay.

But in a statement on Friday night, James Murdoch said he would not be taking the bonus in "light of the current controversy" over phone hacking at the News of the World. "I feel that declining the bonus is the right thing to do," he said.

The bonuses were for the year to the end of June, during which time News Corp became mired in the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed the News of the World. The affair only escalated into a full-blown corporate crisis – with the closure of the News of the World and several executive resignations – in July, shortly after the end of News Corp's financial year.

Chase Carey, News Corp's chief operating officer and Murdoch's right-hand man, took home $30m in the year to 30 June, including a $10m bonus. Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, received a slight increase in total compensation in 2011, up to $15.5m from $13.9m in 2010. Ailes received a $1.5m cash bonus.

The Murdochs' remuneration was revealed in their report to shareholders. Elisabeth Murdoch, the chief executive of TV production company Shine, received a salary of $1.7m from News Corp last year, the report shows. She received $214m in cash after News Corp bought Shine earlier this year.

Rupert's eldest son, Lachlan – who is acting chief executive of the Australian TV firm Ten Network – took home a total of $504,000 in 2011 for his work on the News Corp board. Read more...

Infrastructure bank could be part of jobs package

2011-09-01T05:47:00.000-07:00

By JIM ABRAMS - Associated Press | AP – September 1, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — A national infrastructure bank that would entice private investors into road and rail projects could be a major part of the jobs package that President Barack Obama hopes will finally bring relief to the unemployed.

The White House hasn't divulged the contents of the package that Obama is to unveil in an address to a joint session of Congress next week. But the president has pushed the idea of an infrastructure bank in recent speeches and has praised Senate and House bills that create such a government-sponsored lending institution.

Whether the bank, which would need time to organize, could have any real impact on the jobs situation in the coming year — and particularly before the November 2012 elections — is in dispute.

Obama seems to think it would.

"We've got the potential to create an infrastructure bank that could put construction workers to work right now, rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our vital infrastructure all across the country," he said at a news conference in July.

But Janet Kavinoky, director of infrastructure issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cautioned that "even in the next two years I don't believe the bank is going to be that kind of job creator."

The best way to spur job growth in the short term is for Congress to pass long-stalled bills to fund aviation and highway programs, she said.

The Chamber of Commerce strongly supports the infrastructure bank. Kavinoky said the United States is one of the few large countries that lack a central source of low-cost financing for construction projects. But she said it's going to take time to get it running and come up with a pipeline of projects where funds can be invested.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who's sponsoring an infrastructure bank bill, argued that "we have projects all across America that are ready to go tomorrow." He said the bank "could have money flowing in the next year easily."

Michael Likosky, senior fellow at the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge and author of "Obama's Bank: Financing a Durable New Deal," says he is working with transportation agencies in California and New York that "are waiting for the federal government to say they are going to support these projects."

A commitment to a national infrastructure bank could also provide a positive spark to financial markets and encourage investment, he said.

The bank would supplement federal spending on infrastructure by promoting private-sector investment in projects of national or regional significance. The private sector currently provides only about 6 percent of infrastructure spending.

Supporters, which range from the Chamber of Commerce to the AFL-CIO, say pension funds, private equity funds and sovereign wealth funds have hundreds of billions of dollars ready to be invested in low-risk infrastructure projects.

It's better than having pension fund money go to Treasury bonds, Likosky said. "It's really about changing our approach; we're in tough economic times and we will be for a while. We have to make sure the money we have goes further."

The Kerry bill would require $10 billion in start-up money from the government to get the first loans going and cover administrative costs. The bank would be government owned, run by a board of directors, independent of any federal agency and self-sustaining after the initial expense. Public-private partnerships, corporations and state and local governments would be eligible for the loans.

The bank's directors would pick which projects to finance based on an analysis of costs, benefits and revenue streams, such as from tolls or fees, for repaying the loan. Once the terms of the loan, including interest rates and fees to cover risk, are set, the Treasury Department would disburse the loan.

Urban projects would have to be at least $100 million in size, rural ones $25 million. The infrastructure bank's loan could cover no more than 50 percent of a project's costs.

"There is going to be a revenue stream for payback and therefore the project is going to stand on its own because it will be a good enough project to attract private-sector funding," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, one of several Republican co-sponsors of the Kerry plan.

Supporters estimate the bank could set up as much as $160 billion in government loans over a decade and anchor as much as $650 billion in projects.

In the House, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has a similar bill that relies on $25 billion in start-up money and makes use of bonds as well as loans to stimulate construction projects. Both Kerry and DeLauro would cover transportation, water and energy projects.

DeLauro would also include communications projects. She says her bill is modeled after the European Investment Bank, which has been financing infrastructure projects for 50 years and last year invested more than $100 billion.

Obama, in his 2012 budget proposal, envisioned spending $30 billion to start an infrastructure bank within the Transportation Department that would provide grants as well as loans to transportation projects.

That idea drew opposition from the House Transportation Committee chairman, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. He said in a recent article in the congressional newspaper Roll Call that it would be better to increase help for existing state infrastructure banks "rather than increasing the size of the bloated federal bureaucracy, as some advocate, by creating a national infrastructure bank."

Kerry pointed to a 2009 American Society of Civil Engineers report that said $2.2 trillion needs to be spent over five years to bring the nation's roads, bridges and water systems up to an adequate level. He said Congress needs to both pass a new highway bill and agree on alternatives like the bank.

"If we can leverage $650 billion and get money going in the transportation bill, we can begin to nibble away at the problem," Kerry said.

Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle

2011-08-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

by Susan Berfield
Friday, August 26, 2011
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
How did a Philadelphia family get hold of $40 million in gold coins, and why has the Secret Service been chasing them for 70 years?
The most valuable coin in the world sits in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. It's Exhibit 18E, secured in a bulletproof glass case with an alarm system and an armed guard nearby. The 1933 Double Eagle, considered one of the rarest and most beautiful coins in America, has a face value of $20—and a market value of $7.6 million. It was among the last batch of gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government. The coins were never issued; most of the nearly 500,000 cast were melted down to bullion in 1937.

This coin is worth $7.6 million U.S. Mint/AP Photo

Most, but not all. Some of the coins slipped out of the Philadelphia Mint before then. No one knows for sure exactly how they got out or even how many got out. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation's currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter.

"The 1933 Double Eagle is one of the most intriguing coins of all time," says Jay Brahin, an investment adviser who has been collecting coins since he was a kid in Philadelphia. "It's a freak. The coins shouldn't have been minted, but they were. They weren't meant to circulate, but some did. And why has the government pursued them so arduously? That's one of the mysteries."

The story begins just after the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt on Mar. 4, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. Thousands of banks had already gone under as people panicked and withdrew their gold and other deposits. As the gold supply—much of it kept at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—dwindled, the country faced possible insolvency. On Apr. 5, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which prohibited the hoarding of gold and required citizens to exchange their gold coins for paper currency.

It was Roosevelt's distant cousin, Theodore, who had commissioned the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design a high-relief $20 gold coin in the early 1900s. Teddy Roosevelt wanted an American coin that matched the beauty of the ancient Greek ones, and Saint-Gaudens completed the work just before his death from cancer in 1907. On one side is an image of Liberty, a figure reminiscent of a Greek goddess, hair flowing, olive branch in her left hand, torch in her right. On the other is an eagle in midflight, the sun rising behind it.

The Mint had produced the Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles almost every year since 1907, and 1933 was no different. By May, as the gold recall was under way, the Mint finished pressing 445,500 of the coins. None were issued. Instead the coins, weighing nearly 15 tons, were put into 1,780 canvas bags and sealed behind three steel doors in Philadelphia Mint Vault F-Cage 1. Only two were thought to have been saved, and they were sent to the Smithsonian.

In January 1934, Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act, which allowed the President to nationalize, in effect, the gold held by the Federal Reserve and increase the price of an ounce. This in turn devalued the dollar, which was supposed to stimulate the troubled economy. The director of the Mint then ordered all the nation's gold coins to be melted into bars. The bars would be kept in the newly constructed Fort Knox. The task was enormous: It wasn't until early 1937 that the Philadelphia Mint sent its $50 million worth of coins, including the 1933 Double Eagles, to the furnace.

Around this time, a 41-year-old Philadelphia jeweler named Israel Switt offered several 1933 Double Eagles to some of the most prominent coin dealers and collectors of the day, according to Secret Service documents since made public. Switt sold one, now Exhibit 18E, to a Texas dealer who then sold it to King Farouk of Egypt for $1,575. A royal representative in the U.S. requested an export license for the coin and, unbeknownst to the Secret Service, the Secretary of the Treasury issued one on Feb. 29, 1944.

That same month, Stack's, the rare coin dealer in New York, announced an auction for another Double Eagle. It wasn't until early March, though, that the Secret Service heard about the sale and realized that some of the coins had been taken out of the Mint. King Farouk's Double Eagle had already been delivered to him in Cairo by diplomatic pouch. Agents confiscated the second coin before Stack's could sell it and launched the investigation that continues today. "The government has been fanatical about seizing and destroying these coins," says Robert W. Hoge, curator of North American coins and currency at the American Numismatic Society. "They're famous because the government has been seizing them since the 1940s."

The first phase of the Secret Service investigation would trace 10 1933 Double Eagles to Switt, a reclusive jeweler and coin dealer who, like so many in this story, believed the coins possessed talismanic powers. His only child, Joan Langbord, who worked with him until his death in 1990 at age 95, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that her father "could be obnoxious or irascible. If he didn't like you, he'd throw you out." His business philosophy, she said, was that "the customer was never right; he was always right."

"You must understand the Philadelphia thing," says Brahin. "I'm from there, so I can say this: The dealers were crafty, they would do anything to get an edge. If you don't know that, you don't have the right amount of cynicism to analyze the story."

In Switt's statement to the agents, his only official pronouncement about the coins, he said that he didn't have any records of where, when, or how he had obtained the Double Eagles. But he claimed that he did not buy them from any employees of the Mint.

Nonetheless, after a 10-month investigation, the Secret Service concluded that it was more likely than not that Switt was the fence for a corrupt Mint cashier. In 1945, the Justice Dept. wanted to press charges, but by then the statute of limitations had run out.

Seven years later, in 1952, King Farouk was deposed and sent into exile in Monaco. The generals leading the new Republic of Egypt decided to auction off his belongings, including his renowned gold coin collection. It contained 8,500 pieces; one was the 1933 Double Eagle. Sotheby's won the right to hold the auction in Cairo in February 1954. As soon as U.S. Treasury officials saw the catalog for the Palace Collection of Egypt, as it was called, they asked the Egyptians to pull the coin from the auction and return it to Washington. At the last minute, the Double Eagle in Lot 185 was withdrawn. Then it disappeared.

Four decades later, Stephen Fenton, the chairman of the British Numismatic Trade Assn. and a coin dealer himself, says he got hold of the 1933 Double Eagle by way of an Egyptian jeweler whose client had ties to the military. "I was buying quite a few coins out of the Farouk collection," Fenton says by phone from his London auction house, St. James. "This came along, and it was quite nice. It did have an aura."

Fenton bought the Double Eagle for $210,000 and arranged to sell it to an American dealer named Jasper Parrino for $850,000. On Feb. 7, 1996, Fenton flew from London to New York on the Concorde and checked into the Hilton. The next morning, he recalls, he tucked the coin into a plastic envelope, put it in his shirt pocket, pulled on a new black cashmere sweater, and hopped into a taxi to the Waldorf Astoria. "It was a routine deal," he says.

He went up to a corner suite on the 22nd floor and presented the coin to Parrino, who had already arranged to sell it to Jack Moore, a dealer from Texas, for $1.65 million. Moore had brought along a coin expert of his own. As this expert examined the coin, Fenton began to suspect trouble. "His hands were shaking quite a lot," says Fenton. "I thought he might try to steal it. I was afraid someone was going to come bursting into the room with guns. Well, they did."

Moore had contacted the Secret Service and helped them set up an undercover operation. Fenton and Parrino were thrown to the floor by gun-wielding agents who had been waiting in the room next door. "I had an out-of-body experience," says Fenton. "I felt like I was on top of the wardrobe watching. It was like a movie. Then the coin just vanished."

Fenton faced criminal charges of "conspiring to convert to his own use and attempt to sell property of the United States." He hired a trial lawyer, Barry H. Berke of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, who was able to get those charges dropped fairly quickly. "Then it was a straight fight for the coin," says Fenton. "I thought: The government has two of them [in the Smithsonian]. Why do they want mine? The only people who think the pursuit of these coins is worthwhile is the government. Everyone else thinks the government should have better things to do with its time and money."

After five years of legal wrangling and just four days before the case was scheduled to go to trial in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Fenton and the Justice Dept. came to an unusual agreement: The coin would be auctioned off and the proceeds split between them. That was in late January 2001. The coin was taken from the Treasury vault at 7 World Trade Center and put in Fort Knox. Then came the terrorist attacks on September 11. "If the coin had been left where it was, it would have been destroyed," says Fenton.

In February 2002, the Mint announced the auction of the "fabled and elusive 1933 Double Eagle twenty dollar coin" at Sotheby's on July 30. "The storied coin has been the center of international numismatic intrigue for more than 70 years," said Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore in the press release. Afterward the coin would become the only 1933 Double Eagle "now or ever authorized for private ownership."

Then the publicity campaign began. Matt Lauer wore white cotton gloves to hold the coin on the Today show. The New York Times ran a large photo of it. Sotheby's, working with Stack's, produced a 56-page catalog titled The Golden Disk of 1933: Only One.

The Only One was displayed at the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Sotheby's. "The Mint police and New York City police escorted it back and forth every day to a depository at West Point in an armored car," says David N. Redden, the auctioneer for Sotheby's. "It was fantastic. That made it look wildly important. The government treated it as a national treasure, which it is, in a way. It wasn't going to disappear on their watch. It had already disappeared once."

The auction took place at 6 p.m. in front of a standing-room-only crowd. The coin was in a bulletproof glass case to the right of the auctioneer. The Mint director was there. So were Fenton, Berke, and the assistant U.S. attorney. Redden opened the bidding at $2.5 million. Six minutes later his hammer went down: An anonymous buyer had purchased the 1933 Double Eagle for $6.6 million (a 15 percent buyer's premium brought the price to $7.59 million). It was nearly twice as much as anyone had ever paid for a coin.

Immediately afterward, Mint Director Fore held a ceremony on the auction floor to make the Double Eagle legal tender. "In order to monetize it, somebody had to pay $20," says Redden. "So I stepped down from the podium and gave her $20. The Mint makes a big distinction between coins that are monetized and those that are not. Two Double Eagles are in the Smithsonian, but they're not monetized. To the government, they're curiosities, not currency."

The buyer, who according to Redden is an American interested in no other coins but this one, never brought the Double Eagle home. He lent it to the American Numismatic Society, which has displayed the coin at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ever since.

"I wanted to end with everybody happy, and everybody was. One of these coins is in the marketplace, and that's very important," says Fenton. "I was absolutely thrilled—and exhausted. It felt strange that it was all over."

Except it wasn't.

Two years after the auction, Joan Langbord and her son, Roy, an entertainment executive in Manhattan, called Berke, who had represented Fenton and the Farouk coin, with startling news: They said they had found 10 1933 Double Eagles. The coins had been wrapped in tissue and plastic, put in a gray paper bag from the department store John Wanamaker—which closed in 1995—and placed at the bottom of safe deposit box No. 442 at a Wachovia Bank in Philadelphia. Langbord had inherited the safe deposit box from her mother and said she had thought it contained only jewelry. No one in the family, she later testified, knew how the coins had gotten there. The Langbords, through Berke, declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.

According to legal documents, the Langbords, hoping they could make a deal similar to Fenton's, asked Berke to contact the Mint. On Sept. 15, 2004, Berke met with Mint attorneys at the Secret Service offices in Brooklyn to discuss the situation. A week later, Roy Langbord, accompanied by Berke, opened the safe deposit box and handed over the Double Eagles to the government for authentication. The coins did not come back.

In June 2005, Berke was summoned to meet the Mint's attorneys in Washington. There they informed him that the 1933 Double Eagles were indeed authentic. But this time the Mint refused to offer any monetary settlement. Instead, the lawyers said the government was keeping the coins, and that they were already in Fort Knox. Berke protested, unsuccessfully. In August 2005 the Mint issued a press release announcing it had "recovered" 10 more 1933 Double Eagles.

"I was surprised," says Sotheby's Redden. "It was a little awkward. The Double Eagle had been billed by the Mint as unique." And not just by the Mint but by Sotheby's, too. "I called the buyer, who said: 'Do I have to buy those, too?'"

He hasn't had the chance. For months the Langbords sought the return of the coins, compensation from the government of $40 million, or the initiation of forfeiture proceedings. The government insisted it was not required to do anything. In December 2006 the Langbords took the matter to the courts. Three years later, Judge Legrome Davis of the Federal District Court of Philadelphia ruled that the government had to show it had a right to keep the coins.

This July, eight years after the Langbords say they found the coins, the trial to get them back began at a Philadelphia courthouse, just blocks from the family store on Jewelers Row.

Joan Langbord, dressed simply in a tan pantsuit and costume jewelry, took the stand the morning of July 19. She was occasionally teary. She was also sharp-minded, plain-spoken, and slightly irritated. Describing the store, she said: "It looks like a junk shop. But expensive junk. It looks the way it did when my father ran it. His chair is still in the store." Only the first floor of the four-story building is open to those who walk in off the street.

Records introduced at the trial show she had visited the safe deposit box many times between 1996 and her discovery of the coins in 2003—including the day before the Sotheby's auction. She said she made the visits to select pieces of her mother's jewelry to sell to a longtime customer and that she never noticed the Wanamaker bag at the bottom. It was only when the box warped and had to be drilled open, she said, that she realized the coins were there. The safe deposit box was shown at the trial: It was about the size of a violin case.

After Langbord testified, the judge called for a lunch break, and she and her other son, David, went to the store. It's still called I. Switt & Ed Silver, though her name and that of her business partner are also in gold letters on the front door. She walked in briskly and got right on the phone about a business matter, pointedly ignoring visitors. The old wood and glass counters were filled with jewelry, silver candlesticks, watches, figurines. A cash register from the 1930s sat on another counter. Yellowing family photos hung askew on the wall next to a 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer article about the gold coins.

On day five of the trial, U.S. Mint officers brought the 10 Double Eagles into the courtroom. They had been hand carried by Mint police on a flight from Kentucky to Philadelphia and stored in a vault at the Philadelphia Mint overnight. The coins, spread out against a blue velvet background in a secured glass case, were placed in front of the jury. They walked slowly past the coins. Fifteen minutes later the Double Eagles were on their way back to Fort Knox.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero argued that documents from the Philadelphia Mint and the Secret Service investigation of the 1940s showed that no 1933 Double Eagles legally left the Mint. And, she said, every single coin that had been found could be traced to Israel Switt. She also discussed the government's long pursuit of the coins: "Why do we care? We auctioned one off. You saw the certificate of monetization. We know how Fenton got his coin. He's not Israel Switt. The coins and bills you have in your wallets carry the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. It means something. The government protects its money from thieves and swindlers. We have to care on principle. If we don't, we are done. We are absolutely done."

Berke countered that the Mint records are nearly 80 years old and ill-kept, and all the witnesses interviewed by the Secret Service are dead. He also said that in the confused first weeks after Roosevelt asked people to return their gold, it was still possible to exchange bullion for coin at the Philadelphia Mint. This "window of opportunity" in the spring of 1933, he argued, could well have been how Switt obtained the Double Eagles. "The government desperately wants these coins," he said. "But the government can't always get what it wants."

After eight days of testimony, the jury found otherwise. The Langbords are expected to appeal the verdict. Meanwhile, more 1933 Double Eagle gold coins may still be hidden away. "There has always been talk of others," says Armen Vartian, the lawyer for the Professional Numismatists Guild. Hoge, the U.S. coin expert, says: "It's not impossible that more are out there. I haven't seen them. But it wouldn't surprise me."
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Government of Canada Investing in Next Generation Auto R&D

2011-08-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Aug 29, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Canadian drivers will benefit from research into new technologies for the automobile industry that will develop a battery pack thermal management system for hybrid electric vehicles, more efficient systems for wheel production, performance-enhancing catalytic converters, enhanced fuel cell technology and improved automotive manufacturing workplace design and ergonomics.

The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), was joined today by Nina Grewal, Member of Parliament for Fleetwood-Port Kells, and by Suzanne Fortier, President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, to announce five new projects to be supported by the Automotive Partnership Canada initiative.

"Our government is investing in research and development with the Canadian automobile industry to make sure these businesses continue to grow, create jobs and increase our ability to compete internationally," said Minister Goodyear. "These projects will develop new technologies and bring them to the marketplace for the benefit of Canadians."Read more...

Subscription business model

2011-08-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and websites.

The first UK subscription newsletter was the London Property Letter launched in the early 1960s by Sylvester Stein, previously editor of South Africa's Drum magazine. The London Property Letter utilized the standing order payment where the subscriber signed up for a continuous annual payment from his or her bank account. Around the same time, the Consumer's Association launched Which? magazine using the same standing order techniques.

In 1982, Running magazine was launched by Sylvester Stein to cater for the new jogging and running craze that had arrived from the USA. The standing order subscription model was adapted for use on this and other consumer news trade magazines by Peter Hobday, appointed publishing director of Running magazine by Sylvester Stein in 1982. Peter Hobday increased the subscription sales of Running Magazine to become the highest circulation title the athletics field. Running magazine eventually evolved into Runner's World.

Rather than selling products individually, a subscription sells periodic (monthly or yearly or seasonal) use or access to a product or service, or, in the case of such non-profit organizations as opera companies or symphony orchestras, it sells tickets to the entire run of five to fifteen scheduled performances for an entire season. Thus, a one-time sale of a product can become a recurring sale and can build brand loyalty. It is used for anything where a user is tracked in both a subscribed and unsubscribed status.

Membership fees to some types of organizations, such as trade unions, are also known as subscriptions.

Industries that use this model include mail order book sales clubs and music sales clubs, cable television, satellite television providers with pay-TV channels, satellite radio, telephone companies, cell phone companies, internet providers, software providers, business solutions providers, financial services firms, fitness clubs, and pharmaceuticals, as well as the traditional newspapers and magazines.

Renewal of a subscription may be periodic and activated automatically, so that the cost of a new period is automatically paid for by a pre-authorized charge to a credit card or a checking account. In the U.S., recurring card charges must be disclosed in writing to the cardholder at least 10 days before each charge.[1]

A common model on web sites, colloquially becoming known as the freemium model, is to provide content for free, but restrict access to premium features (for example, archives) to paying subscribers. In this case, the subscriber-only content is said to be behind a paywall. The razor and blades business model (also called the bait-and-hook model) is an attempt to approximate the subscription model, but with a formal agreement by both parties.

Types of subscriptions
Effect on the vendor
Effect on the customer
Effect on the environment Read more...

Obama and Merkel discusses economy

2011-08-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Obama and Merkel vow action on global economic woes
By Caren Bohan | Reuters – 27 juillet 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the eurozone crisis and financial-market turbulence on Saturday and vowed action to bolster the global economy, the White House said in a statement.

"The two leaders agreed on the importance of concerted action, including through the G20, to address current economic challenges and to spur growth and job creation in the global economy," the statement said.

The White House also said Obama and Merkel discussed Middle East peace and would continue working on a statement by the Middle East Quartet -- the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations -- that would provide a basis for the resumption of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

(Writing by Caren Bohan; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Buffett invests $5 billion in Bank of America

2011-08-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

By PALLAVI GOGOI - AP Business Writer | AP – August 25, 2011
NEW YORK (AP) — Warren Buffett is coming to the rescue of another fallen giant.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced Thursday that it would invest $5 billion in Bank of America Corp., giving a much-needed vote of confidence in the struggling bank.

The bank's stock had plunged 52 percent in the past year on concerns over the bank's mortgage problems and worries that it would have to sell large amounts of stock to shore up its balance sheet.

Investors' confidence in the bank took another blow this month as its mortgage headaches got even worse. On Aug. 8, American International Group Inc. sued Bank of America for more than $10 billion, saying the bank deceived AIG by selling it overvalued mortgage-backed securities.

Much of the Charlotte, North Carolina, bank's problems stem from its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage lender. Bank of America has been under heavy pressure from investors for selling them securities based on mortgages that later lost value.

The bank paid a total of $12.7 billion earlier this year to settle claims that it sold investors faulty mortgage investments. Investors have become worried that the bank would have to pay out even more to settle future claims.

Buffett, one of the most successful and respected investors of all time, has lent his credibility to several other icons of American business at times when investors' confidence in them was waning. His investments have usually proven to be both prescient and profitable.

Buffett pumped $5 billion into Goldman Sachs Group Inc. at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, helping to reverse a crisis of confidence in the investment bank and the U.S. banking system in general. He also invested $3 billion in General Electric Co.

Those investments, which paid annual dividends of 10 percent, wound up being lucrative. Berkshire made $2 billion from the Goldman investment alone. Unlike the Bank of America deal, those companies approached Berkshire seeking financial help and the stamp of approval that came with the endorsement of the legendary investor.

Buffett said in a statement Thursday he called Bank of America's CEO Moynihan to ask about investing because he considered the bank a strong, well-led company.
Berkshire will receive a dividend of 6 percent on his investment in Bank of America. Berkshire will get 50,000 preferred shares and warrants to purchase 700 million shares of common stock at $7.14 per share. Buffett can exercise the warrants at any time in the next 10 years. If he does, it would make him the banks largest shareholder with a stake of 7 percent.

An hour after the deal was announced, Buffett had already made a profit on paper of $500 million on the stock warrants thanks to a surge in Bank of America's stock price. After closing at $6.99 Wednesday, the stock jumped 87 cents or 12 percent to $7.86 Thursday. Bank of America's stock traded as high as $15 in January, before its mortgage woes worsened.

Buffett's investment in Bank of America sent the stocks of other banks higher too. Citigroup Inc. rose 2.7 percent and Morgan Stanley rose 3.4 percent.

Berkshire also holds investments in several other banks. One of Berkshire's biggest stock investments is a 16 percent stake in Wells Fargo & Co. Berkshire also holds stakes in US Bancorp, M&T Bank Corp. and the Bank of New York Mellon Co.

High-Paying Jobs You Can Get with an Associate’s Degree

2011-08-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Source: Monster

Nine High-Paying Jobs You Can Get with an Associate’s Degree

By Dona DeZube, Monster Finance Careers Expert

If school isn’t your thing, but you would love a big salary, consider a job that requires only a two-year degree. By training for a specialized healthcare, technology or trades job or heading for the police academy, you can be out of school and quickly working at a high-paying job where Monster’s Salary Wizard puts the median salary at $45,000 or more.

More Resources from Monster:

Before you head off to campus, be forewarned that an associate’s degree can lock you into a particular job, says Mark Szypko, CCP, managing director at Salary.com, which powers the Salary Wizard.

“When you get into these programs, they can be limited, and your career can be inflexible,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with that if you enjoy what you’re doing. But if you get tired of what you’re doing, there may not be a lot of career options open to you.”

Make sure you’re comfortable in the niche you choose before you invest two years of your life and thousands of dollars in tuition getting ready for a new career. “If you don’t like going to the dentist, you probably won’t enjoy being a dental hygienist,” Szypko says.

Test-drive the occupation by doing informational interviews and internships as soon as you’re eligible.

Among the high-paying jobs you can land with an associate’s degree are:

Registered Nurse

Registered nurses have more career flexibility than other associate’s-level healthcare workers, but there’s a catch. “You can break into the nursing field with an associate’s degree, but nurses with bachelor’s degrees are becoming so plentiful that there will be fewer jobs for those looking with an associate’s degree,” Szypko says. Seek an employer that will pay for additional education, and plan to go on for a four-year nursing degree if you want job security.

See registered nurse salaries | Search for registered nurse jobs

Dental Hygienist

Like many high-paying jobs you can get with an associate’s degree, you’ll perform the same tasks over and over when you’re a dental hygienist. You’ll clean teeth, talk to patients about brushing and flossing, and assist the dentist. Many dental hygienists work part time.

See dental hygienist salaries | Search for dental hygienist jobs

Respiratory Therapist

You may need only a two-year degree, but you’ll have to take tough courses, like chemistry and anatomy to graduate with an associate’s degree in respiratory therapy. Most respiratory therapists work in hospitals, which means evening or weekend shift work, testing and treating patients with breathing issues.

See respiratory therapist salaries | Search for respiratory therapist jobs

Programmer

Within IT there are a number of highly paid positions where experience and certifications can stand in for a degree. Programmers who know .Net, Visual Basic, C# or Java see salaries above the $50,000 mark after two or three years in the field, says Ashley Waggoner, vice president of Robert Half Technology in Menlo Park, California, a professional placement firm.

See programmer salaries | Search for programmer jobs

Telecom Installer

This job may sound simple, but it takes a lot of technical know-how, so you’ll need a two-year degree or trade-school certificate in electronics. You’ll boost your salary by joining the Communications Workers of America or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

See telecom installer salaries | Search for telecom technician jobs

Industrial Engineering Technician
If you love math, but not enough to go to college for a four-year degree, consider an associate’s degree in mechanical, electrical or industrial engineering from a program accredited by ABET. Industrial engineering techs earn the most, but salaries for electrical engineering techs aren't far behind.

See industrial engineering technician salaries | Search for engineering technician jobs

Police Officer

You can get hired onto a local force if you have a high school diploma and can pass an agility test, but federal law-enforcement jobs require a college degree. Not only do police officers and sheriff’s officers make good salaries (especially with overtime options), but they can also retire after 20 or 25 years in some jurisdictions.

See police officer salaries | Search for police officer jobs

HVAC Mechanic

While you can get HVAC training from a technical school or community college, you can get into this field with just a high school diploma by doing an apprenticeship -- in fact some states require HVAC professionals to do an apprenticeship before sitting for a licensing exam. You’ll also need to become certified to handle refrigerants. An HVAC job with local government may be your best bet for a solid salary.

See HVAC mechanic salaries | Search for HVAC jobs

Paralegal
Most paralegals get into the field by earning an associate’s degree or a certificate. To be happy as a paralegal, you should enjoy reading, writing and organizing paperwork for attorneys. The highest-paying jobs for paralegals are usually at large law firms located in high-cost areas.

See paralegal salaries | Search for paralegal jobs

USA becomes Food Stamp Nation but is it sustainable?

2011-08-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

ReutersBy Kristina Cooke | Reuters – Mon, 22 Aug, 2011
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Genna Saucedo supervises cashiers at a Wal-Mart in Pico Rivera, California, but her wages aren't enough to feed herself and her 12-year-old son.

Saucedo, who earns $9.70 an hour for about 26 hours a week and lives with her mother, is one of the many Americans who survive because of government handouts in what has rapidly become a food stamp nation.

Altogether, there are now almost 46 million people in the United States on food stamps, roughly 15 percent of the population. That's an increase of 74 percent since 2007, just before the financial crisis and a deep recession led to mass job losses.

At the same time, the cost doubled to reach $68 billion in 2010 -- more than a third of the amount the U.S. government received in corporate income tax last year -- which means the program has started to attract the attention of some Republican lawmakers looking for ways to cut the nation's budget deficit.

While there are clearly some cases of abuse by people who claim food stamps but don't really need them, for many Americans like Saucedo there is little current alternative if they are to put food on the table while paying rent and utility bills.

"It's kind of sad that even though I'm working that I need to have government assistance. I have asked them to please put me on full-time so I can have benefits," said the 32-year-old.

She's worked at Wal-Mart for nine months, and applied for food stamps as soon as her probation ended. She said plenty of her colleagues are in the same situation.

So are her customers. Bill Simon, head of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, told a conference call last Tuesday that the company had seen an increase in the number of shoppers relying on government assistance for food.

About forty percent of food stamp recipients are, like Saucedo, in households in which at least one member of the family earns wages. Many more could be eligible: the government estimates one in three who could be on the program are not.

"If they're working, they often think they can't get help. But people can't support their families on $10, $11, $12 an hour jobs, especially when you add transport, clothes, rent." said Carolyn McLaughlin, executive director of BronxWorks, a social services organization in New York.

The maximum amount a family of four can receive in food stamps is $668 a month. They can only be used to buy food -- though not hot food -- and for plants and seeds to grow food.

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all made efforts to raise awareness about the program and remove the stigma associated with it.

In 2004, paper coupons were replaced with cards similar to debit cards onto which benefits can be loaded. In 2008 they were renamed Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits though most people still call them food stamps.

Despite the bipartisan support for the program in the past, some of the recent political rhetoric has food stamp advocates worried.

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich last year derided Democrats as "the party of food stamps". And Republican leaders in the House of Representatives propose changing the program so that the funding is through a "block grant" to the states, rather than allowing it to grow automatically when needed due to an emergency, such as a natural disaster or economic crisis.

In some parts of the country, shoppers using food stamps have almost become the norm. In May 2011, a third of all people in Alabama were on food stamps -- though part of that was because of emergency assistance after communities were destroyed by a series of destructive tornadoes. Washington D.C., Mississippi, New Mexico, Oregon and Tennessee all had about a fifth of their population on food stamps that month.

"Food stamps have traditionally been insulated from politics," said Parke Wilde, professor of U.S. food policy at Tufts University. "But as you look over the current fiscally conservative proposals, the question is, has something fundamentally changed?"

A LOW WAGE SUPPORT PROGRAM

Over the past 20 years, the characteristics of the program's recipients have changed. In 1989, a higher percentage were on benefits than working, but as of 2009 a higher percentage had earned income.

"SNAP is increasingly work support," said Ed Bolen, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

And that's only likely to get worse: So far in the recovery, jobs growth has been concentrated in lower-wage occupations, with minimal growth in middle-income wages as many higher-paid blue collar jobs have disappeared.

And 6 percent of the 72.9 million Americans paid by the hour received wages at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in 2010. That's up from 4.9 percent in 2009, and 3 percent in 2002, according to government data.

Bolen said just based on income, minimum wage single parents are almost always eligible for food stamps.

"This becomes an implicit subsidy for low-wage jobs and in terms of incentives for higher wage job creation that really is not a good thing," said Arindrajit Dube, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose research shows raising the minimum wage would spur economic activity.

Until a couple of weeks ago Tashawna Green, 21, from Queens Village, New York, worked 25 hours a week at an $8.08 hourly rate at retailer Target. She is on food stamps, and says a good number of her former colleagues are too.

"It's a good thing that the government helps, but if employers paid enough and gave enough hours, then we wouldn't need to be on food stamps," said Green, who has a six-year-old daughter.

Of course, with an unemployment rate over 9 percent, some argue that those with any job at all are lucky.

Millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired have to exist only on food stamps and other government aid, such as Medicaid healthcare support. [nN1E7660K4]

And even with unemployment benefits, said Jessica King, 25, from Portland, Oregon, her family juggles bills to ensure the electricity stays on. They are also selling some belongings on Craigslist to raise funds.

King's husband Stephen, 30, an electronics assembly worker, lost his job two months ago when she was seven months pregnant with their second child. It was the third time he has been laid off since 2008.

She said she was reluctant, initially, to go on food stamps.

"I felt the way our national debt was going I didn't want to be part of the problem," said King, who used to work as a cook at a faith-based non-profit organization.

"But I didn't know what else to do and I got to a point where I swallowed my pride and decided to do what was best for my daughter."

Enrich your vocabulary - French and English - in thirty days

2011-08-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Download it

Sarkozy and Merkel push euro unity, no joint bonds

2011-08-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

ReutersBy Nick Vinocur and Leigh Thomas | Reuters – 16 July 2011
PARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany unveiled far-reaching plans on Tuesday for closer euro zone integration and said joint euro bonds may be a longer-term option, leaving the currency area vulnerable to more attacks from traders.

Under heavy pressure to restore confidence in the euro zone following a dramatic market slump, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped short of increasing the bloc's rescue fund but vowed to stand side-by-side in defending the euro and laid the groundwork for future fiscal union.

Their message was that the focus should be on further economic integration rather than signing bailout checks, and suggested that straying from euro zone rules and fiscal targets would no longer be tolerated.

"We have exactly the same position on euro bonds," Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Merkel after their talks.

"Euro bonds can be imagined one day, but at the end of the European integration process, not at the beginning."

But many experts said the measures would fail to assuage markets, which believe a common bond is the only way to ensure affordable financing for euro zone members struggling with debt.

U.S. stocks dropped more than 1 percent and the euro slid as the proposals failed to ease worries about a debt crisis markets fear is spreading to the euro zone's core. Traders had hoped for signals that the issuance of common euro bonds, or an increase of the EFSF, were live options.

"This meeting is all stick -- fiscal rule enforcement -- and no carrot -- a pooling of fiscal resources via a common bond," Rabobank strategist Richard McGuire said.

The statement by the two leaders reflects deep hostility, among voters in northern Europe tired of bailing out the south at a time of austerity at home. That is particularly true in Germany, where growth slowed to almost zero in the second quarter.

"Anyone expecting this meeting to launch euro bonds was not paying attention to the state of political opinion or indeed to the kind of compromises needed for that to happen," said Julian Callow, senior economist at Barclays Capital in London.

"ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE"

In a further rap to financial market players, whose panic-selling this month wiped some $4 trillion off global stocks and sparked a temporary ban in Europe on short-selling, Sarkozy and Merkel also proposed taxing financial transactions.

In plans to be sent on Wednesday to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, the two leaders want a president to be elected to represent the euro zone and twice-yearly meetings of the leaders of the embattled 17-nation bloc.

In one of the most far-reaching ideas, Sarkozy said the French and German finance ministers had been asked to prepare proposals aimed at having a common corporate tax base and tax rate in France and Germany from 2013. He said the two countries would keep a closer track of each others' economic outlooks.

Analysts queried the feasibility of a financial transaction tax, which was an unexpected proposal, given opposition from some European countries and the European Central Bank.

Callow said that while markets needed to see "more flesh on the bones" of the proposals, it was significant that the two leaders had broken into the August holiday period to meet.

"They are pledging a commitment to economic governance which is a step forward and there is also a commitment to a debt brake, although it remains to be seen whether that will be significantly strong," he said.

"Each side is surrendering some sovereignty which in the end could pave the way to much closer political union and so prepare the ground for the issue of euro bonds."

The full details of the written proposals to Van Rompuy will be made public on Wednesday, Sarkozy's office said.

EURO IS A SET OF RULES

Sarkozy and Merkel -- under pressure to convince markets the euro zone is sound or risk watching it unravel -- said their first proposal was for "a real economic government" for the euro zone, with a president elected for two-and-a-half years.

"Germany and France feel absolutely obliged to strengthen the euro as our common currency and further develop it. And it is entirely clear that for this to happen, we need a stronger interplay of financial and economic policy in the euro zone," said Merkel, who went on to a working dinner with Sarkozy.

Sarkozy said that if adopted, their proposal that euro zone governments should enshrine deficit-limiting rules into their constitutions would be obligatory, not optional.

"The euro has allowed us a lot of economic progress but the euro is not just a right, it's a set of rules, a duty, a discipline," he said. "Consequently if the rule is to be adopted by the 17, it will not be an optional rule but obligatory."

While it was unclear how governments could be forced to adopt politically difficult constitutional changes, Sarkozy's tone suggested there would be no more tolerance for straying from rules and even raised the specter of a two-speed union.

"TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?"

Officials in Paris and Berlin played down expectations ahead of Tuesday's meeting, saying euro bonds would not be on the agenda, but markets were still disappointed.

"Rather than the additional check-writing by core European governments that certain markets were looking for, including a new euro bond, they are getting a fiscal discipline golden rule, stronger economic governance, and a new financial transactions tax," said Mohamed el-Erian, co-chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co in California.

The refusal to contemplate a euro bond at this stage is frustrating investors, who have seen Europe's response to the dragging crisis as too little too late. They see the common bond as the bloc's best chance of getting ahead of the curve.

Some analysts fear the European project could lose its way if domestic political pressures curb the ambitions of the leaders of France and Germany, the bloc's main political and economic powerhouse.

Merkel's own conservatives are strongly opposed to a second bailout of Greece according to a recent poll. Sarkozy, already facing a tough re-election battle next year, is having to push through austerity measures to convince markets France can retain its triple-A rating.

Sarkozy and Merkel had already planned to meet this week to discuss their proposals on euro zone governance, but the stakes were raised when French assets hit in last week's market rout.

Investors dumped shares in French banks, which are exposed to Italian debt, as rumors circulated -- denied by rating agencies -- that France's AAA-rating could be at risk.

That sell-off was evidence markets were not convinced by a July 21 deal to give new powers to the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund and for proposals to be made on closer economic governance.

Some still saw Tuesday's ideas boosting the euro, however.

"Sarkozy talks about common governance for the euro zone, which I think is one step closer toward a fiscal union. That's positive for the euro overall," said currency strategist Richard Franulovich at Westpac in New York.

Sarkozy and Merkel push tax plan, closer economic coordination

2011-08-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

By Paris and Berlin reporters | Reuters – 16 august 2011
PARIS (Reuters) - The leaders of France and Germany, under pressure to counter a debt market crisis in Europe, have agreed to float proposals in September for a tax on financial transactions and push for closer joint governance of economic policy, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday.

After talks in Paris, Sarkozy said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were also proposing that all 17 euro zone countries commit to balanced finances and write that goal into their constitutional law by summer 2012.

Among other measures announced, he said they would also seek to ensure better cross-border economic government for the euro zone via twice-yearly meetings of leaders and the creation of a two-and-a-half-year presidency to steer this forum.

"We want to express our absolute will to defend the euro and assume Germany and France's particular responsibilities in Europe and to have on all of these subjects a complete unity of views," Sarkozy told a news conference at his Elysee Palace offices, where he was flanked by Merkel.

The two are under pressure to come up with plans to shore up the euro zone and restore financial market confidence after a year and a half of turmoil that has refused to die down despite bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and the creation of an anti-contagion fund.

S&P downgrades Fannie and Freddie, US-backed debt

2011-08-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

S&P downgrades Fannie and Freddie, farm lenders and bank debt backed by US government
Daniel Wagner and Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writers, On Monday August 8, 2011, 11:40 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Monday downgraded the credit ratings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other agencies linked to long-term U.S. debt.

The agency also lowered the ratings for: farm lenders; long-term U.S. government-backed debt issued by 32 banks and credit unions; and three major clearinghouses, which are used to execute trades of stocks, bonds and options.

All the downgrades were from AAA to AA+, reflecting the same downgrade S&P made of long-term U.S. government debt on Friday.

S&P said the agencies and banks all have debt that is exposed to economic volatility and a further downgrade of long-term U.S. debt. Their creditworthiness hinges on the U.S. government's ability to pay its own creditors.

Stocks plunged further after the downgrades. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 300 points, or 2.8 percent. The S&P 500 stock index tumbled 3.4 percent. Investors seeking safety drove gold prices up and Treasury yields down.

Monday's downgrades of the mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie reflected their "direct reliance" on the U.S. government, S&P said.

Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans worth more than $5 trillion. As part of a nationalized system, they account for nearly all new mortgage loans. Their downgrade might force anyone looking to buy a home to pay higher mortgage rates.

Officials at Standard & Poor's say they will also indicate shortly how local and state governments will be affected by their decision to lower the long-term U.S. debt.

S&P on Friday said it downgraded U.S. debt for the first time in history because the credit rating agency lacks confidence that political leaders will make the choices needed to avert a long-term fiscal crisis.

The downgrade of long-term debt issued by the U.S. government affects the banking and lending industries because many interest rates are pegged to the yields on Treasury securities. In addition, many companies use the securities as collateral that they would surrender if their bets lost value.

The lower credit rating for long-term U.S. debt means that it might be considered less valuable for those purposes. It might become more costly for companies to borrow or trade.

Some analysts said the downgrades were unlikely to have much effect on the companies named by S&P or the broader markets. They noted that Treasury yields remain low and the dollar is getting stronger -- signs that the world still sees the U.S. as a safe harbor in volatile economic times.

The downgrades "are as meaningless as the original action," said Daniel Alpert, managing partner at the investment bank Westwood Capital LLC in New York. He said that investors are rushing into Treasurys, and that they will do the same for "anything backed by the full faith and credit" of the U.S. government. That includes debt issued by Fannie and Freddie and bank debt that was guaranteed by regulators to ease lending after the 2008 financial crisis.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.38 percent from 2.57 percent late Friday. Analysts say traders are shifting out of bonds and European banks are snapping up U.S. debt to steel themselves for a regional financial crisis.

S&P Managing Director John Chambers said that the credit rating agency believes the dollar won't be weakened "under any plausible scenario." He said it will remain the dominant international currency, and that will reduce interest rates for governments and the private sector.

Ten of the country's 12 Federal Home Loan Banks also were downgraded from AAA to AA+. The banks of Chicago and Seattle had already been downgraded earlier to AA+.

A spokesman for Freddie Mac declined to comment on the move.

AP Business Writer Derek Kravitz contributed to this report.

6 Ways to Pay Off Credit Card Debt

2011-08-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

Source: Yahoo Finance

by Dawn Papandrea

Saturday, August 6, 2011Are you facing monstrous credit card balances? Unfortunately, there is no quick-fix solution to get out of debt, despite what solicitors or infomercials might have you believe.
There are some tried-and-true methods for paying down debt. However, it's staying committed to your financial goals, not necessarily how you go about it that matters most, says Gail Cunningham, spokeswoman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a nonprofit organization.

Consider the following debt reduction techniques and determine which method motivates you most.
No. 1: The "snowball" method.
"When it comes to paying off debt, we need to be more concerned with behavior modification than math," says Dave Ramsey, author of "Total Money Makeover" and host of a nationally syndicated radio show, "The Dave Ramsey Show." His solution is the "debt snowball" method, which involves paying off debts from smallest to largest, regardless of interest rate. "Pay off the first debt quickly, and it gets you fired up to do it again and again," he says.
Ramsey believes the "snowball" method is for every type of consumer. "The only time that you should pay off a larger debt sooner than a smaller one is when you owe the IRS, or if you are trying to stop a foreclosure," he says. "Other than that, everyone should focus on paying the smallest to the largest debt."
[Click here to check current credit card offers, including rates and terms.]
No. 2: Pay the most expensive balance first.
If you are someone who is really motivated by numbers, you will realize the account that is doing you the most damage is the one with the highest interest rate, and you'll take great pleasure in paying that down, says Cunningham.
"Also, if the account with the highest interest is utilizing more than 30 percent of that credit line, focus on paying that one off first to get it under that threshold," she says. Doing so will improve your credit score since debt utilization, which is how much you owe compared to how much available credit you have, is an important factor in determining your score. The lower your utilization is, the better.
No. 3: Do a balance transfer.
Cunningham says if you're considering doing a balance transfer, you should first get out your calculator. "There are certainly fees associated with transfers, so you want to make sure the lower interest rate offsets the fees. You can be a savvy consumer and make that tool work for you if you're very disciplined," she says.
That means you'll need to fight the temptation to use that newly cleared card, while also committing to paying off the balance you moved over in a timely manner, says Deatra Riley, financial education manager at CredAbility, a nonprofit credit counseling and education service. "Balance transfers are a waste of time if you do it with no plan of action," she says.
Riley recommends dividing the total amount owed by the number of months for which the zero interest rate applies, and making sure you can fit that monthly payoff amount into your budget.
No. 4: Keep debt where it is.
Ramsey warns that moving debt around is only putting a temporary patch on your financial wounds. "The danger of moving credit card balances is that it's easy to start thinking you've actually done something to address the problem," he says. After all, you still have all that debt to pay off.
According to Riley, it's also important to keep in mind, especially if you plan to apply for any type of loan in the near future, that opening a new credit account will negatively affect your credit score for the short term.
No. 5: Grow your emergency fund.
In its 2011 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey, the NFCC discovered that 33 percent of Americans have zero dollars in non-retirement savings. "They are one flat tire away from financial distress," says Cunningham.
When an emergency does happen, the cost may mean adding to the current debt load, borrowing from friends and family or forgoing other expenses.
Cunningham advises against wiping out savings to pay down debt, especially if you're not confident about the security of your job. Instead, she suggests keeping a "rainy-day cushion of at least one month's income" in an emergency fund.
No. 6: Use some savings for debt reduction.
If your debt is overwhelming, you might decide to dip into your savings. Just don't bleed it completely dry, says Ramsey. "I always recommend having a $1,000 emergency fund while you get out of debt. Emergencies will happen." You don't want to put yourself in a position where you have to borrow money for the unexpected, he says.
Once you are debt-free, says Ramsey, then you can shift your focus onto building an emergency fund that will cover three to six months' worth of expenses.

A Debt Reduction Breakdown
Technique	Pros	Cons	Who it's good for
Debt snowball method	Get motivated every time an account balance reaches zero.	On paper, it's not the most financially sensible.	Those motivated by small successes.
Balance with highest rate paid first	You'll save more over time.	Must be very focused, and stick to a rigid payment plan.	Those motivated by interest savings.
Balance transfers	Will allow you to save on interest, so you can pay off the principal faster.	Opening a new account can hurt your credit score in the short term.	Determined risk-takers.
Savings-focused	"Rainy day" money means you'll be prepared when emergencies arise.	Savings account interest is less than the interest on your debts.	Potential layoff victims.
Debt payoff-focused	The feeling of relief that comes with a clean slate, and an improved credit score.	If an emergency occurs and savings cannot cover it, you may be forced to borrow.	Anyone who's consumed by their debt.

US downgrade raises anxiety, if not interest rates

2011-08-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

By PAUL WISEMAN - AP Economics Writer | AP – July 6, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — The real danger from the downgrade of U.S. government debt by Standard & Poor's isn't higher interest rates. It's the hit to the nation's fragile economic psyche and rattled financial markets.

S&P's decision to strip the U.S. of its sterling AAA credit rating for the first time and move it down one notch, to AA+, deals a blow to the confidence of consumers and businesses at a dangerous time, economists say.

The agency is "striking at the heart of what makes the global economy tick," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economists for the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. "It isn't just dollars and cents."

One economist, Paul Dales of Capital Economics, worried Saturday that the downgrade could even trigger another financial crisis that sends Western economies back into a recession.

The timing could hardly be worse for the U.S. The economy added 117,000 jobs in July, more than expected. But other economic indicators, including manufacturing, consumer spending and overall growth, are getting weaker.

And the markets just came through their most harrowing two weeks since the financial crisis of 2008. The Dow lost about 10 percent of its value on fears of a new recession and Europe's spiraling financial problems.

In normal times, in another country, a downgrade in a country's sovereign debt rating probably would force its government to pay higher interest rates to convince investors to keep buying its debt.

If that happened, it would drive up the rates that consumers pay on mortgages and auto loans, which are often tied to the government's interest rate.

US credit score downgraded by S&P. What's next ?

2011-08-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

S&P issues unprecedented downgrade of US credit rating, saying debt package falls short
Martin Crutsinger, The Associated Press, On Friday August 5, 2011, 10:18 pm EDT

The United States has lost its coveted top AAA credit rating.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Friday downgraded the nation's rating for the first time since the U.S. won the top ranking in 1917. The move came after Congress haggled over budget cuts and the nation's borrowing limit — and failed to cut enough government spending to satisfy S&P. The issue has contributed to convulsions in financial markets.

The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was expected. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody's Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. S&P said that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country's debt situation. Moody's said Friday it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation's debt, but that it might still lower it.

One of the biggest questions after the downgrade was what impact it would have on already nervous investors. Many financial analysts said investors were expecting a downgrade. But some selling was expected when stock trading resumed Monday morning. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 699 points this week, the biggest weekly point drop since October 2008.

"I think we will have a knee-jerk reaction on Monday," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank.

One fear in the market has been that a downgrade would scare buyers away from U.S. debt. If that were to happen, the interest raid paid on U.S. bonds, notes and bills would have to rise to attract buyers. However, even without its AAA rating, U.S. debt is seen as one of the safest investments in the world. And investors clearly weren't being scared away this week. While stocks were plunging, investors were buying Treasurys. The yield on the 10-year note, which moves opposite its price, fell to a low of 2.39 per cent on Thursday.

The government fought the downgrade. Administration sources familiar with the discussions contended that the S&P analysis was fundamentally flawed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. S&P had sent the administration a draft document in the early afternoon Friday and the administration, after examining the numbers, challenged the analysis.

In a statement, Treasury said, "A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself."

S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years. It said such a downgrade to AA would occur if the agency sees smaller reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.

In its statement, S&P said that it had changed its view "of the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties" over a credible deficit reduction plan.

S&P said it was now "pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics anytime soon."

Obama signs debt bill after final Senate vote

2011-08-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

By ANDREW TAYLOR - Associated Press | AP – 2 July 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate emphatically passed emergency legislation Tuesday to avoid a first-ever government default, rushing the legislation to President Barack Obama for his signature just hours before the deadline. The vote was 74-26.

Obama signed the bill little more than an hour later.

Tuesday's vote capped an extraordinarily difficult Washington battle pitting tea party Republican forces in the House against Obama and Democrats controlling the Senate. The resulting compromise paired an essential increase in the government's borrowing cap with promises of more than $2 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade.

"It's an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means," Obama said after the vote. "This is, however, just the first step. This compromise requires that both parties work together on a larger plan to cut the deficit."

Much of the measure, which the House passed Monday night, was negotiated on terms set by House Speaker John Boehner, including a demand that any increase in the nation's borrowing cap be matched by spending cuts. But the legislation also meets demands made by Obama, including debt-limit increases large enough to keep the government funded into 2013 and curbs on growth of the Pentagon budget.

"We've had to settle for less than we wanted, but what we've achieved is in no way insignificant," said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "But I think it was the view of those in my party that we'd try to get as much spending cuts as we could from a government we didn't control. And that's what we've done with this bipartisan agreement."

Many supporters of the legislation lamented what they saw as flaws and the intense partisanship from which it was forged. In the end, it was a lowest-common-denominators approach that puts off tough decisions on tax increases and cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare.

"What troubles me about it is that the bipartisan compromise also represents a kind of bipartisan agreement by each party to yield to the other party's most politically and ideologically sensitive priority," said Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn. "In the case of Democrats, it's to protect entitlement spending. ... In the case of Republicans, it's to not raise taxes."

The measure would provide an immediate $400 billion increase in the $14.3 trillion U.S. borrowing cap, with $500 billion more assured this fall. That $900 billion would be matched by cuts to agency budgets over the next 10 years.

The Senate vote was never in doubt after Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and McConnell signed on. But like Monday's House vote, defections came from liberal Democrats unhappy that Obama gave too much ground in the talks, as well as from conservative Republicans who said the measure would barely dent deficits that require the government to borrow more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends.

"This is a time for us to make tough choices as compared to kick the can down the road one more time," said freshman GOP Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas.

The measure sets up a fall drama that promises to again test the ability of Obama and Republicans to work cooperatively. It establishes a special bipartisan committee to draft legislation to find up to $1.5 trillion more in deficit cuts for a vote later this year. They're likely to come from such programs as federal retirement benefits, farm subsidies, Medicare and Medicaid. The savings would be matched by a further increase in the borrowing cap.

There's no guarantee the committee, to be evenly split between the warring parties, will agree on such legislation. But there are powerful incentives to do so because more budget gridlock would trigger a crippling round of automatic cuts across much of the budget, including Pentagon coffers.

And questions linger about the effect the grueling political free-for-all will have on the U.S. credit rating.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told ABC News that he didn't know whether the debt-limit fight would cause America's AAA credit rating to be downgraded. "It's not my judgment to make," he said. Geithner also said he fears world confidence in the United States was damaged by "this spectacle."

Enactment of the measure provides welcome closure for Obama, who has seen his poll numbers sag during the debt-limit battle.

GOP presidential candidates such as Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann issued statements opposing the legislation.

"As with any compromise, the outcome is far from satisfying," Obama conceded in a video his re-election campaign sent to millions of Democrats.

In a tweet, the president was more positive: "The debt agreement makes a significant down payment to reduce the deficit — finding savings in both defense and domestic spending."

Colleges That Bring the Highest Paycheck 2011

2011-07-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

by Paul Toscano
Monday, July 25, 2011
Location, prestige, academic reputation and tuition are major factors for students in the college selection process, but post-graduate salary is something rarely taken into consideration.
Although salaries depend heavily on a graduate's field of work, companies are willing to pay a premium for students hailing from the nation's top universities. But which undergraduate institutions offer the most valuable educations?

Recently, PayScale.com released a report on the highest salary potential among the nation's top colleges, and from this data, colleges and universities can be ranked by the mid-career median salaries of its graduates. For schools with the same mid-career median salaries, starting median salary determines their relative rank.

So, which schools have highest paid graduates?

8. Duke University

Mid-career median salary: $111,000
Starting median salary: $59,600

Location: Durham, N.C.
2010-2011 tuition: $40,472
College rank: 9 (National)
Acceptance rate: 18.9%
Total undergrad enrollment: 6,578

7. Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Mid-career median salary: $113,000
Starting median salary: $61,000

Location: Brooklyn, N.Y.
2010-2011 tuition: $36,284
College rank: 153 (National)
Acceptance rate: 55%
Total undergrad enrollment: 1,732

6. Dartmouth College

Mid-career median salary: $114,000
Starting median salary: $51,600

Location: Hanover, N.H.
2010-2011 tuition: $40,437
College rank: 9 (National)
Acceptance rate: 12.6%
Total undergrad enrollment: 4,196

5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Mid-career median salary: $115,000
Starting median salary: $69,700

Location: Cambridge, Mass.
2010-2011 tuition: $39,212
College rank: 7 (National)
Acceptance rate: 10.7%
Total undergrad enrollment: 4,232

4. Harvard University

Mid-career median salary: $116,000
Starting median salary: $54,100

Location: Cambridge, Mass.
2010-2011 tuition: $38,416
College rank: 1 (National)
Acceptance rate: 7.5%
Total undergrad enrollment: 6,655

3. Harvey Mudd College

Mid-career median salary: $121,000
Starting median salary: $64,400

Location: Claremont, Calif.
2010-2011 tuition: $40,390
College rank: 18 (Liberal Arts)
Acceptance rate: 34.1%
Total undergrad enrollment: 757

2. California Institute of Technology (CalTech)

Mid-career median salary: $123,000
Starting median salary: $69,600

Location: Pasadena, Calif.
2010-2011 tuition: $36,282
College rank: 7 (National)
Acceptance rate: 15.3%
Total undergrad enrollment: 951

1. Princeton University

Mid-career median salary: $130,000
Starting median salary: $56,900

Location: Princeton, N.J.
2010-2011 tuition: $36,640
College rank: 2 (National)
Acceptance rate: 10.1%
Total undergrad enrollment: 5,113
For more colleges that bring the highest paychecks, visit CNBC.com.

Bank of America reports huge loss

2011-07-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

AFPBy Alexander Osipovich | AFP – 19 July 2011
Bank of America said on Tuesday that it lost $9.1 billion in the second quarter, due to its record-breaking settlement over subprime mortgage claims stemming from the financial crisis.

Its earnings amounted to a swing into a loss of 90 cents a share, in line with analysts' forecasts after the bank set aside $14 billion last month to compensate angry investors for their losses on dodgy mortgage-backed securities.

Without the mortgage settlement and other exceptional items, the bank would have posted a profit of $3.7 billion, or 33 cents per share, Bank of America said in its quarterly earnings report.

"Obviously, the solid performance in our underlying businesses continues to be clouded by the costs we are absorbing from our legacy mortgage issues," chief executive Brian Moynihan said in a statement.

The bank's revenues in the April-June period were $13.2 billion, a drop of 55 percent from the same period last year. Analysts had expected revenues of $12.3 billion.

Bank of America, the largest bank in the United States in terms of deposits, announced a settlement last month aimed at resolving issues from its disastrous 2008 acquisition of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.

Until 2008, Countrywide played a leading role in generating mortgages that were bundled into securities and resold to investors.

Following a downturn in the US housing market, though, such mortgage-backed securities plunged in value, triggering the global financial crisis.

Bank of America's proposed $8.5 billion payout to 22 big private investment groups, which still needs court approval, is the largest such settlement by a financial institution stemming from the crisis.

Along with that sum, Bank of America also set aside $5.5 billion for pending liabilities to other investors not included in the settlement.

"The company continues to work through legacy issues, but it has been costly, and there is still more work to do," analysts with Nomura Equity Research said in a research note.

Bank of America's shares had slumped 1.7 percent on the New York Stock Exchange shortly before 1500 GMT on Tuesday.

In contrast, shares of its number-two rival Wells Fargo rallied 4.0 percent after the San Francisco-based bank reported that its net income surged 30 percent to $3.73 billion in the second quarter.

Wells Fargo's earnings per share were 70 cents, just beating analysts' consensus expectations of 69 cents.

Weighed down by a sluggish economy, its revenues were $20.39 billion, around 5 percent less than the second quarter of 2010 but still a modest uptick from first-quarter 2011 revenues of $20.33 billion.

"Our business fundamentals were strong with increased revenues, loans and deposits, lower operating costs, improved credit quality and higher capital levels," Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf said in a statement.

The slowing economy also weighed on investment-banking titan Goldman Sachs, which reported that its second-quarter net income was $1.05 billion, below analysts' expectations.

Goldman's revenues were $7.28 billion, down 18 percent from the same quarter of 2010 and 39 percent lower than in the first quarter of this year. Analysts had expected revenues of $8.14 billion.

"During the second quarter, the operating environment was more difficult given global macroeconomic concerns," Goldman's chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a statement.

Goldman shares were down 0.5 percent at about 1500 GMT.

Best way to invest in gold

2011-07-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

Choose the best way of gold investing
By Jon Safer
Gold is considered the ideal precious metal to invest in, particularly when the values of other classes of assets are declining. Individuals choose to invest in Gold because it is seen as a hedge in times of economic recession.

During harsh economic times, paper money becomes less valuable, and gold is considered a sure alternative. Persons also opt to invest in gold because of the potential for profit, and wealth creation. Read more

The $89,000 Online MBA Degree

2011-07-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

Published: Wednesday, 6 Jul 2011 | 10:44 AM ET
By: Stephanie Landsman
One of the world's top ranked business schools is taking its MBA program on a new course.

Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill begins its first ever online MBA program this week.

Even though the program is conducted online, tuition is the same for students who physically attend class. Both degrees cost $89,000. 19 students—mostly in their 30s - are enrolled in the online version.

"We thought there was an opportunity to reach an audience that hasn't been reached before," said UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean Jim Dean. (Yes, he's Dean Dean.) "People who are qualified to do a top tier MBA, but couldn't quit their job for full-time or travel can do this… Frankly, this is something the world has never seen before."

The significance is that this MBA online program is being conducted by a highly ranked school. The Wall Street Journal rates UNC Kenan-Flagler as the nation's sixth best business school. BusinessWeek has it as 16th. Read more

The trade dollar

2011-07-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

The trade dollar, dólar de intercambio o intercambio dólares was a United States dollar coin minted to compete with other large silver coins that were already popular in East Asia. The idea first came about in the 1860s, when the price of silver began to decline due to increased mining efforts in the western United States. A bill providing in part for the issuance of the trade dollar was eventually put before Congress, where it was approved and later signed into law as the Coinage Act of 1873. The act made trade dollars legal tender up to five dollars. A number of designs were considered for the trade dollar, and an obverse and reverse created by William Barber were selected.
The coins were first struck in 1873, and most of the production was sent to China. Eventually, bullion producers began converting large amounts of silver into trade dollars, causing the coins to make their way into American commercial channels. This caused frustration among those who were given them in payment, as the coins were largely maligned and traded for less than one dollar each. In response to their wide distribution in American commerce, the coins were officially demonetized in 1876, but continued to circulate. Production of business strikes ended in 1878, though the mintage of proof coins continued until 1883. The trade dollar was re-monetized when the Coinage Act of 1965 was signed into law. Read more

Bernanke "prepared to respond" if economy worsens

2011-07-13T23:24:00.001-07:00

ReutersBy Pedro da Costa and Mark Felsenthal | Reuters – 13 July 2011
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve is ready to ease monetary policy further if economic growth and inflation slow much more, Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday, giving a boost to the bruised stock market.

While holding to a view that recent economic softness would eventually pass, he appeared less confident in that projection and more willing to entertain the possibility of another round of stimulus.

"The possibility remains that the recent economic weakness may prove more persistent than expected and that deflationary risks might re-emerge, implying a need for additional policy support," Bernanke told the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

The Fed launched an unprecedented round of bond-buying in late 2009 to try to boost the economy and make credit more available, spending some $1.7 trillion on mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries before it ended in March 2010. Later in the year it initiated a second round that wrapped up in June this year in which $600 billion of bonds were bought.

Still, the economy remains in a soft recovery.

Bernanke specifically noted the Fed's forecasts in June, already revised down significantly from April, had not incorporated recent data, particularly last Friday's dismal employment report. It showed job growth essentially ground to a halt in May and June while the jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent.

Hopes for further monetary support sent U.S. stocks, which have taken a drubbing over the last week on worries about Europe's debt troubles and a soft U.S. economy, 1 percent higher, while Treasury bond prices and the dollar tumbled.

"The market wasn't thinking there would be any mention of QE3 whatsoever and here we're finding out QE3 is not being ruled out. It's a tantalizing headline," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Asked whether the Fed would be willing to launch another bond purchase program if the economy slumps, Bernanke said: "We have to keep all the options on the table. We don't know where the economy is going to go."

Embarking on a path of further stimulus would not be simple. The second, $600 billion bond buying program, which ended in June, raised eyebrows both at home and abroad when it was first announced back in November.

At least one Fed official, Dallas Fed Bank President Richard Fisher, on Wednesday served noticed that he would oppose any such idea because, he said, the economy already has ample liquidity and adding more might not spur activity.

"I will not support further monetary accommodation," Fisher told reporters after a speech in Dallas. "There's so much liquidity out there, what's the trigger to put it to work?" said Fisher, a voter on the U.S. central bank's policy-setting committee.

Republicans and some economists accused the Fed of laying the groundwork for future inflation, while leaders in emerging economies accused the Fed of a backdoor dollar devaluation.

Pressed on the budget, Bernanke reiterated his warning that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would deal a severe blow to the global economic recovery.

"Cutting programs or raising taxes in ways that will reduce aggregate demand ... is going to slow the economy," he said.

Minutes from the Fed's June meeting, released on Tuesday, showed some policymakers believe the Fed should stand ready to provide more support to the economy if the recovery flags, rekindling the threat of a debilitating downward spiral in prices and wages.

Others on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, however, felt inflation risks might force the central bank to withdraw stimulus sooner than is currently anticipated.

DOOR OPEN TO QE3

Still, given the change in tune, some investors were betting the more dovish members of the committee would win the day in pushing for a third round of quantitative easing if the economy continues to deteriorate.

"My initial reaction was 'QE3 here we come'," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "We suspected the Fed would come up with some sort of QE3 in light of the disturbance surrounding the sovereign debt markets."

Bernanke did not go into great detail regarding Europe, but the Fed chief's outlook on U.S. growth prospects was understandably cautious.

After recovering from the steepest recession in generations beginning in the summer of 2009, the U.S. economy has lost momentum in recent months. Gross domestic product expanded just 1.9 percent in the first three months of the year, and the second quarter does not look to have been much better.

Bernanke held to the view that recent weakness was due in part to temporary factors like energy costs and the effects on global industry from Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

But he acknowledged the labor market remains weaker than the Fed would like.

"The most recent data attest to the continuing weakness of the labor market," Bernanke said.

Bernanke defended the second round of bond buys against critics who said it had been ineffective.

He said the Fed estimates round two of quantitative easing, or QE2, lowered long-term interest rates by between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage point, which Bernanke said would be roughly equivalent to a 0.40 to 1.20 percentage point decline in the federal funds rate, which is currently set in a range between zero and 0.25 percent.

Regarding inflation, Bernanke reiterated the recent rise in prices was mostly linked to transitory factors such as higher energy and commodity prices, and should trend back down.

Bell Canada slapped with $10,000,000 fine

2011-06-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Bell Canada to pay $10-million fine for misleading ads, Competition Bureau says
LuAnn LaSalle, The Canadian Press, On Tuesday June 28, 2011, 5:56 pm EDT

Bell Canada must pay a $10-million fine for using misleading advertising — including "100 lines of fine print" — on prices for its home phone, Internet, satellite TV and wireless services, the federal Competition Bureau ruled.

The federal watchdog said Tuesday that Bell's advertised prices were not available because of additional mandatory fees related to modem rentals, phone and digital television services that were hidden from consumers in "fine print disclaimers."

"If you're going to advertise the price, it had better be the real price," said Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of Competition.

"You can't use a disclaimer to advertise prices that aren't available to anyone. In this case, consumers had to wade through 1,600 words — 100 lines of fine print — just to try to sort out, if they could, what the real price was," Aitken said in an interview.

Aitken said Bell had been using this kind of misleading advertising nationally since 2007 in printed material, on its website and in some television and radio spots.

The fine is the maximum amount allowed under the Competition Act. Bell (TSX:BCE) has agreed to change its offending advertising within 60 days.

"This is the first case where that level of penalty has been agreed to," she said.

The bureau said Bell had advertised a bundle for home phone, Internet and television services starting as low as $69.90 per month. However, the lowest possible price, including the mandatory fees, was $80.27, the competition bureau said.

Aitken said Bell also offered a home phone service for $14.95 a month, but the actual price was about 20 per cent higher when the mandatory fees were included.

A Bell spokesman said the telecom company disagrees with the decision but agreed to resolve the issue rather than going through a lengthy and costly legal challenge.

"Disclaimers in advertising have been common practice in the communications marketplace and many other industries in Canada," said Mark Langton.

"The bureau has examined our advertising in the past and never raised concerns about price disclaimers," he said in an email.

"We've always disclosed all fees in our advertising. The bureau uses a bell.ca example to explain its position, but customers could not actually buy our products without seeing any and all fees that would apply."

Aitken said she hopes the message that it's not acceptable to use fine print to explain prices goes beyond the telecom industry to businesses in general.

"Something as important as the total price that you're going to offer, it had better be clear."

The $10 million will go into a general government fund and Bell is paying an additional $100,000 to the Competition Bureau to cover the costs of the investigation, Aitken said.

What not to say in a job interview

2011-06-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

5 Terrible Things to Say at an Interview (Don’t Say These Things - Ever)

Source: Monster
By Amanda Frank
Monster Contributing Writer

If getting through a job interview with no major gaffs is a noble beginning for a newbie career hunter, why set such low expectations?

You already know more than we did at your age, or should if you’ve been properly taking advantage of the Internet, which simply didn’t exist when I used to walk 22 miles to school in a blizzard.

When I had my first job interview for an entry-level job straight out of university in (sorry the number pad has been disabled) there was no Monster Canada Career Advice web site to warn me against divulging my passionate feelings toward Leonard Cohen to the interviewer. As innocent as it seemed to me at the time, anything alluding to sexuality was wrong and displaying that lack of judgment cost me any further consideration for the job. I feel this is worth mentioning today, the world is more open, the Internet is a free-for-all, but the corporate world is still conservative, prim and proper (even if it’s just an illusion).

Leonard Who?

The generation gap between us may preclude any mutual experience with my favorite 76 years old poet/writer/singer whose sound is too mellow for Rock Band. Maybe you’ll pick up his music over the course of your meanderings through life and it will stir you to grow in some way. Likewise there’s the whole world of work to discover, and your place in it to conquer.

Work is another long learning process involving the accumulation of wisdom, which takes years of experience, which of course takes time. No employer hiring you fresh out of school is expecting you to know your stuff like a seasoned pro but they do want you to demonstrate judgment, dedication and responsibility.

Since we’ve already covered no-no #1 – communicating suggestive thoughts, let’s skip to the next top 5 things you should never say in an interview – ever.

Don’t Dish Out Lame Compliments or Be Chummy with the Interviewer

Greetings should match your wardrobe, business formal or corporate casual. If you’re tempted to break the ice by throwing a compliment her way say something nice about the office and leave it at that.

You might confuse her into thinking you’re a flighty fashionista if you speak more passionately about her handbag than you do about your interest in the job. If you’re a male candidate paying attention to her eyes, hair or smell, your “flirtations” will likely be perceived as lame attempts to score favoritism.

Don’t pay any false compliments because they will come across as fake. Hiring managers are sensitive if not trained to read body language emitted by people when they tell lies.

Don’t Blame Your Ex-Boss for Anything

You may want to reconsider throwing around accusations about your former boss, as it might call into question a bunch of factors, for example, the other side of the story, your own sense of accountability and issues dealing with authority. The best way to talk about a bad experience with a former boss is to wrap it up with a positive spin. Talk about how you overcame challenges citing specific examples of you honing your problem-solving skills. Show you’re team spirited. Shift into positive contributions you’ve made to team projects at work, interning or as an undergrad. Go as far back as you can go into your past experiences and include things you didn’t put on your resume or cover letter even if they’re not directly relevant to the job.

Don’t Ask the Interviewer about the Salary Range

Similar to a first date, in the first round of job interviews your goal should be to charm the pants off your prospective employer and get that ‘second date’.

Try to bond as much as possible by engaging her enthusiasm in hiring you. Make sure you sell yourself as a conceptual match before moving into awkward salary talk. Use this time to show you have loftier priorities than salary. Instead convey your interest in contributing to a stimulating learning environment.

Unless you’re asked, “what is your salary expectation?” don’t broach the subject. Be prepared to provide a realistic salary range. You’re still too green to command a very large salary, and assuming you’re still single and mortgage-free, you can afford to make less money. Instead look for valuable opportunities to learn, travel, be mentored and develop your skills.

Don’t Spill Embarrassing Personal Baggage to the Interviewer

Open-ended questions leave you a lot of leeway to make big mistakes. A great way to exercise caution is to think before speaking. Don’t over divulge personal information like your mother’s mental history, the current state of your irritable bowel syndrome or the fight you had last night with your boyfriend. To add depth to your experience your interview answers are probably going to extend beyond your work history. Besides academics you should draw on your personal accomplishments in your hobbies and athletic and artistic endeavors.

Also keep in mind that people like the sound of their own voice. She’ll develop an inexplicable complicity for you if you let her do a lot of the talking. First of all you can use this information, much like a psychic does, to feedback things she just told you she wants to hear. To get her talking ask a few prepared questions about the business and its organization. And remember to keep your own rambling in check.

Don’t Say This: “So what is it exactly you guys do here?”

When it comes time to answer ‘the final question’ with a question please don’t cross your leg, clasp your chin in feigned interest and ask, “So what is it exactly you guys do here?”

You can make yourself look good just being curious and showing that you figured out their business model all by yourself. Outshine your competitors by being exhaustively knowledgeable about the company. Use the web site, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook. This shows you’re keeping your eye on the big picture – your future. Ask a thoughtful engaging question that gets them thinking they might want to groom you for bigger better things. You may be hired for a starter job today but your dream job could be lurking around the corner office, with a plush chair and expensed lunches waiting for you to prove yourself worthy, for just a little while longer.

In conclusion, I thought I might add one more thing you should never say, “Just one sec, that’s my phone.” You shouldn’t ever interrupt an interview to take a call, unless somehow you know it’s to say your house is on fire and the person handling any emergencies that might arise while you’re at interview has suddenly slipped into a coma and can’t call 911 to save your burning cat and it’s really too small a window for anything that calamitous to happen. For the 45 minutes you’re in the interview everything you say and do should be of singular mind and focus, the job. Make a connection and you’ll make it to the next round.

Why these companies failed or are failing ?

2011-06-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

5 big companies’ biggest blunders
Source: Investopedia
By Janet Fowler, On Wednesday June 1, 2011
It's a simple fact that trends come and go. Consumer wants and needs change over time, and companies must constantly evolve and adapt to survive. Companies that do this well can weather the economic booms and busts, and potentially thrive throughout the years. But what about when a company's poor decisions or lack of ability to evolve ultimately lead to its own decline? There's a virtually endless list of businesses that have either gone bust completely, or been bought up by other companies - living on in name alone.

1. Atari
Atari was the forerunner of the video game market through the 1970s and early 1980s. The company was known for it large selection of games, which could be found in video arcades worldwide, later followed by a video game console that allowed its fans to enjoy the gaming experience at home. The 1980s saw an increase in competition for Atari, especially with the founding of Activision - a company created by former employees of Atari. Atari had been banking on the success of its home version of the Pac-Man arcade game, only to find that the game was not as big a success as it had predicted. A series of video game flops was followed by what was probably Atari's biggest mistake of all. Nintendo offered Atari the opportunity to sell its product in North America under the Atari name. When these companies couldn't come to an agreement, Nintendo decided to sell its product independently. Nintendo enjoyed great success with the release of its home video game console, but Atari's days were numbered. Atari still produces video games, but this brand's golden age is generally thought to be relegated to nostalgia and retro-kitsch.

2. Blockbuster
Though Blockbuster may still be in business under Chapter 11 in the U.S., this company has been struggling after being forced to close a large number of its outlets (including 146 in Canada). What caused this change? To begin with, it could be argued that Blockbuster did little to foster a positive relationship with customers. After negotiating deals with movie studios, Blockbuster was able to drive out much of the competition by offering lower prices with a percentage of each rental fee going directly into profits. This put many of the smaller video rental companies out of business. Blockbuster then increased prices, but held on to customers by monopolizing the new release rental market.

In recent years, the video rental market has revolutionized, and consumers are able to access new release movies through alternative means. Pay-Per-View and Netflix allow consumers to view films without ever having to leave home. Consumers don't need to worry about late fees or out-of-stock DVDs. Some smaller video rental chains have been able to weather the storm by catering to niche markets and offering obscure, vintage or foreign films. It will be interesting to see if Blockbuster is able to find a way to stay relevant in this highly competitive market. (Don't choose this last-resort option until you learn how it will affect your future.

3. AOL
America Online started out in the 1980s, and as the company grew, it became quite popular with web surfing newbies because they provided users with a simple and straight-forward method for using the internet. AOL continued to grow, merging with Time Warner in 2000 in an attempt to become a media superpower. However, as computer users became more tech-savvy, many of AOL's customers left for other internet service providers, no longer feeling the need for AOL's simplistic and streamlined product. Consumers had some concern for the limitations that AOL placed on users, and the fact that AOL charged for the use of screen names, email and software, which many other providers offered for free. Because AOL failed to evolve with its consumers' technical abilities and their desire for unrestricted internet content, the company lost significant market share. (If a company files for bankruptcy, stockholders have the most to lose.

4. Converse
Even though Converse shoes may still be seen on many a foot worldwide, this company is now actually owned by Nike. Converse started out in the early 1900s, becoming well known for its outstanding basketball shoes. In later decades, Converse enjoyed a revival within American counterculture, including punk rockers and skateboarders, garnering up to seven per cent of the market share. Unfortunately, a series of dramas led this company into financial difficulties in the 1990s, including some athletic endorsements that ended poorly. Advertising budgets and celebrity endorsements dwindled, and Converse found that it was no longer able to compete with some of the larger athletic shoe companies. Even though Converse still had many brand loyalists, its market share shrank to an estimated one per cent by the end of 2000. This, combined with a lower average selling price for its product compared to many of its competitors meant that Converse was simply not earning a large enough profit to survive. Converse had sizable debts and filed for bankruptcy. In 2003, Nike purchased the brand and has found success in reviving its retro appeal.

5. Chi-Chi's
Chi-Chi's, a Mexican-themed restaurant, started out in 1976 and thrived, despite the fact that Mexican cuisine wasn't widely popular at the time. The company became a huge success and grew rapidly. The success of Chi-Chi's led to increased competition through the 1980s and '90s, which ate into Chi-Chi's market share significantly and forced it to file for bankruptcy in late 2003. Shortly afterward, the company's final death blow came from a massive Hepatitis-A outbreak linked to a Chi-Chi's location in Pennsylvania. At the time, the outbreak was the largest in U.S. history, with more than 650 confirmed cases linked to green onions the restaurant had served, which resulted in four deaths. Although the sickness was not linked to the staff or cleanliness of the restaurants, a number of large settlements were paid out to many of the affected patrons, forcing the company to say adios to its North American business. Chi-Chi's still operates in a handful of other countries.

The Bottom Line
Perhaps success in business has a lot do with luck, though there are some basic concepts that can be easily learned from these five companies. Never underestimate the value of building a solid relationship with your customers. Even though consumers can be fickle, companies can enjoy some amount of customer loyalty when the company is perceived as being honest and providing a solid product. Companies must be constantly reviewing customer needs so that their products and services will stay relevant. Companies must always be monitoring what their competitors are doing, and attempt to maintain an edge over their direct competition. When companies suffer from bad press, it's important that they use their public relations specialists to craft responses that won't drive fear into consumers. Companies must strategize in order to weather economic storms, as well as changing consumer trends.

Bush praised Obama after call on bin Laden

2011-05-14T15:37:00.001-07:00

Fri May 13, 10:59 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Former US president George W. Bush praised the mission to eliminate Osama bin Laden as a "good call" but was "not overjoyed" by the news, ABC News reported Friday.

ABC said Bush told an audience this week that he received word that his successor President Barack Obama wanted to talk to him while dining at a restaurant.

"I was eating souffle at Rise Restaurant with Laura and two buddies," Bush said according to an ABC News contributor. "I excused myself and went home to take the call," he added.

"Obama simply said 'Osama Bin Laden is dead.'"

Bush said Obama described in detail the mission to raid bin Laden's Pakistani compound on May 2 and that he told Obama, "Good call."

Bush, who initiated the global hunt for bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks, has declined interview requests since the Al-Qaeda leader was eliminated as well as an invitation from Obama to join him at Ground Zero to meet with victims' families.

But he spoke to a crowd at a Las Vegas event on Wednesday about bin Laden's death.

When asked how he felt upon learning the news, Bush said he was "not overjoyed," explaining that the campaign to track down Al-Qaeda leader was done not "out of hatred but to exact judgment."

"The guy is dead. That is good," Bush said of bin Laden. "Osama's death is a great victory in the war on terror. He was held up as a leader."

He added that the intelligence services "deserve a lot of credit. They built a mosaic of information, piece by piece."

And Bush praised the legendary Navy SEAL Team Six saying: "They are awesome, skilled, talented and brave."

Shortly after the news of bin Laden's death, Bush issued a statement saying the mission marked "a victory for America."

New pop star-turned-president takes power in struggling Haiti

2011-05-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

By Trenton Daniel, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Sat, 14 May, 2011
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Charismatic pop star-turned-president Michel Martelly took over Haiti on Saturday, promising to rebuild its earthquake-devastated capital, develop the long-neglected countryside and build a modern army.

The 50-year-old performer known to Haitians as "Sweet Micky" was swept to power in a March 20 presidential run-off by Haitians tired of past leaders who failed to provide even basic services, such as decent roads, water and electricity in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Martelly was sworn in during a power outage in front of dozens of dignitaries including former U.S. president Bill Clinton, the UN's special envoy to Haiti, and Edmond Mulet, head of the UN mission that has maintained order in Haiti since 2004. Also present was Desi Bouterse, the president of Suriname who is on trial for the 1982 executions of 15 political opponents.

Former Haiti president Rene Preval took off the presidential sash and put it on Martelly as they shook hands and embraced, but did not say anything to each other. Martelly's wife, Sophia, then came on stage and adjusted the sash as their four children joined them.

Martelly did not speak as he left parliament for the National Palace, where was to deliver a speech.

Outside the gated parliament, more than 1,000 Martelly supporters gathered.

"Today is a party for us, for the masses, because the country is destroyed," said Esaue Rene, a 28-year-old mechanic who has high hopes for Martelly. "I would like him to bring jobs so that people aren't sitting around in public plazas because they don't have anything else to do."

Martelly appealed to young voters like Rene because he is the antithesis of Preval, who is seen as aloof and uninspiring. Martelly is effusive and charming. He once joked that he'd dance naked atop the National Palace if he were elected president.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement congratulating Martelly.

"The people of Haiti have shown patience and resolve in expressing their will and demonstrating their commitment to democracy and the electoral process," Harper said.

"This transition marks an important step on the road to recovery from the January 2010 earthquake and a milestone towards long-term stability and development."

Harper said he was looking forward to working with Martelly as he rises to meet the challenges ahead of him.

The challenges Martelly faces in fulfilling his ambitious promises were clear Saturday. He was sworn in front of the country's collapsed National Palace and a shantytown filled with thousands of people displaced by last year's magnitude-7.0 earthquake that killed an estimated 230,000 people.

During his campaign, he promised to build houses in the capital; bring economic development to the countryside; provide universal education for children; develop agriculture; and replace the discredited armed forces with a modern army capable of responding to natural disasters. The previous discredited army was disbanded by ousted former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1995.

Political observers say speeding up the multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort is paramount. That means Martelly's administration must make progress building houses for the more than 600,000 people still living in settlements; stem a cholera epidemic that threatens to spread during the rainy and hurricane seasons; and strengthen the judiciary. And a parliament controlled by political opponents from Preval's party could make passing bills difficult.

He must he do all this quickly.

"His administration will have to show progress fairly quickly in order to provide confidence to the population," said Mark Schneider, senior vice-president of the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C.

Martelly will lead a country still divided over the presidential election itself. He was initially excluded from the runoff in favour of a candidate backed by Preval, only to be restored after the international community challenged the results.

One sign of the division: Martelly's opponents have recently alleged that he holds dual Haitian-U.S. citizenship, which would disqualify him for the presidency. He denies the allegation.

In what some view as a reconciliation effort, Martelly has invited to the inauguration both Aristide and Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, the former dictator who made a surprise return to Haiti in January. Neither of them attended the swearing-in ceremony.

Since Duvalier came back, the ex-despot has been charged with embezzlement and human rights abuses, and advocacy groups have criticized Martelly for inviting him.

"Martelly's facing the need to knit together a polarized country," Schneider said. "Haiti just went through an election which was riven by discord, disagreement, and unhappiness. And given the makeup of the parliament, he has the major task of forging a national government."

In the weeks since Haitian authorities declared him the winner, Martelly has toured the countryside to learn more about reconstruction projects, announced ways to finance free education, and formed a transition team, led by Duvalier's former social affairs minister, Daniel Supplice.

Martelly was well-known as an entertainer. But what kind of leader he makes, many in Haiti aren't sure.

"He's unpredictable," said Patrick Elie, a defence minister under Aristide and an adviser to Preval. "He's got teeth that can both smile and bite. He's shown that."

_ With files from The Canadian Press.

'Mother-in-law dies' on news of bin Laden killing

2011-05-08T11:12:00.001-07:00

AFP News – Sun, 8 May, 2011
Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's first mother-in-law died of a stroke after hearing the news that US forces killed him in Pakistan, a London-based Arabic newspaper reported Sunday.

Nabih al-Ghanem, the mother of bin Laden's first wife, Najwa, was taken to a hospital in Latakia in northern Syria where she died after suffering the stroke, the Asharq Al-Awsat daily said.

It said the woman in her 70s "could not bear the bad news and lost consciousness" after US President Barack Obama announced bin Laden's killing by US commandos during a raid in Pakistan on May 2.

Bin Laden had married Najwa, his Syrian-born cousin, when he was 17, and they had 11 children, the paper said adding she had left Afghanistan a few days before the September 11, 2011 terror attacks on the United States and now lives in Syria.

In January last year, Asharq Al-Awsat reported that a son of the Al-Qaeda leader had been allowed to leave Iran to look for his mother in Syria.

Part of the bin Laden family, whose whereabouts have been unclear since the 9/11 attacks, was in Iran, the daily said, adding that bin Laden had taken a second wife in 1983 and they had three children before divorcing.

Numerous people had lived alongside bin Laden in his dwelling in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The compound housed three of his wives and a dozen of their children, according to Pakistani authorities.

At least five people were killed during the US assault: bin Laden, whose body was taken by the Americans, one of his sons, his two bodyguards -- known as the "Kuwaitis" -- and a woman, according to Pakistani security sources.

The survivors -- three women and their children -- are in Pakistani army detention.

During interrogation, the youngest of the wives, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, a 29-year-old Yemeni, had told investigators that bin Laden had lived in the villa for five years.

Islam allows polygamy with men having the right to have up to four wives as long as they are well provided for.

Surprising find in royal wedding portrait

2011-05-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

An extra guest in the royal wedding photos: A neon-pink toy “wiggly worm”
By Lylah Alphonse | Shine – May 6, 2011

Royal bridesmaid Eliza Lopes, 3, holds a bright pink wiggle worm in the official royal family photograph taken after Prince William married Kate Middleton last week. (Photo: Hugo Burnand/Clarence House-WPA Pool/Getty Images)

While Prince William's goddaughter Grace van Cutsem stole the show with her famous frown on the balcony of Buckingham Palace last week, another tiny royal bridesmaid, 3-year-old Eliza Lopes, had a little help getting ready for her closeup.

In the official family photograph from Prince William and Kate Middleton's lavish royal wedding, the little girl can be seen clutching a fuzzy, neon-pink "wiggly worm."

It stands out in stark contrast to her white silk dress but, according to her grandmother, Duchess of Cornwall (a.k.a. Camilla Parker Bowles), people have only just noticed it—and it's too late to do the photos over.

"Did you see the wiggly worm? That was the funniest thing," she told the Daily Mail. "I can’t believe no one has spotted it."

The toy was a gift from her step-uncle, Prince Harry, who gave it to her when she was startled by the roar of the crowd during the carriage ride after the wedding. The scared toddler saw it and started to laugh—and then refused to give it back.
"I was so worried about Eliza. She is such a lovely little thing and looked so gorgeous in her dress, but it was a very big occasion for a child of her age," Camilla said of Eliza, whose mom is Camilla's daughter, Laura Lopes. "Harry pulled this wiggly worm out of his pocket in the carriage to keep them amused. Eliza loved it so much that she wouldn’t let go."

"Can you believe it? She was holding onto my finger but in her other hand was this worm," Camilla said during a charity event yesterday.
The official royal wedding photographer, Hugo Burnand, came prepared with a few of the popular toys—as well as plenty of jelly beans—to ensure that all of the youngsters would be smiling in the family portrait.

The photos were shot in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace, and feature the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their parents, siblings, bridesmaids, and pages. The shots were taken just after the ceremony, and just before the now-famous royal kisses on the balcony.
"We had spares of everything — cables, lights, cameras, lenses — and spares for the spares," Burnand told WWD.com. "Before the day, we staged dress rehearsals with stand-ins and stop-watches. We knew that if everyone had sprinted back from Westminster Abbey, we would only have had 44 minutes to shoot."

Seven staff members helped things go smoothly, as did Sarah Burton, the creative director of Alexander McQueen who designed the bride's wedding dress. "In the end, we did everything in 26 minutes," Burnand said. "I promised the kids jelly beans and wiggle worms, and it worked out.”

The portrait photographer, who also shoots pictures for Tatler magazine, is a familiar sight at royal events: He photographed the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. Burnand also shot Prince Charles’ 60th birthday portrait, and says that he met the latest royal newlyweds a few times before at various events.

Clinton's explanation for dramatic raid photo

2011-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

Clinton says she has 'no idea' what was happening when iconic White House photo was shot
By Matthew Lee, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Thu, 5 May, 2011
ROME - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday she has "no idea" what she and the rest of President Barack Obama's national security team were watching at the precise moment that a photographer snapped what has become an iconic image of the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

"Those were 38 of the most intense minutes," Clinton said of the raid on bin Laden's compound by U.S. Navy SEALs. "I have no idea what any of us were looking at at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken."

The photo was taken by the White House photographer Sunday night as Obama and his national security team monitored the assault. Clinton is covering her mouth with her right hand, but she said Thursday that the gesture might not convey any special significance.

"I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs," she said. "So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever."

The story behind the photograph has been a subject of intense curiosity, but U.S. officials have refused to discuss details of what exactly was happening when it was taken, saying that could compromise intelligence efforts and capabilities.

Nonetheless, Clinton said bin Laden's death "sent an unmistakable message about the strength and the resolve of the international community to stand against extremism and those who perpetuate it."

"I think our resolve is even stronger after bin Laden's death because we know it will have an impact on those who are on the battlefield in Afghanistan," she said. She and other officials have expressed hope that al-Qaida sympathizers and other militants may now be more inclined to give up violence and rejoin Afghan society.

Clinton said U.S. plans to begin drawing down American forces in Afghanistan in July will continue apace even as she acknowledged that the battle against terrorism was far from over.

"Let us not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its affiliates does not end with one death," she said. "We have to renew our resolve and redouble our efforts, not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but around the world. It is especially important that there be no doubt that those who pursue a terrorist agenda, the criminals who indiscriminately murder innocent people, will be brought to justice."

Many in the U.S. have questioned Pakistan's reliability as an ally, given that bin Laden was found hiding in plain sight in a military garrison town outside Islamabad. Lawmakers are questioning U.S. aid to Pakistan, something the Obama administration has said is vital to war on terror.

Clinton maintained the U.S. must remain engaged with Pakistan.

"It is not always an easy relationship," she said. "But on the other hand, it is a productive one for both of our countries and we are going to continue to co-operate between our governments, our militaries, our law enforcement agencies."

Clinton spoke during a press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini. She was in Rome for a meeting of the Libyan Contact Group, representatives of 22 nations and five international organizations who are discussing ways to support the rebels fighting longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Sohaib Athar was first to tweet operation against Bin Laden

2011-05-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

Pakistani computer programmer unknowingly liveblogs operation against Bin Laden
By Diaa Hadid, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Mon, 2 May, 2011
CAIRO - A computer programmer, startled by a helicopter clattering above his quiet Pakistani town in the early hours of the morning Monday, did what any social-media addict would do: he began sending messages to the social networking site Twitter.

With his tweets, 33-year-old Sohaib Athar, who moved to the sleepy town of Abbottabad to escape the big city, became in his own words "the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

Soon the sole helicopter multiplied into several and gunfire and explosions rocked the air above the town, and Athar's tweets quickly garnered tens of thousands of followers as he apparently became the first in the world to describe the U.S. operation to kill one of the world's most wanted militants.

Athar did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment — he explained in another tweet that a filter he set up to stop his email box from flooding could be culling out requests for interviews. He was up to more 70,000 followers by Monday evening.

"I apologize for reporting the operation 'unwittingly/unknowingly' — had I known about it, I would have tweeted about it 'wittingly' I swear," he tweeted after realizing what he had witnessed.

Later, he gave an interview to Al-Jazeera's English-language news network via Skype as he sat in a cafe. When asked if he was scared, he said that he's from Lahore, "so I've had my share of bomb blasts."

His first tweet Monday was innocuous: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

The noise alarmed Athar, who had moved to the upscale area of Abbottabad to get away from city life after his wife and child were badly injured in a car accident in the sprawling city of Lahore, according to his blog in July.

Nestled in the mountains around 60 miles (95 kilometres) northeast of the capital, Abbottabad is a quiet, leafy town featuring a military academy, the barracks for three army regiments and even its own golf course.

As the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden unfolded, Athar "liveblogged" what he was hearing in real time, describing windows rattling as bombs exploded.

He questioned whose helicopters might be flying overhead. "The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani," he tweeted.

Athar then said one of the aircraft appeared to have been shot down. Two more helicopters rushed in, he reported.

Throughout the battle, he related the rumours swirling through town: it was a training accident. Somebody was killed. The aircraft might be a drone. The army was conducting door-to-door searches in the surrounding area. The sound of an airplane could be heard overhead.

Soon, however, the rumbling of international events far beyond the confines of this quiet upscale suburb began to dawn on Athar, and he realized what he might be witnessing.

"I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected," he tweeted.

Eight hours and about 35 tweets later, the confirmation came: "Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan," Athar reported. "There goes the neighbourhood."

___

Associated Press writer Eric Carvin contributed to this report from New York.

Is Pakistan a U.S. ally ?

2011-05-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

'Osama is alive!' mock Pakistanis outside compound
Tue May 3, 10:33 am ET

ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan (AFP) – Dozens of Pakistani youths on Tuesday demonstrated outside the upmarket compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, mocking the United States and shouting "Osama is alive!"

Unconvinced by news that the Al-Qaeda kingpin had been living in their leafy city of Abbottabad, one protester dressed up as the world's "most-wanted" man, who was killed in a helicopter raid by US commandos.

"Osama is alive, here comes Osama!" he exclaimed jokingly, donning a white turban and hiding his face with a cloth.

Some children as young as four or five joined the spontaneous rally, which was full of laughter and held alongside a heavy police contingent guarding the scene of the now world-famous operation to kill the terror mastermind.

Another in the group, wearing a black turban similar to that sported by the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Omar, suggested that the raid had been a fake.

"Long live Osama, here come Mullar Omar and Osama!" he proclaimed.

Conspiracy theories, propped up by distrust of the United States, have spread quickly among residents in the quiet, relatively well-to-do garrison town after the news emerged of bin Laden's death on their doorstep.

"We are really surprised about how this is possible," said Mohammad Anwar, another teenager at the gathering.
**************************************************************************
Afghan official says Pakistan must have been aware bin Laden was living in military town
By Heidi Vogt,Rahim Faiez, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press
May 4, 2011
KABUL - The Afghan government said Wednesday that Pakistan must have known Osama bin Laden was living in a military garrison town near the capital, echoing international suspicions about Islamabad in the aftermath of the deadly strike against al-Qaida's chief.

The two countries have long had tense relations, especially over the issue of Pakistan failing to target Taliban militants using its territory as sanctuary to launch cross-border attacks against Afghan and international forces.

"Not only Pakistan, with its strong intelligence service, but even a very weak government with a weak intelligence service would have known who was living in that house in such a location," said Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi.

The house where bin Laden lived in the town of Abbottabad was close to the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution where top Pakistani officers train, Azimi said, adding that many neighbouring houses are home to military officials.

"There are lots of questions that need answers," Azimi said.

Others have made similar remarks.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday that bin Laden must have had an extensive support network in Pakistan in the years before his death. And White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that the U.S. is committed to co-operating with Pakistan despite questions about who in the Islamabad government may have known bin Laden was in hiding in the compound in Abbottabad.

Afghan officials have long said that the real war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan. And while they have welcomed international troops who are fighting back the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, they have also criticized these forces for backing a Pakistani government that Afghan officials say is double-dealing.

Azimi went on to say that Afghanistan is bracing for revenge attacks following the bin Laden strike, but expects that the al-Qaida leader's death will eventually make it easier to defeat the Taliban.

The nearly 10-year war in Afghanistan started as a manhunt for bin Laden in 2001. Many inside Afghanistan and in foreign countries fighting the war have raised questions about whether his death will shorten or ease the battle with the Taliban insurgency, but the U.S. and others pledged there wouldn't be a rapid withdrawal.

On the day that bin Laden's death was announced, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called it a blow to terrorism but made no predictions about how it would affect the war in his country.

Azimi, for his part, predicted al-Qaida revenge attacks in the immediate aftermath of the terror chief's death.

"The first phase will be for a short period of time, a revenge phase in order show that even if he is gone, others are keeping the network together," he said, adding that Afghan security forces have already increased their presence in key areas and their readiness in anticipation of such attacks.

"Then slowly the situation will become more normal and that will start to show how Osama's absence effects the structure of the network," Azimi said.

International forces say a persistent campaign against insurgents over the summer has driven them out of their traditional strongholds and destroyed the weapons caches they depend on to mount their seasonal spring offensive.

The Taliban, however, have started the spring fighting season with high-profile attacks apparently designed to show their strength and their ability to infiltrate the government. In April, the insurgent group launched deadly attacks from within the Defence Ministry in Kabul, the main police headquarters in southern Kandahar city and a joint U.S.-Afghan base in the east. The militants also managed to break more than 480 of their compatriots out of the Kandahar city prison with an elaborate tunnel escape.

On Wednesday, U.S. officials confirmed that two rockets had struck inside Bagram Air Field — the main U.S. base in Afghanistan — the night before.

The strikes resulted in only "a couple very minor injuries," said Lt. Col. Patrick Seiber, a spokesman for U.S. forces in the east. He also noted that rockets hit inside Bagram about once every two or three weeks.

But the strike are a reminder that violence continues unabated in Afghanistan despite the removal of bin Laden.

Separately Wednesday, NATO forces rejected accusations that they had killed a private security guard under contract to protect a road travelled by their supply convoys. The international military coalition said that the man who was killed was not working for a security company and was a militant involved in setting up an ambush.

Afghan police and the man's alleged employer — Watan Risk Management — have maintained that it was a Watan guard who was killed while trying to protect the road.

The making of the commando that killed Bin Laden

2011-05-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Obama monitored top-secret raid
CBC – Tue, 3 May, 2011 1:40 AM EDT
As helicopters descended out of darkness on the most important counterterrorism mission in U.S. history, President Barack Obama watched from the White House.

It was an operation so secret, only a select few U.S. officials knew what was about to happen.

And after giving the go-ahead for the mission, the president kept a poker face over the weekend while consoling tornado victims in the South, delivering a college commencement address and cracking jokes at a black-tie dinner for Washington correspondents.

The location of the raid was a fortified compound in the affluent Pakistani town of Abbottabad, about 150 kilometres north of Islamabad. The target: Osama bin Laden.

Intelligence officials discovered the compound in August while monitoring an al-Qaeda courier, a Kuwaiti-born man named Sheikh Abu Ahmed.

Ahmed was a shadowy figure for U.S. intelligence, someone it took many years to identify. For a long time, intelligence officials knew him only by his nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

The first indications about his significance came shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks from CIA detainees who told interrogators the courier was so trusted by bin Laden that he might be living with the al-Qaeda leader.

Ahmed, his brother and an unidentified woman were killed along with bin Laden in the attack on the compound.

Nestled in an affluent neighbourhood, the compound was surrounded by walls as high as 5½ metres, topped with barbed wire. Two security gates guarded the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a 2.1-metre privacy wall. No phone lines or internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection.

Intelligence officials believed the million-dollar compound was built five years ago to protect a major terrorist figure. The question was, who?

The CIA asked itself again and again who might be living behind those walls. Each time, officials concluded it was almost certainly bin Laden.

By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action," a senior administration official said. Over the next 2½ months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in the compound and, if so, how to get him, the official said.

Normally, the U.S. shares its counterterrorism intelligence widely with trusted allies in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. And normally, the U.S. does not carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration with Pakistani intelligence. But this mission and the need for secrecy were too important. No allies were made aware of the plan, the White House confirmed Monday.

It was a mission that required surgical accuracy, even more precision than could be delivered by the government's sophisticated Predator drones. To execute it, Obama tapped a small contingent of U.S. forces under the command of CIA director Leon Panetta, whose analysts monitored the compound from afar.

Panetta was directly in charge of the team, a U.S. official said, and his conference room was transformed into a command centre.

Details of exactly how the raid unfolded remain murky, but a few things are known.

On Friday morning, Obama approved the mission before leaving Washington to inspect tornado damage in Alabama. A small contingent of the navy's elite SEAL Team Six, a top military counterterrorism unit, was approved to carry out the mission.

On Sunday, Obama cut short a round of golf to return to the White House for a meeting where he and top aides reviewed final preparations. The raid began within hours of that final meeting. It involved four U.S. Black Hawk helicopters, about two dozen troops and took about 40 minutes from start to finish.

"The minutes passed like days," John Brennan, the U.S. government's counterterrorism chief, said at a news conference Monday, adding that Obama monitored the raid from the White House Situation Room and expressed relief that no American lives had been lost.

White House officials said two dozen SEALs in night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound in Pakistan by sliding down ropes from helicopters.

One of the helicopters broke down and was later destroyed so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Among many others, the tailed al-Qaeda courier and bin Laden's son are also believed to have been killed during the mission. The compound itself belonged to the courier, the White House said.

A Pentagon official said a woman identified bin Laden name during the U.S. raid.

Brennan said bin Laden used human shields, some of whom were women, in his final moments.

"He was hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," Brennan told the news conference. "I think that speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years."

Osama bin Laden went down firing at the Navy SEALs who stormed his compound.

"He was engaged in a firefight," Brennan said.

An official familiar with the operation says bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed return fire. Three other people were also killed: two of bin Laden's couriers and an unidentified woman.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because aspects of the operation remain classified.

Senior U.S. officials said bin Laden's body was transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson where traditional Islamic procedures for handling the remains were followed, including washing the corpse, placing it in a white sheet and committing the body to the waters of the North Arabian Sea.

When Panetta and his team received word that bin Laden was dead, cheers and applause broke out across the conference room.

Later that evening, Obama delivered a public address to the world, announcing bin Laden's death. White House officials later revealed DNA testing had confirmed his identity.

Click on the graphic below to get a zoomed in view of the Abbottabad compound that housed Osama bin Laden.

Impact of Ben Laden's death on Obama

2011-05-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Bin Laden’s death is a pivotal victory for Obama. But will it make his 2012 re-election bid any easier?
By Holly Bailey - The Ticket | Yahoo! Canada News – Mon, 2 May, 2011
President Obama's declaration late Sunday night that U.S. forces in Pakistan had killed Osama bin Laden will likely prove one of the most significant moments in his presidency.

Speaking from the White House's East Room shortly before midnight EST, the president offered the nation a long-desired moment of closure nearly a decade after the horrors of the 9/11 attacks.

"Tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed," Obama declared in announcing bin Laden's death. "Yet today's achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people … We are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to."

Obama was careful not to gloat about the breakthrough for the struggle against Islamist terrorism--indeed, he went so far as to praise to his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, who Obama had frequently assailed for bungling that struggle on the 2008 campaign trail. At the same time, though, as the smoke begins to clear from this pivotal moment, a no-less significant question lingers: How will the al Qaeda leader's death alter the nation's political landscape, especially ahead of next year's 2012 presidential campaign?

The short answer, of course, is that it's far too early to say for sure. To be sure, as news cameras capture footage of cheering crowds across party lines gathering to celebrate bin Laden's demise, Obama seems almost certain to experience a bump in national approval for his handling of the situation. And the country's mood--usually measured in so-called "right track/wrong track" numbers--will likewise trend upward with a major shot of good news after weeks of angst over issues such as rising gas prices and the struggling economy.

And as the president gears up for his 2012 re-election bid, he can take assurance in his ability to brandish a significant foreign policy achievement: He personally signed off on a mission to capture the world's most wanted terrorist, and it was successful. Obama will be certain to remind voters about that milestone at every opportunity--knowing that it's bound to loom larger in the public mind than the last several months' worth of hand-wringing among candidates and pundits over this administration's approach to Libya and the tumultuous war in Afghanistan.

Many of Obama's likely GOP rivals in 2012 have lambasted him in recent weeks as a president with a weak foreign-policy dossier. But last night, some of his potential opponents--including Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney--carefully offered Obama praise for his handling of the bin Laden operation.

"In the hours after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush promised that America would bring Osama bin Laden to justice--and we did," Pawlenty said in a statement. "I want to congratulate America's armed forces and President Obama for a job well done. Let history show that the perseverance of the US military and the American people never wavered."

In a message posted on Facebook, Romney called bin Laden's death a "great victory great victory for lovers of freedom and justice everywhere." "Congratulations to our intelligence community, our military and the president," he wrote.

But not all GOP candidates were as gracious. In separate messages on Twitter and Facebook, Sarah Palin made no mention of Obama, instead praising the military. "Thank you, American men and women in uniform. You are America's finest and we are all so proud," she wrote. "Thank you for fighting against terrorism."

However, political history also offers some important cautions about how short-lived such victories can be in the heat of a re-election effort. Take, for example, former President George H.W. Bush's sky-high poll numbers in the aftermath of the successful 1991 Gulf War, which made him seem virtually unbeatable by his likely Democratic opponents.

But as the 1992 campaign drew closer, Bush 41's numbers steadily dropped, and lost his bid for a second term, thanks mostly to public anxiety over the struggling economy--an issue that also seems likely to dominate the upcoming 2012 campaign, at least for now.

In policy terms, too, the administration seem averse to gloating over the legacy of his historic moment. Last night, Obama made clear in his remarks that the war in terror is far from over--and that bin Laden's death doesn't mean an end to threats to the nation. "His death does not mark the end of our effort," the president warned. "There's no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us ... The cause of securing our country is not complete."

The secret team that killed bin Laden

2011-05-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

By Marc Ambinder - National Journal | Yahoo! Canada News
May 2, 2011
From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.

Were it not for this high-value target, it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.

This HVT was special, and the raids required practice, so they replicated the one-acre compound at Camp Alpha, a segregated section of Bagram Air Base. Trial runs were held in early April.

DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units. They report to the president and operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directives. Though the general public knows about the special SEALs and their brothers in Delta Force, most JSOC missions never leak. We only hear about JSOC when something goes bad (a British aid worker is accidentally killed) or when something really big happens (a merchant marine captain is rescued at sea), and even then, the military remains especially sensitive about their existence. Several dozen JSOC operatives have died in Pakistan over the past several years. Their names are released by the Defense Department in the usual manner, but with a cover story -- generally, they were killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan. That's the code.

How did the helicopters elude the Pakistani air defense network? Did they spoof transponder codes? Were they painted and tricked out with Pakistan Air Force equipment? If so -- and we may never know -- two other JSOC units, the Technical Application Programs Office and the Aviation Technology Evaluation Group, were responsible. These truly are the silent squirrels -- never getting public credit and not caring one whit. Since 9/11, the JSOC units and their task forces have become the U.S. government's most effective and lethal weapon against terrorists and their networks, drawing plenty of unwanted, and occasionally unflattering, attention to themselves in the process.

JSOC costs the country more than $1 billion annually. The command has its critics, but it has escaped significant congressional scrutiny and has operated largely with impunity since 9/11. Some of its interrogators and operators were involved in torture and rendition, and the line between its intelligence-gathering activities and the CIA's has been blurred.

But Sunday's operation provides strong evidence that the CIA and JSOC work well together. Sometimes intelligence needs to be developed rapidly, to get inside the enemy's operational loop. And sometimes it needs to be cultivated, grown as if it were delicate bacteria in a petri dish.

In an interview at CIA headquarters two weeks ago, a senior intelligence official said the two proud groups of American secret warriors had been "deconflicted and basically integrated" -- finally -- 10 years after 9/11. Indeed, according to accounts given to journalists by five senior administration officials Sunday night, the CIA gathered the intelligence that led to bin Laden's location. A memo from CIA Director Leon Panetta sent Sunday night provides some hints of how the information was collected and analyzed. In it, he thanked the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for their help. NSA figured out, somehow, that there was no telephone or Internet service in the compound. How it did this without Pakistan's knowledge is a secret. The NGIA makes the military's maps but also develops their pattern recognition software -- no doubt used to help establish, by February of this year, that the CIA could say with "high probability" that bin Laden and his family were living there.

Recently, JSOC built a new Targeting and Analysis Center in Rosslyn, Va. Where the NationalCounterterrorism Center tends to focus on threats to the homeland, TAAC, whose existence was first disclosed by the Associated Press, focuses outward, on active "kinetic" -- or lethal -- counterterrorism-missions abroad. Its creation surprised the NCTC's director, Michael Leiter, who was suspicious about its intent until he visited.

That the center could be stood up under the nose of some of the nation's most senior intelligence officials without their full knowledge testifies to the power and reach of JSOC, whose size has tripled since 9/11. The command now includes more than 4,000 soldiers and civilians. It has its own intelligence division, which may or may not have been involved in last night's effort, and has gobbled up a number of free-floating Defense Department entities that allowed it to rapidly acquire, test, and field new technologies.

Under a variety of standing orders, JSOC is involved in more than 50 current operations spanning a dozen countries, and its units, supported by so-called "white," or acknowledged, special operations entities like Rangers, Special Forces battalions, SEAL teams, and Air Force special ops units from the larger Special Operations Command, are responsible for most of the "kinetic" action in Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials are conscious of the enormous stress that 10 years of war have placed on the command. JSOC resources are heavily taxed by the operational tempo in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials have said. The current commander, Vice Adm. William McRaven, and Maj. Gen. Joseph Votel, McRaven's nominated replacement, have been pushing to add people and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology to areas outside the war theater where al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to thrive.

Earlier this year, it seemed that the elite units would face the same budget pressures that the entire military was experiencing. Not anymore. The military found a way, largely by reducing contracting staff and borrowing others from the Special Operations Command, to add 50 positions to JSOC. And Votel wants to add several squadrons to the "Tier One" units -- Delta and the SEALs.

When Gen. Stanley McChrystal became JSOC's commanding general in 2004, he and his intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, set about transforming the way the subordinate units analyze and act on intelligence. Insurgents in Iraq were exploiting the slow decision loop that coalition commanders used, and enhanced interrogation techniques were frowned upon after the Abu Ghraib scandal. But the hunger for actionable tactical intelligence on insurgents was palpable.

The way JSOC solved this problem remains a carefully guarded secret, but people familiar with the unit suggest that McChrystal and Flynn introduced hardened commandos to basic criminal forensic techniques and then used highly advanced and still-classified technology to transform bits of information into actionable intelligence. One way they did this was to create forward-deployed fusion cells, where JSOC units were paired with intelligence analysts from the NSA and the NGA. Such analysis helped the CIA to establish, with a high degree of probability, that Osama bin Laden and his family were hiding in that particular compound.

These technicians could "exploit and analyze" data obtained from the battlefield instantly, using their access to the government's various biometric, facial-recognition, and voice-print databases. These cells also used highly advanced surveillance technology and computer-based pattern analysis to layer predictive models of insurgent behavior onto real-time observations.

The military has begun to incorporate these techniques across the services. And Flynn will soon be promoted to a job within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he'll be tasked with transforming the way intelligence is gathered, analyzed, and utilized.

Obama ridicules Trump at Correspondents’ dinner, mocks ‘birther’ crusade

2011-05-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Sun May 1, 12:38 am ET
By Rachel Rose Hartman

After weeks of keeping his thoughts about Donald Trump largely to himself, President Obama on Saturday night ridiculed the real estate magnate in front of a live televised audience at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C.

As Trump and wife Melania sat among the guests gathered at the Washington Hilton, Obama poked fun at Trump's reality show, said Trump lacked the "credentials" to be president, and mocked the businessman's recent crusade to get Obama to release his long-form birth certificate.

"I know that he's taken some flack lately," Obama said of Trump. "But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald."

But then the president quickly changed gears. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like--did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where areÂ Biggie and Tupac?" Obama said, referencing rap icons Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.

You can watch Obama's 19-minute speech here

But Obama didn't stop at making light of the mutual infatuation of Trump and the birther movement.

The president next mocked Trump's background, saying, "All kidding aside. Obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience," a dig at Trump's political background that evoked laughter from the audience of journalists, politicians and celebrities.

Obama then chose to reference a recent episode of "Celebrity Apprentice" that featured Trump, the star of the program, firing actor Gary Busey instead of singer Meatloaf and rapper Lil Jon in an Omaha Steak challenge. "And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night," Obama said as the audience roared with laughter and applause. "Well handled, sir. Well handled."

It's typical for the speeches at the annual dinner to play out as a roast, poking fun at the self-importance of the national political scene. But Obama's lampooning of Trump and the birther crusade held special significance, since the Correspondents Dinner festivities marked the first time the president and Trump were in the same room since Trump began his highly publicized campaign to get Obama to release his birth certificate.

The president made fun of the controversy, saying that he was prepared to "go a step further."

"Tonight, for the first time, I am releasing my official birth video," he told the audience. But then he played a clip of lion Simba's birth in Disney's cartoon movie The Lion King.

"I want to make clear to the Fox News table--that was a joke," the president said of the Disney clip.

Obama also made some jokes at his own expense, noting how his "honeymoon" as president was over and referencing the perception that he's too professorial and arrogant. At the star-studded gala, he also paused to note that he's even losing support from Hollywood—a mainstay of fundraising for the president's 2008 campaign. (Though he dinged actor Matt Damon for the celebrity's recent criticism, saying "Matt, I just saw 'The Adjustment Bureau,' so right back at you, buddy.")

Obama also joked about starting conspiracy theories about his potential 2012 opponents: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was born in Canada; Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has the middle name "Hosni"; Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman is Chinese; and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney passed universal health care. (The last allegation, of course, falls into the "funny because it's true" category, since Romney had presided over the passage of a state-level version of the same individual-mandate plan that Obama signed into law in 2010.)

The light-hearted evening was interspersed with more serious matters. The Correspondents Association issued awards students and journalists for their achievements, while also honoring journalists abroad who have lost their lives or faced grave physical hazards in the course of their work.

But that didn't mean journalists were spared any ridicule Saturday night.

The evening's celebrity host Seth Meyers, "Saturday Night Live" writer and star, mocked some of the industry's best-known faces.

"Katie [Couric] was known best for asking those tough questions like, 'name a newspaper," Meyers said, referencing Couric's 2008 interview with Sarah Palin. "Years of hard-hitting questions, and she's going to be remembered for the one that could have doubled as a category on 'The Family Feud.' "

On Juan Williams, the NPR journalist fired after saying he gets nervous on a plane when he sees people dressed in "Muslim garb," Meyers said, "so Juan is black and afraid of Muslims, making him the least likely man to get a cab in New York City."

But some of Meyers most biting remarks were reserved for 2012 hopefuls and the president himself.

Meyers suggested Romney's book "No Apologies" actually indicated Romney made many mistakes. "If I come home from a trip to Vegas and the first thing I say to my girlfriend is 'no apologies,' we're gonna have a follow up conversation," Meyers quipped.

Meyers made fun of Trump's hair, likening it to a fox that would be happy to finish the leftovers at his table, said Pawlenty makes Al Gore look like drag queen RuPaul, and joked that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and son Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have something in common with Meyers and his own father: "we're also not going to get elected president."

Meyers also took a few digs at Obama.

"Who knows if they can beat you in 2012?" Meyers said of the potential GOP field. "But I'll tell you who can definitely beat you, Mr. President--2008 Barack Obama," he said, standing feet from the commander-in-chief as the audience roared with laughter. "You would have loved him--so charismatic, so charming. Was he a little too idealistic? Maybe. But you would have loved him."

And Meyers also took note of the toll the presidency has apparently taken on the president's appearance. Meyers said the First Lady looked even more beautiful at Saturday's dinner than she did on Inauguration Day 2009. "But you, Mr. President have aged a little," Meyers said. "What happened to you? When you were sworn in you looked like the guy from the Old Spice commercials. Now you look like Louis Gossett Sr.," he said, referencing 74-year-old actor Louis Gossett Jr.

"Maybe you should start smoking again," Meyers said. "If your hair gets any whiter, the tea party is going to endorse it."

(Photo of Obama: Martin H. Simon-Pool/Getty Images)

These athletes went broke

2011-04-28T10:17:00.000-07:00

Bankrupt stars: Athletes who lost it all
By Daniel Bukszpan, Special to CNBC.com
In 2008, the NBA Players’ Association claimed that 60 percent of pro basketball players go broke within five years of retirement. It’s not hard to see why. In the annals of “easy come, easy go,” few people see it come and go like professional athletes.

While it’s true that many take their salaries and invest them in sensible and enduring business ventures, many others squander their multimillion-dollar salaries on expensive cars, jewelry and mansions, and when the checks stop coming in, they have little to show for it.

Basketball player Latrell Sprewell first made headlines during his tenure with the Golden State Warriors. During a 1997 practice, he choked his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, and earned a 68-game suspension. Sprewell still went on to a substantial career, earning almost $100 million.

It all came to an end when he turned down a three-year contract extension from the Minnesota Timberwolves worth $30 million. According to Sprewell, this was simply not enough money. He said, “I have a family to feed … [team owner Glen Taylor] better cough up some money. Otherwise, you’re going to see these kids in one of those Sally Struthers commercials soon.” (Sprewell was referencing ChildFund International commercials, which provided sponsorship to deprived children around the world.)

The Timberwolves’ upper management, unmoved by his family’s tragic situation, didn’t offer him one more cent, and by the end of the 2005 season, he was unemployed. By 2007, his yacht, “Milwaukee’s Best,” had been repossessed by federal marshals after missed payments and insurance worth over $1 million. In 2008, he defaulted on the mortgage on his Milwaukee home, sending it into foreclosure. His Westchester mansion went into foreclosure two years later.

For a while, no boxer on earth was as feared as “Iron Mike” Tyson. The powerful puncher won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, some of which took place during the first round. He quickly became the heavyweight champion of the world, but in 1992 he was convicted of sexual assault and served three years in prison. When he got out, no amount of comeback matches could get him back his mojo, and after biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a 1997 fight, Tyson was disqualified. He never again won another championship.

Money shouldn’t have been a problem for Tyson. After all, according to the New York Times, he had earned more than $400 million in his boxing career. However, he had spent almost all of it, frittering it away on extravagances like mansions, luxury cars and pet tigers. He also owed $9 million for his divorce settlement and $13 million to the IRS. When he filed for bankruptcy in 2003, he claimed debts of $27 million.