Category: News

Housing starts dropped 4% in December, in a sharp reversal compared to November’s +10.7% jump.

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HOUSING STARTS Privately-owned housing starts in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 557,000. This is 4.0 percent (±9.3%)* below the revised November estimate of 580,000, but is 0.2 percent (±11.5%)* above the December 2008 rate of 556,000. Single-family housing starts in December were at a rate of 456,000; this is 6.9 percent (±8.5%)* below the revised November figure of 490,000. The December rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 92,000. An estimated 553,800 housing units were started in 2009. This is 38.8 percent (±1.4%) below the 2008 figure of 905,500.

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See the Commerce Department release here >

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See Also:

• Zillow Booming During The Housing Downturn
• Homebuilders Index Slips Again In January, Confirming The Housing Double Dip
• The Evidence Piles Up That Housing Is Double Dipping

Man, Warren Buffett is not happy about Kraft’s (KFT) acquisition of Cadbury.

Kraft is now off 2%, after the Berkshire Hathaway CEO told CNBC that he would vote “no” on the Cadbury deal if he could, and that the directors acted irresponsibly when they proposed to issue more stock for the deal.

Specifically, he was angry about the fact that the 78-page proxy didn’t once mention whether the directors felt that Kraft shares were undervalued, and since you’re issuing more shares, you should be able to say whether you’re getting fair value for them.

So the question is: will Buffett sell his Kraft shares? Probably not, because he says the stock is still undervalued.

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See Also:

• Buffett: We’re Not Hiring New People Because Our Order Book Still Sucks
• LIVE: Warren Buffett Talks Wells Fargo, The Economy, And The Bernanke On CNBC
• It’s Official: Cadbury Surrenders To Kraft’s Sweetened Offer

No description for this product could be found, but have a look over at Amazon for reviews and other information.

This afternoon First Lady Michelle Obama will deliver remarks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ 78th Winter Meeting at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington. DC. She will address the problem of childhood obesity and the devastating impact it has on the health of the nation and communities around the country. Mrs Obama will be recognizing the important role mayors play in pursuing comprehensive solutions to improve children’s health.

One of the tenants of the Obama Administration, concerning health care, is a focus on preventative measures that can be taken in an effort to alleviate some diseases. The First Lady has been at the forefront of prevention with her focus on healthy eating, the promotion of local, organically grown produce, and now childhood obesity. We here at MOW applaud Mrs Obama willingness to tackle such a challenging issue.

More to come …

Posted by Aminah Hanan

L’heure de la phase II a sonné pour le discret Mazda 5. Le constructeur n’y est pas allé de main morte et le « 5″ ressort transifguré, esthetiquement en tous cas, de l’opération.

–> Le Mazda 5 restylé sera présenté à Genève en mars prochain. Histoire de teaser un peu sur son grand monospace, la firme diffuse quelques photos en avant-première. Le nouveau style du « 5″ s’harmonise avec le reste de la gamme, et prend même de profil un air de précurseur de l’évolution de Mazda, avec cette ligne en vague, qu’on devrait retrouver sur d’autres modèles à venir. Le constructeur nomme ce style « Nagare flow », du nom du concept car de 2006.

-Côté technique, quelques évolutions déjà révélées:

• Le 2.0 Diesel DISI de 143cv. voit sa conso, et donc ses rejets de CO², diminuer de 15% ( 6,1l. en cycle mixte ). Il bénéficiera désormais d’un stop&start et d’une boite manuelle à 6 rapports.
• Le 1,8 essence devrait voir lui aussi ses consommations évoluer à la baisse ( pas de chiffres ), avec l’adjonction d’une boite manuelle 6 en lieu et place de la 5 vitesses actuelle.

-Le « 5″ conserve bien entendu ses portes coulissantes, mais Mazda annonce une évolution de sa modularité intérieure, le système maison « karakuri » ne donnant pas entière satisfaction.

–> Si le restyling parait très convaincant à l’intérieur, bien qu’une seule photo de la planche de bord, toute nouvelle, soit diffusée, l’extérieur est peut-être moins convaincant. Bien sur le style évolue en profondeur et peut séduire, mais les portes coulissantes sont toujours aussi pénalisantes à ce niveau (rails). Bien sur, comme toujours avec les photos de nouveaux modèles, à confirmer en live…

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… materials to higher value hydrocarbon-based fuels or carbon materials, announced today a Joint Venture to develop, build, own and operate several facilities with Phoenix Renewable Energy for the processing of scrap tires. The JV will have rights …

Take a look at our blogroll. Do a Google search for “BlackBerry blog.” You’ll notice tons and tons of them. Why so many blogs, then, devoted to one topic? Because we all approach it from different angles. This is nice for readers, who can pick the one that best fits their BlackBerry needs. Plus, since we tend to interlink, you can keep up with most others as well. It’s great for the bloggers, too. No one person can think of everything. I love reading the stable of BlackBerry blogs because it gives me ideas for BBGeeks posts, both directly and indirectly. Today’s is a direct influence, from Robb at RIMarkable, one of the good guys in the blogosphere. He has an excellent tip for quickly and easily sending contact information to any email address or BlackBerry user.

(more…)

Despite a relatively solid beginning to 2010, investors may be longing now for the easy months that followed the worst point of the bear market last year.Investors found it difficult to go wrong in the stock market in 2009.

Most categories of stocks rose, and growth stocks, in particular, were an easy bet as investors began to anticipate an economic recovery and bought technology, retailing and energy companies.

But now, after riding growth stocks, companies that have the fastest-growing earnings and revenue, investors have hesitated.

The strong rally ahead of the current earnings-reporting season “has investors wondering if fourth-quarter-earnings expectations have gotten too lofty, and if companies will be able to beat by enough to keep the rally going,” said David Bianco, chief U.S. equity strategist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

In 2009, growth stocks in the Russell 3000 index, which makes up nearly all U.S. stocks, were a clear standout, providing a 34.6 percent advance compared with 16.4 in the Russell 3000 value index. Among the large stocks in the Russell 1000, growth also outperformed.

But investors have seemed less sure of growth stocks lately as they have digested still-high unemployment figures and attempts by China’s government to slow growth somewhat.

The Russell 3000 growth stock index is up 2.8 percent this year, compared with the value index’s 3.9 percent advance.

And as they move from one type of stock to another during the recent uncertainty, market watchers are struggling to find a trend that investors can latch onto with conviction.

“The only clear trend is the lack of leadership,” the Leuthold Group said in a recent report to clients.

With the churn from one sector to another, Tuesday’s beneficiaries were health care stocks, which are growth stocks that have lagged recently.

They rose about 2 percent as a group, as investors grasped at relatively cheap stocks that they speculated could be beneficiaries if a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts prevents Democrats from enacting a health care overhaul.

Other recent winners have been tobacco stocks, which are more insulated from frugal consumer behavior than companies that sell discretionary products. Technology stocks that were hot late last year lost some steam last week.

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.

If you want a clear example of just how convoluted the entire music industry is right now, it doesn’t get any better than the latest video from the band-turned-Internet sensation OK Go which YouTube helped make famous. They’ve got a new album coming out and naturally they want to promote it with a new video as well. This is whe… (read more)

Filed under: Government/Legal, Technology, Chevrolet, Electric

The onslaught of electric vehicles expected to hit the market over the next five years, such as the Chevrolet Volt (pictured above), is keeping many local power utilities up at night. The dilemma has to do with the power supply – more specifically, how to feed the increased demand on the grid down to the household level.

There isn’t really a shortage of power, experts say. However, while your electric company has built the infrastructure to keep your microwave, HDTV and computer all running simultaneously without dimming the kitchen lights, an anticipated flood of innovative all-electric cars concurrently guzzling electrons off the system in private garages may lead to household circuit breakers tripping and street corner transformers burning out.

Not to worry, say the utilities. While it is a challenge that they must address, there is something working in their favor… cost. As is often the case with new technologies, the high selling price of the early all-electric cars (expected to hit $40,000 or more… or less) allows the power companies to anticipate which neighborhoods need upgrading first – now, that’s electrifying insight.

[Source: Detroit Free Press]

Report: Power companies need to upgrade grid to prepare for electric cars originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ducati’s British division launched today a ‘one-make series’ based on Ducati’s 848 Superbike. Dubbed the 848 Challenge, the series include fifteen races, eight rounds, four world championship circuits, two overseas rounds and two thousand pounds worth of Ducati Corse Riding Gear.

The 848 Challenge race series will be run over eight rounds, six in the UK and two in Europe incorporating four world championship circuits. Each of the UK rounds will host two races. Misano will also hold two… (read more)

As an employer of nearly a quarter of a million folks, Warren Buffett has a great sense of the hiring situation in the US.

In his interview on CNBC, which we’ve got full coverage of here, he explains pretty simply why he’s not in the mood to hire: sales still suck.

“We’re worrying about hiring people because of what’s going in our order book… we’re not getting orders yet.”

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See Also:

• LIVE: Warren Buffett Talks Wells Fargo, The Economy, And The Bernanke On CNBC
• Sorry, Folks, There’s No Way You Can "Invest Like Warren Buffett"
• In Just The Last Week, Job Creation And Business Confidence Tumbled Again

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/shiller69

Like xkcd, I have been known to marvel at the compact efficiency of modern flash storage, but I’d never sleep with it. Not sober, at least. [xkcd]

by Roger Alford

Paul Caron at Tax Prof Blog has just published the annual rankings for law professor blogs. There is some very useful information, including overall traffic numbers and details on which blogs are growing and declining in numbers. (Opinio Juris is now ranked 16th overall and is among the top ten in percentage annual increases).

As I have reported before, it is one thing to have good traffic numbers and another to be well read. Here are the rankings of the stickiest law professor blogs (with Caron’s rankings in parenthesis):

1. 3:30 Althouse (3)
2. 3:10 Jack Bog’s Blog (9)
3. 2:40 Antitrust & Competition Policy Blog (34)
4. 2:35 Election Law Blog (33)
5. 2:27 Mirror of Justice (28)
6. 2:25 The Right Coast (19)
7. 2:23 Sentencing Law & Policy (11)
8. 2:21 Religion Clause (24)
9. 2:17 Sports Law Blog (25)
10. 2:15 Legal History Blog (27)
11. 2:13 Dissenting Justice (26)
12. 2:10 Prawfsblawg (13)
13. 2:05 Faculty Lounge (15)
14. 2:01 Opinio Juris (16)
15. 2:00 Balkinization (14)
16. 1:49 Patently-O (7)
17. 1:46 The Conglomerate (22)
18. 1:41 Immigration Prof Blog (23)
19. 1:40 White Collar Crime Prof Blog (20)
20. 1:40 Workplace Prof Blog (17)
21. 1:36 Legal Profession Blog (31)
22. 1:29 Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (21)
23. 1:22 Concurring Opinions (11)
24. 1:16 Legal Writing Prof Blog (30)
25. 1:15 CrimProf Blog (32)
26. 1:13 Leiter Law School Reports (12)
27. 1:07 Ideoblog (29)
28. 1:06 Discourse.net (18)
29. 1:04 Leiter Reports: Philosophy (6)
30. 0:32 Hugh Hewitt (4)
30. 0:32 Tax Prof Blog (5)
32. 0:31 Volokh Conspiracy (2)
33. 0:23 Legal Insurrection (8)
34. 0:00 Instapundit (1)

Performance testing is a notoriously difficult undertaking. So much so, in fact, that it is sometimes not done at all, or only done when a performance problem arises in production, making some sort of investigation unavoidable.

Testing the performance characteristics of a system in advance of its rollout is particularly difficult, because it’s hard to know how to simulate real-world usage situations. Developer and QA-lab setups rarely replicate real-world environments. In the real world, machines have fragmented hard disks, superfluous extra files on the file system, anti-virus and other software running, etc., while end-users do crazy things like start and stop applications, run hard-disk searches, flush the browser cache, leave Gmail, Skype, and other "chatty" applications running in the background, and so on.  This can all affect the performance of WCM or DAM applications in particular. The real world of end-users (and of real servers running in real data centers) is not easily duplicated in a sandbox environment.

Some CMS vendors (for example, PaperThin and Sitecore) provide built-in reporting capability for determining time-to-render for various content elements. But in general, onboard profiling capability is woefully lacking from most WCM and DAM systems.

A few vendors are beginning to delve more deeply into this area. One that does is Day Software: The next release of its Communiqué offering (version 5.3, slated for March) has what I might call (tongue in cheek) pervasive thermometry. Almost any operation that takes (or can take) a noticeable length of time has a thermometer bar or other progress indicator associated with it, and in many cases a comparative bar-graph is available at the click of a button. The bar graphs are drawn using the Google Charts API, which means that a graph can be stored, sent, and managed as a bookmark — the charts are essentially REST URLs.

As with any vendor — and especially Day — you need to be careful that the engineering vision of a reporting subsystem is matched by its usability.  So Day customers will want to test closely when it comes out. 

Until more CMS or DAM systems start offering good tools for profiling or performance monitoring, we recommend that you be sure to address those requirements up front.  Make it part of your requirements process, before undertaking a system implementation, or for that matter, before choosing a vendor. Determine ahead of time what your performance goals are — then put them in writing, in your RFPs and RFIs. Structure them into purchase agreements as well. "Pay for performance" isn’t a bad policy. But if you don’t spell it out, it’s like anything else; it won’t get implemented.

A fifth teen has been charged in the beating death of Fenger High School student Derrion Albert, authorities said tonight.

Lapoleon Colbert, 19, was charged today with first-degree murder in connection to the Sept. 24 death in front of a Roseland community center, according to Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

Colbert, who another law enforcement source said was of the 0-99 block of West 113th Street, is expected to appear for a bond hearing Wednesday at the Cook County Criminal Courts Building.

Footage of Albert’s death, captured on a camcorder, caused a firestorm after it was circulated over the Internet and to news outlets nationwide.

Daly said that Colbert’s image was captured on a videotape of the attack, but she could not say if he was seen on the widely publicized camcorder tape.

Albert’s death, part of a melee between neighborhood teens and those who lived in the Altgeld Gardens-area, prompted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to visit Chicago last October to talk about what the Obama administration is doing to combat youth violence.

Already charged with murder in Albert’s death are Silvonus Shannon, 19, Eugene Riley, 18, Eric Carson, 16, and a 14-year-old boy charged as a juvenile.

– Staff report

Even though nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China will account for most the world’s growth over the next five years, here’s why it actually sucks to be a BRIC.

As shown in this chart from the Financial Times, people living in exciting-growth BRICs nations will remain unexcitingly poor for a long time to come. Meanwhile, the boring developed nations will keep getting richer. This relationship won’t change for a very, very long time. (Via Paul Kedrosky)

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See Also:

• BEFORE THE MAVINS: The Amazing Story Of The BRICs
• The Next BRICs: Six Surging Countries You Must Pay Attention To This Decade
• Goldman’s Jim O’Neill: Easy Money And High Oil Prices Make Russia The #1 BRIC For 2010