Author: Serkadis

In e3, an update on Elsinore.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook wasn’t shy about the company’s focus through 2010, in a conversation with Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey. The talk took place at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this Tuesday in San Francisco, and was given before an audience of investors. An audio stream of the talk is available here.

In general, the talk was what you’d expect. Cook sang the praises of the company’s current offerings, and gave highest praise to the yet to be released iPad, a device for which the company obviously has very high expectations. But he also took time to frame one of the company’s weakest sellers in a fairly dismissive light.

Cook called Apple TV “a hobby” owing to its low sales numbers when compared to the Mac line. He did, however, state that Apple would continue to invest money into its hobby, if only because “our gut tells us there’s something there.” While being dismissive about a weak seller is a good strategy when talking to investors, I can’t imagine the comments made do much for consumer confidence in Apple’s set top box, and it must be especially disheartening to hear for those that already own the product.

While downplaying Apple’s role in the home theatre TV-viewing aspect of consumers lives, Cook also couldn’t stress enough the significance the Mac maker has in terms of its viewing on mobile devices. Much of the talk focused on the iPad, which is rumored to be gearing up for pre-sale later this week. Cook basically reiterated the company line regarding the iPad’s considerable web browsing, email and photo viewing capabilities, and he went after netbooks, too:

The netbook is not an experience people are going to continue wanting to have. When they play with the iPad and experience the magic of using it… I have a hard time believing they’re going to go for a netbook.

I suppose when asked how your new product, which occupies an entirely new category, is going to compete with a tried and tested strong seller, “magic” is as good an answer as any. But Cook emphasized the company’s confidence in the product by pointing out how focused it manages to keep its product line, despite the temptation to grow it further, owing to the high number of great ideas they have coming from the elite staff they hire. He also reminded investors about the pricing strategy Apple took with the iPad, saying “we didn’t want to leave a pricing umbrella for competition, so we got very aggressive on this.”

Cook also said he wasn’t afraid of the iPad cannibalizing sales of its other products. That point I agree with, though I would be very afraid of the opposite being true. It seems to me that a lot of potential iPad owners would probably be better suited by an iPhone/iPod touch or a computer. The iPad could do more to help people choose a lane than encourage them to straddle two.

Another area Cook addressed was Apple retail, revealing that Apple hopes to aim higher this year than it has in 2008 and 2009 in terms of new store openings. It’s been staying closer to the 25 stores per year bottom end of its target range owing to the recent international economic troubles, but it has 50 new locations planned for 2010. The expansion plans bode well for the future, since the company depends so much on direct sales.

U.S. customers hoping for an end to exclusivity will be disappointed by Cook’s comments regarding AT&T. He mainly discussed the advantages of a single carrier model, citing simplicity and the ability to work together in close partnership to introduce innovative new features. He also added that while Apple has seen more sales and higher profits in all the markets where multiple carriers have been introduced, that won’t necessarily be the case every time. Brave words considering there’s no data to back them up. Cook’s defense of the much-derided AT&T was definitely the low point of the talk, and struck me as fairly hollow overall.

The Bears’ brief rally yesterday has been completely wiped out.

Right now the Dow is up 103 points to 10,385 and moving steady. The NASDAQ is up 26 points or 1.16% to 2240 and the S&P 500 is up 10 points to 1104.

The Euro is seeing big gains too against the Dollar and the Pound.

Oil is up $0.55 to $79.41 a barrel. Gold is down $1 to $1102 as it tries to hold above the $1100 an ounce level.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Citi: Sentiment Won’t Stop Crashing And We’re Approaching 2009 Lows
• The Bulls Rampage! Equities Rally! Oil Soars! Gold Climbing!
• New Week Starts Off With Equities, Commodities Falling

To gauge the amount of sewage that flows from Oak Lawn households into interceptor sewers operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, village officials want to place devices called “flow meters” into the MWRD’s pipes.

But village officials say they’ve run into a snag because the MWRD is delaying giving the project the green light.

“We spent two hours talking about our request,” village manager Larry Deetjen said of a Feb. 17 meeting between the two agencies. “They repeatedly denied (it.)”

The plan calls for installing, beginning next month, 15 total flow meters in sanitary sewers, seven of which are owned by the MWRD.

Without their installation, village officials said the cost of Oak Lawn’s $400,000 Sanitary Sewer Master Plan would increase by $100,000 because Oak Lawn would have to install extra meters in adjacent village lines.

The MWRD has allowed other municipalities, including Tinley Park, to install similar devices in its sewers, Deetjen said at Tuesday night’s village board meeting.

Now, one week after their Feb. 17 meeting with the MWRD, Oak Lawn officials hope a letter from Mayor Dave Heilmann to MWRD board president Terry O’Brien will carry some weight.

Trustee Alex Olejniczak (2nd) said sewer problems have plagued the village for years and that the latest snag was particularly frustrating.

“For five years, we’ve been fighting a lot of bureaucracy,” he said.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

If you look hard enough, on any side of a big debate, you can find people who are really ignorant, but not afraid to speak their minds. And, yes, this certainly includes those who are concerned about what has become of copyright law. You may recall that writer Mark Helprin wrote an entire book based on taking a few dumb comments from Techdirt out of context, and pretending that they were representative of the views of those who think copyright law has some serious problems. So, you have to be careful not to take a few ignorant comments and extrapolate further viewpoints on a particular subject. Still, sometimes, you come across an example of someone who is so willfully ignorant that it’s difficult to know how to respond.

Take, for example, the ordeal that the site Torrentfreak recently went through, with famed 60s session musician Carol Kaye, who apparently doesn’t quite understand how BitTorrent (or, potentially, the internet) works. Somehow, she got it into her head that Torrentfreak — which is just a blog that writes about this stuff — was distributing her works in an unauthorized manner. Of course, as a blog site that doesn’t distribute any files, nothing could be further from the truth — and the Torrentfreak folks tried to politely explain this to Ms. Kaye. They even went so far as to offer to contact the admins of certain torrent tracker sites about removing links to the files she was concerned about.

Rather than admit her mistake (and maybe even thank them for their help) she sent a series of increasingly angry emails, such as the following:

You’re a liar, a pirate, and a thief and a no-body — you’re coming down buddy, don’t give me that run-around BS! Whoever you are, you’re THIEF AND A DELIBERATE PIRATE!

So much for helping. She also had her friends start emailing the TorrentFreak folks with similarly misguided emails. I’m reminded of a rather angry Hollywood lawyer who has blogged repeatedly bizarre (and totally false) claims about me — saying that I (seriously) command an army of hackers who will vehemently attack any musician or songwriter who dares to disagree with me. Perhaps some readers here get a bit aggressive in responding to questionable statements made by musicians/songwriters, but you can always find some people who go too far — on either side, as the experience of TorrentFreak demonstrates.

In the case of Carol Kaye, however, it looks like this isn’t the only time she’s been confused about how the internet works. Some folks note that on her own website is a statement suggesting that she thinks Google is responsible for unauthorized access to her content, and she’s expecting the FTC to fix that:

Please do not download any of my books/CDs from Google. I filed FTC Complaint #25172648 against Google for those illegal downloads, don’t be a pirate!

It might help if Ms. Kaye spoke to someone who could explain to her that Google is not the liable party here — and the FTC isn’t going to suddenly make Google liable just because Ms. Kaye is confused about how the internet works. But, then again, she might just accuse anyone who tries to help her of being a “thief.” Clearly, Ms. Kaye is angry about some of her content being available in an unauthorized manner online, and seems uninterested in actually understanding how the content got there or what she can legitimately do in response. It’s really too bad.

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Google’s ‘3D modeling department’ has been working overtime lately with a big number of updates, features and even competitions being revealed in a short period of time. The Building Maker web tool is now available in eight more cities and 25 new languages, Google says, and, as a reminder, the Model Your Town competition is getting ve… (read more)

Article Tags: Dan Pangburn, [email protected]

This is a comprehensive discussion of the science relating to the Global Warming issue and includes a fairly simple model (on page 15) that accurately predicts all average global temperatures since 1895 including the recent decline.

I observed the many conflicting assertions regarding the existence and cause of Global Warming, particularly as to whether it was significantly contributed to by human activity.
This led to substantial curiosity as to the truth. As a result I have conducted research on the issue for thousands of hours for over three years and have determined that the belief that human activity has had a significant influence on global climate is a mistake.

Greenhouse Analogy

This may be how the mistake began. Incorrect conclusions may have been drawn from various observations and discoveries. Some of the discoveries and developments are

Download PDF file to read FULL report by Dan Pangborn

Read in full with comments »

File attachment: ClimateChangeMistake.pdf
  

Shares of tax preparer H&R Block (HRB) fell yesterday as it weathered weak Q4 earnings and a downgrade from Oppenheimer.

Fast forward to today and H&R Block is really getting creamed. Shares are down 18% or $3.50 to $16.23 a share.

Bloomberg: Same-office tax returns prepared in retail operations fell 5.6 percent through Feb. 15 compared with the same period a year earlier, the Kansas City, Missouri-based company said today in a statement. Total tax returns prepared declined 6.3 percent.

“We believe industry filings are down significantly due to the recession and sustained, high levels of unemployment,” Chief Executive Officer Russ Smyth said in the statement. “The weak economic conditions have also contributed to a greater shift to do-it-yourself tax preparation methods.”

Welcome to the TurboTax generation, folks.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Sorry Republicans, Higher Taxes Will NOT Kill The Economy
• New York Unemployment Website Crashes Under The Weight Of Too Many Claimants
• UK Unemployment Unexpectedly Surges

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois is facing a deficit that could reach $13 billion this year and Gov. Pat Quinn wants Illinoisans to see the details.

Quinn’s budget office is launching a Web site Wednesday that will let people get a close up look at Illinois’ books.

The Web site is expected to show revenue and expenses for this fiscal year and estimates for next year.

The Democratic governor is gearing up for his March 10 budget address to lawmakers.

Quinn has proposed raising the state income tax to come up with more money.

Quinn says the state has to cut the budget, borrow money, rely on federal dollars and come up with more revenue to weather the financial crisis.

Republican candidate for governor Bill Brady says raising the income tax would drive jobs out of the state.

More information at www.budget.illinois.gov

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

John Cody reporting
CHICAGO (WBBM) – A coalition of prominent religious leaders is launching a campaign to keep video poker out of Illinois and particularly out of Chicago.

The Rev. Phillip Blackwell, Senior Pastor of downtown Chicago’s Methodist Temple, described a Harvard University tudy showing a 10 percent crime increase in neighborhoods where video poker machines are brought in.

He added: “We deeply care about the quality of our city institutions and do not want to see them ruined by the introduction of video poker machines,” which he described as the most addictive form of gambling.  He described it as “the crack cocaine of gambling.”

The interfaith group is calling for a moratorium on video gambling. They want Gov. Pat Quinn to prepare a state budget that contains no expectations of video poker revenue. They’re also asking for the gambling board to call a moratorium on video gambling expansion until public hearings are held.

The group is asking that every Chicago alderman hold hearings to let ward residents vote on the idea of video poker in their ward.

The Rev. Blackwell estimated that Chicago’s downtown 42nd Ward alone could end up with more than 2,000 video poker machines which, he says, is the same number of gambling positions at two giant river boat casinos. He said the 42nd Ward doesn’t need video gambling, and the city doesn’t need it.

The interfaith group is calling for a moratorium on video gambling which has been legalized in Illinois.  But 65 communities and four counties including Cook County have enacted a ban on the machines.

Chicago also has a ban on video gambling machines but the Rev. Blackwell says it’s possible some City Council members are looking to reverse that ordinance.

Among those also attending the Tuesday morning announcement of the anti-video poker drive:

• Rev. John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church
• Rev, Joy Rogers, dean of Saint James Episcopal cathedral
• Father Dan Mayall, pastor of Holy Name Cathedral
• Rev. Tom Grey, director of Illinois Stop Predatory Gambling
• Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward)

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

The nine Bartlett residents who’ll travel next month to Taiwan to perform as part of an international friendship chorus don’t mind they might not understand all the lyrics they’ll sing.

The chorus will perform both English and songs in Hakkanese, the language native to Miaoli City, Taiwan. Village President Michael E. Kelly on Tuesday declared Miaoli City as Bartlett’s Sister City, part of a newly-implemented village cultural exchange.

The chorus will perform at a Hakka music festival March 2-11. They’ll meet civic leaders including the mayor of Miaoli City, which has a population of more than 90,000 in northwest Taiwan.

English songs the chorus will sing include “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Every time I Feel the Spirit.” The trip is sponsored by The Arts in Bartlett.

“The only town that I’ve ever been (overseas) is the town my family is from in Tipperary, Ireland,” Kelly said. “This whole country, this whole town is made up, as we know, as a melting pot … nobody is better than the Taiwan people, they’re just such a tremendous credit to our village.”

Bartlett resident Mei Syun Lin is a native of Miaoli City and remains active in three Chinese outreach groups, including one that helps senior citizens. She helped get the village involved and wants to share her native culture with residents.

“We called it a friendship chorus because we are going to bring our friendship between two groups, our friendship to Taiwan,” Lin said.

Bartlett officials gave their Taiwanese counterparts several gifts to bring with them overseas: A key to the village, a village flag, a village history book and an image of the old Bartlett train station painted by resident Marilyn Winters.

Kelly wants Bartlett to have similar relationships with other international cities, especially one in India, pointing out that Bartlett’s Indian population is growing.

Resident Cecilia Green will be tweeting her experiences in Taiwan. Follow her on Twitter at cecgreen for updates.

“I’m most eager to meet the people and see some of the crafts of the Hakka people,” Green said.

Emily Lam, a Hong Kong native and Bartlett resident, has been helping Victory Centre of Bartlett’s Community Life Manager Rita Lopienski and the rest of the chorus with pronunciations of vocals in Mandarin and Hakkanese.

“We find that immediately we love the songs,” Lopienski said.

Perry Shen, director general of the Taipei economic and cultural office, accepted the gifts from Kelly with a smile.

“I believe this year will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the village of Bartlett and Miaoli City,” Shen said.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Okay, be honest…don’t let me wax all conspiracy-theory-like if this has been all over the news and I’ve just missed it (The Man bought me a new sewing machine and I’ve been preoccupied with making all the baby’s old receiving blankets into cute little PJ pants…). But, I really don’t think I’ve seen this anywhere…even FNC:

“In the face of a White House denial, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak stuck to his story yesterday that the Obama administration offered him a “high-ranking” government post if he would not run against U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary.

A White House official “vociferously” denied his account yesterday as Sestak insisted on national television that he had told the truth, but declined for a second day to divulge details.

“I was asked a direct question . . . and I answered it honestly,” Sestak said in a Fox News interview. “There’s nothing more to go into.”

Sestak made his startling claim Thursday during the taping of Comcast Network’s Larry Kane: Voice of Reason, a public affairs show televised on Sunday evenings.

“Were you ever offered a federal job to get out of this race?” Kane asked near the end of the 30-minute interview.

“Yes,” Sestak answered.

“Was it Navy secretary?” Kane asked.

“No comment,” Sestak replied…” (Read the whole story)

Regardless of the fact that Senator Specter kissed the ring…it has already been shown that just because Obama wants someone elected they don’t always get elected…and we all know that it’s time for PAT TOOMEY to take his rightful place in the Senate.

Toyota’s President and CEO Akio Toyoda will testify before the House Oversight Committee today on government regulation in the light of the company’s decision to recall over 8.5 million vehicles over unintended acceleration issues. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will also be on hand along with Yoshimi Inaba, President and COO of Toyota Motor North America and chairman and CEO of Toyota Motor Sales.

You can read the opening statements from Toyoda and Inaba here.

The hearings start at 11 a.m. so stay tuned for a link directing you to C-SPAN’s live streaming footage.

Update: Click here for C-SPAN’s live stream.

– By: Omar Rana

Filed under: Government/Legal, Recalls, Safety, Toyota, UK

Most of the vehicles Toyota has recalled as a result of the automakers issues with unintended acceleration span only the past few years, but there have been many reports that Toyota’s unwanted thrust issues may have gone back to 2004 or even earlier. Automotive News reports that the automaker appears to have had similar issues as far back as 1999, at least in the UK. According to the trade publication, Toyota recalled 10,919 Lexus IS200 models built between March 1999 and July 2000 for a floor mat issue that could lead to sudden acceleration. Now federal investigators are wondering why Toyota didn’t spread their recall over to the U.S.

Information about the UK recall was mentioned yesterday during congressional hearings with the Japanese automaker, and Toyota U.S.A. President Jim Lentz replied to questioning about the earlier floor mat issue saying “we didn’t do a very good job of sharing information across the globe.” Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey (D) contends that instead of tackling the issue in the states, Toyota instead “deployed lawyers and lobbyists and convinced the Department of Transportation that this was a small floor mat issue and not something more serious.”

While news of a much earlier recall in the UK for the same issue that has allegedly lead to 19 or more deaths in the U.S. has some lawmakers up in arms, Toyota insists that the floor mats from the IS200 recall were made in England and the design was not used here in the States. If the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds that Toyota failed to initiate a recall after it learned of a defect, the company could face a fine of $16.4 million. Toyota has until March 18 to provide “a chronology of all events that occurred in foreign countries with regard to interference between the accelerator pedal and the driver’s side floor mat in vehicles that are identical or substantially similar to any of the recalled U.S. vehicles.”

Tired of Toyota recall news? Try out the recall-free version of Autoblog.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]

Report: Toyota recalled floor mats in the UK ten years ago, didn’t recall in U.S. originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(This testimony is being delivered today to the House of Representatives)

Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and other members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve’s semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. I will begin today with some comments on the outlook for the economy and for monetary policy, then touch briefly on several other important issues.

The Economic Outlook
Although the recession officially began more than two years ago, U.S. economic activity contracted particularly sharply following the intensification of the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008. Concerted efforts by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and other U.S. authorities to stabilize the financial system, together with highly stimulative monetary and fiscal policies, helped arrest the decline and are supporting a nascent economic recovery. Indeed, the U.S. economy expanded at about a 4 percent annual rate during the second half of last year. A significant portion of that growth, however, can be attributed to the progress firms made in working down unwanted inventories of unsold goods, which left them more willing to increase production. As the impetus provided by the inventory cycle is temporary, and as the fiscal support for economic growth likely will diminish later this year, a sustained recovery will depend on continued growth in private-sector final demand for goods and services.

Private final demand does seem to be growing at a moderate pace, buoyed in part by a general improvement in financial conditions. In particular, consumer spending has recently picked up, reflecting gains in real disposable income and household wealth and tentative signs of stabilization in the labor market. Business investment in equipment and software has risen significantly. And international trade–supported by a recovery in the economies of many of our trading partners–is rebounding from its deep contraction of a year ago. However, starts of single-family homes, which rose noticeably this past spring, have recently been roughly flat, and commercial construction is declining sharply, reflecting poor fundamentals and continued difficulty in obtaining financing.

The job market has been hit especially hard by the recession, as employers reacted to sharp sales declines and concerns about credit availability by deeply cutting their workforces in late 2008 and in 2009. Some recent indicators suggest the deterioration in the labor market is abating: Job losses have slowed considerably, and the number of full-time jobs in manufacturing rose modestly in January. Initial claims for unemployment insurance have continued to trend lower, and the temporary services industry, often considered a bellwether for the employment outlook, has been expanding steadily since October. Notwithstanding these positive signs, the job market remains quite weak, with the unemployment rate near 10 percent and job openings scarce. Of particular concern, because of its long-term implications for workers’ skills and wages, is the increasing incidence of long-term unemployment; indeed, more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months or more, nearly double the share of a year ago.

Increases in energy prices resulted in a pickup in consumer price inflation in the second half of last year, but oil prices have flattened out over recent months, and most indicators suggest that inflation likely will be subdued for some time. Slack in labor and product markets has reduced wage and price pressures in most markets, and sharp increases in productivity have further reduced producers’ unit labor costs. The cost of shelter, which receives a heavy weight in consumer price indexes, is rising very slowly, reflecting high vacancy rates. In addition, according to most measures, longer-term inflation expectations have remained relatively stable.

The improvement in financial markets that began last spring continues. Conditions in short-term funding markets have returned to near pre-crisis levels. Many (mostly larger) firms have been able to issue corporate bonds or new equity and do not seem to be hampered by a lack of credit. In contrast, bank lending continues to contract, reflecting both tightened lending standards and weak demand for credit amid uncertain economic prospects.

In conjunction with the January meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), Board members and Reserve Bank presidents prepared projections for economic growth, unemployment, and inflation for the years 2010 through 2012 and over the longer run. The contours of these forecasts are broadly similar to those I reported to the Congress last July. FOMC participants continue to anticipate a moderate pace of economic recovery, with economic growth of roughly 3 to 3-1/2 percent in 2010 and 3-1/2 to 4-1/2 percent in 2011. Consistent with moderate economic growth, participants expect the unemployment rate to decline only slowly, to a range of roughly 6-1/2 to 7-1/2 percent by the end of 2012, still well above their estimate of the long-run sustainable rate of about 5 percent. Inflation is expected to remain subdued, with consumer prices rising at rates between 1 and 2 percent in 2010 through 2012. In the longer term, inflation is expected to be between 1-3/4 and 2 percent, the range that most FOMC participants judge to be consistent with the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment.

Monetary Policy
Over the past year, the Federal Reserve has employed a wide array of tools to promote economic recovery and preserve price stability. The target for the federal funds rate has been maintained at a historically low range of 0 to 1/4 percent since December 2008. The FOMC continues to anticipate that economic conditions–including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations–are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.

To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve is in the process of purchasing $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. We have been gradually slowing the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipate that these transactions will be completed by the end of March. The FOMC will continue to evaluate its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets.

In response to the substantial improvements in the functioning of most financial markets, the Federal Reserve is winding down the special liquidity facilities it created during the crisis. On February 1, a number of these facilities, including credit facilities for primary dealers, lending programs intended to help stabilize money market mutual funds and the commercial paper market, and temporary liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks, were allowed to expire.¹ The only remaining lending program for multiple borrowers created under the Federal Reserve’s emergency authorities, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, is scheduled to close on March 31 for loans backed by all types of collateral except newly issued commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) and on June 30 for loans backed by newly issued CMBS.

In addition to closing its special facilities, the Federal Reserve is normalizing its lending to commercial banks through the discount window. The final auction of discount-window funds to depositories through the Term Auction Facility, which was created in the early stages of the crisis to improve the liquidity of the banking system, will occur on March 8. Last week we announced that the maximum term of discount window loans, which was increased to as much as 90 days during the crisis, would be returned to overnight for most banks, as it was before the crisis erupted in August 2007. To discourage banks from relying on the discount window rather than private funding markets for short-term credit, last week we also increased the discount rate by 25 basis points, raising the spread between the discount rate and the top of the target range for the federal funds rate to 50 basis points. These changes, like the closure of most of the special lending facilities earlier this month, are in response to the improved functioning of financial markets, which has reduced the need for extraordinary assistance from the Federal Reserve. These adjustments are not expected to lead to tighter financial conditions for households and businesses and should not be interpreted as signaling any change in the outlook for monetary policy, which remains about the same as it was at the time of the January meeting of the FOMC.

Although the federal funds rate is likely to remain exceptionally low for an extended period, as the expansion matures, the Federal Reserve will at some point need to begin to tighten monetary conditions to prevent the development of inflationary pressures. Notwithstanding the substantial increase in the size of its balance sheet associated with its purchases of Treasury and agency securities, we are confident that we have the tools we need to firm the stance of monetary policy at the appropriate time.²

Most importantly, in October 2008 the Congress gave statutory authority to the Federal Reserve to pay interest on banks’ holdings of reserve balances at Federal Reserve Banks. By increasing the interest rate on reserves, the Federal Reserve will be able to put significant upward pressure on all short-term interest rates. Actual and prospective increases in short-term interest rates will be reflected in turn in longer-term interest rates and in financial conditions more generally.

The Federal Reserve has also been developing a number of additional tools to reduce the large quantity of reserves held by the banking system, which will improve the Federal Reserve’s control of financial conditions by leading to a tighter relationship between the interest rate paid on reserves and other short-term interest rates. Notably, our operational capacity for conducting reverse repurchase agreements, a tool that the Federal Reserve has historically used to absorb reserves from the banking system, is being expanded so that such transactions can be used to absorb large quantities of reserves.³ The Federal Reserve is also currently refining plans for a term deposit facility that could convert a portion of depository institutions’ holdings of reserve balances into deposits that are less liquid and could not be used to meet reserve requirements.⁴ In addition, the FOMC has the option of redeeming or selling securities as a means of reducing outstanding bank reserves and applying monetary restraint. Of course, the sequencing of steps and the combination of tools that the Federal Reserve uses as it exits from its currently very accommodative policy stance will depend on economic and financial developments. I provided more discussion of these options and possible sequencing in a recent testimony.⁵

Federal Reserve Transparency
The Federal Reserve is committed to ensuring that the Congress and the public have all the information needed to understand our decisions and to be assured of the integrity of our operations. Indeed, on matters related to the conduct of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve is already one of the most transparent central banks in the world, providing detailed records and explanations of its decisions. Over the past year, the Federal Reserve also took a number of steps to enhance the transparency of its special credit and liquidity facilities, including the provision of regular, extensive reports to the Congress and the public; and we have worked closely with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Congress, and private-sector auditors on a range of matters relating to these facilities.

While the emergency credit and liquidity facilities were important tools for implementing monetary policy during the crisis, we understand that the unusual nature of those facilities creates a special obligation to assure the Congress and the public of the integrity of their operation. Accordingly, we would welcome a review by the GAO of the Federal Reserve’s management of all facilities created under emergency authorities.⁶ In particular, we would support legislation authorizing the GAO to audit the operational integrity, collateral policies, use of third-party contractors, accounting, financial reporting, and internal controls of these special credit and liquidity facilities. The Federal Reserve will, of course, cooperate fully and actively in all reviews. We are also prepared to support legislation that would require the release of the identities of the firms that participated in each special facility after an appropriate delay. It is important that the release occur after a lag that is sufficiently long that investors will not view an institution’s use of one of the facilities as a possible indication of ongoing financial problems, thereby undermining market confidence in the institution or discouraging use of any future facility that might become necessary to protect the U.S. economy. An appropriate delay would also allow firms adequate time to inform investors through annual reports and other public documents of their use of Federal Reserve facilities.

Looking ahead, we will continue to work with the Congress in identifying approaches for enhancing the Federal Reserve’s transparency that are consistent with our statutory objectives of fostering maximum employment and price stability. In particular, it is vital that the conduct of monetary policy continue to be insulated from short-term political pressures so that the FOMC can make policy decisions in the longer-term economic interests of the American people. Moreover, the confidentiality of discount window lending to individual depository institutions must be maintained so that the Federal Reserve continues to have effective ways to provide liquidity to depository institutions under circumstances where other sources of funding are not available. The Federal Reserve’s ability to inject liquidity into the financial system is critical for preserving financial stability and for supporting depositories’ key role in meeting the ongoing credit needs of firms and households.

Regulatory Reform
Strengthening our financial regulatory system is essential for the long-term economic stability of the nation. Among the lessons of the crisis are the crucial importance of macroprudential regulation–that is, regulation and supervision aimed at addressing risks to the financial system as a whole–and the need for effective consolidated supervision of every financial institution that is so large or interconnected that its failure could threaten the functioning of the entire financial system.

The Federal Reserve strongly supports the Congress’s ongoing efforts to achieve comprehensive financial reform. In the meantime, to strengthen the Federal Reserve’s oversight of banking organizations, we have been conducting an intensive self-examination of our regulatory and supervisory responsibilities and have been actively implementing improvements. For example, the Federal Reserve has been playing a key role in international efforts to toughen capital and liquidity requirements for financial institutions, particularly systemically critical firms, and we have been taking the lead in ensuring that compensation structures at banking organizations provide appropriate incentives without encouraging excessive risk-taking.⁷

The Federal Reserve is also making fundamental changes in its supervision of large, complex bank holding companies, both to improve the effectiveness of consolidated supervision and to incorporate a macroprudential perspective that goes beyond the traditional focus on safety and soundness of individual institutions. We are overhauling our supervisory framework and procedures to improve coordination within our own supervisory staff and with other supervisory agencies and to facilitate more-integrated assessments of risks within each holding company and across groups of companies.

Last spring the Federal Reserve led the successful Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, popularly known as the bank stress tests. An important lesson of that program was that combining on-site bank examinations with a suite of quantitative and analytical tools can greatly improve comparability of the results and better identify potential risks. In that spirit, the Federal Reserve is also in the process of developing an enhanced quantitative surveillance program for large bank holding companies. Supervisory information will be combined with firm-level, market-based indicators and aggregate economic data to provide a more complete picture of the risks facing these institutions and the broader financial system. Making use of the Federal Reserve’s unparalleled breadth of expertise, this program will apply a multidisciplinary approach that involves economists, specialists in particular financial markets, payments systems experts, and other professionals, as well as bank supervisors.

The recent crisis has also underscored the extent to which direct involvement in the oversight of banks and bank holding companies contributes to the Federal Reserve’s effectiveness in carrying out its responsibilities as a central bank, including the making of monetary policy and the management of the discount window. Most important, as the crisis has once again demonstrated, the Federal Reserve’s ability to identify and address diverse and hard-to-predict threats to financial stability depends critically on the information, expertise, and powers that it has by virtue of being both a bank supervisor and a central bank.

The Federal Reserve continues to demonstrate its commitment to strengthening consumer protections in the financial services arena. Since the time of the previous Monetary Policy Report in July, the Federal Reserve has proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the regulations governing consumer mortgage transactions, and we are collaborating with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to assess how we might further increase transparency in the mortgage process.⁸ We have issued rules implementing enhanced consumer protections for credit card accounts and private student loans as well as new rules to ensure that consumers have meaningful opportunities to avoid overdraft fees.⁹ In addition, the Federal Reserve has implemented an expanded consumer compliance supervision program for nonbank subsidiaries of bank holding companies and foreign banking organizations.¹⁰

More generally, the Federal Reserve is committed to doing all that can be done to ensure that our economy is never again devastated by a financial collapse. We look forward to working with the Congress to develop effective and comprehensive reform of the financial regulatory framework.

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See Also:

• What On Earth Is The Fed Doing? They Should Wait Another Two Years Before Tightening
• Richard Bernstein: Find Me One Tightening Cycle Where The Fed Didn’t Start By Calling It A "Normalization"
• Morgan Stanley: Don’t Be Fooled, The Chinese Aren’t Really Tightening Lending At All

Picasa users with a passion for geotagging their photos have something to be happy about, Google has now enabled them to upload a photo straight from a Picasa Web Album to Panoramio, Google’s geotagging-inclined photo-sharing site, so they can share the interesting locations they’ve been to and their great talent for photography with the world. And while it’s at it, Google has also released an updated desktop client and Picasa 3.6 now supports 38 languages.

“Starting today, we are… (read more)

Article Tags: Met Office, World Temperatures

More than 150 years of global temperature records are to be re-examined by scientists in an attempt to regain public trust in climate science after revelations about errors and suppression of data.

The Met Office has submitted proposals for the reassessment by an independent panel in a tacit admission that its previous reports have been marred by their reliance on analysis by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

Two separate inquiries are being held into allegations that the CRU tried to hide its raw data from critics and that it exaggerated the extent of global warming.

In a document entitled Proposal for a New International Analysis of Land Surface Air Temperature Data, the Met Office says: “We feel it is timely to propose an international effort to reanalyse surface temperature data in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation.”

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Source: timesonline.co.uk

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Some more ugly data out of the Census department regarding new home sales:

Sales of new single-family houses in January 2010 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  This is 11.2 percent (±14.0%)* below the revised December rate of 348,000 and is 6.1 percent (±15.1%)* below the January 2009 estimate of 329,000.

The median sales price of new houses sold in January 2010 was $203,500; the average sales price was $254,500.  The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of January was 234,000.  This represents a supply of 9.1 months at the current sales rate.

Analysts had been looking for 325,000, so this is a solid miss.

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See Also:

• FINALLY! Here’s Your Latest Snapshot Of The Housing Market

Article Tags: Richard North

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Source: eureferendum.blogspot.com

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