Obama doesn’t need Congress to intervene in Syria

AFP, Washington

U.S. President Barack Obama has the authority to launch air strikes against Syria. But he has to notify lawmakers in Congress -- a process which has begun, according to both sides.

“The administration is actively consulting with members of Congress, and we will continue to have these conversations in the days ahead,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday in a strongly-worded statement on Syria.

The Republican speaker of the House Of Representatives, John Boehner, has had “preliminary communication with the White House about the situation in Syria and any potential U.S. response,” his spokesman said.

“The speaker made clear that before any action is taken there must be meaningful consultation with members of Congress, as well as clearly defined objectives and a broader strategy to achieve stability,” said the spokesman, Brendan Buck.

In 1973, after the Vietnam War and despite the opposition of Richard Nixon in the White House, the U.S. Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to compel U.S. presidents to seek congressional approval in order to deploy soldiers.

A president must, in theory at least, obtain an authorization voted on by Congress if introducing troops into “hostilities” or “situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances” to keep the operation going beyond 60 days.

In practice, however, all presidents since Nixon have deemed this unconstitutional and regularly neglected to ask for such permission, instead simply notifying Congress.

Obama, leaning on a United Nations Security Council resolution, launched aerial strikes against Muammar Qaddafi’s troops in Libya in March 2011. But according to the administration, the operation did not fall within the “hostilities” outlined in the 1973 law.

In the wake of the strikes, Congress was split between backers of a law mandating the president stop the intervention and those who wanted to formally authorize it.

“They do not need an authorization but I hope they will come for one,” Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told broadcaster MSNBC of a possible Syria strike.

“They can start but hopefully as soon as we get back (from recess), Congress will take up an authorization for this,” he added.

According to the senator, a response on Syria “is imminent” and U.S. military “assets are in place.”

Political debate on the topic remains animated and some lawmakers, including many with ties to the ultra-conservative Tea Party, unsuccessfully tried in July to preventively block an attack on Syria without the approval of Congress.

For now, the calendar is on Obama’s side since Congress is on summer recess until September 9.

In March 1999, lawmakers also didn’t have a say on the lengthy bombing campaign in Kosovo, launched by then-president Bill Clinton.

Consumer Confidence Index in U.S. Increases to 81.5

Keywords: Confidence U.S. consumers, index of sentiment

Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly increased in August as Americans grew more optimistic about the prospects for the world’s largest economy.

The Conference Board’s index of sentiment advanced to 81.5 from a revised 81 the prior month that was stronger than initially estimated, the New York-based private research group reported today. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists was 79.

Sustained job growth and increased wealth tied to higher home values and stock portfolios are helping to sustain the household spending, boosting automakers and home-improvement retailers such as Lowe’s Cos. Today’s report showed more Americans expected a pickup in employment opportunities and income gains in the next six months.

“The household sector is still improving and a lot of that improvement comes from home prices,” said Sam Coffin, an economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. UBS Securities is the top forecaster of the Conference Board’s index in the last two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Estimates for consumer confidence ranged from 74.3 to 82 in the Bloomberg survey of 71 economists after an initial July reading of 80.3. The measure averaged 53.7 during the recession that ended in June 2009. The cutoff date for the Conference Board’s survey was Aug. 15.Read more...

Business term of the day - Term for August 27, 2013: "channel partner"

Keywords: channel partner, Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Software

A channel partner is a company that partners with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell the manufacturer's products, services, or technologies. This is usually done through a co-branding relationship. Channel partners may be distributors, vendors, retailers, consultants, systems integrators (SI), technology deployment consultancies, and value-added resellers (VARs) and other such organizations.

Managed Services Channel Partner

The Managed Services Channel Program (MSCP) defines managed services based on market and industry best practices, validates a provider’s managed service against those standards, and offers escalating rewards tied to the value delivered.

Outsourcing Channel Partner

The Outsourcing Channel Program is designed for partners who are taking over management of customer assets for multiple years across multiple technologies, either at the customer site or at another location like a remote data center.

Referral Partner

The Referral Partner is any individual, usually a professional consultant, existing customer, or sales professional, who can refer new customers to the manufacturer in any number of ways. Increasingly, companies are taking advantage of this type of partner as more and more individuals find work independently consulting and referring manufacturer solutions to their clients—which in essence provides a low cost way for manufacturers to manage their sales efforts.

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Software

With the increased reliance on the channel to drive sales efforts, technology has emerged to help support these efforts. Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is the term most widely used to refer to this type of technology.

What is channel coordination ?

Keywords: channel coordination, Anantasubramania Kumar,delayed differentiation, mass customization, decentralized decision making

Channel coordination (or supply chain coordination) aims at improving supply chain performance by aligning the plans and the objectives of individual enterprises. It usually focuses on inventory management and ordering decisions in distributed inter-company settings. Channel coordination models may involve multi-echelon inventory theory, multiple decision makers, asymmetric information, as well as recent paradigms of manufacturing, such as mass customization, short product life-cycles, outsourcing and delayed differentiation. The theoretical foundations of the coordination are based chiefly on the contract theory. The problem of channel coordination was first modeled and analyzed by Anantasubramania Kumar in 1992.

Overview

The decentralized decision making in supply chains leads to a dilemma situation which results in a suboptimal overall performance called double marginalization. Recently, partners in permanent supply chains tend to extend the coordination of their decisions in order to improve the performance for all of the participants. Some practical realizations of this approach are Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR), Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Quick Response (QR).

The theory of channel coordination aims at supporting the performance optimization by developing arrangements for aligning the different objectives of the partners. These are called coordination mechanisms or schemes, which control the flows of information, materials (or service) and financial assets along the chains. In general, a contracting scheme should consist of the following components:

    local planning methods which consider the constraints and objectives of the individual partners,

    an infrastructure and protocol for information sharing, and

    an incentive scheme for aligning the individual interests of the partners.

The appropriate planning methods are necessary for optimizing the behavior of the production. The second component should support the information visibility and transparency both within and among the partners and facilitates the realization of real-time enterprises. Finally, the third component should guarantee that the partners act upon to the common goals of the supply chain.

The general method for studying coordination consists of two steps. At first, one assumes a central decision maker with complete information who solves the problem. The result is a first-best solution which provides bound on the obtainable system-wide performance objective. In the second step one regards the decentralized problem and designs such a contract protocol that approaches or even achieves the performance of the first-best.

A contract is said to coordinate the channel, if thereby the partners' optimal local decisions lead to optimal system-wide performance.[4] Channel coordination is achievable in several simple models, but it is more difficult (or even impossible) in more realistic cases and in the practice. Therefore the aim is often only the achievement of mutual benefit compared to the uncoordinated situation.

Another widely studied alternative direction for channel coordination is the application of some negotiation protocols.[5][6] Such approaches apply iterative solution methods, where the partners exchange proposals and counter-proposals until an agreement is reached. For this reason, this approach is commonly referred to as collaborative planning. The negotiation protocols can be characterized according to the following criteria:

    The initial proposal is most frequently generated by the buyer company which is called upstream planning. By contrast, when the initiator is the supplier, it is referred to as downstream planning. In several cases there already exists an initial plan (e.g., using rolling schedules or frame plans). There are also some protocols where the initial plan is generated randomly.

    In order to guarantee finite runtime, the maximal number of rounds should be determined. In addition, the protocol should also specify the number of plans offered in each round. When the number of rounds or plans is high, the practical application necessitates fast local planner systems in order to quickly evaluate the proposals and generate counter-proposals.

    Generally, the negotiation protocols cannot provide optimality, and they require some special conditions to assure convergence.

    The counter-proposals usually define side-payments (compensations) between the companies in order to inspire the partner deviating from its previously proposed plan.

An also commonly used instrument for aligning plans of different decision makers is the application of some auction mechanisms. However, “auctions are most applicable in pure market interactions at the boundaries of a supply chain but not within a supply chain″,[5] therefore they are usually not considered as channel coordination approaches. Read more...

What is change order ?

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In project management, a change order is a component of the change management process whereby changes in the Scope of Work agreed to by the Owner, Contractor and Architect/Engineer are implemented.
A change order is work that is added to or deleted from the original scope of work of a contract, which alters the original contract amount and/or completion date. A change order may fork a new project to handle significant changes to the current project.
Change orders are common to most projects, and very common with large projects. After the original scope (or contract) is formed, complete with the total price to be paid and the specific work to be completed, a client may decide that the original plans do not best represent his definition for the finished project. Accordingly, the client will suggest an alternate approach.
Common causes for change orders to be created are:

• The project's work was incorrectly estimated
• The customer or project team discovers obstacles or possible efficiencies that require them to deviate from the original plan
• The customer or project team are inefficient or incapable of completing their required deliverables within budget, and additional money, time, or resources must be added to the project
• During the course of the project, additional features or options are perceived and requested.
• The contractor looks for work items to add to the original scope of work at a later time in order to achieve the lowest possible base bid price, but then add work items and fee back on once the contractor has been hired for the work. This is an exploitative practice.

What is centralisation ?

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Centralisation, or centralization (see spelling differences), is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, become concentrated within a particular location and/or group.

The term has a variety of meanings in several fields. In political science, centralisation refers to the concentration of a government's power – both geographically and politically – into a centralised government. In neuroscience, centralisation refers to the evolutionary trend of the nervous system to be partitioned into a central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. In business studies, centralisation and decentralisation refer to where decisions are made in the chain of command.

What is cash advance ?

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A cash advance is a service provided by most credit card and charge card issuers. The service allows cardholders to withdraw cash, either through an ATM or over the counter at a bank or other financial agency, up to a certain limit. For a credit card, this will be the credit limit (or some percentage of it).

Cash advances generally incur a fee (to replace the interchange fee normally charged to the merchant on a card transaction), although this is sometimes waived if the account is in credit. When made on a credit card, they are usually charged at a higher rate of interest than a regular credit card transaction, and generally do not attract an interest-free period which is customarily given to cardholders who pay off their bill in full every month.

Some "purchases" made with a credit card of items that are viewed as cash are also considered to be cash advances in accordance with the credit card network's guidelines, thereby incurring the higher interest rate and the lack of the grace period. These often include money orders, lottery tickets, gaming chips, and certain taxes and fees paid to certain governments. However, should the merchant not disclose the actual nature of the transactions, these will be processed as regular credit card transactions. Many merchants have passed on the credit card processing fees to the credit card holders in spite of the credit card network's guidelines, which state the credit card holders should not have any extra fee for doing a transaction with a credit card.

Under card scheme rules, a credit card holder presenting an accepted form of identification must be issued a cash advance over the counter at any bank which issues that type of credit card, even if the cardholder cannot give his or her PIN. Read more...