Next year may be when Americans stop waiting for faster economic growth to make everything better again and finally learn to accept the current modest pace as good enough now and good enough later.More at that top link.
Even if lawmakers reach a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff's full impact, tax rates will still go up for many Americans, and government spending will go down.
Incomes, which have seen little growth during the recovery, are unlikely to start shooting higher. Aging consumers haven't regained their lost net worth and aren't ready to load up on new debt.
"It's a very different economy than what we've seen in the last 20 to 30 years," said Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research.
Gross domestic product has expanded at an average rate of just over 2% a year since the recession ended, and many economists expect more of the same in 2013.
That assumes a fiscal cliff deal. But the chances of a pact before year-end are now looking increasingly bleak, and a prolonged standoff could deal another blow to the fragile economy. The U.S. could fall back into recession, the Congressional Budget Office has said.
Even without a "cliff" shock, the National Association for Business Economics, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund all see 2013 growth at or just above 2%.
ITG's Blitz also thinks the U.S. will expand by about 2%, with some positive momentum in housing but not much improvement in consumer spending.
"What the economy is not going to do is accelerate toward the trend path where we were pre-recession," he said. "We're not going to make up that lost ground."
When German national Fabian Thylmann was arrested, he became known as the king of the porn industry. His sex company operates like a modern corporation, silently and digitally. He has become a major presence on the Internet, much like Amazon and Wikipedia.Interesting.
This single, lonely aspect of the ATS is all that matters to trunkfuls of self-proclaimed automotive cognoscenti gathering in car clubs and Internet chat rooms across the country. Their amusement will overflow at the latest challenger to BMW's decades-long hold on the sports-sedan scepter.More at the link.
Not so fast. Despite its flaws, the thrill of the ATS' drive is an impressive feat, and the car itself is a massive step in the right direction. Which is good, because frankly, it has to be.
This is Cadillac's first post-bankruptcy baby, a look at what General Motors' luxury division can do when it starts with a clean sheet of paper to design a car with global ambitions. It may come with an American accent, but it needs to speak to buyers in China and Europe as well. Much of Cadillac's image and future hinges on how well the ATS, which starts at $34,885, resonates at home and abroad.
So it's a good thing that this car's two strongest suits, its handling and its design, translate into every language.
Accomplished Washington journalist Jake Tapper, who has served the last four years as ABC’s senior White House correspondent and is a best-selling author, joins CNN as anchor of a new weekday program and CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, it was announced today by Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN/U.S.More at the New York Times, "Jake Tapper Leaves ABC News for CNN."
Tapper has been a widely-respected reporter in the nation’s capital for 14 years and his most recent book, The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, is currently on The New York Times best seller list. In his new role at CNN, he will be a key Washington, D.C. anchor and correspondent for CNN.
“We are thrilled to have Jake join CNN and take the helm of a brand new weekday program,” said Jautz. “Jake is an exceptional reporter and communicator, and we look forward to developing a program that takes advantage of all of his strengths, his passion and his knowledge of national issues and events.”
Wire-thin and slumped like a question mark, James Maley nurses a watered-down whiskey at the battered bar inside the King Eddy Saloon. Around him a boisterous crowd presses in. Maley taps a cracked fingernail nervously on his glass and stares warily at the newcomers.Well, it's probably for the better, right? Skid row's the roughest of rough-and-tumble hardscrabble habitats, so cleaning up the place is good policy. But if you're down and out downtown, this kind of gentrification can force a relocation to even more dangerous haunts. It's hard out there on the streets. Hopefully folks can hang on to a little stability and continuity.
They've come to see novelist John Fante's son, Dan Fante, read at the bar that inspired his father's 1939 classic "Ask the Dust." They're also here to experience skid row's last dive bar before it shuts down for renovations on Sunday.
"If this happened every day, I would never show up," says Maley, who lives in transitional housing a few blocks away.
Other time-worn regulars, many with leathery skin, bad teeth and watchful eyes, nod in agreement. The bar provides home and family for those who have neither. They come for community and to spend what little money they have on plastic pitchers of beer and $2.50 gin and tonics.
When the Fante reading ends, the interlopers quickly disperse.
"There go the slummers," says John Tottenham, a poet who has been coming to the King Eddy since the 1980s.
Chances are the crowds will be back when the bar reopens under new management. The owners plan to use old photos to restore the bar's Midcentury look. They hope to renovate the abandoned speak-easy in the basement and open the bar's windows that are covered by stucco, letting natural light into the place for the first time in decades.
They haven't finalized their plans, but one thing is for sure. Drinks won't come cheap at the new King Eddy.
The bar is located on the corner of 5th and Los Angeles streets in the King Edward Hotel, which was built in 1906 and was a tony destination for visitors to what was once a thriving commercial district. The hotel now provides low-income housing for many of King Eddy's regulars.
The pre-Prohibition era King Eddy is painted black. With neon beer signs providing most of its light, the room is dim and gloomy. Its black-and-white checkered floor is grimy. Plastic beer flags hang from the ceiling and the place smells of stale smoke and disinfectant.
The bar itself, shaped in a square, commands the center of the room, with cracked vinyl banquettes lining the perimeter. A glassed-in smoking space is set off to the side. Behind the bar is a tiny fluorescent-lighted kitchen where prepackaged burgers, pizza and sandwiches are heated in a microwave. A beer and burrito would set a person back only $4.
Next week, Maley and the other dislodged drinkers will have to find another bar, but they face a new downtown landscape of high-end mixology bars, restaurants and Brazilian waxing salons...
In the few minutes it takes to read this article, chances are you'll pause to check your phone, answer a text, switch to your desktop to read an email from the boss's assistant, or glance at the Facebook FB -1.43% or Twitter messages popping up in the corner of your screen. Off-screen, in your open-plan office, crosstalk about a colleague's preschooler might lure you away, or a co-worker may stop by your desk for a quick question.Continue reading.
And bosses wonder why it is tough to get any work done.
Distraction at the office is hardly new, but as screens multiply and managers push frazzled workers to do more with less, companies say the problem is worsening and is affecting business.
While some firms make noises about workers wasting time on the Web, companies are realizing the problem is partly their own fault.
Even though digital technology has led to significant productivity increases, the modern workday seems custom-built to destroy individual focus. Open-plan offices and an emphasis on collaborative work leave workers with little insulation from colleagues' chatter. A ceaseless tide of meetings and internal emails means that workers increasingly scramble to get their "real work" done on the margins, early in the morning or late in the evening. And the tempting lure of social-networking streams and status updates make it easy for workers to interrupt themselves.
"It is an epidemic," says Lacy Roberson, a director of learning and organizational development at eBay Inc. EBAY -0.25% At most companies, it's a struggle "to get work done on a daily basis, with all these things coming at you," she says.
Office workers are interrupted—or self-interrupt—roughly every three minutes, academic studies have found, with numerous distractions coming in both digital and human forms. Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task, says Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies digital distraction.
Companies are experimenting with strategies to keep workers focused. Some are limiting internal emails—with one company moving to ban them entirely—while others are reducing the number of projects workers can tackle at a time.
Last year, Jamey Jacobs, a divisional vice president at Abbott Vascular, a unit of health-care company Abbott Laboratories, ABT -0.24% learned that his 200 employees had grown stressed trying to squeeze in more heads-down, focused work amid the daily thrum of email and meetings.
"It became personally frustrating that they were not getting the things they wanted to get done," he says. At meetings, attendees were often checking email, trying to multitask and in the process obliterating their focus.
Part of the solution for Mr. Jacobs's team was that oft-forgotten piece of office technology: the telephone.
Mr. Jacobs and productivity consultant Daniel Markovitz found that employees communicated almost entirely over email, whether the matter was mundane, such as cake in the break room, or urgent, like an equipment issue.
The pair instructed workers to let the importance and complexity of their message dictate whether to use cellphones, office phones or email. Truly urgent messages and complex issues merited phone calls or in-person conversations, while email was reserved for messages that could wait.
Democrats stopped basking in the afterglow of President Barack Obama's re-election victory and abruptly lowered their outlook on the economy this month, as fears of the "fiscal cliff" dominate year-end headlines, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll released Tuesday.
The Economic Optimism Index dropped to a year low of 45.1 in December from 48.6 in November, the second straight decline, with sentiment among Democrats falling by 8.2 points to 65.6.
Republican economic sentiment, which hit a record low right after the Nov. 6 vote, dipped 1.1 points to a new low of 23.7 in December. Readings below 50 indicate pessimism.
"Consumer confidence is driven largely by party affiliation," said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelli gence, which conducted the poll.
Given the wide partisan disparity, a truer indicator could be how independents feel, he added. They turned slightly gloomier too, slipping to 42.3 from 44.
An earlier run-up in sentiment was first led by Democrats in September, when the successful presidential convention boosted re-election prospects and brightened their views on the economy. The index advanced further in October as Mitt Romney's strong debate performance lifted Republican sentiment.
But the election brought the index back down. A separate survey Tuesday also found it devastated hopes among small-business owners worried about regulation and ObamaCare costs.
The National Federation of Independent Business' sentiment gauge dropped 5.6 points to 87.5 last month, the lowest since March 2010. The share of small businesses positive about the economic outlook fell from a net 2% to a deeply pessimistic -35%.
Welcome to the Photo Wars.
Instagram on Wednesday disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications. The move escalates tensions between the two companies, which were once friends in the battle against Facebook but have now become direct competitors.
In a status update on Twitter’s Web site, the company said Instagram had disabled its integration with Twitter cards, which are used to display images and content within Twitter messages.
“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter,” the post said. “This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience.”
Speaking at the LeWeb technology conference, Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, confirmed that the company has removed the ability to send pictures to Twitter, and plans to completely cut off embedding pictures on the Twitter Web site.
“We’ve decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web site,” Mr. Systrom said, noting that Instagram images will soon no longer be visible on Twitter. “Obviously things change as a company evolves.”
Mr. Systrom did not say when images will cesase to show up on the site.
A wise judge once wrote in dissent that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Let us now extend that wisdom to presidential elections.Well, there you go. It's going to a long quadrennial.
Barack Obama says his election victory is a mandate to pursue the policy course he's insisting on in negotiations with Republicans on the fiscal cliff. He wants a tax increase of $1.6 trillion, $50 billion of new and immediate stimulus spending and the end of congressional approval to raise the ceiling on U.S. debt—the debt that a ratings agency downgraded in 2011.
The campaign stump speech in which Mr. Obama demanded that Congress cede him control over the debt ceiling slips my mind. But we all recall his repeated cries for increasing taxes on "the wealthiest" ($200,000 individual/$250,000 joint), so arguably he has a claim to that. Consequences do come with the democratic habit of holding elections.
But if that is true, then Republicans are justified in citing the consequences of the message of the midterm election held a mere two years ago. In 2010, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives. Less noted but as important in measuring the nation's desires, that election gave the GOP control of the largest number of state legislatures it had held since 1928. A similar surge occurred for Republican governors.
Last time I looked, the progressive movement still hadn't turned Washington, D.C., into the only political jurisdiction of consequence in the United States. The message of the 2010 election, for Republicans anyway, was unambiguous: Slow down the runaway public-spending train, the spending train that caused the nation's voters to torch and punish Republicans in the 2006 midterms.
On the available evidence, a Republican who forgets those recent elections is headed for retirement. So naturally Barack Obama wants John Boehner and the Republicans in control of the House to forget those elections.
Bear in mind as we spend the holidays on this precipice, that the "fiscal cliff" wasn't born yesterday. It crawled out of its crypt in late 2011, after the Republican leadership and Mr. Obama—the deficit-reduction "super committee"—failed to negotiate essentially the same deal they are failing to get done now.
The inability of this Congress and this president to compromise on anything, now or at any time in the past four years, is itself a problem worthy of some thought.
Here's one thought: The main reason there isn't, and may never be, a solution on the fiscal cliff is that Barack Obama doesn't know how to do a political compromise. Where in his career did Barack Obama ever learn the art of the political deal? Nowhere.
When President Obama needed a business executive to come to his campaign defense, Jim Sinegal was there. The Costco co-founder, director and former CEO even made a prime-time speech at the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte. So what a surprise this week to see that Mr. Sinegal and the rest of the Costco board voted to give themselves a special dividend to avoid Mr. Obama's looming tax increase. Is this what the President means by "tax fairness"?These idiots who pound the table for higher taxes are the first to cash out when the bill's about to come due for the rest of us. Gee thanks Baracky!
Specifically, the giant retailer announced Wednesday that the company will pay a special dividend of $7 a share this month. That's a $3 billion Christmas gift for shareholders that will let them be taxed at the current dividend rate of 15%, rather than next year's rate of up to 43.4%—an increase to 39.6% as the Bush-era rates expire plus another 3.8% from the new ObamaCare surcharge.
More striking is that Costco also announced that it will borrow $3.5 billion to finance the special payout. Dividends are typically paid out of earnings, either current or accumulated. But so eager are the Costco executives to get out ahead of the tax man that they're taking on debt to do so.
Shareholders were happy as they bid up shares by more than 5% in two days. But the rating agencies were less thrilled, as Fitch downgraded Costco's credit to A+ from AA-. Standard & Poor's had been watching the company for a potential upgrade but pulled the watch on the borrowing news.
We think companies can do what they want with their cash, but it's certainly rare to see a public corporation weaken its balance sheet not for investment in the future but to make a one-time equity payout. It's a good illustration of the way that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's near-zero interest rates are combining with federal tax policy to distort business decisions.
One of the biggest dividend winners will be none other than Mr. Sinegal, who owns about two million shares, while his wife owns another 84,669. At $7 a share, the former CEO will take home roughly $14 million. At a 15% tax rate he'll get to keep nearly $12 million of that windfall, while at next year's rate of 43.4% he'd take home only about $8 million. That's a lot of extra cannoli.
This isn't exactly the tone of, er, shared sacrifice that Mr. Sinegal struck on stage in Charlotte. He described Mr. Obama as "a President making an economy built to last," adding that "for companies like Costco to invest, grow, hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires something from all of us." But apparently $4 million less from Mr. Sinegal.
By the way, the Costco board also includes at least two other prominent tub-thumpers for higher taxes— William Gates Sr. and Charles Munger. Mr. Gates, the father of Microsoft's Bill Gates, has campaigned against repealing the death tax and led the fight to impose an income tax via referendum in Washington state in 2010. It lost. Mr. Munger is Warren Buffett's longtime Sancho Panza at Berkshire Hathaway BRKB +0.13% and has spoken approvingly of a value-added tax that would stick it to the middle class.
Costco's chief financial officer, Richard Galanti, confirms that every member of the board is also a shareholder. Based on the most recent publicly available data, they own more than 4.1 million shares and more than 1.3 million options to purchase additional shares. At $7 a share, the dividend will distribute roughly $29 million to the board, including Mr. Sinegal's $14 million—at a collective tax saving of about $8 million. Even more cannoli.
Through 10 months of this year, no compact car has sold better than the Honda Civic. Not the Toyota Corolla, the Ford Focus, the Chevy Cruze nor the Hyundai Elantra.I'm glad they reworked it. I might get another one of those things. Who knows?
That's nothing new for Honda or its popular economy car, long a favorite of car critics. Such are the royalties earned from years of consistent reliability, fuel efficiency and strong resale value.
And yet Honda on Thursday trotted out a thoroughly updated Civic at the Los Angeles Auto Show, hoping in part to appease auto critics who almost universally panned the 2012 redesign. The hard plastic interior was called cut-rate, the road and wind noise excessive, the handling sloppy. Consumer Reports, the endorsement perhaps most prized by automakers, stripped the Civic of its “recommended” label in an increasingly competitive small car segment.
The company was caught off guard by the rapidly improving quality of the Civic's peers.
"We underestimated the expectations ... that [customers] had for Honda," said John Mendel, executive vice president for Honda America. So the company scrambled to make the Civic competitive, Mendel said.
Photos: Honda rushes redesign of new Civic
Acknowledging the car's weaknesses, the company recently invited reporters to drive the before and after versions at its U.S. headquarters in Torrance, using the current car as the foil to highlight the virtues of its replacement.
If a short preview drive is any indication, Honda can expect continued sales success.
The name of the program now escapes me. Several months ago, while flipping channels with the remote, I stopped on an MTV show about a working mom whose whole life was upended when her partner announced that he was splitting. It caught my attention because this mother lived in a nice apartment that looked like one in my suburban New Jersey town, and she was applying for food stamps.RTWT.
This wasn't your caricature "taker"—the woman had a real job. With her partner leaving, however, she could no longer afford the rent, and she would have trouble providing for her two young boys alone. As she walked up to an office to sign up for food stamps, she said something like, "I can't believe I am applying for public assistance."
Her situation provoked two questions. First, how could her boyfriend just abandon his sons without having to pay child support? Second, what is the conservative response to a woman who finds herself in this situation?
The show comes back to me in wake of the thumping Mitt Romney took in the presidential election among the demographic this mom represents: unmarried women. During the 2012 campaign, we conservatives had great sport at the expense of the Obama administration's "Life of Julia"—a cartoon explaining the cradle-to-grave government programs that provided for Julia's happy and successful life.
The president, alas, had the last laugh. For the voting blocs that went so disproportionately for the president's re-election—notably, Latinos and single women—the Julia view of government clearly resonates. To put it another way, maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don't find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.
The dominant media conclusion from this is that the Republican Party is cooked unless it surrenders its principles. I'm not so sure. To the contrary, it strikes me that now is a pretty good time to get back to principles—and to do more to show people who gave President Obama his victory why their dreams and families would be better served by a philosophy of free markets and limited government.
Opening their doors earlier than ever for Black Friday paid off for retailers as shoppers mobbed malls thick with sales across the Southland, snapping up electronics, toys and other deals.LAist has more on that, "Local Walmart Workers Stage Black Friday Walkout [VIDEO]."
Hundreds of bargain hunters surged toward the Glendale Galleria before midnight, some banging on one entrance and shouting to be let in. At the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, shoppers rushing into Urban Outfitters shattered a glass door. Mall traffic was a nightmare throughout Southern California.
Despite the chaos, early signs point to a blockbuster shopping day for merchants — with stores raking in even more than the record $11.4 billion for Black Friday they reported last year. More comprehensive numbers are expected Sunday.
"Overall it was a smash hit," said Britt Beemer, a retail expert at America's Research Group who has been tracking holiday sales nationally for more than three decades. "In all the years I have been out, I have never seen such crowds in my life."
Target, Sears and the Disney Store reported a surge in customers. Wal-Mart said it was the retail behemoth's best Black Friday sale ever. Mall operators saw long lines, and shoppers scooped up even some full-price items as well as bargains in stores and online.
The shopping frenzy cheered merchants and Wall Street, which enjoyed a big boost Friday.
There was no violence reported in Southern California, where last year at least 10 people were injured when a shopper used pepper spray to ward off rivals at a Porter Ranch Wal-Mart.
But protests erupted over working conditions at dozens of Wal-Marts nationwide, including one that led to the arrest of nine people blocking a street in Paramount. And two people were shot in what police said was a scuffle over a parking spot at a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee, Fla.
