November 2011

Japan cooks world’s longest kebab

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) Residents of a small Japanese island cooked up a late-night snack that could satisfy even the heartiest appetite – a kebab more than 100 metres long. Thousands of people on …

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Three face prison time in special toilet paper scam

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) Talk about a dirty scam. Federal prosecutors in Florida say at least three people working for a septic tank company duped customers into buying about $1 million in …

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‘Frosty the Snowman’ arrested at Maryland parade

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) Who says “Frosty the Snowman” has to be jolly? A man in a “Frosty the Snowman” costume was arrested Saturday during the annual Christmas parade in Chestertown, on Maryland’s …

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Dutch astronaut orders cheesy request

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers will have a special treat waiting for him in orbit when he arrives in space next month: five kilogrammes of Amsterdam’s finest cheese, its maker …

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Nike creates jacket based on Ibra’s tattoos

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) Zlatan Ibrahimovic has inspired sportswear manufacturer Nike to create a jacket based on the tattoos on the Sweden and AC Milan forward’s upper body. “Tattoos are an art …

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Chinese firm rules out Scorpios, Virgos

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Jordan Times) A Chinese firm has decided Scorpios and Virgos are too moody and critical, telling job seekers with those star signs they need not apply. Capricorns, Pisces and Libras, on …

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East Asia’s Q3 outstanding bonds up 5.5%

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN) Asian Development Bank’s Office of Regional Economic Integration’s director, Iwan J. Azis, said that in the third quarter, East Asia’s outstanding bonds grew 5.5 percent from 2010′s same …

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GM To Offer Chevy Volt Owners Free Loaner Cars Amid Fire Concerns

November 29, 2011

DETROIT — General Motors, concerned about the image of its Chevrolet Volt, is offering free loaner vehicles to owners who are worried about the electric cars catching fire. The move comes after a government safety agency said on Friday that it is investigating fires involving the Volt’s lithium-ion battery packs following crash tests. Thus far, the Volt tests have not raised concerns about the safety of other electric cars, the agency has said. GM said on Monday that the vehicle is safe. But it will contact owners of the more than 5,000 Volts sold in North America since December 2010 to reassure them. It will also offer loaner cars to ensure that owners are satisfied and confident in their purchase. GM has not put a time limit on how long customers can keep the loaners, but said the offer is not a response to demands from customers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a Volt battery pack that was being monitored caught fire on Thursday, a week after it was hit in a side-impact crash test. The agency said another battery that was crash-tested recently gave off smoke and sparks. The latest fires are in addition to a battery fire at a test facility in Wisconsin back in June. The Volt, which can travel about 35 miles on electric power before a small gasoline generator kicks in to run the car, has helped Chevrolet’s public image, and GM is eager to protect that good will. The company has promoted the car extensively as a first step toward independence from foreign oil, and the Volt has helped counter a gas-guzzling image left over from years of GM selling mainly pickup trucks and inefficient sport utility vehicles. Mary Barra, GM’s senior vice president of product development, said both fires reported by NHTSA occurred seven days to three weeks after the crash tests, and could have been prevented if the battery charge had been drained as GM has called for in its post-crash procedures. She said only a few Volts have crashed on public roads. None have caught fire, nor have the battery packs been compromised. “We don’t think there’s an immediate fire risk,” said GM North American President Mark Reuss, who addressed the media in a conference call along with Barra. “This is a post-crash activity.” NHTSA wasn’t aware of the post-crash procedures at the time of the June fire, GM officials have said. In the U.S., GM is notified of any severe Volt crashes through its OnStar safety system, and it sends a team to the car within a day to drain the battery charge to prevent any fires. In the Volt’s system, Lithium-ion battery cells, which essentially are a single battery, are assembled into a pack of cells, and coolant is pumped between the cells to keep them from overheating. In the June fire at a test facility in Burlington, Wis., coolant leaked from the battery and crystallized, and that could have been a factor in the fire, GM has said. The fire came three weeks after a side-impact crash test and was severe enough to cause several other vehicles parked nearby to catch fire as well. Barra said that in all the Volt incidents, the battery cells were not involved in the fires, only the electronics within the battery pack. But she would not be more specific until NHTSA’s investigation is over. Reuss said GM won’t sell any Volts in other countries until it makes sure emergency responders, salvage yards and dealers have been trained to discharge the batteries after a severe crash. The Volt and Nissan’s Leaf, with a total of more than 8,000 cars on the road in the U.S., are among the first mass-marketed plug-in electric cars. They went on sale in the 2011 model year. Other automakers are also working on electric vehicles. The safety testing hasn’t raised concerns about electric vehicles other than the Volt, but NHTSA is asking manufacturers who have electric cars on the market, or who plan to introduce them, for more detailed information on battery testing. The agency also is asking for the companies’ procedures for discharging and handling batteries, including recommendations for reducing fire risks. Lithium-ion batteries, which are rechargeable, have been the subject of several recalls of consumer electronics. Millions of laptop batteries made by Sony Corp. for Apple Inc., Dell Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd. and other PC makers were recalled in 2006 and 2007 after it was discovered that they could overheat and ignite. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to airlines about the potential for fires in cargo containing lithium-ion and non-rechargeable lithium metal batteries after a United Parcel Service plane crashed near Dubai last year, killing both pilots. The plane, which was on fire, was carrying thousands of lithium batteries. Incorrectly packaged, damaged or overheated batteries can catch fire, the FAA said. GM, Barra said, is confident that its batteries are stable and the chemistry is not a fire hazard. She said the company is working with NHTSA and an auto engineering trade association to develop standards for how to handle batteries after a crash. Responding to a question about whether GM should have caught the problem in its own testing, Barra said the battery pack was tested extensively following all known procedures before the car went on sale. It also won top safety ratings in testing by NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, she said. Nissan’s Leaf has not had any fires after crash tests or on the road, company spokesman Brian Brockman said. The Leaf’s battery pack is air-cooled and differs from the Volt’s in other ways. GM will not change its marketing plan for the Volt, which has been extensively advertised on television and has helped the Chevrolet brand attract customers, said Joel Ewanick, the company’s global marketing chief. People who are aware of the Volt are 60 percent more likely to consider buying a Chevrolet, he said. GM’s Reuss, a former top engineer for the company, said he is sure the Volt is safe. “My daughter drives this car every day with two kids in it,” he said. “She continues to drive it.”

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UN probe exposes Assad regime’s heinous crimes

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN – Arab News) Syrian security forces shot and abused anti-regime demonstrators on orders hailing from the top of Bashar Assad’s regime, UN-appointed investigators said Monday. Evidence …

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STILL OCCUPIED: LA Protesters Defy Eviction Notice

November 29, 2011

By CHRISTINA HOAG and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — For now, Wall Street protesters camped out on the Los Angeles City Hall lawn still have their tent city after defying a deadline to pack up and clear out. “Still occupied,” read the sign of a protester up in a tree. Hours after emerging from a possible confrontation with police largely unscathed on Monday, demonstrators turned to the federal courts to keep officers away. (SCROLL DOWN FOR LIVE UPDATES) They are arguing that the City Council had passed a resolution in support of Occupy Los Angeles and that the city’s mayor and police did not have the authority to evict them. The chances that protesters will get an injunction appear slim, constitutional experts say. Until there is a decision, the tent city’s inhabitants are left to wonder if and when police will push them out — and if there will be the kind of violence that has engulfed evictions in other cities when they do. City officials say they will only move in on the camp when conditions are safest not just for protesters and officers but also the roughly 100 homeless people who had joined the encampment. “There is no concrete deadline,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said after hundreds of officers withdrew without moving in on the nearly 2-month-old camp. The effort should come “with as little drama as possible,” Beck told reporters. Police and protesters have clashed elsewhere in recent weeks, most notably in Oakland, Calif., as officers cleared away camps that officials say have grown more dangerous for public health and safety. Nine people were arrested in Maine on Monday after protesters at an encampment took down their tents and packed their camping gear after being told to get a permit or move their shelters. Some of the encampments had been in use almost since the movement against economic disparity and perceived corporate greed began with Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan two months ago. With each passing week, it seems a city moves in to close a camp. Like Los Angeles, Philadelphia officials imposed their own deadline for protesters to move to make way for a construction project. On Monday, however, the camp was still standing. In Los Angeles, protesters had prepared for police action since city leaders announced last week that the camp would be cleared. Campers had packed up about half of the nearly 500 tents. Some protesters carried gas masks and one had even fashioned one out of duct tape and a plastic bottle. Some activists had built a tree house out of wooden pallets in a clump of palm trees to make it more difficult to be arrested, while others just sat in a circle with their tents in the plaza. “I definitely expected to be in jail by 3 a.m.,” said Sean Woodward. “I’m happy we’re still here.” Protesters chanted “we won, we won” as police left after only four arrests during a largely peaceful, six-hour demonstration against the eviction. The arrests were on charges of failure to disperse. Instead of moving in to clear the camp, as had been expected, police concentrated on clearing several hundred protesters who had spilled into the street so morning rush-hour traffic would not be affected. Hours later, several demonstrators asked a federal judge for an injunction against the city. The civil rights complaint contends that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa usurped the City Council’s authority when he set a deadline of 12:01 a.m. Monday for the tent-dwellers to disband. The council passed a resolution of support for the occupiers in October that effectively allowed them to remain on the lawn despite a city ban on overnight camping, the complaint argued. “The City Council welcomed them with open arms and said they could stay as long as they want,” said Jim Lafferty, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “The mayor simply does not have the authority to do this,” he said. The city attorney’s office had not been served with the complaint and could not comment on it, spokesman John Franklin said. However, he said the city was prepared to oppose any injunction. “We’ll be in court,” he said. Constitutional law experts were skeptical of the injunction’s chances. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that while public parks can be used for protests, they are for the use of all people, not just one group, and that governments can restrict how a park is used for free speech purposes. “Parks are open to free speech, but that’s not a place they can authorize as their own home,” said Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. ___ Mulvihill reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press writers John Rogers and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles, Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia, and Glenn Adams in Augusta, Maine, contributed to this story.

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Japan’s Oct jobless rate up to 4.5%

November 29, 2011

(MENAFN) Japan’s government said that last month, unemployment rate in the country grew to 4.5 percent, compared with 4.1 percent recorded in the previous month, reported AP. The government added …

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Low Income Black Friday Shoppers Sought Deals On Basic Necessities

November 29, 2011

And the mall gods spoke. This year marked a record turnout for America’s holy ritual of consumption, Black Friday. Retail sales were up 9.1 percent over last year , according to the National Retail Federation, with some experts scrambling to declare the beginnings of a large-scale consumer comeback. But while some did splurge on flat screen televisions and jewelry, many others rushed into stores for more basic necessities — the $4.47 baby clothes and $1.28 towels that have become increasingly difficult for low-income Americans to afford. At a Walmart in North Charleston, S.C, Black Friday shoppers huddled around stacks of children’s Disney pajamas, waiting for employees to tear off the plastic casing at 9:50 p.m. At Walmarts in Benton Harbor, Mo. and Little Rock, Ark., shoppers-turned-YouTube spectacles fought over towels and waffle makers . But these scenes, humorous to some, also paint a bleak picture for an American economy in the grip of a recovery that to many still feels like a recession. Nearly half of Americans lack economic security and are unable to afford basic needs like food, transportation and health care, according to a recent study by the nonprofit Wider Opportunities for Women. In fact, families’ abilities to pay for food recently hit a new low this month , nearing 2008 recessionary levels, according to a Gallup Poll. “It’s competitive because the economy is bad,” said Melissa Wolford of California, Mo. Her Black Friday list included towels and the $35 “Straight Talk” prepaid Motorola phone from Walmart. RECESSIONARY NECESSITIES Dev Shapiro, a spokesman for Gottadeal.com , a website that has tracked Black Friday discounts since 2003, said his company began noticing deals on basic household items at the start of the recession in 2008. Shapiro, who lives in Dallas, Texas, said many of his friends no longer buy each other cruises for Christmas, instead choosing to go to Best Buy on Black Friday to buy appliances like washing machines and driers. Kmart, for one, has long offered discounts on basic household items on Black Friday, according to Tom Aiello, VP of communication for Sears Roebuck & Co. There’s just been “more of a slant to practical gifts” since the recession, he said. “Families are giving gifts like sheets, comforters, towels.” Yet gadget deals remain the ones most heavily promoted by the stores themselves in the lead-up to Black Friday. Best Buy’s most talked about item this year was a $199 42-inch Sharp TV. Meanwhile, Amazon.com reported Monday that Black Friday Kindle sales were four times higher than last year. It’s not that customers buying flatscreens aren’t buying towels, according to Aiello. While most shoppers won’t camp out for five hours for a set of towels alone, they’re aware of those deals and include such items on their lists, he said. DESPERATE DEALS? With the median national income falling more during the recovery than in the recession itself , it’d be wise not to pin the Black Friday sales jump on any increase in customer cash, according to Candace Corlett, president of WSL Strategic Retail. Instead, shoppers may feel Black Friday is the one day they can find affordable prices, Corlett said. Indeed, in a survey of 1,500 people, WSL concluded that a large majority of shoppers of all incomes, ages and ethic groups perceived Black Friday prices to be the best of any holiday shopping day. And it’s also the exception to the growing spending gap between affluent shoppers and all others, according to Corlett. “For six months now we’ve seen a sharp divide between people with incomes over $100,000 and everyone else,” she said. “Black Friday is different. It brings out that competitive spirit of those who just want to get the deal regardless of how much money they have.” “This is the shopping day of the year,” 18-year-old Seth Hollibaugh said. Hollibaugh waited in front of Best Buy in North Charleston, S.C. for more than 30 hours in anticipation of Black Friday and the $199 42-inch flat screen TV. “Then you start saving up for next year,” he said.

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Liz Ryan: Six Things to Do Now for Your 2012 Job Search

November 29, 2011

If you love your job and wouldn’t dream of leaving it — and on top of that, if you have an employment agreement that guarantees your employment through 2012 or a suitable cash equivalent — you can stop reading this column now. We’re delighted for you. Everyone else might take a look at our list of six things you can do now to start prepping for your post-New Year’s job search, whether you’re working somewhere and planning a getaway, or on the job market full-time. You might be one of the estimated 84 percent of working Americans who planned to jump to a better job at the first opportunity this year. You could be as happy as a clam at your place of employment, but still want to be ready to make a move if circumstances warrant it (if, for instance, your division shuts down or your department’s work is shoved off to a sub-contractor in Indonesia). My point is that everything included on our list of six get-ready/get-going items below is easy to do. It doesn’t take a long time, and if you’re like most people, you’ll have the bit of downtime in December you’ll need to start putting your 2012 job search engine together. If you’re not sure how to proceed on any of these action steps, leave a comment below the story or join our online discussion group and post your query there. ONE: Choose a career direction (or more than one). You can’t get far in a job search without zeroing in on the sorts of jobs you’re pursuing, so step number one is to identify and articulate your direction for the 2012 job search. You can have more than one “prong” on your list — some job-seekers, for instance, might have three prongs labeled project manager, product manager and technical marketer — and/but each prong will require its own resume. Each version of your resume is going to highlight elements of your background that fit the prong your resume is meant to support. TWO: Brand yourself for each “prong” with a prong-specific resume. Once you’ve got a “prong array” identified, you’ll want to construct a prong-specific resume for each career direction. Let’s say that you’ve got two prongs picked out — one’s an office manager prong, and the other one is a combination office manager and HR person (you’ve done some HR stuff, liked it, and would be happy to fold it into your next career assignment). Each of your two resumes is going to present you as a perfect candidate for whichever prong the resume promotes. The names of your past employers, dates and titles will be identical for both resumes of course, but the stories you choose for your resume bullets will vary. Here’s an example. For the “pure” office manager job, Sarah is using this short “framing paragraph” and these three bullets to describe her current role: Acme Explosives, Phoenix, Ariz. 2002 – present Office Manager Acme is the largest stick-dynamite supplier in the Southwest, catering to the coyote market and selling $25M per year through local resellers. I was brought in to organize the front office and coordinate customer-service issues between our sales team and the Finance/Client Support groups, and to support the company’s CEO with his travel, appointments and project management. When my boss was out of town, I helped our largest reseller untangle and resolve a 500K billing error, convincing him to up his orders from Acme in the process. I designed a weekly “dashboard” report for department managers, showing sales by territory and rep, open and resolved client-support issues and profitability by product and region. Hired and trained the front-desk receptionist and the admin assistant to our Manufacturing and Purchasing groups, building an Admin Support team in the process for backup/emergency support. For her combined office management/HR prong, Sarah describes her role at Acme slightly differently and chooses different bullets: Acme Explosives, Phoenix, Ariz. 2002 – present Office Manager (with HR responsibility) Acme is the largest stick-dynamite supplier in the Southwest, catering to the coyote market and selling $25M per year through local resellers. I was brought in to organize the front office and serve as the de facto HR manager (since the company doesn’t have an HR group) and to support the company’s CEO with his travel, appointments and project management. I wrote and trained our employees on the company’s first employee handbook, learning about a half-dozen pressing employee-relations issues in the process and resolving them within 60 days. When we needed ten manufacturing people quickly, I organized and ran a job fair that netted us the ten new hires (dynamite making not being something just anyone can do) and allowed us to double production and add10M in annual sales. Hired and trained the front-desk receptionist and the admin assistant to our Manufacturing and Purchasing groups, building an Admin Support team in the process for backup/emergency support. For this resume, Sarah is emphasizing her HR-type milestones. She’s planning to use her combination HR/office manager resume for smaller companies who might really get excited about an office manager who doubles as an HR pro. THREE: Update your LinkedIn profile. If you’re already working, you might be wary of updating your LinkedIn profile and thus sending off alarm bells for your current manager. Before you start to work on your profile, go to the Settings page and turn off outgoing notifications, so your network won’t know you’re burnishing your profile until you specifically tell them. Use the Edit Profile page to get your profile ready to go, “pointed” in the direction of the one-or-more career direction ‘prongs’ you’ve chosen. That means updating the descriptions for each job you’ve held, inviting lots of former colleagues, classmates and other homies to join your LinkedIn network, adding a great photo, and generally sprucing up on your critically important LinkedIn presence. The trick to a great LinkedIn summary — the short story that tells other LinkedIn users who you are and how you roll professionally — is to use a human voice in it. If you’ve got more than one prong, you’re going to have to roll them together into one brand. Here’s how Sarah handled that task in her LinkedIn summary: I’m an office manager with a strong HR bent, working as a combination office manager/HR staffer at Acme Explosives. I fell into office management in my first job after school (hired into a sales trainee job, my Sales VP kept calling on me for special projects, and the office management bug took hold) and got similarly roped into HR projects when a long-ago boss noticed that the employees typically came to me for advice. I’m equally happy scheduling a Sales offsite meeting or creating a Constant Contact newsletter, and I love interacting with customers, salespeople, vendors and employees. I serve as the company’s business air-traffic controller, keeping my CEO sane and everyone else informed, supplied with the necessary tools and (as much as time and energy allow) feeling appreciated and valued. Notice that Sarah doesn’t say “I’m job-hunting.” How can she? She’s working for Acme. Luckily, she doesn’t need to. She rocks out loud in her LinkedIn profile, and headhunters are going to find her and ask her “Would you consider another opportunity?” Keep a human voice in your LinkedIn profile — it makes all the difference in the world. FOUR: Look at job postings. I recommend that a job-seeker (employed or not) split his or her job-search time and energy into three equal parts. One part goes to responding to posted job ads. A second one-third slice of the pie goes to reaching out to employers who don’t have job openings listed — they still have business pain, and it doesn’t hurt us to write to them about that. The third one-third slice goes to networking, of course. Sarah only has about three hours a week to spend on her job search overall, so she’s devoting one hour to each of the three major activities. That means she can reach out to one or two employers per week, and that’s plenty — if her outreach is targeted and pithy, she’ll get a job in no time. Sarah looks at the job postings on Indeed and SimplyHired every day. Between these two careers sites, she’s seeing the vast majority of all posted jobs in her geographic area. If she hears about other jobs (through friends, especially) she might respond to those as well, but Indeed and SimplyHired keep her in more job ads than she could ever hope to respond to (and that’s fine — she’s being choosy, as you should too.) FIVE: Make overtures. Sarah isn’t at the point yet to tell her whole network about her job search, since it’s an under-the-radar affair. That’s okay — she has told a few very close friends what she’s planning, and they’ll make introductions for her as her job search progresses. Still, Sarah wants to start some conversations right after New Year’s Day, so she’s researching a few local employers in order to be able to send them pithy Pain Letters (TM) as soon as her own starting bell rings. Here’s one of Sarah’s Pain Letters (TM) in progress. She’s writing to a local software entrepreneur who’s been in the papers lately: Dear Amelia, Congratulations on being included in the Phoenix Business Journal’s “Forty Under Forty” roster. What a feather in your cap, on top of winning the KPMG “Fast Fifty” honors last summer. Hats off to you and your team for building a vibrant software-development engine during the worst downturn in recent memory. I can only try to imagine what your daily life and schedule must be like, as you juggle product release schedules, sales needs, leadership priorities and questions from funders — you must feel like a one-armed paper hanger at times. When I joined Acme Explosives in 2002, I came into a similarly high-growth and highly chaotic ecosystem, and managed to install a nimble office-management infrastructure without slowing people down or adding more than a tiny drop of bureaucracy. I’m looking to make a move in 2012, and wondering whether Capricious Software might have any need for someone to organize its operations with a light touch, warmth and humor. If getting some support for your daily marathon is on your radar screen, let’s talk when your schedule allows. Congratulations again on your growth and recent recognition — I’m sure there’s much more of that to come! Best, Sarah Nowell SIX: Prepare your stories. You’re going to need some wonderful stories for your job search — to use in Pain Letters (TM) and to use on interviews — but that’s okay, because you’ve got gazillions of stories. We aren’t trained to recall our stories and pull them out on a job search, but we should be, because your stories are the most important sales tools you’ve got on a job search. Here’s a story prompt list to get you going. Can you come up with one story (or more than one) in each of these categories? That’ll give you something to think about at all those holiday kid choir and orchestra concerts coming up: A story about a time when you saved the day A story about a time when you had to turn on a dime A story about working with a difficult person A story about going ahead without a manager’s direction A story about adding an important piece of business infrastructure (a system or process or report) A story about teaching or mentoring someone A story about saving or helping a customer A story about spotting and resolving something that was broken in the business A story about working on a team A story about learning from a mistake When you get these six elements together, you’ll be unstoppable. Leave a comment below and tell us how you’re doing!

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WATCH: Iraq Vet Injured In Occupy Oakland Protest Gives First Interview

November 29, 2011

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Marine Corps veteran who was struck in the head during a clash between police and Occupy Oakland protesters says he expects to recover completely but he is still having trouble speaking. In a video interview posted on Indybay.org, Scott Olsen says he had trouble speaking at all in the days after his skull was fractured Oct. 25. It’s the 24-year-old Iraq War veteran’s first interview since he was injured. He wears a neck brace and speaks haltingly, and his words are sometimes slurred. Olsen said in the interview that he believes a tear gas canister struck him and he’s frustrated by the pace of the police investigation into who fired it. Oakland police spokeswoman Johnna Watson says investigators are still combing video footage of the incident to put together a complete picture of what happened. ___ Online: Scott Olsen interview: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/28/18701164.php

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Facebook Said To Ready Biggest Announcement Ever

November 29, 2011

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc is looking to go public between April and June 2012 with a valuation of over $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The social media giant is considering raising as much as $10 billion in its IPO, the report said. Sources familiar with the matter said the company has not made any decision over which banks will be involved in the IPO. Facebook’s CFO David Ebersman is in talks with Silicon Valley bankers about an IPO, but founder CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not decided on any terms of the IPO, the Journal said. (Reporting by Vidya L Nathan in Bangalore; editing by Andre Grenon) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

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Groupon Shares PLUMMET

November 28, 2011

‪ ‬ By Tricia Duryee, Groupon Stock Now Half Off Many retailers are enjoying a Thanksgiving shopping spree lift from investors, but not Groupon. Its shares closed today down nine percent , settling at $15.24 after bouncing off a new low of $14.85. That’s less than half the $31.14 that some investors paid at the stock’s high point, just after it went public in early November. More recently, it has been trading in the low to mid-$20s. The drop is especially painful because it puts the company’s market valuation below $10 billion. The high-flying media darling was once the talk of the town, quickly snubbing Google’s $6 billion buyout offer and then rumored to be seeking a public valuation of $25 billion. But the Chicago-based company faced several controversies in its lead-up to the offering. It lost high-ranking executives and more than once was forced by regulators to change the way it reported its finances. Still, on IPO day, all the fuss seemed to be over and done. Groupon priced its shares at $20, several dollars above the expected price range of $16 to $18, and ended up raising $700 million at a valuation of close to $13 billion. That was just shy of its initial goal of raising $750 million. Today’s stock dive during one of the headiest times of the year for shopping may show that the enthusiasm was misguided, although some of its social media peers are also trading down . However, since its public debut, Groupon has failed to make a big splash of any kind. A major new feature, which is key to delivering relevant offers to the right consumers, was lamely supported by an amateurish YouTube video featuring two product guys. And today, the company didn’t really feature anything special for Cyber Monday except for offering discounts on a few recommended gifts . Meanwhile, its next closest competitor, LivingSocial, pulled out all the stops by offering gift cards to major online retailers, such as one from Blue Nile that gave shoppers the opportunity to spend $200 for $100. If anyone felt today’s drop it was Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, who did not return emails seeking comment. Mason, who was at least temporarily worth around $1.3 billion back on Nov. 4 when the company went public, is now worth somewhere closer to $715 million. Via Groupon Stock Now Half Off , on AllThingsD . More from ATD: iPhone 4S Surges in Battle of Britain Google Looks Forward to an Early Christmas Present From Washington: An Okay for Admeld Will Marc or Won’t He? Andreessen Mulling Yahoo Leadership Role in Bid

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Crisis In Europe Threatens World Economy

November 28, 2011

As a breakup of the eurozone — a once seemingly impossible scenario — becomes increasingly likely, economists are starting to sketch out what a post-euro world would look like. Many are warning that if political leaders don’t change course, a breakup of the eurozone would plunge the United States and the rest of the world into a slowdown and possibly another recession. “If Europe turns out badly, it’s much more likely we’ll go into recession,” said Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the New York University Stern School of Business. “If you take a big chunk like Europe and turn it down, it would probably bring everybody else down, including us.” If the eurozone dissolves, the European banking system would likely collapse, economists said, plunging the continent into recession, which would keep European consumers from buying. Decreased demand from the continent, which represents about 20 percent of the global economy, would hurt both the United States and emerging countries, who depend on European banks not just for demand, but also for funding. The risk of a eurozone breakup has increased dramatically over the past couple of weeks, as countries have faced increasing difficulty selling their debt. Interest rates on sovereign bonds issued by eurozone countries have spiked. The interest rate on 10-year Italian sovereign bonds rose to 7.28 percent Monday, nearly hitting a Nov. 9 euro-era high that was only eased afterward by limited bond purchases by the European Central Bank. The interest rate on 10-year Spanish sovereign bonds rose to 6.58 percent Monday, near the euro-era high reached on Nov. 17 . Interest rates on the 10-year bonds of more fiscally sound countries, such as France and Belgium, spiked to 3.58 percent and 5.59 percent respectively on Monday, as the contagion of higher borrowing costs spread to across the eurozone, regardless of their economic fundamentals. If European leaders don’t agree to take bold economic measures for more fiscal integration — including allowing the European Central Bank to become the lender of last resort — the eurozone could start to unravel, said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London. The eurozone’s future could be decided next week when leaders meet for a summit on the sovereign debt crisis on December 9. If they leave empty-handed, Tilford said, fearful depositors could pull their money out of European banks en masse, causing European banks to fail. In a “vicious death spiral,” said Tilford, troubled European countries would stop being able to borrow money as borrowing costs reach unsustainable levels. Then a string of European countries could default and leave the eurozone, leading to its collapse, he said. A number of other triggers could force a eurozone break up. In one scenario described by economists, a troubled eurozone country such as Italy could be forced to default if it is not able to roll over all of its debt at its next bond auction, forcing the country to leave the eurozone soon thereafter. In another possibility, interest rates on sovereign debt could reach unsustainable levels, forcing troubled countries to default on their debts. In addition, the Greek people could pressure their political leaders to leave the eurozone in order to regain political sovereignty from European leaders in France and Germany. “Given that Greece is a democracy, at some point I think the Greek people are going to decide this is not the right way to go,” said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, who said that there is a 40 percent chance of a complete breakup of the eurozone. “It’s a nasty recession to begin with, and they [political leaders] are talking about making it even worse.” Leaving the euro would give Greece a chance to grow its way out of its current predicament, similar to the way that Argentina’s economy grew after abandoning its currency’s peg to the U.S. dollar in the 1990s, Low said. With cheaper exports under a devalued currency, Greece would be able to sell more of its goods and services abroad, he said. But abandoning the euro would not be without its troubles. If Greece left the euro, its banking sector would likely collapse, and Greek companies that borrowed from other eurozone countries would likely default since the debt — valued in euros — would become too expensive to pay off, said Jurgen Odenius, the chief economist at Prudential Fixed Income. The Greek government would also be forced to slash spending to the point where there would be no more deficit, Odenius said, and would likely have trouble seeking outside loans, pushing Greece into a much deeper recession. “This would make for a nuclear meltdown, as far as Greece is concerned,” Odenius said. But for some countries, leaving the euro may be unavoidable, some economists said. Devaluing their own currencies would boost the competitiveness of their exports, allowing countries to grow and pay down their debts, Tilford said. Since countries such as Greece and Portugal have “very weak economic growth prospects … they need a weaker currency,” Tilford said. If they can no longer borrow money, they effectively would be forced to default on their debts and leave the euro, he said. A breakup of the eurozone would cause several negative repercussions for the U.S. economy and emerging economies in particular, Tilford said. As investors flee for safety in the United States, the value of the U.S. dollar would rise, making U.S. exports more expensive around the world and causing their sales to fall, he said. American banks would be forced to swallow major losses on European investments and would lend less, he said — though the Federal Reserve would likely prevent them from failing by becoming their lender of last resort. American investments in Europe generally would plunge in value, Tilford said. As of the end of 2009, U.S. direct investment in Europe totaled $1.98 trillion , according to the Congressional Research Service. The negative blow to U.S. confidence would generally curtail risk-taking and investments in the U.S., Tilford said. Emerging economies would also experience a sharp slowdown because they are dependent on Europe for both financing and consumer demand for their goods, Tilford said. European banks provide about three-quarters of all loans to emerging markets, according to Tilford, and a breakup of the eurozone would cause many European banks to either fail or slash lending. If the eurozone breaks up, a cloud of uncertainty would likely hang over Europe as long as companies struggle to work out contracts that were done in euros, Tilford said. “How on earth do you untangle all the contracts? Because they are all in a currency that would cease to exist,” he said. “They would need to clarify who owns what and under what currency if capital is going to return to Europe.”

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Hearing On Workers’ Comp Law Went Largely Unheard

November 28, 2011

A state Senate hearing last Tuesday on a bill that would revise Michigan’s workers’ compensation law went largely unnoticed. If adopted in its current form, House Bill 5002 would allow insurers to reduce or deny a worker’s benefits based on potential wages that worker could be earning at a hypothetical job. Over one hundred people, a mix of union officials, business lobbyists and concerned citizens turned up to testify at the hearings , which took place just before the Thanksgiving holiday, Michigan Radio reports. Opinions on the proposed measure have been sharply divided. Wendy Block of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce wrote on the group’s website that the legislation was “a solid first step towards updating, reforming and modernizing key areas of the law, which will provide increased certainty for employees and employers.” Karla Swift, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, strongly disagreed with this view in a recent Detroit News editorial . “HB5002 would turn the system on its head by changing the law so that employees would not only lose their workers’ compensation by the wages they earn when they return to work, but by the amount of wages they could possibly earn at a job not even offered to them,” Swift wrote. “This concept is absurd and would penalize workers based on no fault of their own.” The bill would also extend the length of time an injured worker must see a doctor assigned by insurance companies, Michigan Radio reports . The bill passed the state House on Nov. 2 and must be approved by the Senate and signed by Gov. Rick Snyder to become law. Earlier this year, Snyder’s proposed budget included the elimination of the Workers’ Compensation Appellate Commission .

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Look Up To Find The People In Downtown Minneapolis

November 28, 2011

Minneapolis is home to the world’s largest connected skyway system, allowing people to explore 80 downtown blocks all connected by above ground glass tunnels running from building to building to building.

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Google Looks Forward to an Early Christmas Present

November 28, 2011

‪ ‬ By Peter Kafka, Google Looks Forward to an Early Christmas Present From Washington: An Okay for Admeld via All Things D Google’s deal to buy ad tech start-up Admeld, announced in June, looks like it is finally ready to close. Industry sources expect the Department of Justice, who had been reviewing the $400 million transaction for antitrust violations, to approve the deal in the next couple weeks, perhaps as early as this Friday. It’s unclear whether the DOJ will impose any restrictions on the deal. But Web ad players, reading tea leaves and DOJ body language, are betting the sale goes through unhindered. No comment from Google; I’ve yet to hear back from a Department of Justice rep. Admeld helps publishers sell their ads by negotiating bids from multiple buyers, and is a big player in the complicated and fractured display advertising business. Google, which has long been dominant in search advertising, has been steadily increasing its presence in display ads via acquisitions like DoubleClick and Invite Media. So it was easy to see why regulators might give another big deal some scrutiny. In fact, at this point, every big deal Google makes will get a hard look from Washington, which is already pursuing a broad antitrust investigation. But so far regulators have yet to stop a deal, including Google’s $950 million acquisition of AdMob and its more recent deal for ITA. Next up: The $12.5 billion Googorola deal. The DOJ first began looking at Google-Admeld six months ago, and in late July extended their review. At the time, Google published a blog post explaining why the company couldn’t dominate display ads, even while its executives told Wall Street it had big ambitions in display. More recently, Google has gotten help making its case from competitors. Facebook, for instance, is already ahead of Google in the display ad market, at least by the estimation of some analysts. And Yahoo, which still competes fiercely with Google for display ad dollars, has put together a battle plan designed specifically to take on Google: It has lined up a coalition of big Web players with AOL and Microsoft, and it has begun pulling back its inventory from third-party ad buyers, including Google’s Invite Media. Google Looks Forward to an Early Christmas Present From Washington: An Okay for Admeld via All Things D More on All Things D : Groupon Stock Now Half-Off: What’s the Deal? Tell Me Again How iPad Demand Is Waning Apple Nipping at Target’s Heels for Fourth Most-Visited Site on Black Friday The Evolution of Search (As Told by Google)

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Citigroup Settlement Tossed: Judge Tells SEC To Get It Together

November 28, 2011

In a potentially precedent setting ruling on Monday, a federal judge in New York tossed out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup, effectively telling the SEC — which is responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly markets — that it isn’t going far enough in holding financial institutions accountable for their wrongdoings. The SEC accused Citigroup of selling investors mortgage-backed bonds that the bank knew would lose value. Citi netted roughly $160 million in profits from the sale of these bonds while investors lost more than $700 million. Under the proposed settlement with the SEC, the bank would have had to pay $285 million in penalties and fees, but would not have had to admit to any wrongdoing, according to the court decision. The lack of admission was the main reason Jed S. Rakoff, a Clinton-appointed U.S. district judge, said he decided to throw out the settlement. An admission of guilt or innocence is a matter of significant public interest, he said. “The court, and the public, need some knowledge of what the underlying facts are,” wrote Rakoff. “For otherwise, the court becomes a mere handmaiden to a settlement privately negotiated on the basis of unknown facts, while the public is prevented from ever knowing the truth in a matter of obvious importance.” In wording that sounds like it was written for those Occupy Wall Street protesters decrying the nation’s big banks and their outsized influenced, Rakoff wrote: “In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth. … The SEC, of all agencies, has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges; and if it fails to do so, this Court must not.” The ruling “is precedent setting,” said a prominent securities lawyer who has represented investors in class-actions suits against financial institutions and is familiar with the decision. The SEC often settles with large financial institutions without requiring an admission of guilt. And it’s extremely rare for a judge to throw out a settlement — though Judge Rakoff did once previously, in 2009, when he ruled that Bank of America and Merrill Lynch had “effectively lied to their shareholders” when the two firms paid out $3.6 billion in executive bonuses shortly before the bank acquired Merrill and after the bank had accepted billions of dollars in federal bailout funds. “The way the SEC has always proceeded is a slap on the wrist and a cost of doing business, and all these big banks know it,” the securities lawyer said. “If they get in trouble with the SEC, they know they can buy their way out of it without admitting anything. Ninety-nine out of 100 judges go along with it because it is the machine that greases the wheels.” The stakes are high for Citi. If they admit wrongdoing, that would likely be used against them in many more suits. The bank’s potential exposure is enormous. Both the SEC and Citigroup said Monday that they disagree with the ruling. Robert Khuzami, the director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a settlement “reasonably reflects the scope of relief that would be obtained after a successful trial,” according to the Wall Street Journal . Rakoff has in the past upheld SEC settlements that avoided an admission of guilt, including the well-publicized 2010 settlement between the SEC and Goldman Sachs in which the investment bank was accused of failing to disclose another hedge fund’s involvement in its operations, a “similar but arguably less egregious” situation, in Rakoff’s words, than the one Citigroup is accused of by the SEC. Rakoff has ordered both parties to prepare to go to court in July 2012. Though an appeal is possible, it appears unlikely, the securities lawyer said.

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$2.1 Million For Alternative Energy Manufacturing

November 28, 2011

Southeast Michigan is one of 20 regions from around the country picked by the federal government for economic growth grant money, Gov. Rick Snyder and an Obama administration official announced Monday. The federal Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge selected Southeast Michigan from among 146 applications for its potential in alternative energy manufacturing.

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Tribal Land Rule Changes Could Bring New Wind, Energy Projects

November 28, 2011

Washington — Ahead of a meeting Friday between President Barack Obama and hundreds of Native American leaders, the administration unveiled new rules for tribal lands that officials say will expedite home building and energy development. The proposed changes – the first of its kind in 50 years – would open the door to badly-needed housing development on reservations, and for wind and solar energy projects that tribes have been eager to launch. The plan gives Obama another boasting point for this week’s meeting with leaders of the 565 federally-recognized tribes at the White House. “We have for three years worked very hard to change the relationship between the administration and the nation’s first Americans,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday. He said Obama tasked him with changing the federal government’s relationship with tribes “in a very complete way.” Obama has been winning high praise among Native Americans. The president has appointed Native Americans to high level positions in his administration, signed laws to improve health care and law enforcement for Native Americans and resolved a long running lawsuit over royalties for minerals on tribal lands. In February, Obama nominated Arvo Mikkanen to serve as a federal judge. If confirmed, he would be the only Native American actively serving on the federal bench. “We’ve had more access to federal officials to speak about these important issues in Indian Country,” said Mellor Willie, a Navajo tribe member and executive director of the National American Indian Housing Council. That was the case on the land leasing rules. Willie said the council asked the administration to consider reforming the rules during the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations. He said the Obama administration has held a number of meetings with tribes on the subject and provided draft proposals to leaders as the rules were being rewritten. Land on American Indian reservations cannot be bought and sold because it is held in trust by the federal government on behalf of the tribes. If a tribe or tribe member wants to build a house on it or use it for multifamily housing, a business or industry, the Interior Department must approve a “lease” of the land or mortgages. The proposed changes would set time limits for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to approve such leases. Residential leases, subleases and mortgages would have to be approved in 30 days; leases for commercial or industrial development must be approved in 60 days. If the bureau does not meet the deadlines, leases would automatically be approved. Currently, there are no time limits. The proposed rules apply only to land development and not to oil and gas and mining leases. Larry Echo Hawk, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, said the current rules, which date back to 1961, are paternalistic. The federal government through the proposed changes is no longer trying to exercise as much federal authority over the leasing process, he said. Although tribes have been leasing property for years for agricultural and other reasons, the process has become slow and cumbersome. “It is not unusual to hear tribes talk about waiting two or three years for approval of a lease,” said John Dossett, attorney for the National Congress of American Indians. In recent years, Dossett said, it has been particularly frustrating for tribes applying for more complex leases like those for wind farms, which can take two to three years to review. “By that time, the tribes lose the deal. The business partner doesn’t want to wait that long,” Dossett said. The administration has been pushing for renewable energy projects and working to advance solar and wind projects on public lands. It gave priority to 18 projects for this year, including the Moapa Solar Project, which will be built mostly on Moapa Band of Paiutes tribal lands in Nevada. Developing wind and solar energy projects has drawn interest from tribes around the country, Dossett said. Tribes can partner with companies and sell the energy produced back to power grids. Willie said the changes should also help tribal members get mortgages more quickly. Under the current rules, government approval of mortgages can take two months to two years. With that kind of delay, getting the banking industry to see tribal members as a profitable market can be difficult, Willie said. The rules will be open for public comment for 60 days beginning Tuesday. The administration also plans additional meetings with tribes on the proposed changes. ___ Department of the Interior: http://www.doi.gov National Congress of American Indians: http://www.ncai.org/ National American Indian Housing Council: http://www.naihc.net/ ___ Suzanne Gamboa can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APsgamboa ___

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Lynn-Ann Gries: A ‘B2B’ Gold Rush?

November 28, 2011

Investors rekindled their love for consumer Internet companies this year, including those with online search, entertainment, and social media offerings, causing some to begin worrying about the dreaded “B” words. You know, words like “boom,” “bubble,” and perhaps the scariest of all … “bust.” From the initial public offering (IPO) of professional networking site LinkedIn in May to this month’s IPO for daily-deals site Groupon , investors have poured more than $5 billion into consumer-based offerings globally so far in 2011. And there are more attention-grabbing consumer Internet IPOs waiting in the wings, like Zynga. (Who knew we needed Farmville?) But, according to VentureSource, venture-backed Internet firms attracted just 25 percent of funding in the third quarter of 2011 . While still impressive, that’s down from 31 percent in the third quarter of last year. And, as the fervor subsides a little, it seems that investors are beginning to show a little love to business-to-business Internet companies, also known as “B2B” firms. A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed some of the bigger investments garnered by online business startups , including a $85 million cash infusion in Workday Inc., which builds business service solutions for HR, payroll, and financial management and $50 million in Marketo Inc., a company that provides “revenue-focused marketing automation and sales effectiveness solutions.” That’s good news in my eyes. In the Midwest, we need more investors to put their money in companies that offer B2B solutions to identified problems. Our tech companies aren’t the “build-it-and-they-will-come” types, like Google, LinkedIn. Most of our tech companies will never be household names. They find needs — often business needs — and fill them. Many Midwest-based tech companies create behind-the-scenes technology that helps service and retail companies, as well as manufacturers — a historically large sector in the Midwest — operate more efficiently and profitably. Still, these B2B IT companies can become very profitable and go on to generate significant returns for investors as well as wealth and jobs for the communities they’re in. Take Hyland Software , for example. The Westlake, Ohio, company makes an enterprise content management (ECM) system called OnBase. Hyland’s technology automates business processes that depend on documents, content and people. While its technology is pretty much the same as its competitors’, Hyland delivers it in a novel way. “We differentiate with a product that’s designed to flexibly grow with the organization, using it to yield maximum value,” said Kaitlin McCready, a public relations specialist for the company. Some Hyland customers pay more for their software-as-a-service (SaaS). But that software is “point-and-click configurable up front” and deployed department-by-department, which usually make it less expensive for customers, over time. Hyland goes shoulder-to-shoulder with giants like IBM and Microsoft in its industry. And the company’s technology and industry leadership translate into economic growth in Northeast Ohio. With nearly $200 million in revenue last year, Hyland employs 800 people in Westlake, JumpStart Inc. , the venture and entrepreneurial development organization for which I work, invested $350,000 in another growing business-to-business technology company in 2008. OnShift makes software for companies with shift-based workforces, enabling them to save money and time by optimally scheduling their staffs. Their initial target customers are long-term care facilities and hospitals. Last year, OnShift raised another $2.3 million from venture capital funds — including JumpStart — led by Draper Triangle Ventures in Pittsburgh. “The company has a unique offering that is having a compelling impact on customers,” said Michael Stubler, managing director and co-founder of Draper Triangle Ventures. Then there’s Electron Database Company of Independence, Ohio, another company JumpStart is invested in. The company is not easy for me to explain in a sound bite, but it is creating a transformative database software application to dramatically improve the performance of enterprise applications, data warehouses, and cloud computing infrastructures. If its technology takes off, it will enable the rapid growth of the cloud computing market, which is experiencing an explosion in the volume of data that needs to be effectively managed. And while the names “Hyland,” “OnShift” and “Electron Database” probably won’t roll off the tongues of most consumers any time soon, these B2B technology companies each have the potential to provide significant return on investment, as well as a significant impact on their industry and local economy. I hope — as should most of the Midwest — that the trend of investors recognizing the potential of B2B software solutions continues.

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Cyber Monday Smashes Records

November 28, 2011

NEW YORK — Shoppers seem to be just as enthusiastic about shopping on their computers and smartphones on Cyber Monday as they were about finding deals over the weekend. Online sales on Cyber Monday, which was started in 2005 by a retail trade group to encourage Americans to shop online on the Monday after Thanksgiving, were up mid-afternoon by 15 percent from a year ago, according to data from IBM Benchmark. Meanwhile, sales from mobile devices were up 7.4 percent. The group did not give dollar amounts. The Cyber Monday numbers point to Americans’ growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop. Over the past few years, big chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, have been offering more and better incentives like hourly deals and free shipping, to capitalize on that trend. It’s important for retailers to make a good showing during the holiday shopping season, a time when they can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. On Monday, Amazon.com offered its bigger, more expensive Kindle DX for $259, or $120 off the regular price. The Express clothing chain was giving 30 percent off and free shipping on all online orders. And Wal-Mart, which has been calling the holiday “Cyber Week” in ads, was offering an LG 47-inch LED TV for $879, or $320 off the regular price. “Cyber Monday is far more exciting to me than Black Friday,” says Jamie Minoso, a 40-year-old English teacher from Alabama. “I do not enjoy the traffic and chaos involved in shopping at a mall.” To be sure, the strong start to Cyber Monday, created by a unit of The National Retail Federation, follows an even stronger kickoff to the holiday shopping season over the weekend. Americans shopped in record numbers, driven by earlier store openings and a push by retailers for online sales. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to the NRF. And sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, rose 7 percent to $11.4 billion, the largest amount ever spent, according to ShopperTrak, which gathers stores’ data. Online sales were strong even over the weekend. Thirty-eight percent of all purchases were made online this year, up from 31 percent to 32 percent last year, says Sherif Mityas, partner in the retail practice of A.T. Kearney, who believes the increase was due to heavy promotions. Barneys, for instance, offered 40 percent off on its website on Thanksgiving Day, a day before it began its sales in stores. And Barnes & Noble offered 40 percent to 75 percent off online products, discounts that weren’t available in store. “Retailers are doing a good job of creating more excitement online in ways they can’t do in store,” Mityas says. “They’re creating that excitement of, `I’ve got to get that special deal,” that is really spurring traffic.’” It won’t be clear how well retailers will ultimately fare on Cyber Monday until Tuesday. But last year, sales on the day topped $1 billion for the first time, making it the heaviest day of online spending ever. Ahead of this week’s “Cyber Monday,” the NRF says nearly 80 percent of retailers plan to offer special promotions. And a record 122.9 million of Americans are expected to shop on the day, up from 106.9 million who shopped on “Cyber Monday” last year, according to a survey conducted for Shop.org. By early afternoon on Monday, traffic was up about 37 percent year-over-year, according to Akamai, an online content delivery company. Akamai says it expects online traffic to peak at about 9 p.m. Traffic has been up substantially since the Monday before Thanksgiving as retailers promoted online deals earlier than ever, says Lelah Manz, Akamai’s chief strategist of commerce. “There has been a huge volume of promotional activity being driven by daily deal sites, Facebook and other social networking sites,” she says.

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Dean Baker: Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties

November 28, 2011

The country is still celebrating the inability of the supercommittee to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it is important to move on from this victory to retake control of the political debate from the One Percent. As it stands, the One Percent are insisting that the country genuflect over the non-problem of the budget deficit, at a time when tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed, millions of people are facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security to support them. The deficit is the agenda of the One Percent. There is no reason that the rest of us should be concerned about budget deficits when the rest of the country is struggling with the economic disaster created by the greed and incompetence of the One Percent. This is not a statement of morality; it is a statement based on economic reality. Budget deficits can be a problem when an economy is near full employment and the deficit can be pulling resources away from private investment, thereby slowing growth. However, it is not a problem with large numbers of unemployed workers and vast amounts of excess capacity. This is what the financial markets are telling us every day as interest rates on long-term government bonds hover near 2.0 percent. If deficits were really crimping the economy, we would be seeing interest rates of 6 or 7 percent, or even higher. The deficit hawks do not have an economic case to support their argument, just money and influence. In the longer term, the deficit hawks can point to projections of outsized deficits, which they invariably attribute to Social Security and Medicare. The first part of this story is completely untrue. Under the law, Social Security is financed from its designated tax. It, therefore, cannot contribute to the deficit unless Congress changes the law. (The payroll tax credit in 2011, which was replaced with general revenue, is an exception to this rule.) According to the most recent projections from the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security benefits will be fully funded through the year 2038. After that date, if Congress does nothing to increase revenue, then the program would pay a bit more than 80 percent of scheduled benefits. (This would still be about 10 percent more than current retirees receive since benefits are projected to rise by approximately 1 percent a year.) The real story of the soaring long-term deficits is exploding Medicare costs, which are in turn driven by our broken health care system. We already pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as the average for other wealthy countries, with little to show in the way of outcomes. This gap is projected to continue to grow in the years ahead. To anyone who looks at the facts, the obvious answer to our deficit problem is fixing the health care system. This is difficult to do given the enormous political power of the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, highly paid medical specialists, and the other members of the One Percent who profit from the waste in the system as it exists now. If we can’t immediately change the system, then why not take advantage of the gains from trade ? If we change rules to make it possible for Medicare beneficiaries to buy into the health care systems in other countries or make it easier for patients to have medical procedures done at far lower cost elsewhere, it should be an enormous win-win, offering gains that could be in the trillions of dollars . And what free-market fundamentalist can argue against the principle of giving people a choice? In fact, conservatives and self-described free traders run screaming from the idea of opening medical care to trade. They want trade that will lower the wages of auto workers and textile workers by putting them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world; they hate trade when it threatens to reduce the income of the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, and others in the One Percent. It’s time to expose the lies for what they are. The One Percent have rigged the deck over the last three decades to accomplish the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world . These are not people who care about budget deficits or free trade or free markets. They care about making themselves richer at the expense of everyone else. They have been fighting this class war for 30 years. It is long past time that the rest of us started fighting back.

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‘Free Markets, Free People:’ A New Protest Movement In Denver

November 28, 2011

There’s a new protest movement in Denver going by the name “Free Markets, Free People” and they plan to hold a rally at the Capitol’s west steps on Sat., Dec. 3 around the same time and place that Occupy Denver usually holds its Saturday rallies. According to group’s Facebook page and a post on Free Republic , an online gathering portal for conservatives, they are organized by Elliot Fladen, Keith Peterson, and Colorado State Senator Shawn Mitchell . Free Markets, Free People made this statement on their Facebook page : Many of us in the liberty movement have observed the Occupy Wall Street Movement (“OWS”) and admired their passion even when we often disagree with their tactics. They correctly identify some of the problems our country faces, such as that too many businesses make profit by lobbying the government, not by producing better value. However, instead of proposing solutions that would take our country toward renewed prosperity, OWS instead advocates policies that would make things worse. Heavier regulation, cancellation of all debts, outlawing of private insurance, a $20 minimum wage and “free” education are simply more of the same type of government intrusion that caused the current, and projected future, economic mess. What we need instead are more free markets and more liberty – for history has shown that this is the way for our country’s restored greatness – both as a nation and as individuals. 9News reports that Free Markets, Free People are not in direct opposition to Occupy Denver or Occupy Wall Street, in fact they say that the OWS movement is correct in their criticisms about businesses making profits by lobbying government, but also claim that the solutions presented by the occupiers would make things worse. The Free Markets, Free People rally is not affiliated with any specific organization or group, The Denver Post reports , although they do list Lesley Hollywood of the Tea Party of Northern Colorado and state Sen. Shawn Mitchel as the contacts for the rally According to a press release from the group, they intend to “demonstrate citizens’ support for the founding principles of limited government, economic freedom, and private charity.” The rally will take place between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Sat., Dec. 3. The group will also hold a simultaneous canned food drive “to help show that voluntary contributions – not forced giving at the hand of government – is the best way to help the less fortunate,” according to their Facebook page.

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Malls Stop Tracking Shoppers’ Cell Phones

November 28, 2011

Two malls are axing their plans to track shoppers’ cell phones, after a U.S. senator raised privacy concerns over the weekend.

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Occupy L.A. May Branch Out To Occupy Beverly Hills, Skid Row

November 28, 2011

WASHINGTON — After a tense all-nighter with the Los Angeles Police Department, Occupy L.A. activists and their tents outside City Hall have been given a temporary reprieve. The police re-opened the streets around City Hall to traffic Monday morning and essentially left Occupy L.A. alone. Four activists had been arrested — hardly the anticipated outcome from either side. Late Friday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared 12:01 a.m. Monday as the deadline by which Occupy L.A. had to vacate City Hall Park. In a letter to the activists, he wrote: “The Occupy movement is now at a crossroads.” Villaraigosa did not give an explicit explanation as to why he wanted the park cleared of the occupation’s 500 tents, food service and library. Peter Sanders, the mayor’s senior press secretary, said in an email Monday afternoon that the mayor “respects Occupy L.A.’s right to exercise their freedom of speech but that going forward, tents will not be allowed in City Hall Park and the laws regarding city parks will be enforced.” If the mayor thought his threat Friday would send Occupy L.A. members scattering to off-site locations, he was wrong. Sunday night’s general assembly was packed . When a moderator asked how many people were attending the assembly meeting for the first time, many hands shot up. But Occupy L.A.’s continuing general assemblies might be short lived. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck told reporters at a Monday morning press conference that the eviction will happen. “We will enforce the law on our own time schedule,” Beck said. Rumors had already begun that the eviction could come Monday at noon. The Occupy L.A. activists have been just as adamant about holding their ground. “We’re not going away,” PJ Davenport assured The Huffington Post. “We knew that the eviction order was coming down,” Davenport said. “But you can’t help but feel cheated yet again by your local government when they tell you that your time is up and you need to move elsewhere.” Yet some within Occupy L.A. are already considering such a move, Davenport conceded. Los Angeles is a sprawling city with 9.8 million residents and a nearly endless stretch of distinct neighborhoods, enclaves and cultures. Post-eviction, activists aren’t thinking about shrinking. They’re thinking about franchising. Instead of one space, how about 50 spaces? Instead of Occupy L.A., how about Occupy Beverly Hills and an Occupy Skid Row? “You will see tents across the metro area,” Davenport suggested. “If they’re not allowed at City Hall, you will see them around City Hall.” “None of us are interested in working out of an office,” Occupy L.A. activist Joan Donovan insisted. “We want real change. We hope that we show that by occupying, we are extremely serious.” Donovan said the idea of diversifying into several spaces may grow out of necessity — and a way to empower the leaders who grew up through the City Hall space. “We don’t know if we are going to get space this big again,” she explained. “The tactic would be to let all the people who became leaders here to begin the process somewhere else … It would be awesome if there was an Occupy Beverly Hills. It would be the perfect opportunity to talk to tourists about how to better spend their money, how to be better citizens. The idea is to get people to think.” There’s serious talk, Donovan said, of an occupation starting up in Los Feliz. And others are talking about Occupying Rodeo Drive. The greater Los Angeles area already boasts an Occupy Long Beach , an Occupy Venice and an Occupy Pasadena , among other spots. “There are people talking about doing a more permanent occupation of Skid Row,” said Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, an Occupy L.A. activist. “The other possibilities are fully on the table. I think there’s going to be a negotiation about centralization vs. decentralization.”

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Mercury Storage Case Goes To Supreme Court

November 28, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will consider throwing out an $18 million penalty against Texas-based Southern Union Co. for illegally storing mercury at a rundown building in Rhode Island. The justices said Monday they will hear the natural gas company’s appeal of the criminal penalty that was imposed by a federal judge and upheld by an appeals court. What makes the case unusual is that the company is challenging the size of the penalty under a line of Supreme Court cases concerning prison sentences. Southern Union had used the building in Pawtucket to store outdated mercury-sealed gas regulators that it removed from customers’ homes. The mercury was initially removed and shipped to a recycling center. But when that work stopped, the regulators and loose mercury were left to accumulate inside the building.

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Charles Gasparino: Obama’s Corzine Problem

November 28, 2011

Just a few months ago Jon Corzine was on the short list to be President Obama’s Treasury Secretary, but now he’s ignoring a request to testify before a House subcommittee investigating the demise MF Global and setting up a showdown that could have major political implications for the president as his 2012 re-election looms. The president, of course, is weakest when defending his economic record. Say what you want about the Republican obstructionists in Congress, this president is pretty brain dead on the economy and how to get it moving. His solutions are more of the same — government stimulus like the one that barely worked back on 2009, and class warfare rhetoric about raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” which he considers families making $250,000. If you want to know why the president is so lame on the economy, consider who from the private sector he surrounds himself with for advice: Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of GE, which creates more jobs overseas lately than here in the US: Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who when he isn’t lecturing people on the need for higher taxes, uses every loophole imaginable to avoid paying his fair share, and Jon Corzine, who until recently was the CEO of MF Global. The president and Corzine are known to be pretty close, and it goes beyond the president’s visit to Corzine’s swanky midtown Manhattan apartment for a fundraiser or the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Corzine, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and former New Jersey governor, raised for the president this year. Corzine is also known to be an administration counselor on economics given his many years on Wall Street. Don’t believe me, listen to vice president Joe Biden who said Corzine helped the administration develop its stimulus program (he wanted it bigger than the originally planned $300 million; the final package was closer to $1 billion) while referring to him as “the smartest guy I know in terms of the economy.” The president and the vice president will eat those words one way or another in the coming weeks and months. In a business where optics is everything, consider the following: Now that Corzine has ignored his request to testify before a House subcommittee on investigations regarding his role in the bankruptcy of MF Global, he will likely be subpoenaed since Republicans control the majority of the committee. When he testifies he will likely plead the Fifth Amendment against self incrimination, because of the raft of civil and criminal investigations swirling around MF Global’s bankruptcy. Corzine’s biggest problem is that despite his big time resume, he’s actually a pretty lousy manager and economist. he was booted from Goldman because of his poor oversight of the firm’s risk taking. Bad oversight of risk taking is just the beginning of MF Global’s problems leading to its implosion several weeks ago: Along with its bankruptcy are the messy little details involving as much as $1.2 billion in customer money still missing from the firm. Taking the Fifth may be the best move for Corzine since any lawyer will tell you such hearings are built-in perjury traps, but it will be bad for the president, showing once again he doesn’t understand the economy and surrounds himself with people who are equally inept.

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Patagonia: Don’t Buy Our Jackets

November 28, 2011

Are you buying anything on Cyber Monday ? Patagonia asks that you think twice before making a purchase … even from their own store. Patagonia’s campaign is the exact opposite of what one might expect from a clothing and outdoor gear manufacturer, but the Southern California-based company is taking on what they see as rampant consumerism with their Common Threads Initiative . Patagonia wrote on their website , “Cyber Monday, and the culture of consumption it reflects, puts the economy of natural systems that support all life firmly in the red. We’re now using the resources of one-and-a-half planets on our one and only planet.” In the video below, the company stresses that you should consider what you “deeply need” and not just buy what you “vaguely want.” Economically, Black Friday and the holiday shopping season may be a boon , but the unsustainable consumerism Patagonia wants to stop was arguably visible in shoppers’ behavior this weekend. Violence erupted at stores across the country as shoppers fought over limited quantities of sale items. A 61-year-old shopper in West Virginia collapsed in a Target store and later died. He was allegedly ignored and stepped over by his fellow deal hunters. The stress on our planet isn’t just felt with over-production and waste with consumer goods. A report released this week by the United Nations found that a quarter of the world’s land is already “highly degraded.” The report also found that the world’s farmers will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed the world’s expanding population. WATCH: —

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Larry Summers Denounces Inequality — But Why?

November 28, 2011

Why is Larry Summers suddenly so worried about inequality? The Harvard professor — a former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s first Director of the National Economic Council — penned an opinion piece last week decrying the concentration of income at the very top. Warning of “a strong and troubling shift in market rewards for a small minority,” Summers cited “dismal” figures, such as a 275 percent increase in incomes of the top 1 percent from 1979 to 2007. During that same period, income grew a mere 40 percent for the middle class. The need for fixes is fiercely urgent, he said. But his timing is curious. Summers was driving economic policy during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, yet he remained largely silent on income inequality. A scan of news items featuring Summers during his recent time in power turns up almost nothing on this topic, at a moment when economic matters were at the forefront of public debate. The gist of Summers’ op-ed — that the United States has become a profoundly unequal society — will surprise no one who’s been following economic trends for the last several years, to say nothing of the country’s thousands of Occupy protesters, whom Summers conspicuously did not mention. But it’s remarkable to hear the alarm being sounded by someone who’s been portrayed by detractors as an embodiment of the tight link between Washington and Wall Street. Summers’ motivation is largely political, according to several economists contacted by The Huffington Post. “Reputation,” said Derek Shearer, who served in the Clinton administration as an economics official in the Commerce Department and is professor of diplomacy at Occidental College, when asked about the purpose of Summers’ recent move. “Show he’s a good liberal guy.” Summers did not return request for comment for this article. A career-minded technocrat like Summers — especially one who’s been associated with discredited policies like financial deregulation — has to try to stay on the leading edge of political discussion, Shearer said. “These are issues of the day, and he’s out marketing and branding himself. The facts are there, you can’t deny them. All he’s doing is stating reality. It’s like, ‘Oh, my god, there’s global warming.’ ” Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, agreed: “My guess is he’s being political here — he’s trying to go with the tide.” This isn’t the first time Summers has swung to the left while out of government. Baker and Shearer mentioned a series of increasingly progressive-sounding opinion pieces Summers wrote in the run-up to the 2008 election. “If you go back to ’06, ’08, he started to say some really good things in the Financial Times . There was talk about a new Larry Summers,” said Baker. But when Summers joined the Obama administration, where his job was to gather and present the president a range of economic policy options, many observers criticized him for marginalizing progressive opinions, including those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and economists Joseph Stiglitz and James K. Galbraith. “None of the economists who were named to the council were particularly progressive,” Shearer said. “What you can fairly say is that there’s no evidence Larry was concerned with the issue [of inequality], and he really limited the range of interests and expertise that would be provided to the president. He saw himself as an expert on the economy, not somebody with strongly demonstrated progressive values.” In fact, when Summers is quoted talking about inequality in Ron Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President,” it’s in starkly different terms than those employed in his recent opinion piece: “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of a disequalizer.” Summers is quoted as saying. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” Summers has disputed aspects of Suskind’s account , but the remarks seem in line with a couple of other famous Summers statements. While a vice president of the World Bank in 1991, Summers penned a memo suggesting it was only logical for high-pollution industries to move to developing countries . Once the memo was leaked, Summers said it was written in jest. And in 2005, Summers said innate ability may partially explain why women are underrepresented in the sciences — comments that drew a firestorm of criticism at the time. To be sure, Summers has publicly adopted progressive positions before. During the 2008 campaign he spoke forcefully about inequality in a speech at a Harvard Business School conference . At the time, Summers was an adviser to Obama, and seen as a potential candidate to head the Treasury. Once secure in the White House, however, Summers seems to have lost focus on inequality: His next prominent statement about the issue came on October 14, 2010, when his departure from the Obama administration had already been announced. In an interview with the Washington Post , Summers spoke of the subject almost in passing, seemingly at the prompting of the interviewer, while discussing the benefits of letting upper-income tax cuts expire. The chief reason to do so, Summers said, was to allow the government to invest in job-creation: “Summers, who will step down and return to Harvard in January, agreed that tackling income inequality is also a factor,” read the article. “But ‘ this isn’t about redistribution ,’ he said.” Ira Kalish, director of global economics at Deloitte Research, said Summers should be forgiven for having other priorities while working in the White House. “The Obama administration was dealing with a near-collapse of the financial system. It was in a sense a triage,” said Kalish, who authored a study of income inequality’s implications for U.S. business . “They had to prevent the economy from collapsing before they could focus on longer term issues, and this [inequality] is a longer term issue.” While Shearer agreed that the Obama administration had to address many short-term issues, he said it wasn’t an either/or situation. “If this inequality was a major concern of yours, after dealing with the meltdown you move into the reform stages,” Shearer said, “and you of course could have been much tougher in the reforms you proposed.” At the very least, Shearer said, the White House could have established a presidential commission on inequality in the U.S., its causes and potential solutions. “That’s the bare minimum you could have done. That’s something Larry seemed to have no interest in. Instead they set up a Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission.” In his recent op-ed, Summers was careful to position himself at the political center, chiding those who blame “the success of the wealthy” for “the disappointing lack of income growth for middle-class workers,” as well as those who “call concerns about rising inequality misplaced or a product of class warfare.” But this equivocal stance — part denunciation, part defense of inequality — lead Summers into a vague and limited appraisal of the problem and its solutions. None of the economists contacted by The Huffington Post were impressed with Summers’ assessment of the problem of income inequality and potential solutions. Baker called the analysis “really the standard textbook stuff, small-bore stuff.” The cause of the problem, according to Summers, is that “the market system distributes rewards increasingly inequitably.” But Baker notes that the inequality we see is consistent with the direction of policy: “They designed the system to redistribute income upward. The taxpayers are subsidizing the executives at the banks and the shareholders. We have those huge compensation packages on Wall Street; that has nothing to do with the market, it’s government subsidy.” Trade agreements too have played a large part, Baker said, putting less educated workers in direct competition with people from the developing world. “That puts downward pressure on their wages, and at the same time we largely protect the most highly educated professionals — doctors, lawyers — so that they aren’t competing with their counterparts in the developing world.” “This is stuff that’s been said since the Clinton years,” Baker said. “The position is, ‘We have inequality from the market and we can ameliorate it a little bit with good policy.’ The position is that inequality came from the market, not inequality came from the policy.” “He’s not going to say something too controversial,” Shearer said. “Because then he’s not going to be hired by another hedge fund.” “You do very well if you don’t rock the boat in America. I don’t expect Larry to lead the charge,” Shearer added. “I’d be shocked if he did.”

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Stephen P. Groff: More Than Good Intentions: Making Development Assistance Work

November 28, 2011

As Europe and America continue to reel in the wake of the global economic downturn, questions are increasingly being raised about the need for — and value of — foreign aid. US presidential hopefuls and other skeptics are asking: Is aid worth it? Does it make a positive difference in the lives of poor people in developing countries? Or is it merely lining the pockets of corrupt officials at a time when more and more western taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet? Aid to Asia is coming under particularly intense scrutiny. Many see the growing affluence and ample state coffers in some Asian nations, and understandably question why the region needs foreign aid. Behind this sparkling veneer, however, is another face of Asia, the more than 1.6 billion people who eke by on less than $2 a day — less than the price of a small Starbucks latte. Asia’s poor desperately need the health, education and other social services that foreign aid brings. For the sake of these 1.6 billion, and to better ensure the stability of the region; it’s imperative that aid not be cut. It is equally essential, however, that we ensure this aid delivers as promised, giving donor nations value for money, and poor families a better life. Good intentions are not enough. A textbook example of how aid can work effectively can be found in the Republic of Korea, where global development partners are meeting in Busan for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness . Having leapfrogged from “third world” status to a developed country within the course of a single generation, Korea provides a shining example of a country that made development assistance work. Its per capita GDP has grown astonishingly from $255 in 1970 to more than $20,750 by 2010, and today Korea is helping neighboring countries in developing Asia help themselves through both financial and technical assistance. Underpinning Korea’s success were effective institutions that used external resources to support the country’s own development strategies. This “country ownership” is the first principle of the Paris Declaration – a global compact signed at the First High Level Forum in 2005 to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid. In essence, the principle of ownership recognizes that donors can best contribute to development by supporting countries’ own efforts to build more effective governments and institutions. At the same time, the compact calls for a greater focus on producing and measuring development results, with greater accountability for both donors and developing countries. While implementing their own projects may give donors a greater sense of control, experience has shown that it does not produce the long-term impact needed. Donors are often compelled to make their investment spending “visible.” Shiny new hospitals or schools provide compelling photo opportunities, yet if there aren’t enough well-trained doctors or teachers to staff them, and no reliable stream of funding to sustain them, these one-off projects will not add up to development. The only way donors can ensure that their funding is well utilized is if governments and donors work together to support and monitor implementation of a country’s development strategy, making decisions based on the whole picture rather than a small part of it. Six years after the Paris Declaration, some progress has been made in implementing its commitments, but action is still needed on several fronts. First, we must make aid more predictable by being transparent and ensuring that developing country governments receive timely information on how much they can expect to receive from donors in advance and over a period of several years. Without an accurate picture of available resources, it is difficult to make the sound budgetary decisions that in turn can increase the effectiveness of aid. A second challenge relates to reducing aid fragmentation. The average size of aid funding has been cut in half over the past 10 years. There are over 4,000 bilateral programs in developing countries, with all the associated costs, but half of them amount to less than 5% of total aid flows. This fragmentation is increasingly difficult for developing countries to manage. Moreover, inefficiencies from this fragmentation may cost up to $5 billion annually. A final challenge is to build consensus with emerging donors to enrich development cooperation based on their experiences, and better ensure all players contribute equally to improved development effectiveness. While most of the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and the People’s Republic of China — have signed on to the Paris Declaration, they have not been as central to the discussions as many had hoped, leading to the risk that a critical perspective will be diluted in the final outcome of this forum. Beyond these challenges, we must recognize that the world has changed dramatically in recent years. The global financial and economic crisis highlighted the critical importance of deeper, more inclusive global cooperation. The High Level Forum in Busan offers an opportunity to build a fresh, more flexible global development partnership that includes more resources, better coordination and more coherence. We must recognize that it is the best interest of all of us to resolve the very real problems of poverty — and to do this more effectively, and together. In these times of economic uncertainty, the world simply cannot afford anything less than effective aid. Busan is a critical milestone on the path to greater development results — and Korea a fitting showcase for what can be achieved.

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Liquor Licenses Racking Up Revenue

November 28, 2011

In just less a year since the law creating Sunday morning liquor licenses went into effect, nearly 6,000 Michigan liquor stores have forked over $160 for licenses to open shop early. The law allows liquor to be sold beginning at 7 a.m. on Sundays, rather than the standard 12 p.m. It had businesses open early starting on Dec. 19, 2010, in many, but not all, Michigan communities. The state has already received $950,000 in revenue from the new licenses . The law also makes it possible for local governments to opt out of early Sundays , which several cities, including Flint, Commerce Township, Albion and Garden City, have chosen to do. A flaw in the original bill made it necessary for communities to choose to allow businesses to open early or force them to close altogether on Sundays. The Michigan Liquor Control Commission didn’t enforce this provision, and Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill fixing the disparity in May, so communities and businesses can still choose to keep their liquor sales start time at noon. Detroit residents shouldn’t be hard-pressed to find a liquor store when they need one — every Detroit resident lives within 0.7 miles of a liquor store or bar. Mapping the Strait did a little math to find that in 2009 in Michigan, Detroit had the most liquor licenses per resident, with 810 liquor stores and 560 bars in city limits.

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For U.S. Veterans, Green Energy Jobs Await

November 28, 2011

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ben Noland served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years, then spent 18 months looking for a job. “I’ve probably put my resume in to 300 places in the past year,” the 33-year-old Kenton resident said. “The farthest I’ve ever got was a phone interview.” Noland finally landed a job installing solar panels at Tipping Point Renewable Energy, a Columbus-based solar power company that is hiring only military veterans for its installation crews at a time when unemployment among former service members is outpacing that of civilians. Tipping Point’s efforts echo those of companies and groups nationwide to hire veterans in the green energy industry. Denver-based nonprofit Veterans Green Jobs is one of the largest, having trained or placed 370 veterans in the last four years. And a pilot program by five of the nation’s largest energy providers, called Troops to Energy Jobs, provides training and credentials to military veterans, as well as college credit for their military training and experience. About 240,000 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned to the U.S. and are unable to find work. They make up a growing chunk of the 850,000 veterans overall who are out of work. The White House expects an additional 1 million service members to return to civilian life by 2016. The veteran unemployment rate in October was 12.1 percent, compared with 9 percent for the U.S. overall. For veterans ages 18-24, that rate was 30.4 percent. The renewable energy industry is growing fast – solar and wind energy have grown more than tenfold in the last decade – and military veterans often make good fits for green jobs. Such green sector jobs as manufacturing or maintenance of wind turbines or solar arrays require skills similar to those that service members learn in the military, said Bill Scott of Bradley-Morris Inc., the largest military-focused recruiting firm in the U.S. Veterans generally get technical training that is lacking in the civilian workforce, Scott said. The number of projects providing solar energy more than doubled in the U.S. from 2008 to 2010. In that time, the amount of solar energy generated increased from enough to power 1.4 million homes in 2008 to 3.2 million homes in 2010. Wind energy has increased 1.5 times in capacity over the same time, able to power 39 million homes in 2010, up from 25 million in 2008. Renewable energy has been growing fast in Ohio. The number of new projects approved by the state in the first 10 months of 2011 is more than triple that of all of 2010. And of the 2,797 new constructions approved this year, all but 24 were solar power arrays. However, there is some worry about whether that pace of renewable energy growth will sustain itself. Federal stimulus tax credits run out for wind energy projects by 2012 for and solar by 2016, and a federal grant program that repays developers a portion of project cost expires this year. The idea for Tipping Point’s Solar by Soldiers program, started this summer, was inspired in part by chief technical officer Darin Hadinger’s father, a Vietnam War veteran. He said a clerical error on his father’s honorable discharge made it hard for him to find work. Tipping Point has hired as many as six veterans for work site staffs of nine and plans to hire at least 10 more veterans altogether. Noland, one of Tipping Point’s hires, left the Marines in 2009, in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. He started looking for supply and logistics management jobs, something he had experience with from running supply convoys to troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. When nothing turned up, he looked futilely for warehouse jobs in Columbus. Finally, he briefly took a minimum-wage job at McDonald’s 30 minutes away from his house. “I’m a military veteran. Two tours of Iraq, one of Afghanistan – I was thinking, `Man, I’ve got to be able to hang my hat on that,’ you’d think.” Noland said. “I was completely discouraged.” Part of the reason that unemployment among veterans is so high is that there is a lack of understanding among both veterans and potential employers, said Lt. Guy Zierk of the Marine Corps’ Wounded Warrior Regiment in Ohio. Part of Zierk’s job is connecting returning Marines with services and programs designed to help them return to civilian life. “Civilians can have a hard time understanding the military. They don’t understand what a squad leader is – entry-level management,” Zierk said. He said returning veterans also have a hard time translating the skills they learned in their service to civilian life. There’s also a language barrier for veterans returning home, said Neal Yorke, a retired veteran of the U.S. Air Force who helps returning military members transition into civilian life. “I was Air Force, a lot of the time I can’t understand the Navy, and to me the Marines are the most difficult – let alone coming back to the civilian world and trying to explain to an employer that I have the skills that they need.”

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Herman Cain Releases ’9-9-9 The Movie’

November 28, 2011

“9-9-9.” It’s a slogan and tax plan that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has often turned to, even on strange, off-topic occasions . After straying away from this refrain over the past month, however, Cain’s campaign appears to be trying to get back on message with a new, animated explainer video reminding voters about his trademark idea for overhauling the tax system. “The federal tax code is an overgrown monster — but it’s not even a cool monster, It’s a dorky, mechanical monster held together with a bunch of tattered red tape and driven around by squirrelly bureaucrats,” the video’s narrator says. “What would happen if we scrapped all 82,000 pages of the current tax code and simplified things with Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan?” the narrator asks. “The economy would accelerate faster than Barack Obama on his way out of town. We would add $2 trillion to GDP and create 6 million jobs. Business investment would increase by a third. Wages would go up 10 percent. At the same time, federal revenues would go up 15 percent.” While the video is entertaining and well-made, it ignores some of the biggest criticisms of Cain’s plan, such as a review by the Tax Policy Center, which found that it would serve as a nearly 950 percent tax increase on some households making between $10,000 and $20,000 Cain’s campaign, once propelled to the top of the pack with the help of “9-9-9,” has taken knocks over the past month amid persistent sexual harassment allegations , which he has continually denied, and a number of high-profile verbal stumbles . He claimed over the weekend that some of his comments had been taken out of context but that they had nonetheless damaged his polling performance. Cain made a similar admission on Monday, but said that his supporters remained loyal despite the distractions. “Here’s the good news. We didn’t drop all the way down to sixth or seventh. We dropped to third” in most polls, he told Fox News. He says supporters “didn’t defect because of all the noise that was going on.” According to the latest polls , Cain is at third place in the GOP primary field, behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former House speaker Newt Gingrich.

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Jason Alderman: Tax Deadline Looms for Charitable Contributions

November 28, 2011

Each year, roughly one-third of American households itemize deductions on their federal income taxes. If you’re among that group, there are a several important actions you need to take by year’s end in order to take full advantage of available deductions. For example, by December 31, 2011, you must pay for any uninsured medical expenses, state and local income and property taxes, and unreimbursed employee expenses you want to deduct from your 2011 taxes. You also need to decide how much you want to contribute to charitable organizations and either charge your credit or debit card or postmark a check by midnight on the final day of the year. Here are a few tax-related issues and other matters to keep in mind when choosing how you’ll make — and report — your charitable contributions: Confirm the organization’s tax-exempt status. The IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of approximately 275,000 nonprofit organizations because they hadn’t filed annual reports for three consecutive years, as required by law. Although donations you may have made to those organizations prior to their being disqualified still count as tax-deductible, going forward, such organizations are no longer eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions unless they’re reinstated by the IRS. Click Here to find out if any of your donations are affected. Charitable auction purchases and donations. If you buy an item at a charitable auction, you’re only allowed to claim a deduction for the amount you pay that’s above its fair market value, so be sure to get documentation from the organization (e.g., a catalog showing a good-faith estimate). On the other hand, if you donate an item for a charitable auction, you’re only allowed to claim your “tax basis” in the item — that is, the amount you originally paid for it, vs. its current fair market value. IRA distributions. For many, one of our tax code’s downfalls is that unless you itemize deductions you cannot reap tax advantages from your charitable contributions. However, an important exception is made for senior citizens, many of whom no longer carry a mortgage and thus don’t itemize deductions: People age 70½ or older may contribute up to $100,000 from their IRAs directly to charity and have it count toward their 2011 Required Minimum Distribution (RMD). Although the RMD contribution itself isn’t tax-deductible, the amount won’t be included in your adjusted gross income (AGI) thereby providing several potential tax benefits: A lower AGI could reduce taxes on your Social Security benefits. It could make you eligible for tax breaks that are tied to AGI. The contribution will lower your overall IRA balance, which in turn reduces the size of future mandatory distributions. Choose wisely. Before making a donation or volunteering your time, make sure the nonprofit organization is well-run. Ideally the organization applies at least 75 percent of contributions to programs that serve its beneficiaries, as opposed to spending them on salaries, advertising, fund-raising and other administrative expenses. Study the organization’s website and annual report and request a copy of its IRS Form 990, which details how contributions are spent. Speak to staff members or volunteers or, if you know someone who has used its services, ask for their impressions. Several resources are available to help with your research: The IRS’ Tax Information for Contributors website features a search engine for eligible organizations, information on reporting and substantiating charitable deductions and other helpful tips. At GuideStar , you can review financial summaries and other data for more than 1.8 million IRS-qualified, tax-exempt organizations. Its basic search engine is free; or you can order more customized research for a fee. The site also features helpful questions to ask and tips for choosing a charity . Charity Navigator rates nearly 5,500 large charities by financial strength, revenue spent on programs and services and other criteria. Their Top 10 Lists and Tips for Donors provide helpful evaluation tools. You also can use their evaluation guidelines to formulate your own inquiries for smaller organizations not included in their ratings. Charity Watch , formerly known as the American Institute of Philanthropy, is a nonprofit charity watchdog and information service whose Charity Rating Guide (available for $3) rates more than 500 major American charities on how they spend donor money on scale of “A” to “F.” The Better Business Bureau rates whether organizations have met its standards of accountability, including ethical conduct and honest solicitation practices. A few additional tips: Ask whether your employer will match a portion of your contributions, and if it allows automatic payroll deductions to charities of your choice. You must have a receipt to claim deductions for cash or property, no matter how small. A cancelled check or credit card statement will suffice for contributions under $250, but amounts over $250 require a written statement from the charity. See IRS Publication 526 for details. Be wary of telemarketing and email solicitations for donations. When in doubt, hang up or delete the email and contact the organization yourself. And, be aware that scammers often choose names that are similar to those of legitimate organizations. The personal rewards that come from donating your time and money to worthy causes certainly far exceed mere tax breaks, but still, it pays to know how the rules work in case you do qualify. This article is intended to provide general information and should not be considered legal, tax or financial advice. It’s always a good idea to consult a legal, tax or financial advisor for specific information on how certain laws apply to you and about your individual financial situation. To Follow Jason Alderman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PracticalMoney

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Diversified Secure Ventures Corp. (Pinksheets-SRWY) (Diversified) Provides Corporate Update

November 28, 2011

TORONTO–(Marketwire – Nov 28, 2011) – Diversified Secure Ventures Corp. ( PINKSHEETS : SRWY ) wishes to inform its shareholders that the Board of Directors has accepted the resignation of Shane Minnema as Secretary and the resignation of Afshin Missaghi as Director. Edward Minnema presently holds all positions as Officers of the corporation as well as being the sole Director.

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Don McNay: Why Occupy Needs to Work With the One-and-a-Half Percenters

November 28, 2011

“You don’t know me but you don’t like me” -Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens Occupy Wall Street and I share a unique kinship. On the same week that Occupy Wall Street became a worldwide social movement, I released a bestselling book, Wealth without Wall Street: A Main Street Guide to Making Money. I didn’t know about them and they didn’t know about me but we have common goals and points of contention. We are both opposed to how Washington bailed out Wall Street in 2008. We both want to reduce the power of Wall Street in Washington and over our daily lives. My book, Wealth Without Wall Street, advocates the Arianna Huffington concept of Moving Your Money from Wall Street banks to Main Street banks. Occupy Wall Street put rocket fuel behind the Move Your Money movement. I’m hearing from throngs of people who did it. Every time someone from OPW gets pepper-sprayed, has a tea gas canister shot in their head, or gets rousted by police directed by New York ‘s Mayor Michael Bloomberg ( a billionaire dilettante), thousands of others quietly move their money in protest. That “silent majority” inspired by the demonstrators will be people who help make the impact everlasting. Wealth Without Wall Street said that economic protests, like those organized by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, are far more effective than protesting. If Americans set up their lives so that we depend less on Wall Street and Washington, both entities will notice. We will be hitting them in the place where it hurts the most: their wallet. There are several ways to hit Wall Street in the wallet. Moving your money and your investments away from Wall Street is the movement that is picking up steam but cutting up your credit cards, where Wall Street makes of its profits, is another one. My idea of looking to start your own business is going slow but the idea of supporting small business has gotten far more attention since Occupy Wall Street started. A lot of attention has been given to the 99 percenters. That label has been a dilemma for me. I’ve qualified for a financial services honor called the Million Dollar Round Table for twenty-five consecutive years. That means that I’m in the top one percent some years and in the top two percent in other years. In other words, you can call me a one and a half percenter. Although my heart and beliefs are with the people getting pepper-sprayed in the parks, my income is closer to the people who are ordering the police to roust them. As a person sitting on Main Street, I can see how the protesters are having an impact. Bank of America backed off its plan to charge five dollars a month for using debit cards after a protest fueled by OPW knocked it down. I see reference after reference to how OPW is changing the debate in Washington. I need OPW to keep doing what they are doing and know it. OPW may or may not know that they need the “one and a half” percenters when they translate their protests into long-term success. I’ve studied social movements academically and see we are at a turning point. Violent crackdowns, like those are taking place in major cities, can either result in dissipating a movement or angering a nation to take its side. People are angry at Wall Street and that is not going away, no matter how many times Bloomberg and like-minded cronies bash on the people who are peacefully protesting. The anger needed to be channeled into economic action. Where the protests should go next is not against the big banks, it should go against the large institutions placing billions in those banks. When alumni and significant givers protest their alma maters placing money in Wall Street banks, which will make a huge impact. The same will hold true if business pension funds are managed by people not affiliated with pension funds. If voters start throwing out politicians who place taxpayer dollars in Wall Street banks, real change and real reform will be possible. I’m like a lot of “One and a half” percenters. Neither of my parents finished high school and I worked to get a number of advanced degrees. I think Wall Street is putting out average Americans, like the people I grew up with. The financial and political systems are extremely unfair and Wall Street has gotten out of control. I’m glad someone is protesting as it has taken from 2008 to get from anger to marching in the streets. On the hand, Americans are a nations of strivers and achievers. Someone, somewhere, we all want to have access to the American dream and have that legacy for our children. Financial success may be improbable but it should never be labeled as impossible. To propose limits and impeding a rise to the top will never be bought into by those who seek upward mobility. Those sleeping in parks and those who make reasonable high incomes look different, dress different and live in different neighborhoods. The line from the song, “you don’t know me but you don’t like me” holds true and needs to be overcome. Once all sides realize they have common goals and can help each other, those goals will be achieved. Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the bestselling author of the book Wealth Without Wall Street: McNay, who lives in Richmond Kentucky, an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor. You can learn more about him at www.donmcnay.com He is the Chairman of the Board for the McNay Settlement Group (www.mcnay.com) which provides structured settlement consulting for injury victims, lottery winners, and the families of special needs children. McNay founded Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC, which assists attorneys in as conservators and setting up guardianship’s. It is nationally recognized as an administrator of Qualified Settlement (468b) funds. McNay is a Life and Quarter Century Club member of the Million Dollar Round Table .

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Jared Bernstein: What Now?

November 28, 2011

OK. Thanksgiving’s behind us, the 91% of the workforce with jobs are back to work, and in DC at least, there’s a sense of “what happens next?” in the air. Here’s one man’s answer: Anatomy of a failure : It would be a pleasure to never hear the words “super” and “committee” in the same sentence again for a while but I’m afraid it’s actually important to review what happened. The “both sides are to blame” meme is irresistible but doesn’t hold up to even casual scrutiny. The Democrats on the committee went deep into Republican territory with spending cuts, putting hundreds of billions of cuts in Medicare and Medicaid on the table, and asked for less revenue in exchange than they should have. But the Republicans wouldn’t really budge on taxes and that queered the deal from the start. (Their latest retort: “you can’t raise taxes in a recession… even the president has admitted that”… is nonsense. This is a ten year deal, one that could easily have the tax increases phase in later.) I’m really not sure how this story gets told and who’d even want to hear it. But it needs to get out there. Where’s POTUS ? The president should not, in my opinion, take any heat at all for not playing along in the deficit reduction follies going on in Congress. The Republicans have made in clear that if he’s for it, they’re agin’ it and I don’t see what’s gained for him getting burned again by them. If I thought his involvement would contribute to a more positive outcome, I’d argue differently, but I don’t. He needs to be doing whatever he can to either give the economy the lift it needs, or explain to the electorate why he’s unable to do so. More on that below. Republicans on parade : The weekly beauty contest has to end soon and a front-runner will likely emerge before long. At that point, things get ugly. Slugfest: If Tolstoy had been a political consultant, he might have written, “Every happy election strategy is unique; every unhappy election strategy is the same: start negative and go down from there.” At 9% unemployment, the opposition’s hand is dealt — they’ll obviously run against the incumbent’s record. Now, I’m no presidential historian, and I worked for the man, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a president who’s done more and gotten less for it. The Recovery Act, saving the auto industry health care reform, financial reform — all are landmark legislation. The first two demonstrably helped and the latter two have great potential, though they’re far from reaching fruition. But none are popular. I’m not saying there haven’t been large missteps — the handling of the debt ceiling debacle, the precipitous shift to deficit reduction — but the POTUS can be forgiven for feeling a little bit like “no good deed goes unpunished.” (BTW, one of the more dispiriting polls I saw when I was working for the administration was one showing that the auto bailout polled worse than the TARP. I get it — people don’t like bailouts, and they had a hard time sorting out one from the other. But the man made a tough decision — a truly hard, courageous call — that preserved the freakin’ American auto industry! Can I get a witness here?!?) Temperatures rising : All of the above is occurring while the electorate’s temperature is rising… at least I hope it is. News accounts — so this is at the level of anecdote for now — suggest that the failure of the super committee may have been a dysfunctional bridge too far for a lot of people (which would imply something good actually came out of the process). It’s one thing to just throw your hands up and dismissively (and correctly) say “they’re all crazy clowns down there in Washington.” It’s another, however, to get genuinely worried about our inability to self-correct. If so, that could motivate people to push aside the Tea Party, Norquist, take-no-prisoners-make-no-compromise group that has frozen our politics and rendered the nation unable to meet the increasingly serious challenges we face. Europathy : Contagion fears increase as leaders continue to bumble along, slouching toward a solution when the world needs them to be sprinting. As I wrote the other day, the potential for a country to leave the Eurozone is real, and the magnitude of the disruption from that event is hard to exaggerate. Imagine you lent the Newman family across the street a couple of grand in dollars and they paid you back in “Newmans” and you’ll get the flavor of what’s going on here. Still, the thing to keep in mind here is that the solution is known and within the realm of possibility — a large backup fund for banks holding bad debt supported by the ECB (which needs to take a page from our Fed and start printing a lot of euros) and northern members of the zone, and a managed default for Greece. The politics are really tough, however, and after a week in the UK, I must say I’m more sympathetic. Folks on this side of the pond need to appreciate how deeply the populaces of the richer countries disdain any bailout. Yes, true leadership at a time like this means doing things that are deeply unpopular (see note above re President Obama), but that kind of thing is a lot harder in parliamentary systems. But that’s also why advanced economies have central banks — they’re politically insulated so that they can do the right thing at the toughest time. In that regard, the real failure here has been the ECB. (I should note that I’m eating Greek yogurt — made in Greece — as we speak, so I’m trying to do my small part.) Economy : Oh yeah… that. Well, retailers apparently had a kick-ass black Friday — the American consumer just cannot be stopped. But I still don’t see where self-sustaining growth comes from in the near term absent government measures to either boost demand or help revive the housing market. And to the contrary, there’s a real question as to whether the Congress can get it together to extend the expiring payroll tax holiday (over $100 billion) and extended unemployment benefits (about $60 bn). With multipliers, that’s 1-2% less GDP next year. So the slog continues. Absent Congress, the only idea I can think of to really move the needle is to seriously nudge Fannie and Freddie to get much deeper into the business of loan mods. More on that soon on these pages, but it probably involves replacing the acting director of Fan and Fred’s regulator, the FHFA. The current holder, Ed DeMarco (a Bush appointee) has been a tough, responsible regulator. But he’s not been nearly forthcoming enough regarding modifications and most people who’ve looked into this think that an Obama appointee might help get some things moving. This isn’t a lot to ask for given the depth of avoidable economic pain out there — we’re not talking about a major coop or firing a faithful ally. And I’m not saying it will solve everything, but it’s a necessary step and the admin should either take it or explain why I’m wrong. This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein’s On The Economy blog.

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‘The Office’ Dunder Mifflin Paper Now An Actual Product!

November 28, 2011

After seven and a half seasons of teasing us with their product, Dunder Mifflin will finally give the general public the opportunity to use their famed paper. Comcast, the parent company of “The Office” broadcaster NBC, has licensed for production a line of paper stock from the world’s largest (fictional) Northeastern Pennsylvania-based mid-sized paper company. Staples will produce and sell the product on its Quill.com, meaning fans of the show can print out their own love letters to Jim Halpert on the paper he’s made a career of pushing. That Comcast decided to go with Staples may raise some eyebrows amongst hardcore fans of the show; after all, Staples is one of Dunder Mifflin’s biggest competitors, and where Dwight briefly worked while on a sojourn from his beloved company. Another question to ponder: will the pages display the classic, recalled watermark that involved a duck and a mouse in a very obscene way ? For more, click over to the Wall Street Journal .

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Roger Ehrenberg: Message To Founders: Always Ask For ‘The Order’

November 28, 2011

In Wall Street parlance, “the order” is the opportunity to do a transaction. You, the salesperson, are telling the customer in no uncertain terms that you want to do a deal given a particular set of parameters. It is part and parcel of the culture that you can (and should) educate, compare alternatives, and frame the opportunity in light of the customer’s particular context, but that you absolutely, positively have to tell the customer what you want in unambiguous terms. It is also critical to demonstrate why they should do the transaction with you instead of with the myriad competitors from whom they could get something that is largely undifferentiated (though a big part of the job is creating sources of real differentiation, but this is extremely difficult at the commodity-end of the product spectrum). But the bottom line is, you can’t be afraid to ask for the business. You can do a great job educating, positioning and convincing, but if you don’t ask for the order guess what happens: all your hard work ultimately benefits another who has the guts (and brains) to ask for it. It happens every day. The Wall Street example is merely a microcosm of life. Being clear as to your wants and desires is essential for establishing and maintaining healthy relationships in both professional and personal realms. And it is CRITICAL for succeeding in business because, well, if you can’t hire, lead and sell, it is very difficult to win. And this applies to a middle-manager in a Fortune 500 Corporation and perhaps even more importantly to start-up founders. Start-ups need so much stuff, that if a founder lacks the ability and/or impetus to aggressively go out and get it, life is going to be very, very hard. My friend James Altucher recently published an excellent post on TechCrunch about negotiation techniques. How to negotiate is a higher-order manifestation of what I’m getting at. Before negotiation skills come into play, you need to ask for the thing around which a negotiation can take place. I find that many first-time founders have a hard time with this, sometimes due to inexperience, other times lack of confidence, and often because what they want to ask for isn’t crystal clear and, therefore, doesn’t get asked for. These “things” span a wide array of activities: advice from industry mentors; alpha adoption or a proof-of-concept with a potential customer; input from more experienced founders; money from friends and family, etc. All really important stuff that can – and should – be asked for. It is hard to ask for things, I get it. Especially when it comes to stuff like money and and advice. The tone I frequently see from more technical first-time founders is almost apologetic: they are passionate about their gig but are more comfortable operating in a vacuum because it is hard to ask “outsiders” for help. This, in my experience, is seldom a good thing. Being forced to deal with others is healthy and will ultimately benefit the business. But in order to to be effective a few attitudinal elements must be in place: Be confident. You rock; you really do. The fact that you are starting something and devoting your life to it is freaking awesome. This alone should give you the confidence and esteem to ask for help with head held high. The worst thing that someone can say is no. And if they do? Screw them – and move on to the next one. Be focused. You have to know what you are asking for. Being confident while being unfocused in your ask is really annoying and will ultimately lead to failure. If you’ve gone through the trouble to set up an ask, make it time well-spent for all parties. Do you homework and know what you want. Confidence + focus is a recipe for success. Be tough. Getting kicked around and rejected is part of any great mission. It means what you’re doing is either really stupid or orthogonal to conventional thought (read: a potential home run). Given that you rock, I’m going to assume it is a differentiated but dissonant idea which will require a very refined pitch to communicate and convince smart, cynical people (be they potential employees, investors or customers). No is a perfectly reasonable answer: just make sure that you are getting textured rejections in order that you can learn and use that information for subsequent meetings. Be persistent. Staying in touch with those to whom you’ve pitched, where they are potential “yesses” in the future but need to see more and better thinking/product/proof, often yields tremendous results. Saying what you’re going to do and then doing it is a boon for fund-raising at every stage. Use that confidence, clarity and toughness to fuel the persistence necessary to win over high-value people as your company evolves. Starting a company is one of the hardest things anyone can do. You’ve already taken the leap; it is time to leverage that by asking for the order. Don’t be afraid or ashamed, because always remember: you rock. This post originally appeared in InformationArbitrage.com .

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Medicalis Appoints Jim Boyle as Chief Operating Officer and Guy Anthony as Chief Financial Officer

November 28, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwire – Nov 28, 2011) – Healthcare Industry veterans Jim Boyle and Guy Anthony have joined Medicalis, a leading developer of radiology workflow solutions for the next generation in productivity, utilization, and quality. Boyle, who has more than 30 years of related experience in the information technology service industry, joins Medicalis as its new Chief Operating Officer, and Anthony, with over 20 years of successful IT and startup experience, joins Medicalis as its new Chief Financial Officer.

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Did Wyclef’s Charity Waste Millions In Donor Money?

November 28, 2011

Wyclef Jean’s charity, Yele Haiti, is coming under scrutiny again for squandering millions of dollars in charitable donations. The New York Post reported that the charity took in $16 million from donors in 2010 , but only about a third went to fund emergency efforts. The paper also reported that $1 million went to a Florida company called Amisphere Farm Labor, Inc., that doesn’t appear to actually exist. The paper said the address listed for Amisphere is an auto body shop in Miami. The paper also said that Amsterly Pierre, the man who is purportedly Amisphere’s owner, bought three properties in Florida, including a waterfront condo in an upscale area. “The Post conveniently fails to acknowledge that the decisions that Yele made were a response to one of the world’s most catastrophic natural disasters in modern history and required an immediate humanitarian response,” Jean said in a statement . “We made decisions that enabled us to provide emergency assistance in the midst of chaos and we stand by those decisions.” Jean also noted that he was no longer part of Yele’s active leadership. “I have acknowledged that Yele has made mistakes in the past, including being late in IRS filings, but that is old news. When I entered politics last summer, I transitioned from being a board member and chairman of Yele Haiti to a supporter. The new and good news is that Yele under new leadership, despite efforts to undermine its credibility and effectiveness, continues its mission to serve people in need.” Last year, the ex-Fugees rapper mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Haiti’s presidency . That electoral bid was dogged by allegations that Jean took money from Yele for his personal use, which he flatly denied . “Have we made mistakes before? Yes,” Jean said in a press conference last year . “Did I ever use Yele money for personal benefits? Absolutely not. Yele’s books are open and transparent.”

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Jeffrey Sachs: Fairness and the Occupy Movement Revisited

November 28, 2011

A recent Wall Street Journal article by Arthur C. Brooks on the Occupy Movement and fairness (“Fairness and the ‘Occupy’ Movement, November 25) says some interesting things about potential common ground between free-market ideas and the Occupy movement. Yet Brooks also commits some very important errors. Perhaps with clearer facts there could be more common ground on reforming the economy and politics. Brooks, the head of the American Enterprise Institute, denounces crony capitalism as the dark side of American politics and economics. On this we should all agree. The level of corruption in Washington is staggering, growing, and rife in both parties. The White House and Congress dispense billions of dollars of favors to political supporters like a non-stop vending machine. The new book by Peter Schweitzer on crony capitalism ( Throw Them All Out , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) should be required reading. Even if wrong on some particulars, as some members of Congress charge, its overall message is powerful and correct. Where Brooks goes wrong is his description of inequality and fairness. The Republican view, which he espouses, is to reduce taxes, cut government services, and let markets be the standard of fairness. Here Brooks is deceptive in his rendition of the facts. First, Brooks downplays the extent of inequality that has been built up in thirty years of crony capitalism. He favorably writes that “every income quintile has seen a real increase in purchasing power of at least 18% over the past 30 years,” citing a recent study of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Yet the real point of the CBO report, which Brooks does not mention, is that the richest 1% enjoyed a staggering rise of 275%, while the poorest stumbled by with a meager 18% gain. Moreover, the CBO report takes the data only to 2007. By now, even those meager gains at the bottom have been mostly lost. Second, Brooks fails to note that the situation for the poor will be drastically worse if federal transfer programs are cut as the Republican Party is urging. The poorest quintile depends on these federal programs to stay alive. If the poorest Americans had to survive without government support, their incomes would be slashed to disastrous levels. The Republicans answer to crony capitalism is to slash government. Yet by this they mean mainly an attack on the remaining social programs. This is a kind of bait-and-switch strategy: rev up the anger against government corruption, and then kill the life-support programs of the poor and working class. Crony capitalism exists mainly in the big-ticket sectors of the economy — banking, oil, real estate, private health insurance, military contractors, and infrastructure — not in the essential but much smaller parts of the economy: malnutrition of poor children, lack of quality pre-school, insufficient job training, and inadequate student loan coverage. Yes, crony capitalism should be confronted anywhere in the economy, yet cutting the life-support systems for the working class and poor won’t fix government, but instead would cripple the prospects of more than 100 million poor and near-poor Americans. To control crony capitalism, we need to direct our attention where it belongs: the wealth-support systems of the rich, not the life-support systems of the poor. Here are five specific actions against crony capitalism that should appeal across the political spectrum. First, restore the Glass-Steagall Act’s separation of commercial banking and investment banking, and strongly regulate derivatives trading. The financial casino continues to infect the core of the banking system and the real economy. Second, prosecute the law-breakers of the 2008 crisis. Virtually every marquee firm on Wall Street, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan, committed financial fraud. Lead bankers who oversaw the fraudulent practices are still in place, and need to go. Third, retire politicians like Congressman Paul Ryan who pressed for financial deregulation on the grounds of “free markets,” but who then called for Wall Street bailouts when the crisis hit. They are the agents of moral hazard. Fourth, end the rampant tax loopholes that allow America’s biggest companies to park their profits in the Caribbean tax havens. Rather than giving tax amnesties to these companies, we should pull the plug on these tax abuses. Fifth, crack down on Congressional insider trading. Members of Congress are not only swayed by their big campaign contributors and the lobbyists who hire their families and staff, but also by the prospect of personal gains through trading on their insider information and access to sweetheart deals. Congress’s approval rating is on its way to zero. The biggest point of contention between the free-marketers like Brooks and the Occupy Movement is the affirmative role of government in American society. Today’s free-marketers need to re-learn the wisdom of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, whom they praise but don’t read. These earlier free-market advocates were very clear about the need for government to help the poor, protect the environment, and provide public goods including scientific research and infrastructure. Today’s free-marketers are different. They downplay the suffering of the poor and the extent of inequality. They deny the science of climate change. They stand by as the public infrastructure collapses. They disdain the hallowed tradition of federal support for science and education. They subscribe instead to the ugly philosophy of Ayn Rand, who preached that there is no such thing as society or social responsibility, only a collection of individuals. Rand’s philosophy is a tribute to greed, hate, and ruthlessness. Smith, Hayek, and Friedman would have been aghast. So are most Americans. Yes, Mr. Brooks, let us find common ground. We all agree on the need to end crony capitalism. But let us also work together not to cripple government but to make it work for all Americans.

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Italian Borrowing Rates Surge, As Pressure Mounts For Reforms

November 28, 2011

MILAN — Italy’s borrowing rates skyrocketed at a bond auction Monday for the second straight business day, as pressure mounted on the eurozone’s third-largest economy to come up with quick reforms to keep the euro from breaking up. The interest rate Italy had to pay to get investors to part with their cash for 12 years soared to 7.20 percent, a full 2.7 percentage points higher than the last similar auction. In the auction, Italy raised euro567 million ($750 million). While there were enough bids to cover the maximum sought of euro750 million ($1 billion), the high borrowing rates persuaded the Italian Treasury to stick closer to the lower end of its planned issuance range. Premier Mario Monti is under enormous pressure to convince markets that his new technocratic government has a strategy to get a grip on its debts and balance the budget by 2013. He is expected to announce additional austerity measures later this week. A bigger test will come Tuesday, when Italy plans to auction up to euro8 billion ($10.6 billion) in debt of three varying maturities, including the benchmark 10-year issues. Last Friday, Italy had to pay sharply higher rates in a pair of auctions, stoking renewed fears that the country is heading toward a potentially devastating debt spiral that could bankrupt the country and potentially bring down the euro. Driving market fears is the knowledge that Italy is too big for Europe to bail out, and must refinanceeuro200 billion ($267 billion) by the end of April alone. The bond yields also reflect grim economic data that suggest Italy will be in a recession no later than the first quarter of 2012. The OECD on Monday forecast Italian growth a 0.7 percent of GDP in 2011, followed by a contraction of 0.5 percent next year. That’s a sharp cut in previous forecasts of 1.1 percent growth in 2011 and 1.6 percent growth in 2012. Italian business confidence improved somewhat in November, to 94.4, after hitting a 21-month low of 94.2 last month. Despite the increase, “it remains very low and alongside other industry-related indicators signal that the economy is facing serious headwinds,” said Raj Badiani, an economic analyst at IHS Global Insight. Earlier Monday, the International Monetary Fund denied reports that it’s readying a rescue fund for Italy. The Italian daily La Stampa reported that the IMF was preparing a euro600 billion ($794 billion) bailout fund for Italy, which is struggling to manage its enormous public debt of euro1.9 trillion, or nearly 120 percent of GDP. But an IMF spokesman said there are “no discussions with Italian authorities on a program for IMF financing.” And EU spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio also said there have been no such discussion with the European Union. Italy’s banking association, ABI, on Monday inaugurated its first sovereign debt day, during which customers could buy Italian bonds on the secondary market without paying commission. The goal is to create trust in Italian debt – about half of which is in Italian hands – rather than directly influencing borrowing costs. ABI said it was too early to gauge a response to the promotion announced just Friday, but one bank in Rome said it had three or four takers. Customers can save euro2 to euro4 euros on every euro1,000 invested. Another is planned for the Dec. 12 auction. “This initiative seems to be positive, but it probably is just a drop in the ocean, because people are very cautious and are waiting to see what will happen,” said Giuseppe di Bartolomeo, outside a bank in central Rome. Monti was appointed earlier this month to replace Silvio Berlusconi, whose fractious conservative coalition squabbled for months over measures to inject growth into the flagging Italian economy. Monti has pledged a two-track strategy: urgent austerity measures followed by deeper reforms that will be painful for voters to accept. They include revamps of the pension system, doing away with a class of privileged closed professions that discourage competition, cutting political costs, simplifying bureaucracy and selling off state assets. Monti must obtain approval for the measures from the same Parliament that hamstrung Berlusconi. To make the new austerity more palatable, Monti intends to balance sacrifices from the various political camps – and has promised a spending review of political costs starting with the premier’s office. _____ Don Melvin contributed from Brussels.

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Krugman: America’s New Normal Requires Tax Hikes

November 28, 2011

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

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The Best And Worst Run States In America

November 28, 2011

For the second year, 24/7 Wall St. has reviewed data on financial health, standard of living and government services by state to determine how well each state is managed. Based on this data, 24/7 Wall St. ranked the 50 states from the best to worst run.

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Battle For ‘Mom And Pop’ Investors Getting Heated

November 28, 2011

The fight for mom and pop’s stock orders is getting testy on Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange wants to give retail investors fractions of a penny in better prices when they trade securities listed there. The plan, unveiled last month, would effectively set individuals apart from funds, brokers and other professionals – who would still pay the publicly displayed prices. It is an effort to induce retail investors back from trading mostly off-exchange at electronic “wholesalers.” And it means the Big Board is effectively taking on the handful of these wholesale market makers, such as Knight Capital Group Inc and hedge fund Citadel, that have been able to get a first look at retail orders and the opportunity to use that information to aid their own trading strategies. If the NYSE wins regulatory approval for the plan, it could change the way many orders circulate, and it could mean slightly cheaper trading for Main Street investors. But that approval isn’t certain given the plan will resurrect a fierce philosophical debate over preferential treatment for some market participants. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has only weeks to decide what to do. “For the first time in a very broad stroke they could approve the ability of exchanges to discriminate by customer,” said Christopher Nagy, managing director of order strategy at TD Ameritrade Holding Corp, the largest U.S. retail brokerage. In a way, much of the commotion is because mom and pop aren’t the savviest of stock traders. Many casual traders don’t even know that their orders rarely end up at the Big Board or Nasdaq. Instead, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade Financial Corp and other online brokers send the orders – up to 12 percent of all U.S. equity trading, according to Rosenblatt Securities — to the wholesale market makers, who fill the orders and pay the broker a small fee for the privilege. The wholesalers are willing to pay the small fee because mom and pop orders are seen as uninformed – or “dumb”, to use the derogatory industry term. Unlike professional investors with sophisticated short-term strategies and quantitative market analysis, retail investors aren’t usually in a position to keep on top of news, rumors or the flow of orders and liquidity, and may sometimes buy or sell based on a hunch. The diversion of these orders to wholesalers is quite legal, and said to give retail investors about a tenth of a penny in better prices, on average, than they would otherwise get on the exchanges. It is also one of the main reasons more than 30 percent of U.S. equity trading takes place off-exchange in the anonymous “dark”, up from about 20 percent in 2007. The payment-for-order-flow by wholesalers and online brokers has frustrated NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc, which have seen their market share dwindle over the past decade. NYSE Euronext now has only 35 percent of trading in NYSE-listed stocks, down from 80 percent in 2005. The SEC, meanwhile, has been increasingly uncomfortable with the growing share of dark trading as it is more difficult to regulate. “The vast majority of retail traders don’t know that when they’re trading NYSE stocks, they’re not actually trading at the NYSE,” said market structure author and expert Larry Harris, a finance professor at University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. “The NYSE’s proposal is designed to try to recapture some of that retail order flow.” GAME PLAN The NYSE plan, which is called the Retail Liquidity Program, was proposed last month after consultation with the SEC. It is the latest in a long line of attempts by U.S. exchanges to win back retail investors. If exchanges can attract more “dumb” orders to their market, they’ll also attract more institutions and high-frequency trading firms eager to trade against those orders – which is potentially lucrative trading volume. But getting the green light will take work. There is some tough opposition to NYSE’s plan, interviews with wholesale groups and other industry players shows. Overall, though, there is an expectation the SEC will approve an adjusted version of the plan that would give retail investors some sort of exemption for better exchange pricing. Nasdaq as well as Direct Edge, a private exchange operator that handles 10 percent of U.S. equity trading, are expected to propose similar retail-pricing proposals, according to industry sources familiar with the plans. BATS, another private exchange, is expected to criticize parts of NYSE’s plan, said the sources, who requested anonymity. The three exchanges declined to comment. The SEC declined an interview, citing the ongoing public comment period. A raft of letters reacting to the NYSE is expected from brokerages, exchanges and others before the November 30 public comment deadline. The SEC, under Chairman Mary Schapiro, then has until December 16 to decide whether to back the plan or take more time to mull it over, based on the comments. “I would be quite surprised if the SEC were to approve this as is,” said Jamie Selway, managing director and head of liquidity management at Investment Technology Group Inc. “People have played footsie with this issue of price discrimination … but this would be a big step for the SEC.” In detail, here is what the NYSE wants to do: For a one-year pilot, NYSE would create two new classes of market participants: companies such as E*Trade, Charles Schwab Corp or even wholesale firms that are qualified to send bona fide retail orders to the exchange; the second is market makers that are required to provide “potential price improvement” to the orders in an anonymous, or dark, fashion. Retail investors would get at least a tenth of a penny in better prices than the best displayed bid or offer at that moment. The NYSE has not yet said how much it will rebate brokers that send the orders, nor how much it will charge firms that provide the liquidity. It all adds up to a challenge to Knight, Citadel, UBS AG, Citigroup Inc and E*Trade’s market making arm, which are the dominant U.S. retail wholesalers. It could also hurt “dark pool” venues, some run by banks such as Credit Suisse Group AG, where stocks are traded anonymously. TOUGH OPPOSITION The NYSE proposal effectively gives some people in the market preferential treatment over others. This is not allowed at exchanges, though some argue that wholesalers and those running dark pools already offer it. Exchange rules are “not designed to permit unfair discrimination between customers, issuers, brokers, or dealers…” the U.S. Securities Exchange Act says. “My broader concern,” said one brokerage official, “is that the fair access provisions that the exchanges have to abide by are significantly weakened by this.” Joseph Mecane, NYSE Euronext’s co-head of U.S. listings and cash execution, acknowledged he is challenging fair access provisions, but only to an extent. “What we’re essentially arguing is, by making this program only available to retail customers, we’re not unreasonably discriminating against any class,” he said. The SEC would also have to grant the NYSE an exemption to a rule that limits the pricing of stocks to no finer than penny increments — that is, General Electric Co’s shares can only trade hands at $15.08, not $15.085 or $15.0852. In the end, the regulator will have to decide whether NYSE’s plan will bring enough benefit to individual traders and to the public markets to outweigh all the concerns over fairness, and the complaints that it will only complicate an already complicated marketplace. (Reporting by Jonathan Spicer. Editing by Martin Howell) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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