2005 June

2005-06-01

2005-06-01 04:23PDT (07:23EDT) (11:23GMT)
_BBC_
A degree is no longer a passport to a well-paid career
Daily Mail
Scotsman
"Graduates can expect to earn 150K pounds sterling more over their life-times than people with just A-levels, a report says.   Economists at Swansea University said some subjects - such as the arts - could even mean losses, when fees and living costs are taken into account...   During the passage of the Higher Education Bill - which raises maximum tuition fees in England to 3K pounds sterling a year from 2006 - the government said graduates could expect to earn 400K pounds sterling more over their life-times than non-graduates.   However, the Swansea study, led by Professor Peter Sloane and Dr. Nigel O'Leary, found male graduates would earn 141,539 pounds sterling more than those who leave education with 2 or more A-levels.   For women the figure was 157,982 pounds sterling.   Maths or computing degrees made the biggest difference to earnings, adding 222,419 pounds sterling for men and 227,939 pounds sterling for women...   Dr. O'Leary added: 'A lot of people who, 15 years ago, would have left after A-levels and got jobs are now staying on at university.   They leave with bigger debts and go on to do largely the same jobs, which are now called ''graduate'' jobs.' [Yet another demonstration of hyper-credentialism.]...   Dr. O'Leary said [encouraging more people to enter college] was reducing the scarcity value of graduates, further hitting their earning power."

2005-06-01
_Dice_
Dice Report: 69,957 job ads

2005-06-01 07:53PDT (10:53EDT) (14:53GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
ISM factory activity index fell from 53.3% in April to 51.4% in May
ISM report

2005-06-01
Rich Smith _Motley Fool_
Andersen/Accenture innocent?   Think again.
"as a matter of common sense, the Supremes sometimes get it wrong.   Yesterday marked one such occasion: The highest court in the land threw out the 'guilty' verdict handed down to accounting firm Arthur Andersen [now Accenture] in 2002 June...   The Supreme Court did not declare Andersen [Accenture] 'innocent' yesterday.   It only pointed out that the trial court's instructions to the jury were too lax, thereby allowing the possibility that jurors convicted Andersen without the government [thoroughly] proving the accounting firm's guilt.   In essence, the high court said: 'The judge goofed, and you need to try Andersen again.'...   shredding of 2 tons of documents on the eve of a sub poena...   Andersen may no longer be officially 'guilty' [as far as the Supremes are concerned], but its actions were far from innocent.   As the Court pointed out, Andersen had hired lawyers as early as 2001 October 08, to defend it against expected litigation arising from the Enron scandal.   On 2001 October 09, Andersen's in-house lawyers termed an investigation of their firm by the Securities and Exchange Commission 'highly probable'.   The very next day [2001-10-10], Andersen partner Michael Odom instructed Andersen employees to 'comply with the firm's document retention policy' (wink, wink), adding that '[I]f it's destroyed in the course of [the] normal policy and litigation is filed the next day, that's great...   [W]e've followed our own policy, and whatever there was that might have been of interest to somebody is gone and irretrievable.' Yet Andersen's own policy mandated that 'in cases of threatened litigation... no related information will be destroyed'.   With Andersen's lawyers warning that investigation and litigation were imminent, anyone with any common sense at all would have known that the decision to fire up the shredders was wrong...   Fool contributor Rich Smith is a former prosecutor and a current member of the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court."

2005-06-01
_Inc_
Consumer Confidence Up
"Consumers who believe jobs are 'plentiful' increased to 22.6% from 20.4% last month, and those who view jobs as 'hard to get' increased to 24.2% from 22.9%."

2005-06-01
David G. Savage _Los Angeles Times_
Supremes say jurors weren't properly instructed to determine both actions and intent in case against Andersen/Accenture
"The Enron Corp. memos, notes and drafts were destroyed in 2001 October as the firm was collapsing, but before the government launched an official investigation of Enron or Andersen, its auditor.   A jury in Houston debated 10 days before finding Andersen guilty.   But the Supreme Court said prosecutors had not been forced to prove that Andersen's staff knew it was breaking the law by destroying old files -- that there had been criminal intent...   The Justice Department said it was disappointed with the decision and would study it before deciding whether to retry the case.   'We remain convinced that even the most powerful corporations have the responsibility of adhering to the rule of law.', said acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter."

2005-06-01
Loren Steffy _Houston Chronicle_
Remember reasons behind Andersen/Accenture's original conviction
"It might be useful to consider reminding ourselves of Arthur Andersen's handling of its documentation and retention policy...   The Supremes tossed the Andersen verdict on what amounts to a legal technicality.   Jury instructions were too vague, the court said its unanimous decision Tuesday...   The instructions went so far as to say that if Andersen believed it was acting lawfully, the firm could still be found guilty...   Andersen [Accenture], or at least its collective leadership, knew what it was doing...   For the legions of honest Andersen employees, the decision means nothing.   Their firm can't be restored; their jobs can't be retrieved; the management decisions that caused it all can't be rescinded.   Nor does it mean much for the victims of Enron...   It doesn't erase the earlier fines or the crescendo of accounting frauds it endorsed, from Sunbeam to Waste Management to, ultimately, Enron and WorldCom...   It might be useful, in sorting out the court's decision, to remind ourselves of what jury foreman Oscar Criner said after convicting Andersen.   The jury instructions, he said, didn't matter.   It was Temple's memo that convinced jurors that Andersen's leaders knew they were destroying evidence.   It would be useful, too, to recall that Criner said the government used Andersen's abysmal track record of blown audits to show that its recidivist history motivated Temple in urging her colleagues to shred with gusto.   More specifically, her mention of Enron in the memo sealed the firm's fate, Criner told the Chronicle at the time."

2005-06-01
Some, meanwhile, in the wake of the Supremes' announcement, are considering the implications of the label "high court".

2005-06-01
Valerie Kalfrin _Tampa Tribune_
Local cops share massive data-bases
"Called the Tampa Bay Security Network, the system enables police in Tampa, Clearwater and St. Petersburg, and sheriff's offices in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties to share information unlike ever before, officials said Tuesday.   It contains information from dispatch and arrest records, traffic citations, the state's sex offender database - in short, anyone's contact with law enforcement in these jurisdictions, said Lorelei Bowden, a Hillsborough sheriff's employee and the project's manager...   Bowden demonstrated the system Tuesday at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's [FDLE's] Tampa office.   The system is based on Coplink, a database technology launched in 1998 by Knowledge Computing Corp., of Tucson, AZ, and [ab]used by more than 100 jurisdictions nationwide...   The network is funded with $2.3M in federal and state domestic security grants, Gee said.   Its third phase, in July 2006, will link all law enforcement agencies in the state.   Unlike the Matrix network, a national crime and terrorism database whose funding ran out in April, the security network does not include consumer electronic transactions such as gas bills and airline ticket purchases...   Even so, the data-base should be regulated closely, said David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington."

2005-06-01
_CIO_
Tech spending expectations fell slightly in May (graph, plus PDF)
"The spending outlook for May fell to the lowest level since 2003 November, with CIO Magazine Tech Poll™ respondents predicting growth of 4.8% for the next 12 months versus April's predicted growth rate of 7.9%.   Predictions in all of the poll's spending categories, except out-sourced IT Services, declined month over month.   However, the information technology (IT) labor market is showing continued improvement, with 14.8 % of respondents reporting IT labor as hard to find.   This figure represents the highest number reporting IT labor as hard to find since 2001 October [well into the on-going depression]."

2005-06-01
Andy McCue _Silicon_
1 in 5 out-sourcing deals are canceled
"the study of 182 IT out-sourcing buyers in the US...   Almost 3-quarters (74%) said they are happy with their IT out-sourcing efforts to date and out of the 21% who terminated a deal in the last 12 months, half of those simply switched to another vendor.   Only a quarter of those who terminated then brought the work back in-house.   The study was last done in 2002 by consultancy DiamondCluster International when buyers expected cost savings in the region of up to 50%.   The new figures found those expectations have declined to 10% to 20%, along with the rates they are paying to out-sourcing service providers."

2005-06-01 14:16PDT (17:16EDT) (21:16GMT)
Ed Frauenheim _CNET_
H-1B meet E-3
"the U.S. E-3 visa was signed into law by President Bush two weeks ago and will allow up to 10,500 Australians to live and work in the U.S...   The controversial H-1B program, which is frequently used to bring over computer workers, has an annual cap of 65K visas -- though Congress recently expanded the cap by 20K [people who have advanced degrees earned at US universities]...   UC Davis Professor Norm Matloff, a long-time critic of H-1B visas, blasted the E-3 addition Wednesday: 'None of the H-1B increases, starting in 1998, has ever been warranted, but of course increases are especially unwarranted in today's job market.   And it gets worse: The new visa category is especially liberal, in that (a) it can be renewed indefinitely, and (b) it also allows spouses to work, so that the number of workers could be even more than 10K.'"

2005-06-01
Norman Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
Another stealth H-1B visa increase
 

2005-06-02

2005-06-02 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
unemployment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 303,031 in the week ending May 28, an increase of 25,534 from the previous week.   There were 304,067 initial claims in the comparable week in 2004.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.9% during the week ending May 21, unchanged from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,370,458, a decrease of 27,707 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.1% and the volume was 2,702,892."
graphs

2005-06-02 05:41PDT (08:41EDT) (12:41GMT)
S. Srinivasan _AP_/_Yahoo!_
Lobbyist NASSCOM declares India controls 44% of off-shoring with revenues of $17.2G (14.07G euros)

2005-06-02 09:10PDT (12:10EDT) (16:10GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
2005 Q1 US productivity up 2.9%
"unit labor [compensation was] revised up to a 4.3% year-on-year increase, the fastest gain since the third quarter of 2000, when [compensation was at its] last cyclical peak of 4.9%... Real hourly compensation (adjusted for inflation) increased a revised 3.9% in the first quarter, compared with the previous estimate of a 2.4% gain... In the non-financial corporate sector, productivity increased 2.7% in the first quarter after rising 9.0% in the 4th quarter."
BLS data

2005-06-02 09:38PDT (12:38EDT) (16:38GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Corporate lay-off plans up 42%
CNN/Money
"U.S. corporations announced 82,283 job cuts in May, a 42% increase from a 5-year low in April, out-placement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas said Thursday.   Many of the planned lay-offs were in manufacturing, especially computers, where job cuts surged to 17,886 in May...   So far in 2005, lay-off announcements are running 4.6% ahead of last year's pace.   In all of 2004, 1.07M job reductions were announced...   According to the most recent Labor Department data, there were 4.4M separations from jobs in March, including 1.4M lay-offs, down about 32K from a year earlier.   At the same time, 4.9M workers were hired, up 42K from 2004 March."

2005-06-02 11:41PDT (14:41EDT) (18:41GMT)
Leslie Wines _MarketWatch_
labor market in focus
"The Labor Department revised first-quarter productivity data to show a 2.9% annual growth rate, up from a 2.6% estimate a month ago.   Unit labor costs, a key measure of inflationary pressures from compensation, rose a revised 3.3% annualized in the first quarter, up from an initial estimate of 2.2%.   [Seasonally adjusted unemployment insurance] claims rose by 25K to 350K in the latest week, mainly due to temporary lay-offs in the auto sector...   The impression of a deteriorating labor market was reinforced by news from research firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas that in May lay-offs surged 42%, after hitting a 5-year low in April.   Much of the increase consisted of computer industry jobs cuts.   The Commerce Department reported that U.S. orders rose by 0.9% in April... the largest increase in 5 months..."
graphs

2005-06-02
Martin Wolk _NBC_
Teens seeking work continue to face tough competition from older workers, legal and illegal immigrants
"If the store has not been run out of business entirely by a nearby super-center, it probably is owned by a national chain that may only accept applications at central head-quarters.   And the company may not want to bother with inexperienced teenagers looking for short-term employment...   In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, millions of older workers have come out of retirement or simply stayed in the work force.   In many states immigrants are a huge factor in seeking entry-level jobs that might have gone to teens in the past.   And slow job growth since the recession ended in 2001 has forced many college graduates to take temporary jobs at retail stores, restaurants and call centers...   'Teens are having a much harder time getting work.', said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.   'Not just in summer but year-round...   That is partly a new phenomenon.   There is something structural going on in the labor market that has made it a lot harder for kids to find work.'...   Only about 41% of young people aged 16-19 worked last summer, down from 52% at the height of the economic expansion [at the economic collapse] in 2000, Sum said."

2005-06-02
_Black Enterprise_/_UPI_
India asks WTO to protect off-shoring
"We are very concerned because all these noises just keep coming, India's Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said.   Nath also said New Delhi would like to put the issue of a ban on out-sourcing jobs once and for all behind us, the Press Trust of India reported Thursday."

2005-06-02 13:51PDT (16:51EDT) (20:51GMT)
_PR News Wire_/_Yahoo!_
Duke University/CFO Magazine global business outlook survey: Capital spending and employment growth to slow due to interest rates, increasing fuel & health care costs and "lack of pricing power"
"This quarter, 40% of U.S. CFOs are more optimistic about the economy than they were last quarter, while 26% are less optimistic.   This continues the downward trend in optimism over the past year.   46% of CFOs were more optimistic last quarter, 54% were more optimistic two quarters ago and more than 70% were more optimistic a year ago...   Domestic employment is expected to increase by 1.4% this year, down from plans expressed last quarter to increase employment by 1.7%.   43% of companies say they will increase employment by a small amount in the third quarter of 2005, 16% by a moderate amount and only 2% by a large amount.   Employment growth will slow moderately in the 4th quarter of 2005.   While domestic employment growth is slowing, out-sourcing plans are again increasing.   The number of out-sourced employees is expected to rise by 6.5% during the next 12 months, up from expected growth of 2.7% in last quarter's survey."
Duke/CFO survey

2005-06-02
Marcia Heroux Pounds _Sun-Sentinel_
Rising housing costs put pressure on pay
"Kaplan University President Andrew Rosen... told the audience [at the South Florida Economic Summit last week that] a job candidate turned down Kaplan's offer of a $150K job after looking at South Florida's pricey housing market.   The candidate said he would need at least $200K, and Kaplan declined...   The annual raise for the average American worker is only 3.5%, and that hasn't improved significantly in recent years, says Ralph M. Parilla junior, a Plantation management consultant who specializes in compensation issues.   Meanwhile, employees are paying more than ever before for housing, food, gas and health insurance.   But if they find new jobs, employees are finding they can obtain salary increases of 10% or more...   employers that want to retain their best workers or attract new ones need to keep up with compensation trends."

2005-06-02
Linda Tucci _Search CIO_
Off-Shoring Not Yet Fait Accompli
"A new report from the Cambridge, MA-based [Forrester Research] shows that 56% of U.S. companies do not use off-shore providers and don't plan to in the next 12 months...   most of that growth is being driven by a relatively small group...   the 28% of U.S. companies that do use off-shore providers are a conflicted bunch...   7% would seek to prevent their domestic providers from using off-shore labor...   So how are the 28% using off-shore labor?   Right now, mostly on isolated application development projects, the survey found.   But respondents said the purview of work is expanding to more 'mission-critical' applications development and maintenance.   Nearly 25% of the companies are using off-shore labor for help desk support and another 19% are considering it.   Only 7% use off-shore labor for infrastructure management and monitoring, but respondents cites these 2 areas as ripe for export in the future...   One-third report they realized the savings they expected...   nearly one-fifth said their savings are less than anticipated."
 

2005-06-03

2005-06-03
New employment data was released today

2005-06-03
Liza Porteus _Fox News_
"Buy American" provisions return for more congressional debate
"Peter Steffes, [lobbyist] at the National Defense Industrial Association...   Rich Carter, spokesman for representative Don Manzullo, R-IL, told FOXNews.com that requiring the government to buy American-made products is good for both the economy and national security...   'we've lost over 3M jobs and a lot of our critical defense industries are vanishing; they're going over-seas.', Carter said.   'We're going to be fighting a war, we're going to have to be relying on foreign companies to supply us.   I don't think you ever want to be in that position.'   Manzullo has sponsored legislation reaffirming the 'Buy American Act', a law passed during the Great Depression aimed at restoring America's industrial base.   The decades-old act says a company must have 'substantially all' of a product grown, made or mined in the United States.   Federal agencies have generally interpreted 'substantially all' to mean 50% or more of U.S. content or labor...   the Defense Department currently has agreements with 21 countries that waive the 50% threshold...   Last week, Manzullo's amendment preventing such waivers without a vote by Congress was passed by the House and attached to the Defense Department reauthorization act.   The amendment also has been attached to the House-passed Department of Homeland Security authorization act, which gives that agency $34.2G for fiscal year 2006.   'For years, the Pentagon has flouted the original intent of the Buy American Act by using memoranda of understanding to bypass U.S. manufacturers and spread our tax-payer dollars around the world.', Manzullo said in a statement.   'This legislation closes the loop-holes and ensures more than 50% of the Pentagon's purchases must come from within the United States, which will help restore the struggling U.S. industrial base and create jobs for Americans.'...   'The problem is that a lot of things we have these days are manufactured over-seas or there's parts that are manufactured over-seas.'...The American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition supports 'Buy American' provisions.   Jim Schollaert, director of industry relations for AMTAC, pointed to several instances in history that could be harbingers of things to come.   For example, Swatch Group, AG and its Micro Crystal division in Switzerland refused to send key components used in bomb guidance equipment on the Pentagon's flagship Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) during the Iraq war.   'U.S. wealth is being drained out of the country.   Frankly, I think that's an even greater threat to our long-term security than Al Qaeda.', Schollaert said.   Defense groups and others, including the [lobbyist group] Information Technology Association of America [ITAA], which represents 380 corporate technology companies, argue that legislation like Manzullo's is simply bad security and economic policy.   'With this purchasing prohibition, I guess DHS will have to learn to do without computers and cell phones.', said ITAA President Harris Miller.   'I cannot think of a single U.S. manufacturer that could meet this 50% threshold for these devices...' [thus inadvertantly supporting the argument for the need for more such manufacturing to be done in the USA]... 'It might make short-term economic sense [to send jobs off-shore]... but it spells disaster for our national security over the long haul unless all countries around the world that we purchase from forever remain our true and dear friends.', [Schollaert said]."
There are currently 13 proposals that refer to the Buy American Act (search).

2005-06-03 07:32PDT (10:32EDT) (14:32GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
ISM services index slows from April to May
"The ISM non-manufacturing sentiment index fell to 58.5% from 61.7% in April.   It's the lowest level since May 2003...   The new orders index rose to 59.7% from 58.8%.   Employment edged higher to 53.4% from 53.3%.   Prices paid fell to 57.9% from 61.9%."

2005-06-03
_UPI_/_Washington Times_
Intelligence, genetic disease linked
"A University of Utah study of Ashkenazi Jews suggests an unusual link between their genetic diseases and their higher intellectual ability...   The study, to appear in Cambridge University's Journal of Biosocial Science, says this unusual pattern of diseases among the Ashkenazis of central and northern Europe is the result of natural selection for enhanced intellectual ability...   Ashkenazic diseases like Tay-Sachs are a side effect of genes that promote intelligence...   In the United States, Ashkenazi Jews make up 3% of the American population but have won 27% of its Nobel prizes.   They also account for more than half of world chess champions."

2005-06-03
Ed Sperling & Brian Halla _Electronic News_
Executives whine about honest accounting cross-checks
"if our politicians have their way, the great American dream will move to Shanghai...   In Shanghai there are 3K sky-scrapers, the world's fastest train, the world's tallest hotel, the world's longest suspension bridge...   Foxconn -- which is all Taiwanese, except they've moved most of their employees over to Beijing and Shenzhen -- is a city within a city.   They had 35K employees there when I visited.   Now there are double that number.   Rolls of sheet metal come in one end, and out the other side come every PC you've ever seen, Playstations, cell phones...   National [Semiconductor], we spent 68K additional man-hours just this year implementing Sarbanes Oxley.   Craig Barrett said it's been 250K additional man-hours for Intel at a cost of $30M...   If you look at the history of technology in this country, it's always been about information...   In the past year, the semiconductor industry shipped $213G worth of stuff, but Craig Barrett still hasn't declared the recovery.   There still hasn't been a killer app, but $213G was $9G more than we were at during the top of the dot-com boom.   There's tremendous momentum out there today, but it's not going into PCs.   It's going into PDAs, fully featured cell phones, PVRs, HDTV, video games and all kinds of stuff that you carry around.   Some day all those things will be connected.   Now we have wireless standards for every spectrum of bandwidth and power requirement, all the way from Zigbee and RFID, Bluetooth, 802.11 and now ultra wideband...   Metcalf's Law... The value of the power of the network moves up as the exponent of the number of nodes...   What about medical?   What about surveillance?   Sensors you sprinkle out of airplanes that have on-board MEMS gyros that right themselves and talk to each other and together watch a railroad track.   They become a powerful supercomputer that create a 3-D image of this thing that's approached the tracks, send it to an operator to identify the face against a list of known terrorists.   All of this technology exists today, or it's right around the corner.   But we'll have to buy it all from [Red China] because we can't get H-1B visas to hire the best and the brightest...   We opened a plant in Suchou, [Red China], and we had the Sino-Singapore Development Group.   They helped us put up this plant...   Right now, most of our companies do big 'D' little 'R'.   The universities do the big 'R' and no 'D'.   That's where we can light the world up.   I talked about ultra wideband and how important that will be.   Ultra wideband is 10 meters, 10 gigahertz, and a lot of bandwidth...   Power management is 41% of the company."

2005-06-03
Thomas Dawson _American Chronicle_
Illegal Aliens and Immigration
"We do not have an immigration problem with Mexico. We do have a border problem with Mexico.   Without making more jokes about Homeland Security, borders are important.   Without borders, there is no country... or security.   Some public political debate has begun, but don't expect too much...   In reality, the politicians will continue to stall any useful action for the sake their 'financial constituency'.   Some discussion at the federal level has finally begun again, and a few really big political names are making a lot of noise.   But in a typical stalling tactic, the discussion is not about closing the borders.   The talk is about those illegal aliens that are already here and many more that will come, as we make plans for them.   Their only concern is what will be the final criteria to make them underclass citizens?   Discussions with this kind of detailed minutia can be dragged out for a very long time... and they will be...   Don't listen to the politicians; they have no intention of closing the Mexican borders until, and only if forced to do so.   It is only a ploy to bring in more cheap labor for exploitation.   The failed corporate religion of Globalization in the name of 'free trade' is really a search for the cheapest labor available.   Corporations have greased the wheels of government and momentum is steam-rolling any public opposition...   hundreds of thousands of 'guest workers' that have already been imported to work as engineers, IT technicians, etc which are hired at only 50% to 80% of the going rate in this country, thus holding down the wage scales of the middle class and increasing corporate [executive] profits."

2005-06-03
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
US labor force has one foot in the third world
"In May the Bush economy eked out a paltry 73K [seasonally adjusted] private sector jobs: 20K jobs in construction (primarily for Mexican immigrants), 21K jobs in wholesale and retail trade, and 32,500 jobs in health care and social assistance.   Local government added 5K for a [seasonally adjusted] grand total of 78K.   Not a single one of these jobs produces an exportable good or service.   With Americans increasingly divorced from the production of the goods and services that they consume, Americans have no way to pay for their consumption except by handing over to foreigners more of their accumulated stock of wealth.   The country continues to eat its seed corn.   Only 10M Americans are classified as 'production workers' in the Bureau of Labor Statistics nonfarm pay-roll tables...   The US with a population approaching 300M has only 10M production workers.   That means Americans are consuming the products of other countries' labor...   Americans feel prosperous because they are consuming $700G annually more than they are producing...   First world capital is rapidly deserting first world labor in favor of third world labor, which is much cheaper because of its abundance and low cost [and quality] of living.   Formerly, America's high real incomes were protected from cheap foreign labor, because US labor worked with more capital and better technology, which made it more productive.   Today, however, US capital and technology move to cheap labor, or cheap labor moves via the Internet to US employment..."

2005-06-03
Richard Freeman _The Globalist_
What really ails Europe and the USA: The doubling of the work-force
"the global labor force has virtually doubled in size in the last 15 years...   In 1980, [what we consider to be] the global work-force consisted of workers in the advanced countries, parts of Africa and most of Latin America.   Approximately 960M persons worked in these economies.   Population growth -- largely in poorer countries -- increased the number employed in these economies to about 1.46G workers by 2000.   But in the 1980s and 1990s, workers from [Red China], India and the former Soviet bloc entered the global labor pool.   Of course, these workers had existed before then.   The difference, though, was that their economies suddenly joined the global system of production and consumption.   In 2000, those countries contributed 1.47G workers to the global labor pool -- effectively doubling the size of the world's now connected work-force.   These new entrants to the global economy brought little capital with them...   the entry of [Red China], India and the former Soviet bloc into the global economy cut the global capital/labor ratio by just 55% to 60% what it otherwise would have been.   The capital/labor ratio is a critical determinant of the wages paid to workers and of the rewards to capital."

2005-06-03 13:45PDT (16:45EDT) (20:45GMT)
Mark Cotton _MarketWatch_
Weak jobs report halts Nasdaq streak
"The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 92.52 points at 10,460.97.   The blue-chip index fell 0.8% on the week.   The Nasdaq Composite fell 26.37 points to 2,071.43, with the tech-rich index posting a 0.2% decline on the week.   The S&P 500 Index dropped 8.27 points to 1,196.02.   On the week, the broad gauge was down 0.2%...   The [seasonally adjusted] unemployment rate slipped to 5.1% from 5.2% [the lowest since 2001 September], based on a separate household survey...   The bench-mark July [crude petroleum] contract ended up $1.40 at $55.03 [per] barrel, rising 6.1% [over] the week...   decliners had an 18 to 14 advantage over advancers on the New York Stock Exchange, while losers outpaced winners by nearly two to one on the Nasdaq.   Volume was light with 1.2G shares exchanging hands on the Big Board, while 1.3G shares were traded on the Nasdaq."
 

2005-06-04

2005-06-04
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
Immigrant displacement of US workers hit new high in May
"According to [the household] survey, 376K jobs were added in May -- nearly 5 times the... pay-roll figure [from the establishment survey].   And the Household survey also shows that Hispanic workers, comprising 15% of the U.S. labor force, landed about half of those jobs.   As a result, the Hispanic unemployment rate declined by 0.4 points in May.   White unemployment was unchanged.   The Black rate declined by 0.3 points...   [0ne theory is that] people who are not on company pay-rolls but self-employed -- are tallied in the Household Survey but not in the [Establishment] Survey [pay-roll figures]...   [Illegal aliens] don't show up in the pay-roll numbers because employers have long feared (mistakenly, it appears) that the Feds will eventually enforce the law.   We believe it is no coincidence that the gap between the two employment surveys -- 8M jobs -- so strikingly resembles the official estimated number of illegal immigrant workers.   [Current estimates of illegal aliens residing in the USA range from 8M to 16M.   With between 60% and 70% of total population in the work force this implies between 4.8M and 11.2M illegal aliens in the labor force.]...   From 2001 January through [2005] May Hispanic employment rose by 15.1% and non-Hispanic employment rose by 1.0%.   The VDAWDI [V Dare American Worker Displacement] index reflects the relative difference between these 2 employment trends, i.e., the displacement effect.   At 114.1%, the May VDAWDI was a record high."

2005-06-04
Mac William Bishop _Asia Times_
Taiwan's gangs go global
"on May 29 more than 10K gangsters from dozens of crime syndicates from across Asia gathered in Taipei...   According to one expert on organized crime, Lin Chung-cheng, Taiwanese gangs are involved in businesses worth nearly US$1.85G a year - and their activities are as internationalized as any multinational corporation...   many high-profile and internationally wanted gangsters from the Bamboo Union flee to or retire in Southeast Asia or [Red China].   One such gangster is Bai Lang, or the "White Wolf", who was connected with the assassination of Taiwanese dissident author Henry Liu in Daly City, California, in 1984, and was charged in Taiwan with involvement in narcotics smuggling.   Bai Lang now lives in Cambodia."

2005-06-04
Alex _Ziff Davis_
15 software product and service companies receive 84% of profits; top 3 get 75%
Business Week

2005-06-04
_Ziff Davis_
82,283 lay-offs announced in 2005 May
US corporations announced 82,283 job cuts in 2005 May, a 42% increase from a 5-year low in 2005 April, Challenger Gray & Christmas said.   In IT industry the job cuts surged to 17,886 in 2005 May as companies reacted to weak demand in European markets.   So far in 2005, lay-off announcements are running 4.6% ahead of 2004 pace.   In all of 2004, 1.07M job reductions were announced."
 

2005-06-05

2005-06-05
Clifford Krauss _NY Times_
Some Natives, Foreigners Find Jobs Scarce in Canada
"GSS, 55, an environmental scientist... could not seem to get a job in Canada, his adopted country, despite a doctorate from Germany, two published books and university teaching experience in the United States...   It was not supposed to be this way in Canada, which years ago put out a welcome mat to professionals around the developing world.   With a declining birth-rate, an aging population and labor shortages in many areas, Canada, a sparsely populated nation, has for decades encouraged foreign engineers, health professionals, software designers and electricians.   But the results of this policy have been mixed, for Canada and for the immigrants.   Recent census data and academic studies indicate that the incomes and employment prospects of immigrants are deteriorating...   About 25% of recent immigrants with a university degree are working at jobs that require only a high school diploma or less, government data show...   Over the last decade, the country has attracted 200K to 250K immigrants a year -- measured as a percentage of the population, that is triple the rate in the United States [which receives 770K to 1.4M legal and illegal immigrants per year]...   1 in every 6 people in Canada immigrated, giving it the world's second-highest proportion of immigrants.   Only Australia's is higher...   [But now they're] driving taxis and trucks, working in factories or as security guards, and hoping their children will do better...   Mr. Reitz estimates that foreign-educated immigrants earn a total of $2G less than an equivalent number of native-born Canadians with comparable skills because they work in jobs below their training levels.   Drawing on census data, he judges that in 1980, new immigrant men earned 80% of the salaries of native Canadian men, and that the proportion has now dropped to less than 70%.   [the employers in North America who scream that there just aren't enough engineers mean that there aren't enough young cheap engineers.   What GSS thinks is racial discrimination is much more likely age discrimination...Norm Matloff]"

2005-06-05 12:00PDT (15:00EDT) (19:00GMT)
_USA Today_
Red Delicious apples pack more anti-oxidant punch
"A Canadian study measured the levels of anti-oxidants in 8 varieties of apples to find that Red Delicious, America's most common brand, contains the highest concentrations of health enhancing anti-oxidants...   The skin of Red Delicious apples -- the most common variety grown in the United States -- contains over 6 times more anti-oxidant activity than the flesh, according to researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada...   June 29 issue of _Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry_...   But if you simply can't bear to eat the peel, the sweet-tart Northern Spy ranks #1 for anti-oxidants in flesh alone.   Cortland was second, followed by Red Delicious...   Though apples have significantly lower concentrations of anti-oxidants than other fruits, especially many berries, researchers say year-round availability and greater popularity might make them a better source for many people."

2005-06-05
_KPTM Fox 42_
Federal Agents Raided Labor Camp in Florida
"Federal agents have raided a Florida labor camp where they say homeless men and women lived in a type of modern-day slavery.   Four people face federal charges in a case that officials say is likely to grow.   78 potato field workers have been interviewed at the compound south of Jacksonville.   Some were arrested on unrelated outstanding warrants."

2005-06-05
_PhysOrg.com_
3D Magnetic Sensor May Provide Rapid Reaction Gas and Brake Pedals
"Engineers [at Fraunhofer-Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen] have developed a 3D magnetic sensor which digitally registers the pedal deflection by its angle.   BMW is currently testing the system.   In a joy-stick, the sensor measures the spatial position of a small magnet.   From it, the evaluation electronics determines the position of the lever...   the sensor measures on the basis of the Hall effect: When a conductor carries current across a magnetic field the electrons are deflected to the side, producing a transverse voltage which is proportional to the strength of the magnetic field."

2005-06-05 08:57PDT (11:57EDT) (15:57GMT)
_CNN_/_Money_/_Reuters_
Red China continues hard line in trade talks
Casper Star Tribune
eTaiwan News
Tampa Tribune
"Vice Premier Wu Yi, who oversees trade, said emergency import curbs the Bush administration had slapped on trousers, shirts, underwear and cotton yarn from [Red China] were hurting an industry that [mal-]employs 19M people...   'I don't believe there is a full appreciation in [Red China] for the level of political pressure that we face with respect to our relationship.', [US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez] told reporters...   [Red China] exported $10G worth of clothing to the United States in 2004, a figure Washington says will rise this year.   Gutierrez said earlier this week it was the global trade in fake and pirated goods, which the US Chamber of Commerce says costs the American economy $250G each year, that was the top issue bedevilling trade ties."

2005-06-05
Harsimran Singh _Billings Gazette_
Working in India requires adjustment for visitors
"Most foreign expats think that Indian managers are over-confident, immature and think themselves to be more knowledgeable than their foreign clients.   Said Michael Anderson, COO of a U.S.-based BPO in Gurgaon: 'Indian managers lack honesty...   Managers in India lack global exposure.   This makes them look immature while interacting with Western clients.'...   Ian Stern, founder of Holistic Enterprises, a voice and accent training [i.e. fraud perpetrating] firm...   Foreign expats also are astounded to see how casually people take off on account of family marriages or ill health...   The basic infrastructure is still lacking...   Mike Matheson, '...You get to know that eating at roadside may be fatal.   You get to learn that water in your tap is not potable...'...   India is generally considered to be a hardship posting for foreign managers.   So the salary and perks shoot sky-high, accordingly...   Almost all said that Indians are hard-working and have a good knowledge base.

2005-06-05
Carolyn Lochhead _San Francisco Chronicle_
Friedman's proposal finally reaches the radical leftist media
"San Francisco seems an unlikely home for the man who in 1962 first proposed the privatization of [the Socialist Insecurity Abomination]...   It was Friedman who in 1962, with the publication of _Capitalism and Freedom_, first proposed the abolition of [the Socialist Insecurity Abomination], not because it was going bankrupt, but because he considered it immoral...   The late Arizona Republican senator Barry Goldwater, whom Friedman advised, found that out in 1964 when he suggested during his presidential campaign that [Socialist Inecurity] be made voluntary.   Goldwater was pilloried, not only by [radical leftist] editorial pages but his own party [out of unreasoning fear]...   Friedman calls [Socialist Insecurity], created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, a Ponzi game.   Charles Ponzi was the 1920s Boston swindler who collected money from 'investors' to whom he paid out large 'profits' from the proceeds of later investors.   The scheme inevitably collapses when there are not enough new entrants to pay earlier ones.   That [the Socialist Insecurity Abomination] operates on a similar basis is not really in dispute.   Paul Samuelson, who won his Nobel Prize in economics 6 years before Friedman and shared a Newsweek column with him in the 1960s, called [Socialist Insecurity] 'a Ponzi scheme that works'.   'The beauty about social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound.', Samuelson wrote in an oft-quoted 1967 column."
 

2005-06-06

2005-06-06
William Rees-Mogg _Times of London_
Europe was on its way to a bureaucratic prison camp: Rejection of EU constitution leaves room for a more attractive destination
"The treaty for a European constitution was a rotten treaty for a rotten constitution.   It should never have been negotiated, it should never have been signed, it was essential that it should be defeated.   The treaty took us a long stride closer to a United States of Europe, run by bureaucrats for the benefit of the European political class...   Thirty years of arrogant misgovernment must surely have been enough for the French...   The constitution is dead, but the project which created it is still alive.   So are the institutions, the Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice.   All of them will continue to try to maximise their own authority, at the expense of the people and of the national parliaments...   3 destinations... a return to the normal sovereignty of the nation states... the United States of Europe... a common market...   We need to cut [the EU] back to size..."

2005-06-06 10:44PDT (13:44EDT) (17:44GMT)
Jonathan Burton _MarketWatch_
Apple to switch to Intel CPUs: Lower cost, future development path cited
"Apple Computer Inc. said Monday that it will begin using microprocessor chips made by Intel Corp. in its signature Macintosh computers beginning next year, ending a long-standing relationship with International Business Machines Corp. [and Motorola]...   However, by embracing Intel after years of railing against its dominance of the PC market, Apple risks alienating its famously loyal base of users and developers...   Apple reportedly has been upset about Big Blue's inability to engineer a next-generation chip that can be used in its notebook computers.   Desk-top Macs run on the powerful G5 product, but the chips generate too much heat to be used in PowerBook and iBook lap-tops.   Apple uses the so-called G4 chip, manufactured by Freescale Semiconductor, for its note-book computers and the Mac mini PC.   Freescale shares fell on the report, even though Apple sales represented only 3% of the company's 2004 sales of $5.7G."

2005-06-06
Philip Aldrick _London Telegraph_
IT work-force faces cheap labour threat
"Out-sourcing specialists say that, rather than hiring locally, mult-inational technology firms are recruiting cheap skilled labour at their foreign branches and bringing the staff to Britain for client projects...   the cost of each over-seas recruit 'a third to a half that of a UK employee', Mr Simmonds reckons."
 

2005-06-07

2005-06-07 13:05PDT (16:05EDT) (20:05GMT)
Shawn Langlois _MarketWatch_
GM to slash 25K jobs by 2008
"General Motors, hit by falling sales, soaring costs and recent credit down-grades, said Tuesday it will cut at least 25K jobs [about 13.8% of GM's U.S. work force] in the U.S. by 2008 to generate $2.5G in annual savings."
 

2005-06-08

2005-06-08 01:27PDT (04:27EDT) (08:27GMT)
John Oates _Register_
More out-sourcing = more unhappiness
"the market is still growing - but customer disatisfaction is growing too.   Just over half of buyers have prematurely ended an out-sourcing agreement within the last 12 months, compared to 21% a year ago.   Contracts were terminated because of poor provider performance (36%), moving the function back in-house, cited by 11% of respondents, and failure to achieve cost savings (7%)...   in 2004 only 7% admitted a customer had prematurely ended a contract.   But the 2005 survey found 49% of out-sourcing providers have had a contract terminated early...   Some 74% of survey respondents expect to increase spending on out-sourcing in the next year, up from 64% last year.   India and the US remain favoured destinations, for contracts which are off-shored as well as out-sourced -- three-quarters of all respondents send some IT functions to one or both countries...   this year 6% of buyers have operations [in Red China].   In 2004 only 8% of buyers expected to have operations in [Red China] within 5 years, but now 40% expect to do so."

2005-06-08 08:34PDT (11:34EDT) (15:34GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Support increasing for tariffs on exports from Red China to USA
"A bill that would slap tariffs on [Red Chinese] exports to the U.S. unless [Red China] sets a definitive time-table to float its currency is gaining momentum in Congress, said senator Charles Schumer, D-NY, one of the principle authors of the legislation...   The bill written by Schumer, D-NY and Lindsey Graham, R-SC, would slap a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports if [Red China] doesn't take a meaningful step to revalue its currency and set a time-table for an eventual float.   The bill received 67 votes on the Senate floor in a test vote..."

2005-06-08 10:42PDT (13:42EDT) (17:42GMT)
Lisa Sanders _MarketWatch_
Gasoline cheap compared to food
"'Even with unleaded regular selling for more than $2 per gallon, the increase in gasoline prices since 1982 is 25% lower than the increase in food prices, 50% lower than the rise in housing costs, 70% lower than the spike in medical costs and a whopping 80% below the surge in college tuition.', the industry research firm found.   Accounting for inflation and better miles to the gallon, the cost of gasoline per mile driven is less than half of the cost of 1981 rates, according to Herold co-director of research Nick Cacchione.   He called it 'America's bargain liquid', at 10% less than bottled water, 33% of the price of milk and 20% of the price of beer.   Though the price of gasoline per mile is up 41% since 1995, the cost for a family to go to a major-league baseball game is up 70%, and the average price of a movie ticket has climbed 57%.   Want a half-gallon of ice cream?   That will lighten the wallet by about 45% more than it did 10 years ago."
 

2005-06-09

2005-06-09 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
unemployment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 287,305 in the week ending June 4, a decrease of 16,741 from the previous week.   There were 308,229 initial claims in the comparable week in 2004.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.8% during the week ending May 28, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,347,555, a decrease of 13,593 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.1% and the volume was 2,633,372."
graphs

2005-06-09
Ed Frauenheim _CNET_
Execs want relief from Sarbanes-Oxley
"Complying with the law may be a headache for IT departments, but new federal guidelines could ease the burden...   For example, the IT department at one point thought it needed to keep track of the previous 10 computer passwords used by... employees, rather than just the 3 archived by the company's business software.   [And why are they archiving passwords at all?!]   In addition, some argued the company... required an electricity generator at its offices in Colorado so its computer systems would continue to run in the event of a power failure...   Congress passed SOX in 2002 in order to "protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures." A key portion of the law is Section 404.   Thanks to it, publicly traded companies have to include in their annual reports a review of the company's internal control over financial reporting, and a related auditor's run-down...   Some IT departments seem to have responded to SOX by documenting a wide range of activities, including apparently trivial ones...   Steve DeLaCastro suggested, companies using out-sourcers may be out of compliance with SOX in part because controls aren't being audited."

2005-06-09

2005-06-09 12:22PDT (15:22EDT) (19:22GMT)
Steve Gelsi _MarketWatch_
US credit kkkard delinquency rates fell
"The delinquency rate fell to 4.07% in April, down from 4.52% a year ago.   On a year-over-year basis, the delinquency rate has improved for each of the last 21 months, Moody's said.   Overall credit-card debt decreased 0.6% in April, the second straight month of decline.   Non-revolving credit such as auto loans rose 1.5%.   In a separate report, the Federal Reserve said overall new consumer debt was up 10% in the first quarter."
on the Federal Reserve report

2005-06-09 13:00PDT (16:00EDT) (20:00GMT)
Ron Scherer _Christian Science Monitor_/_Yahoo!_
Big businesses race to abrogate pension obligations
"One of the major spurs for this has been the bankruptcy of United Airlines, which dumped its $10G pension liability on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), the government insurer supposed to guarantee workers some protection if their employers go under.   Because of loopholes in pension rules, many of United's workers were not aware their pension fund was in danger...   Although GM is in the news now, in the past the legacy costs have bedeviled the steel industry.   In 2001, Bethlehem Steel went into bankruptcy, throwing its pension commitments over to the PBGC.   At the time, the industry said its $12G in legacy costs for 600K workers made it difficult to compete.   After it dumped its legacy costs, Bethlehem Steel, now part of the International Steel Group, became profitable.   In mid-April, Mittal Steel Company, now one of the world's largest, acquired ISG for about $5G.   Edward Hill, professor of economic development at Cleveland State University's College of Urban Affairs.   He cites Delphi's $150-per-hour manufacturing cost as opposed to [Red China's] $1-per-hour cost for auto parts."

2005-06-09
Tom Elias _Hollister Free Lance_
Senators terrified to tackle illegal immigration
"... senator Barbara Mikulski of MD... crab processors... potato farmers in Idaho...   That's why they solidly backed an amendment proposed by Republican senator Larry Craig of Idaho that sought to grant legal status and permanent resident status to any agricultural worker who has been in this country illegally, but has worked 100 days out of any one-year period during the 18 months before January 1 of this year.   Their families would also have qualified under the Craig plan.   Had Craig's plan been approved, it would have started the largest immigration amnesty program of the last 19 years, one that might have dwarfed the 1986 amnesty plan that eventually produced more than 1.5M new American citizens, more than half of them living in California...   They get uncomfortable when they see how popular a few strongly anti-illegal immigrant congressmen have become...   cheap labor provided by the undocumented helps many businesses..."
 

2005-06-10

2005-06-10 05:55PDT (08:55EDT) (12:55GMT) US May import prices fell 1.3% in May: Export prices fell 0.1%
BLS data

2005-06-10 07:33PDT (10:33EDT) (14:33GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
US trade deficit increased 6.3% to $57G in April
BEA press release
"So far in 2005, the trade deficit -- the difference between imports and exports -- is up 12.6% from the pace a year ago.   The U.S. trade gap was a record $617.58G in 2004...   Exports rose 3.0% to a record $106.4G in April.   Imports rose 4.1% to a record $163.4G, mostly as a result of record crude oil prices.   Imports of goods alone rose 4.8% to $136.7G.   U.S. businesses bought a record amount of industrial supplies- mostly petroleum- and capital goods.   The U.S. imported $19.4G of crude oil in April, the second highest amount on record.   Consumer good imports rose 7.6% to $31.90G.   Exports of goods alone rose 4.2% to $74.5G.   U.S. farmers sold a record amount of their goods over-seas in April.   Exports of civilian aircraft also rose 40.8% to $3.21G.   The average price per barrel of oil jumped $3.62 to a record $44.76 in April.   The U.S. imported 313.8M barrels of crude oil in April, or 10.46M barrels per day, down from 326M or 10.52M barrels, in March.   The U.S. trade deficit with [Red China] widened to $14.7G in April compared with $12.0G in the same month last year."

2005-06-10 09:08PDT (12:08EDT) (16:08GMT)
_Weather.com_
tropical storm Arlene expected to land Saturday between New Orleans and Cape San Blas

2005-06-10 11:19PDT (14:19EDT) (18:19GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
US government deficit down to $35G in May: Compare to total federal expenditures 1789-1902 of $17G
"The U.S. federal budget deficit dropped to $35.3G in May, the lowest deficit in 4 years for the month, the Treasury Department said Friday.   The deficit was $62.5G a year ago in May.   The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the deficit would be $36G.   Total receipts in May were up 32.2% to $152.7G, compared with $115.5G the previous May.   Outlays were up 5.6% to $188G.   This May had one more business day than the month last year.   So far in the fiscal year, receipts are up 15.4% to $1.37T from $1.19T last year.   Outlays are up 7.2% year to date at $1.64T.   The deficit so far this year is $272.2G vs. $346G last year.   [The Interest on Treasury debt securities is $23.6G, which is 12.6% of the total current month Federal Outlays.]"

2005-06-10 13:40PDT (16:40EDT) (20:40GMT)
Susan Lerner _MarketWatch_
Tech retreat hits Nasdaq again
"The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 9.61 points, or 0.1%, at 10,512.63 while the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 13.91 points, or 0.7%, to 2,063 and the S&P 500 lost 2.82 points, or 0.2%, to 1,198.11.   The major indexes were mixed on the week, as well, with the Dow adding 0.5% and the S&P edging up 0.2% but the Nasdaq giving up 0.4%.   In the broader market, decliners narrowly outpaced advancers 1,621 to 1,583 on the New York Stock Exchange while holding an 8 to 7 edge on the Nasdaq.   Big Board volume was just about 1.25G shares while almost 1.45G traded on Nasdaq...   In the energy pits, July crude futures dropped 74 cents to close at $53.54 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange."

2005-06-10
_American Patrol_
CFR Proposed End of USA

2005-06-10
Bryan Robinson _abc news_
The New Batman: Darker but Gentler?
"'It's much more human.', Bale said of the portrayal of Batman [in 'Batman Begins'].   'It focuses on Bruce Wayne and answers many questions like, why the hell is a guy dressing as a bat running around the city as a way to fight crime?   He is facing his fears.   You get to see his origins, you get to see him at age 8.   You get to see him as a lost cause, as an angry young man who doesn't know what to do with his life.' [Or maybe he does.]"
 

2005-06-11

2005-06-11
_UnBossed_
Deloitte Consulting reports that out-sourcing is falling from favor
"70% of employers reported negative experiences with out-sourcing.   These results were reported by experienced managers who collectively managed about $50G in contracts."
 

2005-06-12

2005-06-11 21:16PDT (2005-06-12 00:16EDT) (04:16GMT)
Stephanie I. Cohen _MarketWatch_
Fixing pensions
"The millions of Americans counting on employer-promised pensions may be shortchanged unless Congress and the administration can find a way to reverse the billion-dollar deficits facing the ailing private [employer-managed] pension system.   Defined-benefit pension plans - those plans that guarantee a set payment every month for retirees - have come under increasing scrutiny this year amid evidence many plans have been massively underfunded...   many private companies failed to make annual payments to finance their pension plans as they tried to cut costs.   Now many of these same companies, facing a financial slump today, are unable to make up for the short-fall and meet approaching pension obligations...   The real tension may come as lawmakers and the administration try to agree on how to prevent a massive federal bailout of these pension plans without sparking a wave of bankruptcies among the corporate plan sponsors...   The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watch-dog, has warned policy makers that 'even with meaningful, carefully crafted reform, it is possible that some [defined benefit] plan sponsors may choose to freeze or terminate their plans.'   The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. was set up as a government chartered agency in 1974 to guarantee employers' pensions in the event companies defaulted on their obligations.   Since then the PBGC has assumed responsibility for nearly 3,500 defined benefit plans that have failed.   Today the agency faces a record $23.3G deficit and roughly 1,100 companies reported a combined $354G short-fall in funding for their defined benefit pension plans in 2004."

2005-06-12 07:07:37PDT (10:07:37EDT) (14:07:37GMT)
Louise Witt _Los Angeles Daily News_
Small businesses still hiring, but at a very slow rate
"smaller firms, which are more difficult for the government to track, are continuing to hire -- even if it's at a tepid pace...   According to the latest NFIB survey of its members, more firms plan to hire new workers in May than they did in April.   In a survey of 1,220 members in April, NFIB found that 11% of its members said they plan to add more employees...   SurePayroll, which provides online payroll services to small businesses, also found that smaller firms are continuing to hire.   A SurePayroll survey of 15,000 customers found that they added 0.08% more new employees in May compared to April -- the third consecutive month of employment growth.   With SurePayroll's hiring index showing a 0.3% rise since January, the company forecasts that small businesses will add 0.7% new employees in 2005.   Still, that will be considerably down from the 4% payroll growth seen in 2004."

2005-06-12
_India Daily
India sacrificed the interest of 99% of common Indians for the sake of a few executives
"The neglect of the rural sector at the cost of a few out-sourcing oligarchs caused BJP the Government.   Congress came with a lot of promise for the rural sector."

2005-06-12
Steve Jobs _AppleMatters_
Steve Jobs's Commencement Address at Stanford
Leland Stanford University
Irish Eyes
 

2005-06-13

2005-06-13 08:49PDT (11:49EDT) (15:49GMT)
Gail Liberman & Alan Lavine _MarketWatch_
ATM surcharges add up
"Experts say that ATM surcharges --fees charged at ATM machines -- are rising.   So are fees charged by your bank for using another bank's ATM.   Bankrate.com data recently indicated that the average ATM surcharge rose $1.40 this year.   In addition, the average fee a bank customer pays for using another bank's ATM reached $1.35 [while the costs of processing a transaction remain in the $0.20 to $0.40 range].   Say you withdraw $20 from a bank ATM near the beach: Fees totaling $2.75 translate into a whopping 13.5% charge for the transaction!"

2005-06-13
Robert Trigaux _St. Petersburg Times_
Who really benefits from the subsidies and tax incentives aimed at luring businesses into an area
"Two years ago next month, governor Jeb Bush flew to California and dangled $310M in government funds in front of the prestigious Scripps Research Institute to build a bioscience facility in Florida.   The size of incentives ballooned to $569M after Palm Beach County committed tax dollars to land Scripps in its east-coast piece of the Sunshine State...   nobody asked in advance if this was the absolute best use of tax-payer money.   Nobody asked what $569M could do for Florida if such a mega-subsidy was directed to other needy purposes, or simply used to bolster Florida's existing bioscience research and business industry.   Nobody asked because nobody knew...   [Greg] LeRoy has written a book... called _The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation_...   In too many cases, corporations relocate to receive an incentive, but leave when the tax-payer subsidies run out...   LeRoy describes how Tampa's Sykes Enterprises repeatedly accepted subsidies to open its call centers in job-needy rural America towns - like Greeley in Colorado, Klamath Falls and Milton-Freewater in Oregon and Manhattan, Hays and Ada in Kansas - only to close most of them soon after the subsidies ran out...   Sykes moved the bulk of its call center jobs to cheaper locations over-seas."

2005-06-13
Diane M. Grassi _Sierra Times_
US Off-Shoring Personal Private Information
"According to the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, CA there have been close to 60 reported security breaches of customer financial information from United States corporations thus far in 2005, involving 13.5M customers' identities.   The companies include Choicepoint, Inc., Bank of [India] Corp. [formerly Bank of America], Wachovia Corp., Ameritrade Holding Corp., DSW Shoe Warehouse, Time Warner Inc., LexisNexis and most recently Citbank Financial Group.   While most lost data has involved data storage tapes lost in transit by courier services or UPS, others involved computer security breaches...   Yet American customers or consumers are never informed whether or not their personal information and credit history is being off-shored...   In the U.S., the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 which applies to financial institutions as well as accounting firms engaged in the practice of tax preparation requires that firms design, implement and put safeguards in place in order to maintain protection of customer information.   In addition, such companies must provide their customers with a privacy notice that details the company's information-collection and information-sharing practices giving the customer the right to 'opt-out' and limiting the sharing of such information.   Yet to date the Federal Trade Commission has not levied any punishment or fine on any U.S. accounting firm with regard to over-seas out-sourcing practices and the lack of notification of such to customers."
Privacy Links
 

2005-06-14

2005-06-14 07:18PDT (10:18EDT) (14:18GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
PPI fell 0.6% in May
"The decline in the PPI in May was the biggest one-month decline since a 1.5% drop in 2003 April. Excluding food and energy costs, the core PPI rose 0.1%."
BLS data on PPI
graphs

2005-06-14 07:49PDT (10:49EDT) (14:49GMT)
Aidan Lewis _AP_/_Yahoo!_
Icemand of the Alps possibly under attack by modern bacteria
"X-rays have shown bubbles in the bones that could be caused by bacteria, said Eduard Egarter Vigl, in charge of preserving the mummy at the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, Italy...   Oetzi has provided researchers with a wealth of information about the late Neolithic Age, or 3,300 to 3,100 B.C.   He was carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows and a copper ax, prompting speculation that he was a hunter or warrior.   X-rays have revealed that Oetzi was wounded by an arrow, with the flint arrowhead remaining in his left shoulder.   Previous tests have shown that his last meals included venison, unleavened bread and some greens."
South Tyrol Archaeological Museum

2005-06-14 08:28PDT (11:28EDT) (15:28GMT)
Robert Schroeder _MarketWatch_
US retail sales fell 0.5% in May
"Excluding auto sales, retail sales fell 0.2%, slightly less than the 0.3% economists were expecting."
census bureau press release

2005-06-14
Doug Kendall
The Myth of "Jobs that Americans Won't Do"
"Americans will do just about anything, if the money is right...   Since some businesses don't want to pay what workers feel the job should pay, the jobs go unfilled.   These businesses instead hire illegal aliens...   Ask any doctor in the USA if he would work for minimum wage and he'll laugh at you, because he has gone through years of training and he feels his work is worth more than that.   It's the same mentality with any worker, whether or not their feelings (and pay grade) are justified...   The only problem with our current national security scheme is that the only people being scrutinized, monitored, tracked and inconvenienced are US citizens -- and that's completely unacceptable."

2005-06-14
Chad Selweski _Macomb Daily_
US representative Candice Miller says illegal aliens bias districting
Contra Costa Times
"Miller is proposing a constitutional amendment that would only allow legal U.S. citizens -- not all persons -- to count toward representation in the House of Representatives. If such a change had been in place for the 2000 census, Michigan would not have lost a House seat and California, Texas, Florida and New York would have secured fewer seats... Miller recently learned that the decennial [census] counts illegal immigrants -- 5.4M in California alone -- when determining each state's representation... Just 2% of [Michigan's] 10th District consists of non-citizens. In California's 31st, 41% are non-citizens. As a result, the number of votes cast in the 31st in 2002 was about 67K -- requiring a 34K-vote majority to win election. In the 10th, 217K votes were cast and Miller won with 137K votes."
 

2005-06-15

2005-06-15
Cal Thomas _Washington Times_
Illegal immigrants leave an infectious TB trail
"According to an essay in the current Journal of the American Medical Association, a form of tuberculosis that has shown itself resistant to several drugs has invaded California and is present primarily in the state's foreign-born population, a politically correct euphemism for illegal aliens...   18 to 24 months of treatment for multi-drug-resistant TB, called MDR-TB, costs between $200K and $1.2M per person...   [TB] increased between 1985 and 1992.   Nearly 15K cases of TB were diagnosed last year...   [84% of those with drug-resistant TB were foreign born.]...   Two years ago 29% of TB cases in the USA were diagnosed among the foreign born.   Last year that figure rose to 53%."

2005-06-15
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee _Optimize_
Mid-Career Crisis
Information Week
"After putting in 20-plus years at AT&T Bell Labs and then Lucent Technologies in demanding positions such as being the architect of a computing environment used by 6K software developers, who could blame RS if he had looked forward to mixing work with a little more pleasure time as he entered the zenith of his career?   Instead, he felt compelled to accept an early retirement package in 2001 July, when Lucent, like other telecom-equipment suppliers, retrenched in the wake of the Internet and telecom-industry bust...   Across the country, thousands of seasoned IT pros have faced similar career upheavals, or could in the near future.   It's happening to their younger counterparts, too, as off-shore out-sourcing, corporate down-sizing, and fast-changing technologies shatter the myth of job stability.   Just this month, the Walt Disney Co. disclosed plans to cut about 1K IT jobs and out-source the work to other companies.   For those IT pros in the second half of their careers -- and the latest data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates there are about 301K who are 55 and older -- the possibility of having to change gears amid these conditions presents unique challenges.   11% of the nation's 3.4M IT professionals will reach retirement age during the next 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   But instead of confidently moving forward in their careers, many are concerned about the threat of unemployment before they're ready to leave the work-force...   a Bureau of Labor Statistics study covering 2001 to 2003 found that a majority of workers who were laid off didn't return to the pay levels they lost.   The study found that 57% of long-tenured workers--those with more than 3 years on the job -- who were working full-time in 2004 January were earning lower wages than before being laid off.   One-third lost 20% or more of their pay...   Looking at 6,531 managerial and professional workers laid off between 2001 and 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found 1 in 5 still unemployed in 2004 January; 11% had left the work-force entirely...   69% of people ages 25 to 54 who lost jobs in 2001 to 2003 were re-employed when interviewed in 2004 January, but just 56% in the 55 to 64 range were employed, and 20% had dropped out of the labor force.   The problem is likely exacerbated in the IT industry.   'More so than other industries, the tech field is a young field.', says John Challenger, CEO of executive search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.   'There's no question that older IT professionals face additional obstacles, but they aren't insurmountable.'...   RS didn't have to face what's often a deal-breaker for people considering retraining: the cost.   The government paid for everything, including tuition and room and board.   The investment, which RS estimates was about $60K, would have been 'a big hurdle' for RS's family finances, he admits."

2005-06-15 07:21PDT (10:21EDT) (14:21GMT)
CPI edged down 0.1% in May
sample of CPI data
BLS press releases

2005-06-15 07:59PDT (10:59EDT) (14:59GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Industrial output rebounded in May
"Industrial production rose a stronger-than-expected 0.4% in May, after falling 0.3% in April...   At the same time, the Empire State Index, a leading indicator of factory output in future months, rebounded sharply in June."
Empire State manufacturing index

2005-06-15 13:06PDT (16:06EDT) (20:06GMT)
_MarketWatch_
J.P. Morgan Chase offers to settle fraud claims related to Enron
"J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. on Tuesday said it's paying Enron investors $2.2G to settle a law-suit that claimed the bank helped defraud them.   Last week, Citigroup reached a similar settlement with investors for $2G.   William S. Lerach, the attorney for the University of California - the lead plaintiff in the case -- said Wednesday that there's 'more work to do' for the thousands of investors who lost money when Enron went bankrupt following a massive accounting fraud...   Remaining defendants in the investors' law-suit include the financial institutions of Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and the Royal Bank of Scotland.   Additional remaining defendants include The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., because of its alleged role as an underwriter of Enron securities, as well as former officers of Enron, its accountants, Arthur Andersen [now Accenture], and certain law firms, the university said...   Other firms, including Bank of [India] Corp. [formerly Bank of America] and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., already have settled the case for a combined $491.5M..."

2005-06-15
Chris McManes _IEEE*USA_
5 US Technical Job Classifications Show Employment Drop, 1 Shows Gain
"The biggest drop was among computer hardware engineers (18K), followed by computer software engineers (13K), computer programmers (8K), electrical and electronics engineers (8K) and computer and information systems managers (5K).   Contrasted with this loss of 52K jobs, the BLS reported a gain of 54K jobs among computer scientists [high-end] and systems analysts [generic, old-school low-end]."
 

2005-06-16

2005-06-16 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
unemployment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 314,352 in the week ending June 11, an increase of 25K from the previous week.   There were 313,930 initial claims in the comparable week in 2004.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.9% during the week ending June 4, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,435,044, an increase of 92,641 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.1% and the volume was 2,674,791."
graphs

2005-06-16
John Epperheimer _Silicon Valley_
Silicon Valley Jobs: Big pay-offs come at a high price
"The diversity you have experienced in college will be echoed in any high-tech company you join.   You will be exposed to a fascinating array of cultures and backgrounds.   Many of your co-workers will have recently immigrated here.   If you were born here or have lived here most of your life, you may get frustrated with them because their views of work are so different from yours...   Some portion of your company's work has probably already been out-sourced to India or [Red China] or other countries.   You will need to keep reinventing yourself so that your contributions are unique enough that they can't be shifted over-seas...   Many of those class-mates who work in other states will probably get better educations for their children from public schools than your kids will receive in California.   If you become a parent in California, you are likely to find yourself making decisions about where to live based on school district test scores.   Or, you'll be scrambling to cover the cost of private schools...   The concept of work-life balance is pretty much a fallacy here."

2005-06-16 15:42PDT (18:42EDT) (22:42GMT)
Zubair Ahmed _BBC_
Out-sourcing increases exposure to fraud
"The arrest last week of a man in western India in an alleged call-centre fraud case went unreported.   This was despite the high-profile reporting on the case in April when 16 others were arrested.   This suited India's business process out-sourcing (BPO) companies, especially Mphasis, whose four employees have been implicated in the case.   They are yet to recover from the shock of the alleged fraud of nearly $400K...   'Fake degrees and documents are a major concern of our clients.', said Yogesh Bhura."

2005-06-16 15:57PDT (18:57EDT) (22:57GMT)
Mark Cotton _MarketWatch_
Dow closed at 3-month high after 6 trading days of gains
"The Dow ended up 12.28 points, or 0.1%, at 10,578.65, taking the bench-mark index to a 3-month high.   Not since December 2003 has the blue-chip average had such a long winning streak.   The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 14.23 points, or 0.7%, to 2,089.15, while the S&P 500 Index was up 4.35 points, or 0.2%, to 1,210.93, a level not seen since early March."
 

2005-06-17

2005-06-16 19:42PDT (22:42EDT) (2005-06-17 02:42GMT)
_AP_/_Business Week_
Wyeth gets FDA approval for new class of anti-biotics
"the Food and Drug Administration approved its intravenous antibiotic Tygacil to treat a wide variety of bacterial infections. The agency approved Tygacil to treat complicated intra-abdominal infections and complicated skin and skin structure infections in adults. Such infections arise in cases of complicated appendicitis, infected burns, intra-abdominal abscesses, deep soft tissue infections and infected ulcers."

2005-06-17
Norman Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
a reluctant comment
"I am reluctant to give him any publicity.   I don't mind people who disagree with me, of course, but I get irritated if their views are based on snap judgements rather than careful, thorough examination of the facts.   I get even more irritated if they hide the fact that they stand to gain financially from those views which they present as being for the public good...   his latest big theme, which is basically, 'Globalization is good, and its down-sides can be compensated by improving our educational system'.   He is one of those who, for example, hold the Alice in Wonderland view that we can solve our current problem of unemployed engineers and scientists by producing MORE engineers and scientists...   engineers in most of those countries [Thomas] Friedman lists are not so anxious to come here now, precisely because people like [Thomas] Friedman have ruined the American job market for engineers...   I myself have always supported a policy of rolling out the immigration red carpet for 'the best and the brightest' in the world.   But where did Friedman get the ridiculous idea that anyone who completes a PhD is a 'first-round intellectual draft choice'?   A few people who get a PhD are indeed brilliant, but most PhDs are not...   The fact is that any ambitious kid would be crazy to want to go into engineering today [in the USA]..."

2005-06-17 06:12PDT (09:12EDT) (13:12GMT)
Frank Barnako _MarketWatch_
Web captures news-paper readers
"Nielsen/NetRatings reported research that 21% of Web users who read newspapers have transferred 'primarily' to on-line, while 72% still rely on print...   Nielsen/NetRatings also released traffic information for the top on-line newspapers for May showing NYTimes.com first with an audience of 11.3M unique visitors, followed by USAToday.com (9.2M), WashingtonPost.com (7.4M), LATimes.com (3.8M), and SFGate.com (3.4M)."

2005-06-17 07:38PDT (10:38EDT) (14:38GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
US international trade current-accounts deficit rose 3.6% in 2005 Q1
"In the first quarter, the deficit rose 3.6% to a record $195.1G from the 4th quarter's revised $188.4G...   In the first quarter, the increase in the current account was largely due to a larger deficit in trade of goods, which rose to $186.3G.   Foreign-owned assets in the United States increased $226.1G in the first quarter.   The goods-and-services deficit rose to $171.8G in the first quarter from $169.2G in the previous 3-month period.   Unilateral current transfers resulted in a net outflow of $27.1G in the January-to-March period, up from $22.4G in the 4th quarter.   The services surplus increased to $14.6G from $13G.   Foreign official assets in the United States rose by $24.7G in the first quarter, following an increase of $94.5 in the 4th quarter.   Foreign direct investment moderated slightly to $28.8G in the first quarter, while U.S. direct investment abroad slipped to $32.2G from $100G.   U.S.-owned assets abroad rose $60.7G in the first quarter after increasing by $289G in the 4th quarter.   Net foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury debt rose to $75.5G in the first quarter from $15.7G in the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department data.   Foreign purchases of U.S. equities fell to $28.9G from $45.7G, while purchases of corporate bonds fell to $58.6G from $69.3G.   Purchases of agency bonds plunged to $800M from $43.2G."
BEA data

2005-06-17 07:35PDT (10:35EDT) (14:35GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
US housing starts inched higher in May
"Housing starts rose 0.2% in May to a seasonally adjusted 2.009M annualized units from April's downwardly-revised 2.005M, the government said."
census bureau data

2005-06-17 08:12PDT (11:12EDT) (15:12GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index rose from 86.9 in May to 94.8 in early June

2005-06-17 13:11PDT (16:11EDT) (20:11GMT)
_USA Today_
Time-Line of Tyco International scam

2001Mar31	Tyco announced $9.2G cash and stock deal to purchase CIT Group...
2001Dec05	Tyco shares close at a high of $59.76 on the NYSE
2002Jan14	Business Week listed Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski as one of the top 25 corporate managers of 2001...
2005Jun17	Manhattan jury finds Kozlowski and Swartz guilty of stealing around $600M from Tyco. They each could face 25 years in prison.

2005-06-17
_PC Pro_
Michael Dell keen to sell Intel-based Mac OS X

2005-06-17 13:21PDT (16:21EDT) (20:21GMT)
Lisa Sanders _MarketWatch_
Crude petroleum futures close at all-time high: up 9.2% this week
"On the Nymex, July-dated crude futures contracts, up 9.2% this week, closed at $58.47 a barrel, up 3.3%, or $1.89 after trading as high as $58.60.   The price eclipsed the previous record of $58.28 a barrel set on April 4 intraday and the previous all-time high close of $57.27 on April 1...   diesel fuel is selling for about $1.70 a gallon wholesale (exclusive of tax and mark-up) in many of the large spot bulk markets, according to the Oil Price Information Service.   At the pump, the average price of diesel stood at $2.34 a gallon on Thursday, up from $1.79 a year and near the all-time record of $2.388 a gallon set on April 11...   July natural gas added 7.7 cents to close at $7.69 per million British thermal units."

2005-06-17 14:00PDT (17:00EDT) (21:00GMT)
_World Net Daily_
House slashes UN funding: Hyde said 'It's time we had some teeth in reform
"The bill passed 221-184...   Hyde and other law-makers listed complaints such as coddling of rogue regimes; a bias against America and Israel; irresponsible spending; scandals such as the oil-for-food program and sexual abuse by peacekeepers; and human rights abusers sitting on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.   Failure to comply with the demands would result in withholding half of U.S. dues to the general budget and a refusal to support expanded and new peace-keeping missions.   Among the 39 reforms sought, according to the Associated Press, are slashing the public information budget by 20%; establishing an independent oversight board and an ethics office; and barring countries that violate human rights from serving on human rights commissions.   The secretary of state must certify that 32 of those reforms are met by 2007 September and all 39 by the next year."

2005-06-17 14:00PDT (17:00EDT) (21:00GMT)
_MarketWatch_
Kozlowski & Swartz convicted
"After fighting prosecutors to a standstill in a 6-month trial last year, 2 top former Tyco International executives were convicted Friday in a Manhattan court of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company.   U.S. stocks end higher; S&P 500 positive for the year."
more on Kozlowski & Swartz
stocks up
"The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 44.42 points to close at 10,623.07.   The bench-mark index has now risen for 7 sessions in a row, a feat not equaled since March 2003.   It now sits at a 3-month high after rising 1.1% on the week.   The S&P 500 Index was up 6 points at 1,216.96, allowing the broad gauge to turn positive for the year for the first time since early March.   The index was up 1.6% on the week.   The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.96 point to 2,090.11.   Gains for the tech-rich index proved harder to come by as it knocked up against its March highs.   In that month, the Nasdaq hit an intraday high of 2,100 and a closing high of 2,090. On the week, the index was up 1.3%."

2005-06-17
_Kansas City Star_
FDA gives approval for next step for cardio-vascular drug preliminary tests showed was more effective for blacks than others
"The Food and Drug Administration's cardiovascular drug advisory panel voted 9-0 in favor of allowing sales of the heart failure drug BiDil...   The usual treatment is with drugs called ACE inhibitors, but research has indicated they do not work as well in black patients as in white patients.   BiDil is a combination of 2 drugs: hydralazine, which eases blood pressure, and isosorbide dinitrate, which is used for heart pain.   The combination also boosts the amounts of nitric oxide in the blood, a substance that is found in lower levels in blacks."

2005-06-17
_Fresh Plaza, Netherlands_
Florida blueberry industry springs to record heights
"Braswell became a blueberry grower just as the Florida industry took off to record heights.   Braswell and Jerry Mixon Jr., a veteran grower based in Haines City, estimated blueberry acreage in Florida reached nearly 3K acres in 2005, about double the 1,500 acres reported in 2001 by the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service in Orlando...   Braswell estimated Juliana Plantation's production fell more than 20%.   But higher prices more than made up for lost production, Braswell said.   He estimated the plantation would get an average of $27 to $28 per flat, compared with about $22 last year.   Florida blueberry growers are responding by planting more acres.   In addition to doubling its acreage next year, Juliana Plantation is building a 3,600-square-foot greenhouse to meet its own demand for new bushes.   'With every Tom, Dick and Harry growing blueberries, there's a shortage of plants now.', Braswell said...   Michigan is the top U.S. blueberry grower with 15,900 acres in 2004 followed by New Jersey with 7,500 acres, USDA statistic show."

2005-06-17
_ITPAA_
UK CIOs fear for their jobs
"In a snap-shot survey of almost 100 senior IT professionals by technology optimisation specialist Mercury UK, 7% said IT projects always delivered business vale, with 87% saying they 'sometimes' delivered value. In addition, 33% felt their job was less secure than it was 3 years ago, and 44% said their employers planned to out-source more IT to India..."
 

2005-06-18

2005-06-18
_Cleveland Plain Dealer_
Important lessons of summer jobs
"summer jobs are not what they used to be.   They are now held not by adolescents in deep sulk mode but by retired people and foreign workers on temporary work visas.   Just this month, the _Christian Science Monitor_ reported: 'Last summer, the teen employment rate was the lowest since 1948, with only 36% of those ages 16 to 19 holding jobs, down from 45% in 2000.'   A week later, the _New York Times_ reported: 'Like many seasonal resort areas across the country, Nantucket increasingly depends on foreign workers to wash its dishes, bag its groceries and fill other jobs once held by American teenagers and students.'   So what are the American teenagers doing?   They are working on film sets, in TV studios and at glossy magazines as 'interns'.   Of course, no one is paying them to do these jobs, so we have to pay their Manhattan rent, which is higher than our Cleveland mortgage, and send monthly allowances..."

2005-06-18
David Gow & Guenter Verheugen _Guardian_
Big beast's battle
"The French, Germans and others worry that east Europeans, let alone [Red Chinese] and Indians, are picking up the bulk of investment, jobs and growth, prompting him to [idiotically] denounce a prevalent fear of hordes of eastern nomads waiting to pounce on richer EU members and take over everything."

2005-06-18
Kerry Hall _Charlotte Observer_
NC adds jobs, but not for some
"North Carolina fared well last month, adding 8,400 jobs, the nation's third-largest increase, behind California's 17,600 new positions and Florida's 9,900 new jobs, according to seasonally adjusted numbers released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   South Carolina, meanwhile, lost 2,900 jobs, according to seasonally adjusted figures.   Seasonally adjusted numbers smooth out regular temporary fluctuations, such as seasonal changes in tourism and teaching jobs...   He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering and a master's degree in textile chemistry, both from NCSU."

2005-06-18
Joe Guzzardi _V Dare_
Is playing baseball a job Americans won't do?
"Unlike major league players who enter the U.S. on a P1 visa, minor leaguers depend on the all-purpose H-2B visa for 'temporary' employees.   During pre-911 years, baseball was allotted 1,400 H-2B visas—a total that baseball management predictably viewed as insufficient...   Although major league baseball has signed U.S. college stars, it seems to prefer Hispanics.   The reason: They are, in a word, cheaper.   About 700 Hispanic players -- mostly from the Dominican Republic -- come to the US each year...   The cruel irony is that the U.S.A. produces an abundance of outstanding baseball players every year...   For young stars like Chamberlain and Urquidez to get their shot, the owners need to turn their attention away from the cheap sources of players like the Dominican Republic—and pay more attention to what's going on at baseball diamonds across America."

2005-06-18
Don Curlee _Monterey Herald_
Bill reforms ag guest-worker program
"The mostly likely vehicle is a bill in Congress called AgJobs.   It accomplishes several objectives for foreign workers and potential workers and those who hire them [damages domestic workers and potential workers], and touches on social and labor relations issues, even national security and foreign relations and diplomacy...   A kind of under-ground railway has developed that carries the illegal workers to other farm job centers in the South and East Coast, as well as beyond agriculture into the Northeast and Midwest."

2005-06-18
Leslie Cauley _Indianapolis Star_
Phone company mergers don't favor customers
USA Today
"Despite change of ownership, users stay locked in contracts, can face fees, headaches...   F was one of 6K AT&T Wireless customers who got dumped by Cingular when the merger closed in October.   Cingular, owned by SBC Communications and BellSouth, agreed to the divestment as part of a broader pact with the Department of Justice.   The problem?   F, a dedicated customer of AT&T Wireless, wanted to stay with Cingular.   When he called Cingular's customer service department to complain, however, he got another surprise: He could stay with Cingular, but he would have to pay a $175 disconnection fee to U.S. Cellular, which had just purchased the Lamar, MO market...   Gene Kimmelman, director of Consumers Union in Washington, says things are only going to get worse.   He notes three big telecom mergers are in progress: SBC and AT&T; Verizon and MCI; and Sprint and Nextel.   Once they close, customers of the acquired companies -- AT&T, MCI and Nextel -- will be at the mercy of the new owners."
 

2005-06-19

2005-06-19
Charles Odum & Paul Davenport _AP_/_Yahoo!_
CardSystems Solutions Inc. exposed 40M kredit kkkard accounts to fraud
Marin Independent Journal
Arizona Republic
Ha Aretz
CNN/Money
MarketWatch
"MasterCard International Inc. spokes-woman Jessica Antle said only about 68K of its card holders are at 'higher levels of risk' [because they normally run a high level of risk, anyway]...   about 13.9M of the 40M credit card accounts that may have been exposed to fraud were MasterCard accounts...   [FBI spokes-woman Deb McCarley] said CardSystems' call center in Tucson, AZ had contacted the FBI, and the Phoenix office is handling the case...   CardSystems processes less than 0.5% of American Express' domestic transactions..."

2005-06-19
Jay Tea _WizBang_
Illegal Alien Updates
alternate link
"'There is no safe harbor in the entire state where Mr. Mora Ramirez could go to avoid breaking the law.'   Bingo, Attorney Movafaghi.   Got it in ONE.   Your client entered the country ILLEGALLY, and his continued presence here is an ongoing offense.   He can end this very simply -- by leaving the country.   If he wants back in, let him do what millions of others do -- follow the rules, obey the law, and get in line.   And if his previous violation of those laws is held against him, tough -- decisions have consequences."

2005-06-19
Brad Cain _AP_/_Oregan Statesman Journal_
Measure would require proof of citizenship to vote
"plan to require people registering to vote for the first time to show proof of citizenship...   The measure recently was approved by the Oregon House after sponsors said that the requirement would help prevent illegal immigrants from fraudulently registering and voting...   Linda Flores, a Republican from Clackamas.   'Citizens want us to do everything we can to preserve their rights and to secure our borders.'   The bill is directed at people who are in the country illegally and also to protect the integrity of Oregon's election process, she said...   Oregon bill mirrors a similar law in Arizona, where undocumented immigrants have become a hot political issue.   In January, Arizona became the first state to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote.   Voters passed that law, which supporters said is needed to prevent voter fraud.   Other states have debated similar measures, but Arizona is the only state so far to enact such a law.   Under the bill passed by the Oregon House, first-time registrants would be required to produce evidence of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport.   A leading supporter of the measure, Jim Ludwick of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, said the potential for abuse is large.   The latest estimate is that as many as 150K illegal immigrants are living in Oregon, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, although Ludwick thinks the number is higher...   Any undocumented alien who tried to [vote] would face 'tremendous' consequences -- including a maximum 5-year jail term as well as deportation, Lindback said."

2005-06-19
JS _Asbury Park NJ Press_
illegal immigration
"The opinion of Partha Banerjee, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, that children of illegal immigrants 'deserve' in-state tuition fees is another example of the entitlement mentality of the elite at the expense of the tax-paying citizens."

2005-06-19
Rachel Konrad _Contra Costa Times_
Programming Jobs Have Lost Their Luster in USA
Lakeland Ledger
Columbia Basin Herald
Akron Beacon Journal
North San Diego County Times
San Francisco Chronicle
"The 22-year-old Shanghai native graduated this month with a major in computer science and a minor in economics...   [He] begins work in the Fall as a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group [body shop], helping to lead projects at multi-national companies.   Consulting, he says, will insulate him from the off-shore out-sourcing that's sending thousands of once-desirable computer programming jobs over-seas.   More important, Mo believes his consulting gig is more lucrative, rewarding and imaginative than a traditional tech job...   As tens of thousands of engineering jobs migrate to developing countries, many new entrants into the U.S. work force see info tech jobs as monotonous, uncreative and easily farmed out - the equivalent of 1980s manufacturing jobs.   The research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that up to 15% of tech workers will drop out of the profession by 2010, not including those who retire or die.   Most will leave because they can't get jobs or can get more money or job satisfaction elsewhere.   Within the same period, worldwide demand for technology developers...is forecast to shrink by 30%...   The U.S. software industry lost 16% of its jobs from 2001 March to 2004 March, the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute found.   The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology industries laid off more than 7K American workers in the first quarter of 2005...   U.S. graduates probably shouldn't think of computer programming or chemical engineering as long-term careers but it's 'not all gloom and doom', said Albert C. Gray, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers...   Stanford listed [only] 268 job postings in its computer science jobs data-base in the Spring quarter -- roughly double the number from last year."

2005-06-19
Susan J. Demas _Saginaw News_
Laid-off dads focus on family as they comtemplate their futures
"Staying strong for his family is his primary concern, but [he] gruffly admits he still feels devastated...   Monday, [he] goes back to his routine of scanning the want ads and tracking down job leads...   'I'll be honest.   The job market is terrible.', he said with a sigh.   'It's real competitive with all the people out there looking for work.'...   With 7.6% non-seasonally adjusted unemployment in April, the Saginaw metropolitan area's economic outlook is even bleaker than that of Michigan -- which clocks in with the highest jobless rate in the nation at 6.6%...   [He] said governor Jennifer M. Granholm and the Legislature need to do more than help corporations in these tough economic times."

2005-06-19
Kevin G. Hall _Philadelphia Inquirer_/_Centre Daily Times_
As Red China rises, some fear unequal trade
Charlotte Observer
"Assessments of [Red China's] rise, including annual economic growth of 9.4% since 1978, are legion.   Just as a snap-shot, consider that subway systems are being built in 84 Chinese cities.   For a decade now, debate has swirled over whether [Red China] - a 'socialist market economy', according to its constitution - is a strategic trading partner or a budding rival.   Late last year, Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, author of a long-standard college economics textbook and an ardent supporter of free trade, suggested that [Red China's] growing economic might called into question whether free trade was a win-win game for America.   Samuelson said that open trade had helped the U.S. economy grow since World War II but that competition from abroad had driven down wages in lower-skill jobs.   Over time, [Red China] and India could displace [have been displacing] U.S. high-tech jobs, too, and more American wages could be cut to help the United States sustain competition.   Even though U.S. consumers get less-expensive [Red Chinese]-made goods, many Americans could be the net losers in such trade, he wrote.   Other experts say [Red China] trades by rules aimed at building its national power rather than economic exchange.   'What we've been calling free trade is not free trade.', said Clyde Prestowitz, a former top trade negotiator in the Reagan administration and author of the new book _Three Billion New Capitalists_.   In it, Prestowitz warns that [Red China] is building an export-based economy.   [Red China's] approach mirrors the mercantilist policies of 17th-century Europe, when kingdoms tried to minimize imports, maximize exports, and strictly administer their domestic economies to develop national wealth and power at the expense of their rivals."

2005-06-19
Wayne Tompkins _Louisville Courier-Journal_
Benefits and costs of global economy fall unevenly
"Kentucky sends thoroughbreds to the United Arab Emirates, liquor to Australia, cars to Canada and computer parts to Brazil.   Madisonville's GE engine plant sends $2.2G in turbojet and turbo propeller parts abroad, the state's largest export by dollar volume.   Kentucky also sends processed foods to Moldova and furniture products to Kuwait...   The reality for a laid-off apparel worker in south-central Kentucky, who lost her job to cheaper foreign labor, is vastly different than for a factory employee in Southern Indiana, who owes his high-paying job making kilns to a booming export market...   Whether globalization ultimately has hurt or helped the economies of Kentucky and Indiana is difficult to prove because officials say they only track the number of jobs created and not job losses...   Kentucky's exports, for example, have created about 142K jobs, and nearly 90K owe their jobs to foreign-owned companies located in the state, according to 2004 data from the Cabinet for Economic Development.   The state had 121K export-related jobs the previous year...   Thousands of other jobs have been out-sourced across the globe -- further reducing job options in both states for everyone from software engineers to reservations clerks.   Most of the 24K apparel industry jobs to leave Kentucky since 1991 also have gone over-seas.   Fewer than 9K remain in the state...   Since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, Kentucky's annual exports have jumped to $13G from $4.7G.   In the past 5 years alone, Indiana's exports have grown to more than $19G a year, up from $13G.   The state's exports of machinery and transportation equipment to Mexico alone have increased 10-fold during that period, now a combined $2G a year...   Sykes Enterprises, a Tampa, Fla.-based firm that operates call centers that provide technology help, once employed about 1K people in its Hazard and Pikeville facilities.   Blaming competitive pressures, Sykes closed the centers in 2003 and 2004.   The jobs were brought to the region in 1999 with $7.6M in state cash and incentives, most of which paid for training.   Today, many of those jobs are in El Salvador and other countries.   'We're losing jobs at an alarming rate, primarily manufacturing jobs.', said Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO...   Any job replacing it in smaller towns pays less and probably has few to no benefits, he said...   The [textile] industry has reported that it has lost more than 300K jobs since 2001...   'It's been a one-way street for the last 20 years.', said U.S. representative Ron Lewis, R-KY.   'We've had no tariffs on imports from the region [to be covered by CAFTA], and we've had significant tariffs on our exports, so I think it's a total win when we can eliminate those tariffs.'...   Lewis said that over the past 4 years the state's exports to the CAFTA countries jumped to $164M from $67M...   In December, Mayfield's German-owned Continental Tire plant ceased tire production, idling 730 workers.   'The same thing happened not too long ago in Elizabethtown with Gates Rubber.', a subsidiary of a British company, he said, referring to the 2004 loss of 430 jobs...   Indiana... has lost 100K manufacturing jobs since 1999...   About 230K Hoosiers are in export-supported jobs, and foreign-owned companies employ about 137K people, including more than 90K in manufacturing, the U.S. Department of Commerce said...   When apparel maker Oshkosh B'Gosh sent nearly 1K jobs out of Casey county during the 1990s for cheaper pastures in Honduras, the county was lef