Tuesday 30 June 2015
Forget Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner Should Divorce Her Agent And Get A New Career
Can Mr Obama really help?
WHAT’S the easiest way to boost America's sluggish wage growth? President Barack Obama thinks that expanding overtime pay may be the answer. On June 30th details emerged of a new scheme in which 5m more Americans will be entitled to “overtime pay”—1.5 times their normal pay when they work more than 40 hours. Mr Obama hopes that the plan will boost the paypackets of some workers. The economic evidence behind it says this may not be the only benefit.
American workers have seen better days. Since the recession, inflation-adjusted private-sector hourly earnings have stumbled. People wistfully remember decades long gone, where they were used to annual rises of 2.5% or more in real terms every year. Small wonder, then, that economists are trying policy ideas from the glory days. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), implemented in 1938, is one place to look. The FLSA stipulated that any worker who worked more than 44 hours and was paid less than $30 a week was entitled to overtime pay. The FLSA is still in force (and the working-hours threshold is now 40 hours) but the earnings threshold was last updated in 1975 and currently stands at...Continue reading
Panic!
ON OCTOBER 4th 1582 the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian in many European countries. The following day was October 15th 1582. The change provoked chaos, as landlords demanded a full month’s rent and greedy bankers attached a full month’s interest to loans, while workers went unpaid for the eleven missing days. Unsurprisingly, riots ensued.
To listen to some pundits, June 30th 2015 will see similar chaos. At midnight tonight there will be a “leap second”. The day will be lengthened by one second, in order to realign Coordinated universal Time (UCT), the main standard regulating the world’s clocks, with solar time. This chronological quirk, many worry, will befuddle computer systems.
The last leap-second was added during a weekend in 2012. That time, the computer system of Qantas, an Australian airline, crashed and 400 flights were delayed. But tonight will be the first time since 1997 that a leap-second was added on a working day, with financial markets in full swing. And over the last two decades trading has become much more dependent on...Continue reading
Saturday 27 June 2015
World's Highest-Paid Celebrity Couples 2015
We Don't Have Low Wage Poverty, We Have Tax Poverty
Friday 26 June 2015
Treasure hunt
ANDY MURRAY, a tennis ace, made headlines this month—off the court as well as on it. He is teaming up with Seedrs, an up-and-coming British crowdfunding platform through which small companies sell stakes in themselves. The Scot will advise Seedrs on the health, sports and wearable-technology sectors as well as make the odd investment himself. Through such websites, individuals and funds provided over €1.5 billion ($2 billion) in equity and debt to European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 2014, according to researchers at Cambridge University and EY, an accounting firm.
That is a pittance compared with the €926 billion of total new external funding made available to European SMEs the year before, mostly by banks. But the amount is more than doubling each year. That is heartening, since European banks, nursing big losses from the financial crisis and trying to rebuild their capital ratios, have trimmed lending to businesses by 12% over the past six years.
Crowdfunding is just one of a number of ways in which European SMEs, typically far more reliant on bank financing than their American counterparts (see...Continue reading
Have your cake and eat it
CHINA’S blistering economic performance in recent years has brought advocates of democracy out in hives. GDP growth in the one-party state, at an average of 10% over the past decade, has easily outpaced that of its democratic emerging-market rivals. India saw annual growth of 6% over the same period; Brazil, just 2%. Some say that democracy is to blame for India’s and Brazil’s slower progress. Politicians in such places cannot lay the foundations for long-term growth, the argument goes, since voters want instant gratification. Are freedom and prosperity really at odds?
The idea is not new. In 1994 Torsten Persson of Stockholm University and Guido Tabellini, then of the University of Brescia, published a paper that argued that in democracies, vote-hungry politicians divert resources away from people who could use them more efficiently by lavishing spending on their constituents in the form of unemployment benefits and pensions. This and political gridlock, another unfortunate aspect of democracy, both tend to slow growth. Another
The Top 10 Behaviors That Could Launch Your Career
Wishful thinking
WALL STREET has been in buoyant mood in recent years. The S&P 500 equity index has reached repeated record highs. One might think that would be great news for America’s public-sector pension plans, which hold more than half their assets in equities.
Only up to a point. The latest report* from the Centre for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College estimates that the funding ratio of pension plans—the proportion of liabilities covered by assets—has risen from 72% in 2013 to (drum roll) 74% last year. A fifth of all schemes have a funding ratio of less than 60%—a group that includes not just the usual suspects in Illinois and New Jersey but some in Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut and Kentucky.
To make matters worse, this calculation makes a very generous assumption. Most liabilities of a pension plan fall well into the future—a stream of payments to current and future beneficiaries who may live into their 90s. These payments must be discounted to work out the sum in contemporary dollars needed to cover them, but at what rate? Private-sector pension plans are required to use long-dated AA-rated corporate-bond...Continue reading
Thursday 25 June 2015
Of rainfall and price rises
Dampening down inflationON A brutally hot day in May, Gani Patel is sitting in Vipin Seeds, a farm-supplies store in Jalna, a small town in a drought-prone region of India. The talk in the shop is of prospects for the monsoon, the three-month rainy season beginning in June. Business is slow. Last year’s rains were below normal, so farmers are short of cash. Mr Patel grows cotton and maize on his 12-acre farm in Bhakarwadi, around 45km from Jalna. In case the rains disappoint again, he plans to install a drip-irrigation rig to make the best use of the water he draws from his two wells.
Much in India’s economy depends on the monsoon. Farming is India’s largest employer. Three-fifths of the land under cultivation is watered only by rainfall. Food accounts for almost half of the consumer-price index, so prices ebb and flow with the rains. A forecast at the start of June by the India Meteorological Department that the rainy season would again fall short was worrying. Then the heavens opened. Rainfall across India in the first three weeks of June was 21% above its 50-year average. Mumbai had its wettest 24 hours in ten years on...Continue reading
Boeing Will Pay High Price For McNerney's Mistake Of Treating Aviation Like It Was Any Other Industry
Wednesday 24 June 2015
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If your vehicle breaks down on the highway or motorway, place within a safe place for instance the road off shoulder. Put up a warning device or flash your warning light. Put the triangle hazard devices, one in the front and one in the back. In that way incoming and outgoing vehicles will be warned that there is a barrier down the road. It also acts as an SOS poster to personnel passing by that may well be able to assist. Check your car and inspect and pinpoint the problem. Afterward decide if you can mend it on your own or will need a Wakefield mobile mechanic.
The Greek saga continues
AS THE deadline for repayment looms, Greece finally offers a concrete set reforms, Russian assets are seized abroad and a look at China's booming and busting stock markets
Tuesday 23 June 2015
Why Culture Matters For Startups - Q&A With Culture Influencer Cosmin Gheorghe
Gardasil 9 Effectively Stops 90% Of Cancers Caused By HPV In Girls and Boys
Friday 19 June 2015
How The DEA Seized A College Student's Entire Life Savings, Without Charging Him With A Drug Crime
Why they are a flashpoint
GREEK pensions have been a source of acrimony since the first bail-out five years ago. Germans in particular, who were being asked to retire later, resented having to help what they regarded as feckless Greeks, many of whom were drawing pensions in their 50s. Yet since then there have been two major reforms, pushing the statutory retirement age up from 60 for women and 65 for men to 67, while pension benefits have been cut. So why are they still such a point of contention?
One reason was the dire starting-point. As George Symeonidis, a board member of the Hellenic Actuarial Authority, said earlier this year, “the reforms have not finished, nor is it possible to reform a system in four years, when nothing has actually been changed for decades.” Before the first bail-out in May 2010 the system was already heading for disaster, with pension outlays among the highest in Europe at 13.5% of GDP in 2009 and projected to reach nearly 25% of GDP by 2050.
In part this reflected an especially generous set of benefits, which provided the highest “replacement rate” (of earnings before retirement) for public pensions among the OECD club of 30 or so mainly rich countries before the euro crisis, in 2008. The basic system required only 35 years of contributions rather than the 40 generally needed in pension systems to get a full pension. Pensions could be taken...Continue reading
6 months in review: 2015's best video campaigns so far
Thursday 18 June 2015
Toxic Boss? How Successful People Overcome Them
Heating up
CRUNCH time is approaching for Britain's labour market. Figures released today show that unemployment held steady at 5.5% in the three months to April, as the pace of job creation slowed. With joblessness now just half a percentage point above the Bank of England’s estimate of its equilibirum, Britain’s jobs boom, which has seen employment rise by 2m in five years, may be nearing its end.
That means growth in demand (or spending in the economy) is beginning to show up in wage rises, rather than new jobs. Regular pay, excluding bonuses, is now growing at 2.7% annually in nominal terms—easily the fastest rate of growth since February 2009. Thanks to near-zero inflation, workers are enjoying their juiciest real (ie, inflation-adjusted) pay rises since November 2007 (see first chart).
Increasing nominal wage growth will worry inflation hawks. In their June meeting, interest-rate setters at...Continue reading
6 Personal Blocks That Lead To Career Crisis, And How To Successfully Navigate Through Them
Not The Usual Suspects: 20 Small Agencies That Punch Above Their Weight
Women Who Code: 'We Have To Start Making Commitments' On Diversity
The wealth of nations
LAST year, global private wealth grew by 12%, or $17.5 trillion, to reach $164 trillion (in stocks, bonds, savings and cash) according to a report released this week by BCG, a consultancy. Good news for many, but particularly for Asia, where private wealth grew by a whopping 29% compared to 5.6% in North America and 6.6% in Europe.
For the first time in modern history, Asia is now richer than Europe. And it is catching up with North America too; by 2019 the region’s wealth is expected to reach $75 trillion compared to $63 trillion in North America. And although America is still the country with by far the most millionaires in the world, of the 2m new millionaire households created last year 62% are from Asia-Pacific. China is the main driver here; it will account for 70% of Asia’s growth between now and 2019, predicts BCG, and by 2021 it will overtake America as the world’s wealthiest nation.
At the same time, the world’s wealth is being concentrated in fewer pockets. Whereas in 2012 38% was held by millionaires, in 2014 this was 42% and the trend is increasing. Whereas households with more than a million dollars in the bank saw their wealth swell by 16% on average, those with less wealth saw it grow by only 9%.
Where is all this wealth coming from? Strong performance by stocks, which now make up 39% of private wealth compared to 31% in 2009,...Continue reading
iPhone 6S Leak Reveals Significant Design Changes
Israel, Canada Want A Piece Of New York's Medical Marijuana
Pyrrhus would be proud
THE endless and costly litigation regarding the nationalisation at the height of the financial crisis of AIG, the world’s biggest insurer at the time, has always had a Dickensian air. The case, which was initiated in 2011 by Hank Greenberg, AIG’s disgruntled former boss, involves more than 1,600 exhibits, a transcript of 8,812 pages and 442 docket entries. On June 15th the element of farce was heightened when a court ruled in Mr Greenberg’s favour in every respect except the one that matters.
The punitive terms of AIG’s bail-out involved “plain violations of the Federal Reserve Act”, Judge Thomas Wheeler of the Court of Federal Claims decided. Yet, “If the government had done nothing, the shareholders would have been left with 100 per cent of nothing.” In other words, Mr Greenberg is right to question the legality of the government’s actions, but wrong to expect compensation.
Mr Greenberg had sought damages in “excess of $40 billion” on behalf of Starr International, AIG’s largest shareholder, which he controls. He has already said he will appeal. The government, too, may want to appeal to clarify its authority to rescue struggling financial firms and to ward off more lawsuits challenging its conduct during the crisis—especially from the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-backed mortgage giants it also took...Continue reading
When To Take Social Security
Tuesday 16 June 2015
Debt relief
IF GREECE does not reach a deal capital controls may become necessary, the Swiss economy stays strong despite its currency gamble and the impact of debt relief on very poor countries
Top Mobile Car Mechanic Wakefield
From Piracy to Prosperity: Inside the New Artist's Toolbox
Sunday 14 June 2015
Liveblog: Bethesda's E3 Press Conference
A bigger stick
CAN misbehaving bankers be reined in? In the wake of seemingly endless banking scandals, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, promised on June 10th to do just that. “The age of irresponsibility is over,” Mr Carney declared. The bank, the Financial Conduct Authority (a fellow regulator) and the Treasury hope to adopt and export a new model for regulating scandal-ridden fixed income, currency and commodities (“FICC”) markets. Recent wrongdoing in this area includes the rigging of LIBOR, a benchmark interest rate, and the manipulation of currency markets. Yet authorities have struggled to bring the individuals responsible to account.
Banks have not gone unpunished for their sins: it seems that at every recent results season, they have had to set aside ever greater provisions for fines, often sapping their already feeble profits. Between 2009 and 2014 the world’s banks incurred £160 billion ($245 billion) in such costs and set aside a further £46 billion to cover future payouts, says CCP, a research group.
Yet while shareholders have seen their wallets emptied, bankers themselves have evaded severe punishment—much to the public’s frustration. There has been only one conviction in Britain relating to market rigging. Another trial—of Tom Hayes, a former UBS and Citigroup trader—is currently under way. American regulators, too, have...Continue reading
Dotty
INVESTORS obsess over the Federal Reserve’s “dot-plots”. These charts show the rough trajectory that senior Fed officials think its benchmark interest rate should follow over the next few years. Before every second meeting of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), members say how high they think the rate should be at the end of the current year and the two subsequent ones. Each estimate is then plotted as an anonymous dot on a chart, to provide a sense of the range of views within the FOMC. For instance, at its meeting in March, seven of the 17 members thought that the benchmark rate should be 0.625% by the end of the year (see chart). They will now be preparing new dots for their next meeting, on June 16th-17th.
At first glance, the dot-plots seem to offer a wealth of information. For instance, they show that there is plenty of disagreement within the FOMC. Its two most dovish members think the rate should remain where it is (a range of 0-0.25%) until the end of the year, whereas its fiercest hawk wants the rate to rise to 1.625%. For the end of 2016, the range is even wider: 0.375% to 3.75%.
But the...Continue reading
Thursday 11 June 2015
A tight squeeze
DURING the financial crisis, when the global economy faced its gravest threat since the 1930s, policymakers sprang into action. To stimulate the economy, central banks slashed interest rates and politicians spent lavishly. As a result, the recession, though bad, was far less severe than the Depression.
Unfortunately, however, that quick response nearly exhausted governments’ economic arsenals. Seven years later they remain depleted. Central banks’ benchmark interest rates hover above zero; government debt and deficits have ballooned. Should recession strike again, as inevitably it will, rich countries in particular will be ill-equipped to fend it off.
Just how much wriggle room do they have? For comparison, The Economist has devised a composite measure of debt, deficits and interest rates—the weapons policymakers typically wield to dispel threatening conditions. Though crude, the analysis yields a clear and troubling conclusion. A few economies could mount a robust defence against a new shock, but most are sitting ducks.
For interest rates, we assign a value of 100—meaning maximum wriggle...Continue reading
Nuts May Reduce Risk Of Death From Multiple Causes, Study Finds
Wednesday 10 June 2015
With $300 Million Haul, Floyd Mayweather Tops Forbes' 2015 List Of The World's Highest-Paid Athletes
Tuesday 9 June 2015
Government workers live longer
IT IS not quite the secret of eternal life. But it seems that, in America, public sector workers live slightly longer than those employed in the private sector. A new briefing from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College examines the figures. It takes a cohort of 55-64 year of workers from 1983 and checks the mortality rate for such workers over the next 11 years.
When it comes to men, 17% of those in the public sector died over the following 11 years, compared with 17.6% of those in the private sector. For women, the difference was starker, and statistically significant; just 8.7% of public sector workers died, compared with 9.9% of those in the private sector. A second study covered a shorter follow-up period of just six years; the male gap disappears but female public sector workers still live longer.
Alas, simply applying for a government job will not add years to your life (although if the work is boring enough, it may feel like it). The main reason for the gap is education. In this particular cohort, 31.3% of male public sector...Continue reading
Monday 8 June 2015
Video Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce Success
If your business has an ecommerce component, you may want to consider video marketing as an effective tool for sales. Using videos will result in "higher average order value (AOV) and increased conversions". All good things, right? Business 2 Community has six ways to execute a successful ecommerce video marketing strategy for your business.
Xbox One Update Tells Players To 'Prepare For The Future'
The Latest Investing Moves by Seven Masters of the Universe
What '60 Minutes' Didn't Tell You About Legalized Marijuana
Saturday 6 June 2015
Why American Pharoah, The First Triple Crown Winner In 37 Years, Is Worth $50 Million
Friday 5 June 2015
Utility Warehouse or 1st Utility Which Is First
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A fearful number
NO NUMBER strikes fear into bankers’ hearts like “311”. That is the section of America’s Patriot Act of 2001 that gives the Treasury sweeping powers to act against those who facilitate financial crime, anywhere in the world, by labelling them a “primary money-laundering concern”. For firms badly behaved or unlucky enough to be targeted, a 311 designation is more often than not a death sentence.
The latest use of the power, in March, was against Banca Privada d’Andorra, a small money-manager based in the mountainous financial haven nestled between France and Spain. The move in effect shut the bank and its subsidiaries out of America’s financial system, preventing them from concluding any transactions denominated in dollars—an essential function for almost any bank. BPA’s Spanish unit has since been liquidated. The parent has been placed under the control of the Andorran authorities.
FinCEN, the arm of Treasury that handed out the black spot, accuses the bank of aiding money-launderers from China, Russia and Venezuela. It alleges that high-level managers knowingly facilitated untoward transactions, as well as €20m...Continue reading
Keeping the grease
THE headlines focused on the fact that GE, a big industrial conglomerate, is beginning to sell off its $500 billion finance arm in small chunks. This week it put a $40 billion portfolio of corporate loans up for sale. But not all of GE Capital will end up on the block: GE is keeping the $90 billion division that finances purchases of medical equipment, power-generation gear and aeroplanes, or leases them to users. In part, that is because those fields are critical to GE: it makes all or part of the products being financed or leased. But it is also because the financing of old-fashioned capital goods is a booming business.
The gear GE sells is expensive; would-be buyers often lack the capital to buy it outright. For GE, therefore, the financial engineering that underpins the use of its wares is as important as the mechanical engineering that created them. Many hospitals, for instance, do not buy expensive scanners from GE, but lease them instead. When it develops improved versions, it helps the hospitals swap the new generation for the old, by passing the outmoded gear to another, thriftier institution, and so on down a long chain. By the...Continue reading
Thursday 4 June 2015
With a little help from my friends
“I LIKE money and nice things, but it’s not money that makes me happy. It’s people,” says one woman in a World Bank survey. She’s not alone: research has found that social integration is more important for well-being than income, and also decreases poverty. Loneliness, conversely, can be deadly: one study found it did more damage to health than smoking. This week, policymakers from 40 countries met in Colombia to ponder ways to measure deprivation that take account of more than just income, including isolation. Several Latin American countries are devising or have already adopted such “multi-dimensional” measures of poverty.
Income can be a misleading measure of need because poor people end up living in different degrees of hardship depending on their intangible resources. Having strong social bonds eases financial deprivation. Friends and relatives can lend money, pool risk, mind children and bring news of job openings. Researchers from the London School of Economics found that when a group of Bangladeshi women were given business training and free livestock, not only did they move up the income ladder, but their friends’ lot improved too. A year later the friends’ consumption had risen by almost 20%, and they claimed to have become savvier about business as well.
The downside is that not having the right friends can cement hardship. The...Continue reading
EPA's Fracking Analysis: Something For Everyone
Wednesday 3 June 2015
How much is too much?
PUBLIC debt in rich countries exploded between 2007 and 2012, rising from an average of 53% of GDP to nearly 80%. Some people think this is a problem, and say that governments need to do their best to cut it. But that view has been challenged in a new paper from the International Monetary Fund, which suggests that “paying down the debt” (or in the words of George Osborne, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, “fixing the roof while the sun is shining”) is not the most sensible approach.
The IMF's economists reckon that if a government could choose between having high or low debt today, then all else equal they would (and should) choose the latter. After...Continue reading
Tuesday 2 June 2015
Can Social and Video Bridge the Gap in Digital Marketing?
"Whilst video provides customers and clients with entertainment and relevant information in a package that consumers prefer, social media delivers the video to the people who want to see it." Are these the two driving factors that will bridge the digital marketing gap? According to one expert, they may not be the magic wands that will bring in droves of customers, but they can help your business in a strategic marketing plan. It's up to you to decide how that plan is executed.
'Free' Windows 10 Upgrades Kill Priceless Windows 8 And Windows 7 Features
Was I Right To Walk Out Of The Job Interview?
Monday 1 June 2015
Silence is Golden - How to Speak Volumes in Your Video Marketing Without Using Words
They say pictures are worth a 1000 words and videos are worth millions. But what if you don't use any words at all to convey your business's message? Silence can be golden and can lead to great returns. These video content marketing ideas from ReelSEO will give you an idea of how you too can turn a silent video into great ROI.
Making climate agreements work
In December talks in Paris involving more than 200 countries may result in a new agreement aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In the months leading up to the conference, The Economist will be publishing guest columns by experts on the economic issues involved. Here, Christian Gollier (pictured at left) and Jean Tirole (at right) of the Toulouse School of Economics explain why a carbon tax, or a carbon cap-and-trade system, should be policymakers' preferred weapon.
THIS December France will play host to crowds of diplomats as the United Nations holds make-or-break talks on climate change. The challenge for delegates in Paris is to achieve a binding agreement that will limit the increase in the world’s temperature to no more than 2°C. It is an incredibly difficult task. But economics can shed light on which strategies have the best chance at success.
Climate change is a...Continue reading