November 2011

Want to Retire Early? You Don’t Need Riches

November 25, 2011

One in five Americans plans to retire before age 65, according to a new study, and they’re not just the ultra-wealthy. There’s hope for everyone to bail out of the daily grind before age 65, if they adopt the behaviors and attitudes of these savers. The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, an organization funded in part by the Transamerica Life Insurance Company, surveyed more than 4,000 U.S. employees and delved deeply into the responses of the group they label “future early retirees.” “We had two hypotheses: They were privileged and ultra-affluent or wildly optimistic,” says Catherine Collinson, president of the center. But just 52% of the future early retirees had a college degree , and 49% reported an annual household income of less than $100,000. They are equally divided among men and women; half are over age 40. “They are far more likely to be like the ‘Millionaire Next Door’ than a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet,” Collinson says, referring to the 1996 best-selling book that found many U.S. millionaires lead relatively modest lifestyles. The future early retirees weren’t pathological optimists either. The study authors extrapolated from the data on their savings behavior, and found they were actually “well on track to meet their goal,” she says. So who are the future early retirees, and why are they successful? They started saving earlier — age 25, on average, versus age 30 for their later-retiring peers. They contribute more to their company plans — 10% of income on average, versus 6% for other respondents. They are much more likely to save for retirement outside of workplace plans — 69% versus 60% of those planning to retire after 65. They’re also luckier: While about three-quarters of those surveyed enjoyed access to a company 401(k) plan , the future early retirees were more likely to have company-funded pensions as well (25% versus 14% for those retiring after 65). More Likely To Dream Big But a big part of their success relates to priorities and attitudes. Retirement is a huge value for them; nearly one-third called it their top financial goal, versus less than a quarter of their peers. They were also the group most likely to have a vision for their golden years. “All groups look forward to spending time with family and friends, but future early retirees are much more likely to dream of traveling and pursuing hobbies,” says Collinson. “The idea of retirement has captured their imaginations.” The early birds were the least likely to work part-time in retirement — 46% versus 59% of those who plan to retire later — but more likely to do it for enjoyment. More Likely to Plan In terms of personality, the future early retirees have a propensity to plan: 71% have a specific retirement strategy, versus 56% of the post-65 group. Researchers have tested people for this trait, and found it actually predicts financial well-being , as measured by credit scores. “There are four things that are part of being a planner: You set goals ; you think about the means to achieve them; you use tools to keep track of progress and see the big picture; and you like to plan — it feels good to plan rather than being spontaneous about a particular domain,” says John Lynch Jr., a professor at University of Colorado and director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making. “You can have two people who are similar in every way — income, education, ethnicity — but if one is a high planner and the other a low planner, the high planner will have a much better credit score,” says Lynch. More Likely to Balance Immediate and Future Spending Planners also score high in conscientiousness, frugality and self-control . One reason is that their planning allows them to see potential expenses down the road and allocate money for them — so they have a better handle on their spending today. Thus they’ll whip out a coupon in the grocery store, knowing that small savings will add up over time for their future goals. Steve Spiller, a marketing professor at UCLA, has studied the concept. Planners “can see ahead and realize they are bumping into [spending] constraints, whereas people who are not planning go about their merry way until they’re just about to run out, and think, ‘Oh, if I spend this dollar now, I can’t spend this tomorrow,’” Spiller explains. Even if someone isn’t a planner by personality, it’s crucial to try to set a retirement goal. Anna Maria Lusardi, an economist at George Washington University who studies financial literacy, has found people who make an attempt to estimate their savings goals for retirement ultimately save more than those who don’t. (Take 30 minutes to try to ballpark your number for free at this site .) More Self-Reliant and Nimble The future early retirees also appear to be more self-reliant — nearly two-thirds say their primary source of income in retirement will be their own retirement savings — versus 54% of those who plan to retire after 65. They also seek out information on retirement. They’re much more likely to spend time on financial information websites, and to talk with friends and family about their plans. In addition, they also responded to shifting economic times. Asked how their savings habits had changed since the recession, 45% said they were saving the same and 26% said they were saving more. “What the data implies is they have chartered a course and are sticking with it, and adapting to difficult conditions,” Collinson says. The study authors decided to spotlight future early retirees as an inspiration amid economic gloom and doom. “Hopefully people can look to them as role models in their own planning and saving, and may become future early retirees themselves — or at least retire sooner and on better terms than they expect,” says Collinson. Boost Your Social Security Checks Think when you retire that you’re stuck with a small Social Security check? Not true. In fact, there is one simple step you can make to boost the amount you’ll receive — potentially by as much as 25%! All the specifics, along with tips for how to manage your investments leading up to and during retirement are laid out in a new, easy-to-understand report from the Motley Fool. And this report, “The Shocking Can’t-Miss Truth About Your Retirement,” can be yours FREE simply by entering your email below and clicking the button.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Big Carbon’s Sock Puppets Declare War on America and the Planet

November 25, 2011

It’s now become de rigueur among the radical right wing rhetoricians to characterize any government support of America’s green energy sector as wasteful, fruitless, and scandalous. They greeted with glee the collapse of the government supported solar company, Solyndra, America’s first major casualty in our race with China to dominate the “new energy” economy. With Solyndra dying on the battlefield — its marketplace choking on inexpensive Chinese solar panels — the right wing’s response was to hoist the white flag and declare defeat in the war for global cleantech leadership. That brand of “Can’t Do” cowardice is a boon to the carbon and nuclear power incumbents who fund so much of the right wing’s activities — but it’s bad for America. Leveraging the aberrant Solyndra bankruptcy, these groups have launched an orchestrated series of attacks against the renewables sector by trying to discredit other companies, even those that are driving America forward with innovative solutions that actually do compete on a global basis. For example, last month, Fox News ran a story insinuating that SunPower received a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch project because of its political connections Congressman George Miller. The story also suggested that SunPower was struggling financially and posed another risk to taxpayers — a la Solyndra. The truth is that SunPower is one of America’s strongest solar manufacturing companies and Mr. Miller had nothing to do with the company receiving a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch Project. To Fox News and other right wing media sources, the facts meant very little. Their intent is only to suggest wrong-doing in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration and its clean energy goals. Last week found the right wing echo chamber, from Fox News to the New York Post , and the conservative blogosphere in an anti-green frenzy based on faux facts from a new book, Throw Them All Out . The author of this far-fetched screed is Peter Schweizer, Sarah Palin’s foreign policy guru, currently employed by the Hoover Institution, a think tank funded largely by oil interests (e.g., Exxon, ARCO, Transamerica, and Richard Mellon Scaife’s oil and banking fortune) to craft the philosophical underpinnings for unregulated pollution, unrestricted corporate profit taking, and massive corporate welfare for the carbon/nuke incumbents. Thanks to a mention in Schweizer’s far-fetched opus, I got a shout out, last week from most of these crackpot gas bags. The Daily Mail summarized my supposed crimes in its headline : “JFK’s nephew received $1.4 billion dollar taxpayer bailout for his struggling green energy firm.” All of the reported “facts” in this blogosphonic barrage were Schweizer’s inventions. Schweizer claims that BrightSource Energy received a government bailout due to political influence exerted on behalf of VantagePoint Capital Partners, where I am a partner and which is the largest institutional shareholder of BrightSource. The actual facts do not support Schweizer’s claims. BrightSource Energy did not receive a bailout. Rather, the Ivanpah project, a 392 megawatt solar thermal project in the Mojave Desert that will provide clean power to 140,000 homes, received a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy (DOE). Ivanpah, which broke ground in October 2010, is majority owned by Google and energy giant NRG. BrightSource is a minority owner of and the technology supplier to the Ivanpah project. The underlying loan from private investors is fully secured, and pays interest that will earn a healthy return for U.S. taxpayers. Unlike Solyndra which received corporate financing from DOE, and which had no assurance that it would be able to sell its product, Ivanpah and the Central Valley Solar Ranch projects have contractual commitments from California’s largest utilities to buy all of its power at fixed prices. This is comparable to building a new hotel with the guarantee that it will have 100% occupancy rates for 20+ years. Schweizer’s claims that the loan guarantee works out to a cost to taxpayers of $1 million per job is also a canard. The Ivanpah project is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the nation and the largest solar thermal plant under construction in the world. The project’s three year construction phase will create 1,400 highly-skilled trade, engineering and construction jobs at peak. These are high paying union jobs in a region plagued by one of America’s highest unemployment rates. The project will generate $250 million in earnings for these construction workers and, over its 30 year life, will produce $650 million in earnings for workers on the site, including the 90 permanent jobs required to operate the plant. Finally, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah project is an investment in America’s future with substantial indirect economic benefits locally and across the nation. The majority of the project’s supply chain is being sourced domestically across 17 states, driving investments throughout the country and creating additional jobs in other areas of the United States that have been adversely affected by the economic downturn. The Ivanpah project is also generating $300 million in state and local tax revenues over its life. The right wing’s campaign against the DOE’s support of renewable energy is not in our national interest. The DOE loan guarantee program has been extremely successful in providing debt financing to innovative energy projects in the wake of the 2008 credit market challenges. Access to capital is a crucial component of building innovative energy infrastructure and creating economic benefit. The DOE loan guarantee program has also been very successful at attracting private capital to these projects. Each dollar appropriated for the program leverages $13 dollars in private sector investment. As of August 2011, DOE had made commitments to 37 clean energy projects, leveraging private investment of more than $40 billion. This includes more than 10 utility-scale solar power projects in the Southwest, including SunPower’s Central Valley Solar Ranch and BrightSource’s Ivanpah. These projects are estimated to create tens of thousands of jobs across the country. Where is the Right Wing Opposition to the Obscene Subsidies to Carbon and Nuke? The frenzy against government support for green energy is ironic considering the silence from those same quarters regarding the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual subsidies and externalized costs flowing from government and the American public to the carbon and nuke companies that fund the right wing think tanks and the conservative blogosphere. The same DOE loan guarantee program that supported the solar projects gave an astonishing $8.3 billion loan guarantee — many times the size of the solar projects — to Southern Company to build two nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is an industry with a product so expensive it cannot compete in any version of free market capitalism. Big nuke is totally dependent on massive, monstrous public and government subsidies at every stage of its life. Oil is a close second. A comprehensive inventory of oil subsidies by former California EPA Chief Terry Tamminen, in his acclaimed book Lives Per Gallon, calculates U.S. subsidies to the oil industry at upward of one trillion dollars annually! The Rise of Green Energy This blogosphere wrangling is part of a larger struggle pitting disruptive technologies like LED lights, electric cars, and renewable energy such as wind and solar — the clean, green democratic, abundant, and patriotic fuels from heaven — against the powerful incumbents of coal, oil, and nuke — the destructive, plutocratic, largely foreign owned, addictive, poisonous, destructive, and war breeding fuels from hell. The green fuels are winning. Solar power is now at or near grid parity in many U.S. states. That means that solar generators can deliver electricity to consumers at or below the cost of coal or oil, without even considering the catastrophic health and environmental costs that these dirty sources create. Energy industry giants like NRG, which owns coal and nuke fleets, are moving aggressively into solar. “Solar is the future,” says NRG CEO David Crane. “Over the long term, solar won’t need the government to drive adaptation — the pace of innovation is so rapid and the costs are dropping so quickly that the marketplace will ultimately force the transition. Government incentives are important in that they will drive a quicker adaptation and keep American companies in the game.” Crane points out that his vendors are already offering solar panels at slightly less than $1.00 per watt, leading to an all-in cost of installed solar on a distributed basis of $2.50/watt. This, according to Crane, translates into 12¢/kilowatt hour, making home grown solar energy cheaper than the grid in 20 states. Experience shows that these industries are demonstrated jobs producers. There are already more Americans employed by the solar industry (110,000) than there are coal miners (90,000), and the wind industry (75,000) is rapidly expanding its workforce. The only questions now are: How fast will the transition occur? Which nations will lead the way and reap the financial rewards of that leadership? Unfortunately, due to the outsized influence of big coal, oil, and nuke on our Congress, America is lagging. China’s Leadership China’s bold strategy is to dominate the new energy economy with giant investments in wind, solar, LED light bulbs, smart grid systems, and electric cars. Despite our strong lead among entrepreneurs, the American government’s willingness to compete with the Chinese in these domains has been anemic. The Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House and then died under pressure from the carbon cronies in the Senate, would have increased solar deployment in America by a mere 37% by 2020. The Chinese have already committed to increase their solar development by 20,000% during that period and wind development by 1200%. While the right wing whines about a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to a solar project, the Chinese are funneling $758 billion to their solar and wind industry over 5 years. I commend the Chinese for their commitment to transition to a green energy economy. But I refuse to accept the right wing narrative that America can no longer compete in the world marketplace. Americans still lead the world in patents filed and the other indicia of entrepreneurship. The promising new technologies and young green tech companies that I see daily are challenged principally by a lack of capital available from our banks and government. This is more than an issue of national wealth and prosperity — our national security is also at stake. The war by America’s carbon and nuclear energy industries and their right wing allies, against our country’s burgeoning cleantech industry is damaging our economy and subverting our national security, just as it has in the past led us into oil wars. When I was a boy, America owned half the wealth on Earth. We lost that advantage mainly due to our carbon addiction, which still causes us to hemorrhage nearly $750 billion annually in American wealth — the cost of importing foreign oil. The Chinese would naturally like us to spend what’s left of our national wealth purchasing Chinese solar panels, Chinese LED lights, and Chinese wind turbines and electric cars. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, many in the thrall of Big Carbon, are sitting on their hands as the hemorrhage continues. The incumbents are able to control the political process in Washington with the support of their right wing media flacks, and with hundreds of millions in annual contributions and lobbying. Such investments allow the incumbents to reap hundreds of billions in annual subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, artificially ballooning their profits. These are self-destructive policies for America. With the same resolve that established America’s industrial and technological greatness in the 20th century, leading the transition to a new energy economy is America’s best hope for true national security, prosperity, and restoring our global leadership and moral authority. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is President of Waterkeeper Alliance, Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a Partner in VantagePoint Capital Partners

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Christmas Tree Farmers Struggle After Historic Drought

November 25, 2011

NEW CANEY, Texas — Dry, brown grass crunches underfoot as David Barfield walks through his 45-acre Christmas tree farm pointing at evergreens covered with brittle, rust-colored needles. “Dead tree, dead tree, dead tree,” he says, shaking his head at dry timber he hoped would be chopped down by parents with excited children. Instead, Mother Nature delivered the Grinch in the form of a historic drought that has killed thousands of trees across Texas and Oklahoma. Some died of thirst. Others were destroyed by wildfires, whose breadth and intensity were magnified when wind swept the flames across parched landscape. Most farmers plan to import trees from North Carolina to supplement any they have left, said Marshall Cathey, president of the Texas Christmas Tree Growers Association. They say they aren’t planning to raise prices because consumers are reluctant to pay more than $40 or $50 for a Christmas tree, especially in the poor economy. But families hoping for a homegrown tree to cut down will have a harder time finding one, and dozens of farmers are struggling. Possibly most painful for these growers are the deaths of the youngest saplings, which guarantee the drought’s effect will be felt for years to come. “It’s depressing, it really is,” said Barfield, 53. “This was going to be our retirement.” He and his wife, Karen, 49, bought the farm about six years ago with dreams of retiring from Texas’ oil fields and spending their final years peddling the Christmas spirit with fresh-cut trees, marshmallow roasts and hayrides in a red-and-white sleigh. They planted 20 acres of evergreen trees. Now, barely two years after Karen Barfield retired to work the farm, she has returned full-time to her job selling explosion-proof enclosures to the oil industry. David Barfield has increased his hours doing part-time electronic work. Instead of selling some 400 homegrown trees as they do in a good year, they will be lucky to sell 100 – nearly all Frasier firs brought in from North Carolina. And they’re not certain that will be enough to cover their property taxes. Barfield says he can only charge $50 for a North Carolina fir – just $10 more than he pays for them. “Eight (trees) died within the last week,” Barfield said, continuing his walk through his farm in New Caney. “These were all green a week ago. The drought has been hurting us real bad.” But at least he and his wife have other income. Others have not fared as well. “We lost probably 90 percent of our trees,” said Jean Raisey, 79, who’s run a 10-acre Christmas tree farm in Purcell, Okla., with her husband since 1985. The other 10 percent are dying now, she said. “We’ve had to hire a contractor and pull all the dead and all the live trees,” she said. “And we’re out of business.” Cathey, who owns the 50-acre Elves Farm in Denison, Texas, a town about 75 miles north of Dallas, said he has spoken to many of Texas’ 120 Christmas tree farmers in recent months. Long stretches of triple-degree heat, he said, harmed the trees as much as the lack of rain. And the drought has been bad. In Texas, less than 11 inches of rain fell this year compared to an annual average of almost 24 inches. In Oklahoma, there has been about 18.7 inches of rain this year compared to a long-term average of 30 inches. All trees have been hard-hit by the lack of rain. “There’s hundreds of thousands of trees dying,” said Travis Miller, a drought expert at Texas A&M University. “We’re looking at a … one-in-a-500-year kind of drought, and so it’s weeding out the ones that can’t survive this kind of extreme conditions,” he added. For evergreens, which usually prefer wetter, more temperate climates, the struggle may be greater than for drought-resistant plants, such as the juniper brush, although it too is dying in Texas this year. Farmers who planted evergreens native to Afghanistan – and accustomed to a desert climate – have had greater success than those who planted trees from the northeast United States. Those who irrigated also are having more modest success, although that costs – about $1,200 a month on a midsized farm. Jan Webb, owner of the Double Shovel Christmas Tree Farm in West Texas – one of the driest areas of the state – said her Afghans have done well. Of the 400 she planted last year, only about 50 died. On the other hand, none of the 400 Leyland Cypress she planted survived. It takes three to five years to grow an evergreen to a marketable size. Webb planted her first tree about three years ago and was hoping to open for the first time next Christmas, but with the drought, it will be at least two years before she has a homegrown tree to sell. “We can’t sell what’s from our farm right now because they’re too small,” she said. Yet the farmers are determined children will be able to see trees cut for Christmas – even if they’re North Carolina firs liberally placed in Texas soil. There will be hayrides and picnics. Christmas carols will ring out and colorful lights will cover the bare branches. Bah humbug to the drought, they say. ___ Ramit Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

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Woman Shoots Shoppers With Pepper Spray At Black Friday Sale

November 25, 2011

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Authorities say 20 people had minor injuries when a woman shot other customers with pepper spray during a Black Friday sale. Police Lt. Abel Parga says she was trying to keep other shoppers away from the merchandise she wanted. The incident occurred shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday in a crowded Los Angeles area Walmart as shoppers hungry for deals were let inside the store. Officials said 20 people suffered minor injuries. At least half of those were caused by crowd jostling after the spraying. Parga says police are still looking for the woman. The store remained open and those not affected by the pepper spray continued shopping.

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10 Walmart Shoppers Injured In Pepper Spray Incident

November 25, 2011

LOS ANGELES — Authorities say at least 10 people suffered minor injuries inside a crowded Walmart store in Los Angeles after a female shopper used pepper spray during a confrontation. The incident occurred shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday in the San Fernando Valley as shoppers looking for Black Friday deals were let inside the store. Shawn Lenske, a Los Angeles fire spokesman, said the injuries, all of them minor, were due to “rapid crowd movement.” Police Lt. Abel Parga says a woman used pepper spray, hitting other customers. It’s unknown what caused the confrontation. Parga said police were looking for the woman. No arrests have been made.

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EXPLICIT PHOTOS: On Fur-Free Friday, A Look Back At Celebs Who’ve Stripped Down For Animal Rights

November 25, 2011

Black Friday may be American retail’s biggest shopping day of the year, but the day after Thanksgiving also marks Fur-Free Friday. With hundreds of fur-free PETA protests scheduled around the world this year , animals rights activists will tout the message that wearing fur fuels a deadly and inhumane industry that is far from glamorous. **Scroll down for EXPLICIT photos of past anti-fur PETA ads** In 2010 the U.S. retail fur sales hit $1.3 billion, a 3.1% increase from 2009, according to the Fur Information Council Of America . The Humane Society writes, ” On fur factory farms around the world , millions of raccoon dogs, rabbits, foxes, mink, chinchillas, and other animals spend their lives in wire cages, only to be killed by anal electrocution, by neck-breaking, or in gas chambers.” PETA writes on its website: When people learn that millions of innocent animals are beaten, boiled, hanged, and electrocuted for their fur every year; that each fur coat, each piece of fur lining or fur trim, and each fur cat toy represents the intense suffering of dozens of animals; and that furriers intentionally mislabel the fur of cats and dogs as fur from other species or as faux fur — then every decent human being will want to go fur-free. To raise the profile of the anti-fur message, PETA’s iconic campaign, “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” has attracted a number of high profile celebrities to strip down in support of animal rights. Elisabetta Canalis is one of the most recent and memorable celebrities to bare it all for the animal rights organization. With her billboards posted in Milan since September, Canalis explained to PETA her reason for posing nude: “That is what is required to keep people’s attention on such a brutal practice,” she said. “These poor animals are electrocuted, skinned alive, drowned, and bludgeoned just for the sake of fashion.” Other eyebrow-raising images of celebrities posing for PETA include Khloe Kardashian’s “I’d Rather Go Naked” ad, Chad Ochocinco’s “Ink Not Mink” ad and Laura Vandervoort’s “What Skin Are You In?” ad. If you’re heading to the malls this Black Friday, many would suggest skipping the animal skinned fashion in exchange for some cruelty-free clothing instead. In celebration of Fur-Free Friday, see some of PETA’s most memorable anti-fur ads below (WARNING: Some images may be considered explicit and NSFW):

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Shoppers Answer Stores’ Call, Showing Up Early For Black Friday Deals

November 25, 2011

NEW YORK — Move over turkey – it’s time to shop. Black Friday began in earnest as Target, Abercrombie & Fitch and other stores opened their doors at midnight – a few hours earlier than they normally do on the most anticipated shopping day of the year. A few retailers even had lines of shoppers when they opened on Thanksgiving Day. Herald Square in New York was bustling at 6 p.m. with shoppers looking to snag discounts at Old Navy and other stores that were open on the Thanksgiving. By 9:45 p.m., more than 300 people were waiting outside a Best Buy in New York before it opened at midnight. An hour later, nearly 2,000 were in line at another Best Buy in St. Petersburg, Fla., ahead of its midnight opening. Roberto Rubi, 24, of Seminole, Fla., had been standing in line since 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning and hoped to score a cheap TV and laptop. He ate dinner with his family at home while three of his buddies took his place in line. “It’s hard times,” Rubi says. “So, any discount helps.” Retailers hope the earlier openings will make shopping more convenient for Americans who are more likely to be worried about high unemployment and the other challenges they face in the weak economy. Black Friday is important to merchants because it kicks off the holiday shopping season, a time when they can make 25 to 40 percent of their annual revenue. It’s expected that shoppers will spend nearly $500 billion during the holiday shopping season, or about 3 percent more than they did last year. “It’s a good move to try to get shoppers to spend sooner, before they run out of money,” says Burt Flickinger, III, president of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group. About 34 percent of consumers plan to shop on Black Friday, up from 31 percent last year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, and 16 percent had planned to shop on Thanksgiving Day itself. For the weekend, 152 million people are expected shop, up from 138 million last year. To get people to shop, merchants pulled out of their bag of tricks. A few opened last year at midnight, but several other stores are doing so this year. Some are matching the prices of their competitors. Others are offering layaway plans that allow shoppers to pay as they go. But the deals are what’s driving many early shoppers into stores. After all, Americans are focusing more on bargains these days, a habit they picked up during the economic downturn. The Gap is offering discounts of 20 to 60 percent on many items. Old Navy has pea coats for $29 and jeans for $15. Toys R Us is selling a Transformers Ultimate Optimus Prime action figure for $30 off at $47.99 and a Power Wheels Barbie vehicle for $120 off at $199.99. And Best Buy has a $499 42-inch LCD HDTV for $199 and a $400 Asus Transformer 10-inch tablet computer for $249.99. Millie Ayala, 28-year-old receptionist, began standing in line at a Toys R Us in New York at 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, armed with the retailer’s circular and a plan for how she and her sister would scour the store for deals. On her list? An interactive dog named Cookie and dolls for her two young daughters. “Finances have been tough,” she says. “Things are a lot more expensive but with Black Friday deals, things are more affordable.” After showing up at Best Buy in New York on Wednesday at 3 p.m., Emmanuel Merced, 27, and his brother were the first in line when it opened. On their list was a Sharp 42-inch TV for $199, a PlayStation 3 console with games for $199.99 and wireless headphones for $30. Merced says he likes camping out for Black Friday and he figures he saved 50 percent. “I like the experience of it,” says Merced, who plans to spend $3,000 to $4,000 on gifts this season. It remains to be seen whether that enthusiasm will linger throughout the holiday shopping season. But analysts seem to agree that if retailers want shoppers to keep coming back, they’ll have to keep discounting. “The consumer is continuing to spend and shop and look for the bargains,” says said John D. Morris, BMO Capital Markets analyst. “If it’s the right product at the right price, she’s shopping and buying.” _____ Anne D’Innocenzio in New York and Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg, Fla., contributed to this report.

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A Death Most Fowl

November 25, 2011

PENN HILLS, Pa. — A wild turkey smashed through a plate glass window at an empty western Pennsylvania restaurant and ended up where millions of its fellow gobblers did on Thanksgiving: a dining room. Penn Hills police Officer Bernard Sestili tells the WTAE-TV the feathered fowl didn’t survive impact when it barreled into the dining room of the Eat’n Park in Penn Hills on Thursday afternoon. The restaurant was closed at the time. Sestili says he responded when the building’s alarm went off. He suspects the turkey may have been roosting in a nearby tree when it “got up this morning and went for his morning flight and flew into the window.” Penn Hills is about 10 miles outside Pittsburgh.

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Holiday Gift Guide: The Best From Our Board Of Directors

November 25, 2011

Black Friday marks the chaotic kickoff to the holiday shopping season. This year, an estimated 152 million Americans — yes, half the country — will be heading out in full force to start crossing items off their lists. Big retailers open their doors earlier and earlier each year, and some eager shoppers even camp out to get their hands on the best deals. Sure, you could head out to your local mall. But that’s boring. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, that doesn’t mean you can’t shop like one. In an effort to help Santa’s helpers get a little more creative this year, we reached out to members of our Board of Directors — who, we must admit, make some pretty cool stuff — for their best offerings. From books that inspire (Virgin’s Richard Branson ) to jewels that sparkle (DANNIJO’s Danielle and Jodie Snyder ) to eco-friendly soap that will help you clean up a little spilled egg nog (Method’s Eric Ryan ), our team has got you covered this year. Oh, and did we mention you can buy everything here from the comfort of your own home? Happy gifting!

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Japan’s Oct core CPI plunges 0.1%

November 25, 2011

(MENAFN) Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said that last month, the country’s core consumer price index (CPI) plunged 0.1 percent from last year’s same period, reported …

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S Korea’s Sep accumulated fiscal surplus reaches USD14.46b

November 25, 2011

(MENAFN) South Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance said that as a result of an increase in tax revenue, in September, the country’s accumulated fiscal surplus reached USD14.46 billion, reported …

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Tracy de Groose: Why Connectivity is Creating a New Class of Female Leaders

November 25, 2011

We are witnessing a shift in the nature of leadership. The command and control structures we have inherited from traditional leadership are making way for styles characterised more by empathy, partnership and collaboration than by ego. This new breed of connectivity will be an increasingly valued skill for organisations in the future and is an enormous opportunity for female leaders. The ability to connect has always been important for professional women, but largely, to date, it’s taken the form of network and support groups. In an attempt to get more women to the top, we’ve tapped into a natural skill women have – to build supportive relationships and coach each other on our way up. There are thousands of these groups by sector levels and locality. If the roles were reversed, and men were under-represented in the boardroom, I am pretty sure they would resort to more direct means. Men are inherently more confident, ambitious and competitive which means their paths to success have often taken a very different course from many female leaders. It is connectivity that has helped women secure senior roles in the past, and I believe this will play an even bigger role opening up more leadership opportunities in the future. I believe we are seeing a shift from competition to connectivity and collaboration and organisations are increasingly benefiting from this approach. As a marketing consultant in 2009, I worked in collaboration with The Portman Group to unite the drinks industry behind one campaign to promote responsible drinking. Rather than having 40 different drinks companies compete on their social responsibility messaging, we joined forces to invest behind a single campaign – Why Let Good Times Go Bad? It was one the most successful social marketing launches in terms of impact, understanding and potential to change behaviour, according to researchers at Millward Brown. But what was more impressive was to watch the 40 companies who’d historically spent years competing against each other coming together to do something brave, innovative and valuable. This required a different type of leadership approach – more empathy, more collaboration, less ego – to unite a previously un-unitable bunch. As HR guru Lynda Gratton puts it in her research “The Future of Work”: “One of the paradoxes of the future will be that to succeed one will [....] need to both stand out for your mastery and skills and simultaneously become part of a collection of other masters who together create value.” I work in an industry that has been dominated by male leaders. Looking even five years back, most media agencies were run by men. Looking at the top 10 media agencies in the UK today, five of the 10 are run by women. That’s a massive shift in a relatively short space of time and a reflection of the fact that the media industry has changed. Media agencies of the future will increasingly need to think beyond advertising and be innovative in their approach to deliver value to clients. Connectivity, collaboration and holistic thinking will help agencies deliver this innovation and value for clients. Let’s be honest, leadership has been defined by men. If we look to replicate those skills as women, we may never realise our true potential as leaders. Our strengths in connectivity will help more women succeed as leaders. Now our natural strengths are becoming important in how organisations need to be led in both the new era of leadership and the media industry I work in. We just need to make sure we act and grab the opportunity.

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Arianna Discusses The American Dream At The ‘Opportunity Nation’ Summit

November 24, 2011

On November 4th, Arianna participated in the “Opportunity Nation” Summit in New York City. Fareed Zakaria, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others also participated in the Summit. The event is described on the “Opportunity Nation” website as follows: The summit will feature a small number of influential speakers who will speak both about their own experiences with opportunity – events and moments that shaped their lives – as well as highlight examples of how their work creates opportunity for others. The topic of discussion for Arianna’s appearance was the “American Dream.” Arianna appeared on-stage along with The Washington Post ‘s Michael Gerson, who was also a special assistant to President George W. Bush. “My view of what is happening is that almost as though we’re looking at a split-screen reality. And depending on which side of the screen you are looking at, you can be deeply pessimistic or deeply optimistic,” said Arianna. She mentioned that “one side of the screen” includes grim unemployment and foreclosure statistics. In addition, Arianna stated, the United States ranks “10th in upward mobility,” which she explained puts us “behind France.” She continued, that’s “as if France would be behind us in croissants and afternoon sex, because, you know, upward mobility is sort of at the heart of the American Dream.” Arianna also mentioned “the other side of the screen.” On that flip side, according to Arianna, “we do have an explosion of empathy and compassion and creativity at the community level very often.” She relayed a conversation that she had with Pastor Rick Warren in which the two discussed how “churches, synagogues and local institutions are coming together to make a difference.” Arianna also explained that the founding fathers of capitalism “all were very concerned about a moral foundation to capitalism,” but that today that “moral foundation” has fallen by the wayside. “It’s almost as though we went from a country that makes things, to a country that makes things up,” explained Arianna. She cited “credit default swaps, derivatives, you know ways to make money that do not add value” as the manifestation of this syndrome. She concluded, “The more we can strengthen the part of us that ultimately brings us together rather than tears us apart, the more likely it is that we’ll be able to get out of this crisis and not just survive, but thrive at a higher level.” Click here to view Arianna’s appearance (via C-SPAN). Her portion of the video begins at 01:07:00.

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Timothy Caulfield: Do Stem Cells Really Offer a Miracle Cure?

November 24, 2011

Quarterback Peyton Manning has used it. So has New York Yankee pitcher Bartolo Colon. Ditto Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry. You can get it to combat wrinkles and reverse the aging process. You can even get it to improve your sex life. What is this miracle cure, this elixir of life? Stem cell therapy. But does it actually work? I think not — at least not yet. A recent event underscores the cavernous gap between the well-publicized (and completely legitimate) promise of stem cell research and actual, efficacious, therapies. Last week, a California biotech company, Geron, decided to terminate a much-scrutinized and highly-anticipated stem cell clinical trial. This was a one-of-a-kind, first-in-the-world initiative that involved the injection of stem cells into the backs of patients with recent spinal cord injuries. It is no surprise, then, that last week’s decision generated both shock and anger. And for the patients hoping for a near-future cure, it was nothing less than heartbreaking. Not only did the company decide to stop this particular trial, it decided to get out of the field of stem cell therapies altogether. So definitive was the decision that Geron gave back millions of public research dollars. We need to be careful not to over-interpret the Geron pull out. This is one company and one trial. There are now a few other clinical experiments in the pipeline (emphasis on a few), such as one to treat a form of blindness . And we must remember that not all things that are called “stem cell therapies” are the same. Manning, for instance, reportedly received a type of adult stem cells , though there are few details on the exact nature of his treatment. Still, the move by Geron provides an opportunity to reflect on the state of stem cell research today. A reality check. First, ignore the hype. I believe there is little evidence that any of the often advertised stem cell therapies, embryonic or otherwise, work. Yes, there are a handful of decades-old treatments, such as the use of cord blood stem cells for some forms of cancer, which are clinically beneficial. But the list of proven treatments is short and does not include any for common diseases or injuries. (The International Society of Stem Cell Research has a terrific website that outlines what is available.) Manning, Colon and Perry may have had a positive experience (the placebo effect is a powerful thing, after all), but, to date, I believe good clinical evidence simply does not exist. Second, despite the hope of many, it isn’t going to be easy to make money off stem cell research — at least with a treatment that is scientifically legitimate, appropriately tested and approved by the relevant regulatory agencies (three characteristics missing from most of the stem cell therapies currently offered in clinics around the world). Economic growth has often been one of the ways that the huge public investment in stem cell research has been justified. Just a few weeks ago, for example, the UK government announced that it was committing millions in a stem cell research centre with the hope that it will help drive the UK economic recovery. But the ability of emerging stem cell technologies to stimulate the economy and create jobs is far from certain. Indeed, economics is the explicit reason for the Geron pull out. The company press release stated that the decision was made after a strategic review of the costs, timelines and “clinical, manufacturing and regulatory complexities associated” with this kind of research. In other words, stem cell research is not, from the perspective of this company, worth it. I don’t mean to be a downer. In fact, I believe that stem cell research holds tremendous potential. I remain fully confident that, one day, therapies will emerge. But the inappropriate hype associated with this area hurts policy debates, leads to unmet expectations, and has the potential to mislead the public about the actual state of the science. The Geron story is a sober reminder that promise is not reality, even in a field as exciting as stem cell research.

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Nokia’s Huge Announcement Bodes Ill

November 24, 2011

HELSINKI — Nokia Corp. has applied to delist from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange because of falling trading volumes of its shares, the world’s largest mobile phone maker said Thursday. The announcement came as the Finnish company’s stock continues to tumble as it struggles against stiff competition in the top-end smartphone sector and against rivals making cheaper handsets in Asia. In August, Standard and Poor’s downgraded Nokia’s credit rating, saying its outlook for the company remained negative. Moody’s also downgraded it by two notches in July from A3 to Baa2 due to a “severe weakening” of Nokia’s business position. Nokia said the application was a pragmatic decision in an increasingly Internet-connected world that allows electronic trading from anywhere. Besides Helsinki, Nokia shares are still traded in New York, but during the last eight years Nokia has delisted from the London, Paris and Stockholm exchanges. Last month, Nokia launched its long-awaited first Windows cellphones – nine months after it teamed up with Microsoft Corp. to make smartphones. Standard and Poor’s said the partnership “could help Nokia improve the currently weak competitive position of its smartphone portfolio.” Nokia’s share price, which has plunged by 50 percent since the February partnership was announced to below euro4.00, reviving slightly to reach euro5.00 at the end of October. On Wednesday, Nokia stock was trading up 2 percent at euro4.17 ($5.58) in Helsinki. Nokia’s application to delist from Frankfurt is subject to approval by the management board of the Frankfurt exchange. The application is not related to Tuesday’s announcement that Nokia Siemens Networks will slash 17,000 jobs – almost one-quarter of its work force – in a move to cut annual costs by euro1 billion ($1.35 billion) by 2013. The company is a joint venture of Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG of Germany. _____ Online:

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Is Recycling Culture Good For America?

November 24, 2011

This is the third in an occasional series examining the recession’s impact on culture, The Recessionary Arts, and part two of last week’s installment, ” Movies And The Economy: Courting Adults In A Time Of Declining Film Attendance .” Find out more about the series here . The big story about James Erwin, who recently scored a movie deal based on a comment he posted online , isn’t that he’s a 37-year old dad in Des Moines, Iowa, who never intended to become a screenwriter. Or that he won’t move to L.A. because he likes the new doors he just put on his house. Or even that he’s won Jeopardy twice. Those points are significant, to be sure, and will make for great details when Erwin himself becomes the subject of a movie, as he probably will someday. But the more important story is that Erwin, a software-manual writer with no insider connections, managed to get an original property through to Warner Brothers in this lackluster economy — in a year when every movie seems to be based on something that came before, and studios in search of sure success cut projects with any hint of mystery. Hollywood set two dubious records this year — the most sequels ever made and the release of more franchises in their fourth and fifth iteration than ever before. The 10 highest grossing movies so far have shaken out on franchising lines: one to six are sequels (“Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon,” “The Hangover Part II,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tide,” “Fast Five,” and “Cars 2″), seven and eight are based on Marvel characters (“Thor,” “Captain America”), nine is a reboot (“Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes”). Ten is the sole original property, “Bridesmaids.” The problem is two-fold — the down economy on one end, and technologies such as video on demand services and iPads on the other — distraction from the traditional modes of distraction. Anything is possible — even watching “Melancholia” on your couch before its released in theaters. Meanwhile, tickets are pricey, the studios have smaller budgets, and the tent-pole movies intended to draw crowds are increasingly wired to keep multiple industries in the black. But does optimizing profits in a down market necessitate movies that are essentially extended commercials? Are bad movies good for American business? Earlier this summer, Universal dropped a project known as “Ouija ,” part of a 6-year deal with the Rhode Island-based toy company Hasbro. It was brokered at the start of the recession, a year after Hasbro’s Transformers brand made millions at the box office, outstripping all but two movies. The deal stipulated the film adaptation of 7 Hasbro board games and toys — Candyland, Stretch Armstrong, Clue, Battleship, Monopoly, Magic: The Gathering and Ouija. By the time Universal paid Hasbro $5 million to back out of “Ouija,” the darkest and most promising outcroppings of the deal had also disintegrated: “Monopoly” and “Clue,” each of which had a respected director attached in (Ridley Scott and Gore Verbinski). The studio’s line was that it needed to focus on “Battleship,” “Candyland” and “Stretch Armstrong,” which is set to star Taylor Lautner. One source at Universal told The Huffington Post the “risk” and “reward” assessment by which studio executives estimate a film’s financial costs and gains have skewed since the recession. A pricey film with indeterminate rewards, like perhaps “Ouija,” probably isn’t to survive. A movie starring Taylor Lautner? Already in development. According to Patrick Corcoran, spokesperson for the National Association of Theater Owners, this mania for marketable projects is an inevitable, natural happening — the age-old game to “exploit already known properties” into a “positive feedback loop,” whereby fans of the movies buy the toys and vice versa. Hasbro, Corcoran said, was “aggressive in exploiting their properties and getting studios to agree.” In a press release from 2000 , then-Hasbro president Alan Hassenfield detailed “a very painful year” involving massive layoffs and closings. They’d realized, reported the press , that making toys for fans of a particular movie was a losing venture. Interest inevitably waned, as it had for Star Wars before Hasbro sold its inventory of Star Wars stock. Their new strategy would be the inverse. They’d capitalize on products they’d already popularized — the Ouija boards, the gel-filled Stretch Armstrongs. To keep them vibrant, they’d get studios to make movies about them (preferably, one would think, ones and twos and threes, ad infinitum). The decision seems to have paid off. Hasbro profits jumped 62 percent after the first “Transformers” movie in 2007, even as the recession took hold. And after a year of seesawing profits, they posted a growth of 10 percent this October, due in large part to strong sales of Transformers, a 27-year-old toy. The human face to all this bottom-lining is the thousands of employees of Hasbro (and Universal, and Paramount, and all the rest) working in a dismal economy for product-hawkers. The only Hasbro plant left in the U.S. is in the former manufacturing center of Western Massachusetts, where the scarceness of jobs gives even the upcoming ” View Master” movie a sense of gravity. In 1980, before the internet, the Chinese economic boom and the recession changed the landscape of a toy company’s and a movie studio’s operations, the top 10 highest grossing movies was in a near-inverse state to this year’s list . Only two sequels were in the top 10. The rest were original movies, including now iconic originals, such as “Tootsie,” “9 to 5″ and “Airplane.” As for Erwin’s original script, “Rome Sweet Rome,” it may not be so different from the rest of Hollywood’s current productions. James Erwin’s decision to move his Marines back in time, a key part of the script, was an unwitting tick in an industry check box. According to Adam Kolbrenner. the president of the boutique screenwriting agency, Madhouse Entertainment, that sold the script to Warner Bros, “the time-travel space” is a brand in its own right, and one that “everyone wants to buy these days.” “Let’s not deviate,” Kolbrenner said in a phone interview. “I’m going to figure out how to make ‘Rome Sweet Rome’ a franchise. As far as I’m concerned, those marines in episode two are flying to fucking China.”

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A Dumpster Dinner: Is Thanksgiving The Most Wasteful Day Of The Year?

November 24, 2011

NEW YORK — Lynn U., a 58 year old mom of two, is bringing cornbread stuffing to her aunt’s Thanksgiving celebration this year. What the aunt doesn’t know is that Lynn didn’t find her ingredients in the aisles of a grocery store, but in the trash bags outside. Lynn, who asked that her last name not be used to protect herself from possible backlash from her employer, is neither homeless nor broke. She has a college education and a good job as a middle school teacher. And she lives on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, one of the country’s more affluent neighborhoods. But ever since she went on a “trash tour” in 2007 with a group of freegans , or those whose diet consists only of discarded food, Lynn has also embraced dumpster diving. In 2008 she made her family’s entire Thanksgiving dinner exclusively out of garbage materials. As most Americans spend today indulging (and prepping for Black Friday’s shopping battleground ), a few like Lynn are choosing to celebrate by taking a bite out of the food waste problem. Not that a dumpster dinner is completely altruistic. Since Lynn began diving four years ago, her family has saved $9,000 a year on groceries. No one in her family has ever gotten sick from the food, she said, and most of what she finds in her neighborhood is organic. Some of the Thanksgiving divers have larger ambitions for their free finds. A dinner made by Lynn U. from discarded food (Courtesy of Lynn U.) Austin Redwood, a 24 year old recent college grad living in Baltimore, hopes to score enough food from dumpsters within the next few days to feed 25 to 30 people at his own “Dumpster Thanksgiving” feast in early December. “We try to make it as fancy as possible,” Redwood told The Huffington Post . So far, Redwood has found “fish (mahi mahi, tilapia and cocktail shrimp), chicken (wings and breasts) [and] cheese (about 10-15 wedges of handcrafted ‘Blacksticks’ blue cheese and brie).” In past years he has found “really large turkeys in the trash.” Jon Stepanian, organizer for the Long Island chapter of the activist group Food Not Bombs , plans to collect hundreds of discarded pies from supermarket trash cans this Thanksgiving. Like last year, he and his friends will go out on Black Friday to distribute the pies in high traffic area for a protest they call “Pies not Bombs.” “There’s so much waste in our society,” Stepanian told The Huffington Post . “It’s a problem of businesses having to follow a model of over-consumption to compete.” TOO SMELLY TO SAVE? Dumpsters tend to be especially bountiful over the Thanksgiving weekend mostly because there is so much food to begin with. Already-prepared turkeys and pumpkin pies don’t sell very well once the holiday is over. While many supermarkets donate excess inventory to food banks, perishable goods are often still thrown away. Stores do their best to plan and forecast efficiently for Thanksgiving. “There’s definitely more inventory on hand over the holiday,” said Maria Brous, Director of Media and Community Relations at Publix Supermarkets. “The last thing we want to do is to be unprepared for a customer.” Brous said Publix and other grocers are working hard to decrease their amount of food waste, both over the holiday season and year round. This year, Publix implemented a perishable recovery program in 66 percent of its stores, in collaboration with the nonprofit Feeding America which distributes food to 202 banks in the U.S. In June of this year, the Food Marketing Institute also launched an industry-wide Coalition on Food Waste to address the problem. Traditionally, perishable foods like eggs, produce and meat have not been donated to food banks, as short shelf lives made it difficult to get items to mouths in a safe amount of time. Organizations like Feeding America are now trying to save more perishables with solutions like refrigerated transport trucks, Brous said. Karen Hanner, the director of Manufacturing Partnerships at Feeding America, said supermarkets have gotten better at recovering food in the past 10 years. They’ve become more aware of the environmental impact of landfills, she said, and have been forced by a bad economy to carefully monitor their expenses and bottom lines. Still, not all grocers have been as active in sustainability efforts. Trader Joe’s, for one, is famous among dumpster divers for having the most lavish trash of them all. Trader Joe’s does not currently have a national partnership with Feeding America, according to Hanner, but does donate on a store by store basis. In an email, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson told The Huffington Post. that the retailer “donates a majority of items that are not sellable.” But even the most eco-conscious grocer can’t salvage smelly items like fish or pre-cooked turkeys. “There are some items we can’t donate,” said Brous. “We don’t want to put the at-risk population [who uses food banks] in more danger.” “They’re very well intentioned,” Karen Hanner says of those dumpster divers who take food salvaging into their own hands. “But they’re missing the fact that the food may not have been handled in the right way for the client who eventually consumes it. It’s very dangerous.” STANDING UP FOR STUFFING Lynn, who is trained as a chef and used to own a catering company, said she understands the perception that many have about dumpster diving, as it was once her own. “People are shocked to find out. They think it’s for the homeless or for the down and out,” she said. But Lynn maintains that the practice has changed her whole outlook on life, as well as how her family celebrates Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. “We got rid of our car. We don’t buy each other gifts. We’ve stopped over-consuming all together,” she said. When Lynn brings the homemade stuffing to her aunt’s today, she hopes to finally tell her extended family about her hobby. “It’s a little bit like like coming out of the closet,” she said. “People are judgmental. But once they taste the food I make they’ll stop judging.”

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Walmart Stiffing Customers On Gift Receipts?

November 24, 2011

Walmart has been accused of a faulty return system that leaves customers with far less than the full price of their returns.

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AT&T Prepares For Deal Collapse

November 24, 2011

By Harro Ten Wolde and Georgina Prodhan FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) – AT&T said it would take a $4 billion charge in case its takeover of T-Mobile USA fails, reflecting the dwindling chances for the deal seen as job-destroying by powerful political opponents. The U.S. telecoms group and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, said they would continue to pursue anti-trust approval for the $39 billion takeover from the U.S. Department of Justice but withdrew for now applications to the industry regulator. “AT&T Inc and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T,” they said in a statement on Thursday, the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Both the DOJ and telecoms watchdog the Federal Communications Commission oppose the deal, which would reduce the number of national mobile carriers to three while consumers are struggling to make ends meet and unemployment rises. FCC approval would be meaningless if the DOJ blocked the deal, and AT&T and Deutsche Telekom said they would return to the FCC process if they secured approval from the DOJ. Analysts said the merger, badly needed by sub-scale T-Mobile USA — the smallest of the four U.S. national mobile operators — looked less likely than ever to succeed. Espirito Santo analysts said AT&T’s decision to take the $4 billion charge this quarter showed the company’s own assessment of the chances of success had fallen, causing its auditors to force the company to take the hit now. “It tells us something about timing too — suggesting that AT&T may decide to walk away at the first opportunity (March 20 2012) rather than waiting for the ultimate September 20 2012 deadline,” they wrote in a note to clients. Deutsche Telekom shares were up 0.2 percent to 8.76 euros by 1315 GMT (8:15 a.m. ET), broadly in line with the European telecoms index, which was up 0.5 percent. JOB SITUATION Today’s decision follows a blow earlier this week when the FCC said it would try to send the deal to an administrative law judge for review. The FCC says the merger would result in a massive loss of U.S. jobs and investment, and significantly diminish competition, while the DOJ says it would lead to higher wireless prices for consumers and businesses. The DOJ has gone to court to block the deal, and a trial in that case is due to begin on February 13. Any administrative hearing at the FCC, which is charged with evaluating the public-interest merits of the deal, would begin after the anti-trust trial. U.S. consumer spending growth slowed last month and business capital investment plans were weak, although first-time claims for jobless benefits remained in a range that hinted at improving labor-market conditions. AT&T has 260,000 employees, most in the United States. Deutsche Telekom employs 36,000 at its U.S. unit. AT&T argues that the T-Mobile merger could actually create tens of thousands of jobs during integration and network upgrades, and has pledged to bring back 5,000 jobs that it has moved overseas — but many observers are skeptical. “I don’t believe there’s any politician in America who’s interested in being associated with something that has a negative impact on the job situation in America,” Denmark-based telecoms consultant John Strand of Strand Consult told Reuters. NO PLAN B Acquiring T-Mobile would have vaulted number two-ranked AT&T into the leading position in the U.S. wireless market, overtaking Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc. It would also have solved a years-long problem for Deutsche Telekom, whose U.S. unit has long ceased to be a source of growth and is in urgent need of investment. Credit rating agency Moody’s said it believed Deutsche Telekom would rather exit the U.S. market than go it alone. “The options open to Deutsche Telekom if it were to stay in the US market are much less palatable than if it were to exit,” wrote Carlos Winzer, senior vice president at Moody’s. However, the rating agency believes that Deutsche Telekom will fight aggressively alongside AT&T to salvage the sale process in order to improve its weak position in the US. A failure would throw Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann’s strategy into disarray and may force him to throw money at a business he thought he was rid of. Company officials have said there is no “Plan B.” The company faces a long delay at best and may be driven back into the arms of number three U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel — a less suitable partner for whom T-Mobile USA would not be worth nearly as much now as it was to AT&T in March. A break-up fee of up to $6 billion, including some spectrum and roaming access, would provide some consolation and could allow Deutsche Telekom to sell the U.S. unit at a discount, Strand said. Telecoms consultant Fred Huet of Greenwich Consulting said T-Mobile USA would immediately need to find ways of cutting costs. “They need to find some way of sharing cost across operators,” he told Reuters. “They need to have a better cost base, otherwise they’re going to be in real trouble soon.” (Additional reporting by Chris Steitz and Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt and Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Chris Wickham) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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David Suzuki: Don’t Say the D-word

November 24, 2011

A kerfuffle is raised every time a comedian, politician, or businessperson uses the F-word or the N-word. I understand that. But to me, the D-word is the most obscene. I’m referring to disposable . Let me explain. When I was a boy, we were poor and it was a big deal when my parents bought me a new coat. I would quickly outgrow it, and it would be passed on to my sister. My parents boasted that three of their children had worn the same coat. They weren’t concerned (nor were we kids) about gender differences or fashion; it was the coat’s ability to keep the wearer warm and its durability (now there’s a good D-word) that mattered. We now have an economic system in which companies must not only show a profit each year, they must strive for constant growth. If a product is rugged and durable, it creates a problem for even the most successful business — a diminishing and eventually saturated market. Of course, any product will eventually wear to a point where it can no longer be patched, so the market will continue to exist to replace worn products. But that’s not good enough in a competitive world driven by the demand for relentless growth in profits and profitability. So companies create an aura of obsolescence, where today’s product looks like a piece of junk when next year’s model comes out. We’ve lived with that for decades in the auto industry. I’ve always said a car is simply a means of getting from point A to point B, but it’s become far more than that. Some cars convey a sense of power, and cars become safe havens when loaded with cup holders, sound systems, and even TVs and computers. Some people even name their cars, talk to them, and care for them like babies — until next year’s models come along. It’s similar with clothing, even with outdoor attire beloved by environmentalists. We have a proliferation of choice based on colour, sexiness, and other properties that have nothing to do with function. I don’t understand torn blue jeans as a fashion statement, and I wish people would wear their pants till they spring their own leaks rather than deliberately incorporating tears. All of this is designed to get us to toss stuff away as quickly as possible so the economy can keep spinning. Nowhere is this more obvious than with electronic gadgets. When my wife lost the cord to charge her cellphone, she went to seven stores. None had the necessary plug for her phone. Finally she went back to the retailer that sold her brand only to be told that the cords for the new models don’t fit the old ones and hers was so old, it wasn’t even on the market any more. It was a year-and-a-half old. I remember when I was given the first laptop computer on the market. It had an LED display screen that let me see three lines at a time and a chip that stored about three pages of writing. But it was small and had word processing and a port to send my pieces by telephone. It revolutionized my life. I was writing a weekly column for the Globe and Mail and was able to send articles from Russia and even remote towns in the Amazon. A couple of years later, a much better laptop hit the market. It had an LCD screen, a huge memory, and it displayed almost a full page. I got one. A year later, I got a new model, and then half a year after that, another. Each served me well, but every year, new ones would appear that were faster, smaller, and lighter, with longer-life batteries and more bells and whistles. Try to get one fixed or upgraded, though. As with digital cameras, I was repeatedly told that it would cost more to fix an old laptop than to buy a new model. This is madness in a finite world with finite resources. At the very least, products should be created so components can be pulled apart and reused until they wear out. You see why I think the D-word is so obscene. Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org .

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Andrew Pyle: The Super Committee’s Lost Opportunity

November 24, 2011

As Americans head into their Thanksgiving long weekend, they will have plenty of things to be thankful for. Unfortunately, an effective government will not be one of them. While we have not been startled by the lack of political leadership in Europe in dealing with the region’s debt crisis (to date, the EU had still not ratified the most recent rescue and stability program), there was a feeling that members of Congress would get their respective acts together and put to rest any doubts over fiscal repair in the U.S. The so-called ‘super committee,’ established back in August after the rating downgrade, was given one task and that was to come up with a proposal to cut a further $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit over 10 years. A large number, yes, but considering this is only 10 per cent of the current annual shortfall, the task wasn’t insurmountable. Some tax tweaks here and there, and a thorough cupboard cleaning of inefficient federal agencies would have achieved the desired objective and brought some peace to equity markets and cool down rating agency tempers. Alas, with only a few days before the Nov. 23 deadline for a proposal, members of the committee pre-announced that there would be no agreement. Markets recoiled and hopes of a late-year recovery in stocks has faded, as this was one of the few silver linings left in an otherwise dark cloud hanging over Europe and the global economy. All is not lost, however, since failure to produce an agreed upon proposal simply takes the beltway to plan B — an automatic series of spending cuts in 2013 geared towards the $1.2 trillion deficit haircut. If it were not for this contingency, the rating agencies would have been scrambling this week to either cut the U.S. rating a first time (for the two majors that didn’t already knock the triple-A off the shelf) or guidance for additional downgrades by Standard & Poor’s. At the time of writing, all but Fitch had indicated that they were leaving their respective ratings in place, but this could all change come 2012. The reason is that the automatic cuts slated for 2013 could become un-automatic as the election race heats up. If, for whatever reason, those cuts get kicked down the road, I believe the agencies will waste no time in slicing into the U.S. debt rating. If you thought the shake-out in equities back in August was disturbing, such a scenario would be worse. Moreover, there is less scope for U.S. bonds to avoid being hit as well in that situation given that bond yields are significantly lower today than they were back before the summer fiasco. For example, the 10-year U.S. Treasury was still up near three per cent going into the debt ceiling debate and subsequent downgrade, compared to levels below two per cent this week. Conversely, the value of the U.S. dollar is higher today than it was before August, with the DXY index trading up near 80 — roughly a seven per cent gain. Any flight to safety considerations by investors in the face of a U.S.-led panic in stocks would have to be measured against both the risk of a correction in the dollar, without much compensation in terms of actual yield on bonds. Some view these developments in a light similar to the MAD (mutual assured destruction) equilibrium that existed between the U.S. and Soviet Union back during the Cold War. Given that continued political ineptitude will lead to a worst case scenario with respect to U.S. capital markets, and hence individual American household portfolios, the endgame result should be that Republicans and Democrats get together to either push forward sustainable deficit reduction proposals or allow the automatic 2013 cuts go through. The problem for the equity market is that participants feel that politicians won’t adhere to MAD and that this uncertainty prevents a clear vision towards the medium-term outlook for the economy. In other words, there are now very real second-order effects from continued political inaction that puts the outlook in flux. That means two things. First, the odds of a Santa Claus rally are now lower. Second, volatility into 2012 will remain elevated. If this scenario unfolds, then politicians will learn at the polls just how much of a wasted opportunity this was.

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Jeff Cimbalo: The Latest Plan to Control Euro Members

November 24, 2011

What’s the newest strategy of the European Commission to remove any democratic accountability from the eurozone members? They are now aiming to consolidate all eurozone members on the IMF Executive Board into a single member, represented by… the European Commission. The move would make the Commission less reliant on the pronouncements of European Council and the interests of the Union’s member states. While there are benefits to consolidating the eurozone’s votes, they don’t have much to do with the eurozone. This action could be part of the more consolidated eurozone that Merkel envisions floating this December in Brussels. If the Commission is talking about it now, it might mean that France and Germany’s longtime opposition to attacks on their prerogatives in international organizations may be thawing. On the face of it, the Union would lose a lot from this plan. Right now eurozone member states control 28.3 per cent of voting quotas, and the Union itself controls almost 32 per cent (not counting Poland which, as an alternate Board member, would vote an additional 2.7 per cent). A larger number of seats influences more votes than the aggregate eurozone as a whole, which controls about 20.5 per cent of the voting quotas. These numbers suggest that the Commission is willing to give up some voting strength for the Union as a whole for greater control over the eurozone’s votes. The biggest risk with the move is the degree to which eurozone members, if transformed into one IMF member called the “eurozone,” can and ought to be held responsible for the failure of a eurozone member to repay its debts. Sanctions for this are rare but they have occurred in Sudan and Zimbabwe, and the Membership Agreement for the IMF provides for suspension of voting rights in those cases (Article XXXVI and Schedule L). Either the eurozone members’ voting rights will have to be joined to the various crises of their members, or one of the only remedies the IMF has for non-compliance will have to be gutted for the eurozone. I would bet on the latter. This move is also likely to drive the eurozone farther from the non-euro members of the Union. By consolidating all eurozone votes into one, it is a bloc vote every time, with no formal need for the Commission to consider the concerns or other EU member states. Keep in mind that all Union members are already obligated under the Lisbon Treaty to “uphold the Union’s position in [international] forums.” (Article 34.) Under this plan, the Union would not even need to try to form a position. It remains to be seen if non-euro members want to give up the Union’s current favorable arrangement in the IMF to essentially allow an organ of the whole Union, the European Commission, to force the eurozone to vote as a bloc even on matters where there is no existing Union position to follow. It is also unknown if changes for how the EU votes at other institutions, such as the G-20 and the UN, might follow.

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Thanksgiving Faces Cuts For The Jobless With Uncertain Unemployment Extension

November 24, 2011

Most years, Thanksgiving dinner at Pauline Richter’s house in Skokie, Ill., features the classic American tableau: turkey with all the trimmings, an array of pies. Family preferences — a vegetarian dish for her brother — and the art and act of preparing profound amounts of food have always been more important than price, Richter said. But there’s no turkey this year for Richter, who is expecting her brother for dinner and some cousins for dessert. The menu has to stay inside the limits of what her $133 per week unemployment benefits can provide. Richter isn’t just living on a limited income, but is also facing the distinct possibility that her unemployment benefits could disappear in January. “I’ve just started to think about what that would really mean,” said Richter from her home about 15 miles north of Chicago. “I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.” Richter, who has lived in her 3-and-a-half bedroom home for 39 years, lost her job directing a Chicago mental health services program for low-income senior citizens in June. She is one of the 1.8 million out-of-work Americans who will have to find a way to live if Congress fails to pass a bill extending federal unemployment payments by year’s end, according to an October analysis released by the National Employment Law Project . That number could grow as large as 6 million people by the end of 2012 if Congress refuses to act, according to the analysis. “Congress is a mess,” Richter said. “They appear to have no sense at all of just how hard things have become.” In 2010, things at the Chicago nonprofit where Richter worked for 24 years went from intense, but meaningful, to just plain stressful. Her long-time boss left the organization. By the start of this year, the agency had significant financial problems. On June 16, Richter and several other employees lost their jobs. That was a Thursday. “I wasn’t ready to stop working,” said Richter, who declined to give her age, fearing that potential employers might see it and refuse to consider her for a job. “So, what was really a shock was that all of a sudden I wasn’t getting up and going to work anymore. The issue of paying your bills, well that worry comes later.” The following Monday, Richter realized that she was going to have to apply for unemployment benefits to cover her expenses and avoid depleting her emergency savings fund or retirement savings. In Richter’s family — both her parents lived well into their 80s — savings are something that people take very seriously. State budget cuts had already shuttered the unemployment office in Evanston, about five miles east of her home. Initial claims require an office visit, she said. So Richter had to use “very expensive and very precious gas” to drive to Chicago. Once she arrived, she got one of her first real pictures of just how bad the job market might be. It looked like there were hundreds of people in the room. Some were there for benefits; others were there to use the agency’s computers to look for jobs. The situation hasn’t changed much over time, she said. “They do the best they can, but it’s always a long wait. You have to bring your newspapers and be prepared to wait,” Richter said. No one would do that if they didn’t need the money, she said. “I don’t think I really understood that until I became unemployed.” Richter estimates that she has applied to at least three jobs — mostly with nonprofits and social service agencies — every week since she lost her job. She visits at least five different websites that list vacant jobs every day and meets with a job counselor every few weeks. Once, the counselor nervously asked Richter — who has a young woman’s face but white hair — if she had considered hair dye. When her stress percolates to the surface in the form of a cold that’s hard to shake, she reminds herself that she spent a long time working as a problem solver, helping people whose lives were pockmarked by poverty. She will get through this, she said. “I’m not the kind of person who sits and wrings her hands,” said Richter, who is divorced. “I will do what I have to do to survive. I take care of me. And I do have grandchildren. I don’t want them to think that I’m poor.” While Richter searches for work, she’s learned to live on less, she said. She’s slashed her cable down to the bare minimum to continue receiving a TV signal. But her religious beliefs require her to keep kosher, a diet that often involves buying high-priced food, she said. Her food bill is nearly $400 every month. Her unemployment benefits cover that bill and utilities. She has also curtailed her driving, typically only using her car to get to job interviews, she said. She is filling up once per month, which costs about $65. Richter considers herself fortunate. She has already paid off her home. And, when the $5,000 property tax bill associated with it came due this year, she was able to pull that money from her savings. But that does not mean she is not concerned about her future. Her savings are dwindling. “Its frightening. But what’s really scary is, it’s not just me,” Richter said. “People who were in the middle class keep moving downward. My house is paid for, but other people aren’t so fortunate. So I’m sure that if those benefits aren’t renewed we will see more homelessness, more discontent. And the economy? People who are forced to keep lowering their expenses, they aren’t just spending less and less. They are being forced to withdraw from society. Whether people know it or not, when you are talking millions of people, this is a tragedy.” On Wednesday, Richter had just returned from the market with the makings of a Thanksgiving meal. There will be eggplant casserole. Her brother is a vegetarian, so there will be a fish. And there will be some kind of soup and salad, she said. “It’s not a poor man’s meal,” she said. “It hasn’t come to that yet. There will be some cheer here. But certainly I have to think about these things differently now.”

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Occupy Wall Street Takes On Black Friday Amid Skepticism

November 24, 2011

With Black Friday heralding the start of the shopping season, a bevy of groups identified with the Occupy Wall Street movement are asking consumers to reconsider their spending habits. But unlike other high-profile Occupy efforts of late — such as last week’s march across the Brooklyn Bridge , in which thousands of activists participated, it’s unclear whether the pushback against Black Friday shopping will serve as a show of strength for the movement. “I don’t think that they’re going to gain any traction out of this one,” said Stephen Hoch, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. “If I was them, I wouldn’t be investing a whole lot of energy in using this as a poster child for what’s wrong with our country.” Black Friday, otherwise known as the day after Thanksgiving, serves as the unofficial start of the November-December holiday shopping corridor, one of the busiest times of year for retailers. About 152 million people are expected to shop this Friday , in what has become an annual tradition of shoppers mobbing stores in the hopes of getting limited-time deals. This November, a number of Occupy Wall Street groups have publicized plans to oppose Black Friday in one form or another. These efforts are in line with Occupy Wall Street’s overall mission of reclaiming power from major corporations and financial institutions, and come a little more than a week after the cradle of the movement, Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, was forcibly evacuated on the orders of Mayor Michael Bloomberg . One group, known as Occupy Black Friday , is urging shoppers to bypass chain stores in favor of small and local businesses, while another group, named Don’t Occupy Walmart , is organizing a boycott of Walmart stores in protest of what it calls unjust and anti-union practices on the part of the retail giant. Still other Occupy chapters around the country are planning flash mobs, singing protests and other public demonstrations with the aim of encouraging shoppers to support local merchants. Sean McKeown, a chemist and New York resident who has spearheaded the Don’t Occupy Walmart group, told The Huffington Post that his group’s actions are intended in part to make a statement about the Occupy movement’s enduring presence in New York, now that Zuccotti Park has been cleared. “We’re trying to show that even if we don’t have a park that we’re staying in, we certainly have the ability to do a lot of things,” said McKeown, 31. “This is a way to show the power of the movement.” Still, skeptics question whether the disparate Occupy efforts — which have been unevenly publicized, and do not appear to be centrally coordinated — stand much chance of interrupting the post-Thanksgiving crush at stores and shopping malls. “It will be very difficult for any kind of organization to thwart the efforts of both retailers and consumers as they quest for the perfect deal,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group, a market research company. “No one is going to get in these people’s way.” Since the Internet has made it possible to shop from anywhere and at any time of day, Cohen noted — and since seasonal deals are often available not just on Black Friday, but for days and weeks afterward — Occupy protesters could have a hard time making their message as widely heard as they’d like. And since many small and local businesses get their goods from the same corporate suppliers that stock the shelves at Walmart and Target, it’s not clear whether encouraging people to shop locally will strike much of a blow to big business. “You’re basically taking from Peter to give to Paul in many cases,” Cohen said. “What’s the difference if I buy Tropicana orange juice from Walmart or if I buy it from the local grocery store?” Occupy Black Friday, which is among the groups calling for people to spend locally rather than at chain stores, could not be reached for comment. The anti-consumption spirit of the various scheduled Occupy events has a precedent in Buy Nothing Day , the yearly undertaking — always scheduled to fall on Black Friday — in which participants refrain from spending any money. Buy Nothing Day was created some 20 years ago by advocates associated with the Vancouver magazine Adbusters , which also issued the original call for the movement that would become Occupy Wall Street. While it remains a red-letter date on the calendars of many social activists, its effects on retail sales have traditionally been less than earthshattering. “They’re fragmentary, they’re ephemeral,” said Richard Hastings, a macro and consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities, of Buy Nothing Day and similar campaigns that have attempted to build commercial headwinds on Black Friday. “To really be quite poetic about it, they’re evanescent.” Hastings said that “the Occupy movement in the U.S. can only have some impact if it starts to do boycotts” — but added that he does not expect the anti-Black Friday forces to change many minds this year. “This is not a society where sitting around and obsessing about ideology goes on and on forever,” Hastings said. “We’ve been a consumer society for an extremely long time.” What people bought during Black Friday last year:

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European Bank Using Emergency Facilities To Tackle ‘Very Dramatic’ Problem

November 24, 2011

BRUSSELS (Ben Deighton) – Franco-Belgian bank Dexia (DEXI.BR) is accessing emergency liquidity facilities in Belgium, France, Spain and Italy, a banking source said on Thursday, as analysts described its liquidity situation as “very dramatic.” The source said the bank was making use of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) facility of the Belgian central bank as well as “national central banks in France, in Spain, in Italy,” where Dexia has units. One analyst said the fact Dexia was tapping national central banks’ liquidity via the European Central Bank network showed how bad the situation had become for the lender. “The emergency window of the ECB … is very expensive, so it shows that the liquidity situation is very dramatic,” the analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “At some point you run out of unencumbered assets to post at the ECB, and then the only way to fund yourself is via the ELA, which is clearly not a good sign,” the analyst said. Dexia and the central banks of France and Belgium both declined to comment. The source added that Dexia would try to raise money on markets again after the finalization of a 90 billion euro ($120 billion) guarantee scheme agreed in October by France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said Wednesday that he hoped to reach an agreement with the European Commission about the restructuring plan for Dexia (DEXI.BR) in the coming days. ($1 = 0.7490 euros) (Additional reporting by Dan Flynn in Paris; Editing by Luke Baker and Will Waterman) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Turkey and shell sign oil, gas search deal

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Royal Dutch Shell has signed a deal with Turkish state-run petroleum company, TPAO, to search for oil and gas. The deal, sealed on Wednesday, allows the two …

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Greek conservative leader sends letter to EU/IMF

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) The leader of Greece’s conservative New Democracy party sent a letter on Wednesday to the European Union and IMF saying he supported the terms of a bailout aimed at …

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Gazprom reviews South stream route

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Russian natural gas company Gazprom said a section of its planned South Stream pipeline could run through a political entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, UPI …

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Turkmenistan to boost china gas deliveries

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Turkmenistan will boost natural gas deliveries to energy-hungry China under an agreement signed Wednesday that will see the central Asian nation supply about half of …

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Thanksgiving Kicks Off Anxious Holiday Season For Retailers

November 24, 2011

(Phil Wahba) – The holiday shopping season starts in earnest on Thursday, with retailers anxious to see if U.S. consumers are willing to spend despite an endless stream of scary headlines about the fragile economy and their own precarious finances. However, in the eyes of retailers, the shopping period has been churning along for some time as retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Toys R Us started early by offering layaway programs, and others offering major deals to lure shoppers. These incentives have increased the stakes for retailers, and when Americans are done with their turkey dinners on Thursday, many will be getting a jump-start on ‘Black Friday’, the biggest shopping day of the year, and one that sets the tone for the entire season. “If Thursday and Friday are not very good, chances are it will not pick up going up to Christmas,” said Keith Jelinek, a director at consulting firm AlixPartners’s retail practice. WalMart, Gap Inc’s Old Navy and Sears Holdings’ K-Mart are again open on Thanksgiving Day to get a headstart, while Toys R Us opens Thursday evening. But to narrow the gap in store hours, discounter Target Corp, electronics chain Best Buy and department store chains Macy’s Inc and Kohl’s Corp will open doors at midnight on Thursday. Retailers themselves concede the pressure is on. “At the end of the day, we are trying to respond to what our customers want to do, and they are telling us that’s when they want to shop,” Mike Vitelli, president, Americas and enterprise executive vice president, Best Buy, told Reuters. Others, like J.C. Penney Co Inc are taking their chances and opting to open early Friday morning as they did last year. The National Retail Federation expects sales in November and December to be up 2.8 percent over last year. So retailers see little margin for error in their fight for sales. The battle will also be waged online, where comScore expects sales to be up 15 percent this year. Wal-Mart starts its Black Friday ‘doorbuster’ deals on Thursday at 10 p.m. at its stores. Amazon.com Inc, not to be outdone, will offer its deals online at 9 p.m. But Wal-Mart is also offering 30 percent more deals on Thanksgiving. The knock-down-drag-out fight comes as the rebound in sales cooled in October, when many top chains like Macy’s and Saks reported disappointing sales and shoppers were hit with a steady stream of bad news about the economy. It will be a tougher fight for chains that have struggled of late, like Gap, Penney and electronics giant Best Buy. PriceGrabber.com, a price comparison website, found that searches for electronics in recent days were flat with last year, helped only by a surge in interest in new tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Inc’sNook. The NRF expects 152 million people to hit stores this weekend, up 10.1 percent from last year. But that will be fueled by bargain hunting, with the real test coming after the weekend, as retailers see if shoppers are only willing to hit stores when there are juicer deals on the table. Last year, after a strong Black Friday weekend, shoppers sat on their hands until closer to Christmas – waiting for stores to hand out bigger bargains. “I think as time goes on, you’re going to see a leveling and a softness in the numbers,” said Al Ferrara, director of BDO USA’s national retail practice. (Reporting by Phil Wahba in New York, additional reporting by Dhanya Skariachan; Editing by Bernard Orr) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Cyprus to launch new offshore oil and gas search

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Cyprus said it will launch a second licensing round for more exploratory drilling for oil and gas off its southern coast in four to six weeks, according to …

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US durable-goods orders fall, jobless claims rise

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) Orders for U.S. manufactured items fell for a second consecutive month in October, the government reported Wednesday. While much of the weakness came from a big …

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US consumer sentiment improves

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Saudi Press Agency) U.S. consumer sentiment improved in late November as some of the pessimism over the economic outlook faded, the University of Michigan reported Wednesday. Its final …

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Futures Industry Reconsiders Customer Bailout After MF Global Disaster

November 24, 2011

CHICAGO (Ann Saphir) – In November 1986, shaken by traders’ losses after a brokerage went bust, the U.S. futures industry considered, and then rejected, the notion of insuring customer funds in a broker default. The collapse last month of MF Global Holdings Inc, and hundreds of millions of dollars of still-missing customer money, is forcing a rethink of that 25-year-old decision. Executives at the National Futures Association have been talking with senior management at CME Group Inc and other market participants about how best to safeguard customer funds in future broker bankruptcies, Dan Driscoll, NFA’s chief operating officer, told Reuters in an interview. Under discussion is the feasibility of a government-sponsored insurance fund modeled after the Securities Investors Protection Corporation (SIPC). Another option is an industry-sponsored bailout fund, Driscoll said. Neither response would prevent a broker’s misuse of customer funds, as CME has said happened with MF Global, but some type of insurance could help restore shattered faith in the industry, helping allay growing fears that money parked at futures brokerages simply is not safe. “In the past, one reason there hasn’t been a SIPC is there hasn’t been a clearing firm that went bankrupt and lost customer funds,” Driscoll said. “Now there is. It’s a big amount of money, and it really has an impact on customer confidence.” But questions about how to pay for such insurance hang over the debate. Both schemes could make trading more expensive, forcing brokers — many of whom have seen profit margins shrivel — to push more costs down to customers. MF Global was one of the biggest U.S. futures brokerages until it filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct 31, after revelations it had made a bad $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt, sparked a liquidity crunch. Customers are still struggling to get their frozen funds back, and the bankruptcy trustee estimates that as much as $1.2 billion in customer funds has simply disappeared. CME, which puts the estimate of lost money significantly lower, has offered $50 million to repay customers stuck with losses after the final accounting. A CME spokeswoman declined to comment on whether CME would support an industry-wide bailout fund for customers. “Could there be a SIPC-type approach for futures? Yes,” said Don Horwitz, of Oyster Consulting in Chicago. “It’s not as if they could just overlay it, there are some costs, but this will be one of the things I’d think would be considered.” After the collapse of the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme in late 2008, SIPC raised its broker assessments from a flat $150 per firm per year to a quarter of a percent of yearly operating revenues, costing bigger firms hundreds of thousands of dollars, Horwitz said. All told SIPC collected $410 million last year. Talks among industry leaders so far have been one-on-one, Driscoll said, but in “coming days” there would be an effort to bring participants around a table to hash out a formal set of proposals. TOW TRUCK? Adopting an insurance scheme, particularly one modeled after that used to backstop securities markets, would be an about face for the futures industry, which has long said its customer funds are safer and its markets more reliable and transparent than the highly regulated world of stock trading. Created in 1970 to help restore confidence to the securities markets, SIPC has authority to use its funds to pay back securities customers up to $500,000 per account when brokerages fail. The insurance, which is funded by member brokers, does not cover futures accounts. The futures industry seeks to protect customers by requiring brokers to wall off customer accounts from their own funds. The system is an important selling point for CME, which touts the stringency of fund segregation in materials aimed at winning business from fund managers. The safety of customer fund segregation was also among the reasons that NFA cited when it recommended against adopting a bailout fund 25 years ago, in the wake of the collapse of Volume Investors, a brokerage on New York’s Commodity Exchange. With $13.7 million in customer funds, it was one of the largest futures brokerage failures of its time. By contrast, MF Global had about $5.5 billion in funds when it went under. COMEX — which is now owned by CME — in the end spent $3.6 million repaying traders who lost money in the bankruptcy. The payout equaled about 12 percent of the average customer funds held by a futures broker at the time. Futures trading has skyrocketed since then; an equivalent payout today would come to $170 million, based on the latest figures on futures customer funds published by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In a 122-page report entitled “Customer Account Protection Study,” dated November 20, 1986, the NFA concluded that insolvencies were so rare and fund segregation and other protections so strong that “it does not appear that even retail customers would require a public commitment to account insurance to maintain participation in the futures industry.” Post MF Global, that argument no longer passes muster. Trader anger at the brokerage and its regulators is mounting, and many smaller market participants are pulling or threatening to pull their money from futures markets. Volume Investors’ 1985 failure affected fewer than 100 traders. MF Global had tens of thousands. Industry executives say that if industry does not come up with its own solutions, change will be foisted on it. “I don’t think they’ll get off without a fix,” Horwitz said. Not all market participants support the idea. John Roe, a Chicago broker and former MF Global customer, said he fears an insurance scheme would only encourage risk taking by assuring traders there will always be a savior ready to pick up the pieces should something go wrong. “When there’s a car wreck, do you look for a better tow truck?” Roe asked. “Let’s build a better car.” (Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Alden Bentley) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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And The Latest European Country To Be Downgraded Is..

November 24, 2011

LISBON, Portugal – International ratings agency Fitch has downgraded Portugal’s debt to junk status due to its high debts and poor economic prospects. Fitch said Thursday it is downgrading Portugal one notch, to BB+ from BBB-. The agency said it took the measure because of Portugal’s “large fiscal imbalances, high indebtedness across all sectors, and adverse macroeconomic outlook.” The move is another blow to Portugal’s efforts to restore its fiscal health after taking a €78 billion ($104 billion) bailout earlier this year to avoid bankruptcy. The government is cutting spending and hiking taxes — measures which triggered a general strike Thursday.

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Air pollution costs Europe more than USD134b in 2009

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) European Environment Agency (EEA) said that the cost of air pollution on Europe in 2009 exceeded USD134 billion, affecting both the environment and health of citizens in the region, …

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China’s Alibaba reports 12% rise in Q3 profits

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Alibaba.com Ltd. reported third-quarter profit rise by 12 percent, benefiting from raising prices, Bloomberg reported. The company said its profits hit USD64 million in the quarter from …

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S. African producer price rise to 10.6% in October

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Statistics South Africa unveiled a rise in the nation’s producer price to 10.6 percent in October, Bloomberg reported. The report said that producer-price inflation accelerated by 0.1 …

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USD/JPY Classical Technical Report 11.24

November 24, 2011

USD/JPY:Although the market has come back under pressure following the recent surge to 79.55, we retain a constructive outlook with the price still holding above the bottom of the daily Ichimoku …

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EUR/USD Classical Technical Report 11.24

November 24, 2011

EUR/USD: The latest break below 1.3420 should now open a fresh downside extension which ultimately exposes a retest of the key lows from October at 1.3145. Look for any rallies to be well capped …

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EURUSD: Stay Short Targeting October Low

November 24, 2011

I sold EURUSD at 1.3526 as prices completeda Head and Shoulders top bearish reversal chart pattern following a retest of support-turned-resistance at the bottom of a rising channel that defined …

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Indonesia to increase tobacco excise tax by 15%

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Indonesia’s Finance Minister, Agus Martowardojo, said that in an attempt to lower tobacco consumption in the country, starting next January, the government would raise tobacco excise tax by …

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China to provide Venezuela with USD4b loan

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Venezuela’s Energy Minister, Rafael Ramirez, said that in a move that would increase the country’s oil production, improve its power plants and raise iron and aluminum output, the Chinese …

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Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law, Thanksgiving Edition

November 24, 2011

Ah, Thanksgiving. Savory food, family… and that pesky relative with a PhD in Fox News that keeps needling you to the point where you can’t even enjoy Cousin Chrissy’s carrot soufflé. [All references are to actual dishes at my family table! Also, usual disclaimer and Thanksgiving tidings to my bros-in-law -- Jim, Clint, Sean, Andy, Tom. Earlier editions of this series are here and here .] Well, don’t fret, and definitely don’t let them throw you off your eating game. Here’s a handy roundup of retorts to a few egregious arguments you’re likely to hear. Master these, and you’ll probably end up having thirds of Aunt Debbie’s pecan pie. Bro-in-Law: Poor people aren’t even poor in this country — they’ve got tons of stuff — TVs, air-conditioning, even houses! Well, one thing’s for sure — they don’t have a lot of money. You know what the poverty threshold is in this country? For a single mom with a couple of kids, it’s around $17,500 a year. Imagine raising kids on that kind of income today (look to your mom for support). And according to the official numbers, 20 million people — about 7% of the population — live in families with income below half that amount — I don’t care if you own 10 TVs — good luck patching a life together on that kind of income. But you’re right bro, a lot of poor people have TVs and ACs… less than half own homes, by the way, and many of them are cash-poor elderlies. But you’ve got a point, up to a point. Once you take into account their government benefits, like food stamps, Medicaid benefits, and tax addons to their wages, it’s true that a lot of poor people are not living in anything like a state of privation. In fact, the wage credit for low-income workers kept over five million people, including three million kids, out of poverty last year. So some of the stuff we’re doing is helping and that’s something we might want to be a little bit proud of. Sure, government gets some stuff wrong, but helping to top off low-wage incomes to help families trying to do the right thing is a great policy. By the way, bro, your hero Ronnie Reagan expanded that wage subsidy program (the Earned Income Tax Credit), calling it the best antipoverty program we’ve got. (Let me know how he deals with that one.) And here’s the thing. While a lot of poor families may be getting by, it’s awfully tough for them to get ahead. There’s less income mobility here than in most other advanced economies, and there’s also less mobility than they’re used to be. While prices of a lot of things like TVs, ACs, and laptops have fallen a lot, helping today’s poor to consume a lot more cool stuff than yesterday’s, some other very important prices have gone up a lot faster than average, like college, or like access to better neighborhoods with better schools. That’s how kids get a chance in this country, and precious few kids in families living on $20K or less are getting those chances. Even if they’ve got a few TVs. Bro-in-Law: Well, by now you’ve gotta admit it — Obama’s failed. Time to get on the [Mitt, Newt, etc.] bandwagon and give somebody else a chance to clean up the mess because your guy can’t do it. Now wait a minute, bro. I mean let’s just think about that for a minute. Your man W turned a phat budget surplus into a deficit and left Obama with an economy contracting at the nightmarish rate of 9% (that real GDP in Bush’s last quarter in office — 2008q4), shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month. This President takes office, gets the Recovery Act into the system, and by the second half of 2009, GDP’s growing again. But early 2010, the private sector’s adding jobs, as it’s been doing ever since — too slow, I grant you — but there’s no question he turned things around. And let’s be real here… your pals up there in DC have blocked every idea he’s tried to move. And some of them, like Mitch McConnell, say they’re doing so in order to defeat him. Imagine that-this guy proudly announced he”ll throw the President’s plans to help the economy under the bus if that’s what it take for his own political gain. I don’t care how ambitious you are, that’s just despicable and I don’t get it. (Looking around for support of basic fair play, say… ) So I really don’t think that’s a fair judgment of this president and what he’s accomplished. Even with vicious, aggressive forces working 24 and seven against him, he’s done great stuff. And I gotta tell ya, listening to those guys and gals who want to take his place, I’m pretty much hearing the very playbook that lost the game-big time-the last time out. It’s like they drove the car into the ditch, fought the President every step of the way as he got it out, blocked him from jump starting it, and now they want the keys back! (Help yourself to Aunt Judy’s cranberry pie — and take that extra scoop of vanilla — you earned it!) Bro-in-Law: I can’t stand the way you liberals go on about the rich not paying their fair share. You know as well as I do that half the country doesn’t even pay taxes! OK… put down that turkey drumstick and give him your best incredulous look. Then start by appealing to common sense. Why, that can’t be right. I mean, every time you buy gas you’re paying a tax, right? And everybody who works pays payroll taxes, don’t they? Heads should start nodding. The fact is, virtually everyone pays taxes. Your beloved bro is talking about federal income taxes and that’s just one of many kinds of taxes people pay. For most Americans, it isn’t even the largest tax they pay-more than four in five working Americans pay more in the payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. Let that sink in while you take a spoonful of Bubbi’s cranberry sauce. Then, add that unlike Federal income taxes which rise with your income level, payroll and sales taxes — the kinds of taxes that low-income people pay tend to be regressive in that they extract a larger share of income from low-income families than from the wealthier households. Same with state and local taxes — property taxes, sales and excise taxes, additional income taxes — they also tend to be more regressive. In fact, poor families — those in the bottom fifth of the income scale — pay 16% of their meager income in taxes of one sort of another. And if we’re talking about the federal income tax, more than eight of every ten people who owed no federal income taxes fall into one of two categories: working people who paid substantial payroll taxes, and seniors living largely or entirely on fixed incomes. The rest? Largely students, people with disabilities, the long-term unemployed, and others with very low incomes. Oh yeah — and a bunch of corps with kickass tax lawyers (and, to be fair, often large capital losses which they can deduct from their tax liability). How I ask you, my brother, are you saying we should raise taxes on seniors who depend on Social Security, on disability and veterans benefits? Is that where you want to take this, given that something like 4,000 millionaires will pay no income tax this year? I mean, remember Warren Buffet talkin’ about how he paid less taxes than his staff — now there’s something that doesn’t seem right at all… (more heads nodding — let’s land this argument with style): I gotta tell ya bro, I’m not worried about the Buffets of the world. I’m worried about the working single mom trying to make ends meet, the young adult in community college, the senior living on her Social Security, the security guard workin’ his butt off for the minimum wage. And all of ‘em are paying payroll and sales taxes. Jeez, if anything, bro, I can’t imagine how families like that are getting by. I guess we’ve got a lot to be thankful for today… Nuff said. This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein’s On The Economy blog.

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Steady German growth supports markets with the start of a volatile session

November 24, 2011

The unrevised gross domestic product figures from Germany supported markets to rebound slightly with the start of the European session today, which might see more volatility with the expected weak …

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Rep. John Conyers: Eliminating Regulations That Protect the Health and Safety of Americans Is Not Job Creation

November 24, 2011

As you are preparing to gather around the Thanksgiving table, the Republican majority in Congress is rushing to push through legislation that will undermine the continued health and safety of the loved ones seated next to you. Over the next two weeks they will bring three bills to the House floor that will halt regulation as we know it, making it more difficult to protect public health and safety. Nobody likes red tape and everyone can agree that there are areas where our regulations could be streamlined. However, these bills go much further and will make it virtually impossible to enact new regulations or fine-tune existing ones. Indeed, under these bills it would even be harder to get rid of burdensome regulation. Consider H.R. 3010, the “Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011,” the latest salvo in conservatives’ war against safeguards provided by regulations. If enacted, H.R. 3010 would effectively halt agency rulemaking, which threatens the government’s ability to protect the American people from a wide range of health and safety harms. H.R. 3010 will result in “paralysis by analysis” by imposing numerous unnecessary analytical requirements on agencies before they even start the rulemaking process. This bill will arrest the rulemaking process and slow down the implementation of critical regulations that ensure our air and water is clean, and our consumer products are safe. But that is not the only bill being crammed into the remaining few days of the congressional session. H.R. 10, The “REINS Act,” would adversely impact how necessary and beneficial rules are promulgated by imposing a mandate requiring all new major regulations to be affirmatively approved by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president within 70 days before they can take effect. By requiring congressional approval and by giving Congress too little time to act, the REINS Act will effectively prevent major rules, including those related to public safety, from ever being implemented. Rounding out the trio of public safety killing legislation is H.R. 527, the “Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011.” Under current law, rulemaking agencies must make an analysis for every new rule that would have significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities, such as small businesses. Among other things, this bill repeals the authority of an agency to waive or delay this analysis in response to an emergency that makes compliance or timely compliance impracticable. So if there is an epidemic of E. coli or listeria infection caused by some item in our nation’s food distribution network, or if there is an imminent environmental disaster that could be addressed systemically through regulation, this bill says “Don’t worry. Don’t rush.” My conservative colleagues argue that this legislation is necessary because too much regulation is responsible for our nation’s current economic difficulties. They must be suffering from some collective form of amnesia. It was not too much regulation of Wall Street that led to the near collapse of the worldwide marketplace. It was not too much regulation that caused the BP oil spill. And, it was not too much regulation that allowed mortgage brokers, servicers, bankers and others to engage in predatory lending and falsify foreclosure documents in court proceedings. Regulation has had no discernable impact on our economy compared with the devastating impact that the lack of demand has had. As a July Wall Street Journal survey of business economists found , “The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies.” Even the business community recognizes that the biggest problem it faces is lack of demand. The most recent National Federation of Independent Business survey of its members likewise shows that business owners believe that poor sales — not regulation — are the biggest problem. The focus of this debate, rather, should be on the fact that regulations are really about job creation. Historically, American-made goods have been sought the world over because of their high quality and safety standards. But the United States will lose this competitive advantage if we continue toward lowering our regulatory standards. The solution to the recession is fairly straightforward. We must increase demand for American goods, create jobs and resolve the home foreclosure crisis. If we continue this regulatory race to the bottom, American manufacturers will be less competitive, demand will further weaken, and fewer — not more — jobs will be created. These bills provide yet another opportunity for big business to recklessly cut corners on public health and safety in the name of increasing big profits without creating a single new job. The safety standards for American goods are so high, and our products are so consistently safe that it is no surprise we often take for granted the regulations that ensure their quality. So as you sit down to a nice meal consisting of food put through a thorough inspection process with loved ones who traveled safely on planes, trains and automobiles subject to rigorous safety standards, remember: Regulations don’t kill jobs, they save lives. And that there are plans underway in Washington to undermine the regulatory process that guarantees the health and safety of millions of Americans.

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Ford suggests temporary layoffs in its Valencia plant

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Ford said that due to a weak European demand for new cars, the company proposed a momentary 4,000 job cuts of the carmaker’s 6,200 employees in its Valencia assembly plant in Spain, …

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Nokia Siemens to cut 17,000 jobs

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN) Nokia Siemens Networks’ CEO, Rajeev Suri, said that in order to reduce costs by USD1.35 billion annually by 2012, the firm would cut 17,000 jobs of its worldwide workforce, reported …

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Nokia Siemens to cut 17,000 jobs, €1bn costs

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Gulf Times) Struggling telecoms gear maker Nokia Siemens Networks is to axe 17,000 jobs to help cut annual operating costs by around €1bn ($1.35bn). The move comes as the joint …

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Asian markets lower after US growth data

November 24, 2011

(MENAFN – Gulf Times) Asian markets fell yesterday, following the lead from Wall Street after revised US growth figures showed the world’s number one economy expanded slower than previously thought …

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