Category: News

‘Iraq’s refugees – beyond tolerance’ by Dr Philip Marfleet and Dr Dawn Chatty, the latest in the series of Refugee Studies Centre Forced Migration Policy Briefings, is now available online.

This policy brief considers the situation of displaced populations within Iraq’s national borders and of communities of Iraqis living under difficult circumstances in a number of Middle Eastern states.

The paper suggests that despite military and policy discourses of renewed stability in Iraq, the crisis is far from over and that mass return is unlikely as long as security remains a key concern. It presents some key principles for consideration by policy makers in government, in migration agencies and in the humanitarian networks and recommends that further research should be conducted on the scale, circumstances and patterns of movement of Iraqis within and beyond the Middle East.

• Policy brief

Many investment banks reported robust earnings during the last couple of quarters. Earnings outperformance was based on a tripod of contributors: a broad-based rally in asset prices, a partial recovery in investment banking revenues, and strong fixed-income trading revenues. Although these earnings weren’t the result of accounting gimmicks, they are of questionable quality for other reasons and may prove transitory. We believe that the worst has already passed for investment banks in this cycle, but we also believe that most investment banks will likely stumble on their earnings before a sustainable earnings uptrend establishes itself.

Higher Revenues but also Earnings-Quality Issues
Investment banks’ asset management and principal investment-related revenues have done well during the last couple of quarters, but the two revenue lines lead to different conclusions regarding future earnings. Asset management revenues are generally calculated as a percentage of assets under management, while principal investment revenues are generally the markup in the value of investments, and to an extent securities inventory, that an investment bank bought using its own capital. It’s no mystery why these revenue lines did well as just a brief glance at the lineup of Morningstar Indexes shows a year-to-date broad-based rally across asset classes. We believe earnings of investment banks with large asset management revenues as a percentage of their total, such as Lazard (LAZ), should fare relatively better than companies that may have received earning boosts from gains, such as Jefferies (JEF) and Greenhill (GHL). This is illustrated in the following table.

Recent quarters have been like Period 1–markets are rising and investment banks, like our sample company, have recognized higher asset management revenues as a result of higher AUM and recognized principal investment gains from marking up the securities they own. However, when the markets are flat as in Period 2, our company will still generate a steady level of asset management revenues while principal investment gains will disappear. The lack of principal investment gains will actually likely cause a sequential drop in earnings if our company recognized gains in the prior period. In the event that overall markets decline as in Period 3, asset management revenues will decrease somewhat, but our company would recognize principal loss. During these three periods, our sample investment bank recognized $875 of asset management revenues and $0 of principal investment gains, even though both AUM and principal investment/securities positions at the end of Period 3 are the same as the beginning of Period 1. This is why we prefer companies that derive more revenues from asset management than principal investment gains because the quality of earnings is better.

Economic Recovery Good for Underwriting, Advisory Revenues
The primary cause of the rebound in asset prices, belief of an imminent economic recovery, also led to a rebound in traditional investment banking lines such as underwriting and financial advisory. Third-quarter investment banking revenues were up 50% to more than 100% from their fourth quarter of 2008 or first quarter of 2009 trough at many investment banks. Although we were skeptical of the underwriting revenues in the second quarter, as we believed everyone was rushing to raise capital during what was, at the time, a questionable brief window of opportunity, a sustained economic recovery should create an uptrend in investment banking revenues. That said, we forecast that 2009 investment banking revenues will still be approximately 40% lower than their 2007 peak at many investment banks and that it will be several years before those lofty heights are seen again.

Good Economy Could Hinder Trading Profits
Although improving economic conditions and the unfreezing of the capital markets were a boon for underwriting revenues, they actually cast a shadow over future fixed-income trading revenues. Furthermore, this shadow could be rather dark as cash fixed-income trading has arguably been the most important driver of the recent outperformance of investment banks; multiple investment banks reported record-breaking trading revenues.

Even after adjusting for write-downs and debt-valuation adjustments and even if you disregard companies where 2008 revenues were weak or the income line contains other revenues besides cash fixed income, the year-over-year increase shown in the table above is clearly abnormal. Fear, volatility, and constrained investment bank balance sheets were primary contributors to the increased fixed-income trading profitability. Many investment banks exhibited a sequential decrease in fixed-income-related trading revenues from the second to third quarter of this year as those contributing factors started to abate. As prospects for an economic recovery are ever brighter, the risk premium that investment banks were able to earn on fixed-income trading has begun to shrink. A decrease in fixed-income profitability started last quarter, and we don’t expect the downward trend to reverse until normal fixed-income trading revenue levels are reached once again. In a conference call, the chairman and CEO of Piper Jaffray (PJC) , Andrew Duff, anticipated that fixed-income sales and trading revenues in a normalized environment could be 50% lower than their second quarter of 2009 results.

Overall Take
Recent results of investment banks have been good, but they were a result of likely transitory tailwinds that led to the relatively poor quality of earnings. Of the tripod of sources that have supported investment bank earnings, we believe outsized investment gains and fixed-income trading revenues should be petering out while underwriting, financial advisory, and asset management revenues will hold fairly steady or increase. The net effect on most investment banks will be negative, as principal investment and trading revenues have generally been a larger percentage of revenues. For example, FICC and principal investments accounted for approximately 60% of Goldman Sachs’ (GS) net revenues, principal transactions were 40% of Morgan Stanley’s (MS) net revenues, and principal transactions were 55% of Jefferies’ net revenues after mandatorily redeemable preferred interest in the third quarter. If even just one leg of the tripod buckles and nothing takes its place, recently elevated earnings will fall.

Earnings May Hold Up for These I-Banks
We do believe there are several investment banks that are less likely to stumble on earnings because of their revenue mix or special circumstances. They are Evercore Partners (EVR), Lazard, and Stifel Financial (SF). Evercore derives the bulk of its revenues from mergers and acquisitions and restructuring advisory. The unfreezing of the capital markets and more positive economic outlook should lead to more M&A activity. The aftermath of the financial crisis still needs to be cleaned up, so restructuring advisory is still likely on the increase for several quarters. Lazard also generates the bulk of its revenues from M&A and restructuring advisory, but also has a sizeable asset management division. We believe Stifel Financial may avoid an earnings dip, as its recent acquisition of some UBS (UBS) wealth-management offices in the U.S. could replace the lost revenue from a likely fixed-income trading revenue decrease. Although we believe these companies’ earnings may outperform those of their peer group in the near term, please look at their respective Analyst Reports to see if we believe they’re currently attractive on a long-term basis.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Wanna Hedge? Think Silver Not Gold
• The Fragile Recovery Of The Oil Services Sector
• The Second Wave Of Mortgage Resets Begins

One year ago today, Chinese authorities seized Liu Xiaobo and tossed him in prison for his involvement with Charter 08, a manifesto calling for human rights and democracy in China. The charter was published online two days later, on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Liu was eventually charged with “inciting subversion of state power” and he remains in custody today.

Liu was held for six months under “residential surveillance” at an unknown location (aka, a secret prison). He has now been moved to a prison in Beijing, but no trial date has been set. Liu has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese government for decades and has been incarcerated for his views before. The charter has now been signed by more than 10,000 people inside and outside of China, but many of the 300 original signers have been arrested or harassed by Chinese authorities.

China’s suppression of dissent is well documented, of course, and I’ve written before about the country’s continued use of secret prisons despite promises and claims to end the system. Today, as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao prepares to travel to Copenhagen to talk with world leaders about climate change, his country is detaining countless people for suspected subversion and, in some cases, for nothing at all.

(more…)

Apple this week revealed the most critically acclaimed and best selling content of the year in the iTunes Store, the world’s most popular online music seller and mobile application destination. iTunes Rewind 2009 is a feature on the iTunes Store that gives a glimpse into trends for the duration of the year. Content is presented as an editorially chosen “Best of 2009,” along with a list of the year’s “Top Sellers.”

Read more from AppleInsider

Deutsche Bank has released an interesting note based on conversations with the Consumer Electronics Agency. It provides a nice glimpse on what the mood is so far:

DB: We participated in CEA’s Black Friday Results Webinar this week. Below
are some takeaways:

Consumer electronics top 10 “Wish lists” changes from 2008 to 2009, based on phone survey:

    *Notebooks still at the top of the list
    * MP3, video games and digital cameras moved up the list, while GPS and
    DVD players moved down the list
    *New to the list this year were E-readers, iPhone, Blu Ray

In store survey on Black Friday for shoppers “high interest” list GPS went from #1  ast year to #4 this year, TV went from #4 last year to #1 this year, Blu Ray move way up from #15 to #3, Laptop up a bit, video games about even Promotional activity, was less intense than CEA forecasted in many products.

    *Lowest prices on Blu Ray, netbooks and TV’s was not as low as expected
    *Lowest prices on notebooks and GPS was discounted more than expected
    *On TVs, the biggest discounts on small TVs while prices on big TVs were     less discounted

-CEA raised holiday spending forecast for to -5.9% from -7.5% compared to down -6.4% in holiday 2008.

*Increase mostly due to firmer pricing, particularly in TVs which was helped     by better trends on larger screens than expected. 32″ was the sweet spot,     but unit sales in 40″+ was better than expected

 *Reduced forecast for video game revenues, but this was due to strength in portable units, which  lowers ASP’s

*GPS units worse than expected
*Camera outlook increased, with DSLRs surprisingly strong
*Blu Ray units helped by bundling

Based on their survey work, CEA Seemed encouraged with Black Friday

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Black Friday Will Be Insanely Scary And Busy This Year
• Startling Jump In eCommerce Spending On Cyber Monday
• The European Retailers Prepared To Invade And Kill Their American Counterparts

The ASA110H absolute sensor is the hybrid version of the familiar ASA510 sensor. This innovative development offers decisive advantages: High accuracy, high resolution and additional digital and analog outputs which make it suitable for both linear and angle measurement.
The small, compact sensor in a metal housing captures position changes by scanning the newly developed two-lane measuring scale MBA110. The permanently attached translation module processes the sensor signals via battery backup even in a currentless state and is particularly suitable for applications requiring both absolute and incremental signals.
The additional outputs allow digital (line driver) or analog 1Vss signal output.

Bus operation is particularly useful for applications with multiple axes. The integrated RS485 interface enables up to 31 devices to be connected together via a single cable strand. Profibus, CANbus and Interbus connections are available to the user via the IF09 Gateway.

With a resolution of 1µm in the absolute channel and high control dynamics via real-time channel 1Vss or line driver, combined with immunity to dirt and vibration, the ASA110H offers the clear benefits of a magnetic measurement system.

Protech Systems.has released a new series of fanless 15”/17”/19” Touch Screen Panel PC – PPC-7915/17/19, powered by an Intel® Atom N270 Processor to meet the demand of quiet and energy saving. It features low power consumption, integrated touchscreen, and IP65 dust/water protection. Utilizing the Intel® Atom processor provides efficient, reliable performance at a fraction of the cost. Protech’s Touchscreen Panel PC solution would be an ideal solution for automation control, HMI, testing equipment, process monitoring, kiosks and digital signage.

Fanless and Low Power Consumption

The PPC-7915/17/19 series feature robust, industrial design with outstanding Fanless thermal control and are available with Intel® Atom™ 1.6 GHz processors. The total system power consumption is only 80W in fully loading mode. The fanless application can efficiently expand the product life time and increase the durability of the model. They are ideal for high-performance control platforms for machine builders and plant engineering applications.

Panel and Touchscreen Solution

The panel is with high brightness 350 nits TFT display and up to 1280 x 1024 pixels. It can be also switched to sun-light readable panel for customization. Moreover, it utilizes 5 wire touchscreen to guarantee a high calibration stability and a long term accuracy. We also offer difference touch solution such as capacitive, inferred & saw for tailor made service.

Open Frame and Mounting Design

To fit individual mechanical design and decoration, Protech brings up open frame concept. Its unique modular design allows several mechanical mounting solutions including open frame, panel mount bezel, IP65 bezel, and wall mountable bezels. System integrator can install the panel pc to the factory control machine without front bezel. Or, they can be built up customized front bezel based on difference requirements.

Rich I/O Connection

The series is equipped with VGA output which is available to connect second display up to 1600 x 1200 resolution. The digital I/O, parallel and four serial interfaces offer RS-232/422/485 industrial protocol for communication. For network capability, two Gigabit Lan ports provide more flexible connection for users.

Excellence Expansion Capability

With additional riser card, PPC-7915/17/19 can be added to two adapter cards such as PCIe, PCI or ISA. It offers more flexible solution to users in building system. Also, the internal mini PCI slot allows user to plug in 802.11 wirless module for area network transmission.

Embedded Application

For embedded applications, the PPC-7915/17/19 can be equipped with a Compact Flash reader for excellent vibration and shock resistance. It is available to pre-install Windows XP, XP embedded, Windows 7, Windows CE and Linux operating system.

Protech’s Panel PCs are fully documented and tested to meet FCC, CE and ROHS compliance standards for easy integration into existing systems. “Protech offers a wide variety of custom options such as custom front bezel, touch screen, LCD panel, I/O port and even logo to truly make this product a one of a kind panel pc for your application,” said by Charlie Yang, product manager of Protech System.

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From the name alone, chocolate bark doesn’t sound particularly appetizing. Chocolate bark is actually a sheet of chocolate that is usually covered with nuts, dried fruits, candies or even additional pieces of chocolate. Its is rustic looking in the sense that it is just thrown together, not laid out with a specific pattern to how the ingredients are placed, and it is broken into shards of various sizes to serve. The name “bark” starts to seem much less unusual when you see a box full of chocolate shards that actually do bear a slight resemblance to rough pieces of tree bark – albeit tasty tree bark.Chocolate bark can be made with any kind of chocolate. Usually, it consists of more than one type layered together. Peppermint bark, where layers of white and dark chocolate are topped with shards of peppermint candies, is very popular around Christmas and the holidays. Almond bark is another commonly found bark, topped with almonds or other nuts. In some stores, you may see blocks of “almond bark” sold. These are blocks of vanilla-flavored faux white chocolate, which usually do not use any cocoa butter, but instead rely on vegetable fats to give them their texture. It is sold as a chocolate-like dip for fruits and as something you can use to make a “real” chocolate bark. Stick with real chocolates and you can easily make a batch of delicious chocolate bark yourself as a lovely, homemade holiday gift.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Government/Legal

Whenever we’ve mentioned the Cizeta V16t supercar here on the pages of Autoblog in the past, we have always received mixed reactions. With its love-it-or-hate-it, Diablo-prototype looks and its unique transverse V16 engine, the car was a stunning achievement by former Lamborghini engineer, Claudio Zampoli. It was his vision, his engineering and his design work that made this project come to fruition. It was also his initials, C.Z., or “Ci Zeta” in Italian, that led to the vehicle’s name. While only ten of the cars were ever built, they have attained a certain cult-like following among some enthusiasts.

Although often misidentified as a Cizeta Moroder, the correct name does not include the name of music composer Giorgio Moroder, who was an early investor that dropped out in the planning stages. The 560-horsepower, V16 beast was said to be good for well over 200 MPH in its day, and for anyone who has seen or heard it in person, it’s not hard to believe. We consider ourselves very lucky indeed to have spent some time in one of these Veyron-preceding 16-cylinder marvels. The red one you see above is so familiar to all of us in the SoCal car community that we sometimes forget just how exotic it really is. We’ve seen it at numerous events around Southern California and have gotten to know Mr. Zampoli as well.

Imagine our shock, then, to hear that the very Cizeta we know best has been seized by Federal authorities. According to news reports, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has seized the car, alleging that Zampoli violated U.S. customs and environmental laws when he brought the car into the country in 2001. One issue was the price claimed for the vehicle when it was brought over, which at $125,000 was approximately one fourth of its price when new.

The other issue is the fact that the car was never certified by U.S. agencies for emissions and safety regulations. It is not uncommon for such small manufacturers to skip U.S. importation because of the cost involved in crash testing these expensive autos. Some are granted exemptions using the government’s Show or Display rules, and others are sometimes imported as museum pieces that are never registered for road use.

We know that there will be a lot more to this story as it unfolds. For one thing, we know that Mr. Zampoli moved his operations to the U.S. several years ago. We also believe that this particular vehicle never belonged to him. It was allegedly shipped over for updates and repairs by its Austrian owner in 2001 and was supposed to be shipped back by 2004 after receiving an extension on its stay. For one reason or another, the owner never had it shipped back. It has always worn European tags and a manufacturer plate when out and about.

While the official ICE statement that alludes to these cars being “a real threat to public health and safety” is laughable in many ways, the fact remains that the Cizeta was never certified for sale in the States and due to its extremely limited production, it probably never received an exemption for Show or Display. For now, the authorities are trying to have the car forfeited to the federal government, with the intent to have it auctioned to an overseas buyer eventually. We’ll be sure to keep you posted. Thanks for the tips, everyone.

[Source: The Orange County Register]

REPORT: U.S. customs agents seize a very familiar gray-market Cizeta V16t originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rapid7 chose to publish a free version of their NeXpose scanner. The software is available for less then a month, and still has to prove itself to the general community. We are publishing the experiences of our first look on this product. The NeXpose Community integrates with Metasploit, and the integration will be covered in the next article.

Installation The installation is simple enough – just run the installer. It asks for a username/password for the web interface, and then installs itself. There are no errors when installing on Windows 7, XP SP3 and Win2003 Server.

First run
Start up on Windows 7 was not successful. NeXpose Community just threw a lot of access denied error messages. As far as i could understand, the access denied messages are because of an attempt to modify the registry which is protected under Windows 7. Even when using Run As Administrator i got the same results.
The run was successful from the Windows2003 server installation. The first start up was extremely slow, it ran for more then 15 minutes configuring and updating itself. After that, the web interface is available for login at https://serverip:3780

First Scan
In order to scan you need to configure a Site, with target IP’s within it. You can add several target IP’s within the same site. The scanning options include the following scanning templates:

• Full audit : Performs a full network audit of all systems using only safe checks, including network-based vulnerabilities, patch/hotfix checking, and application-layer auditing. Only default ports are scanned, and policy checking is disabled, making this faster than the Exhaustive scan.

• Exhaustive : Performs an exhaustive network audit of all systems and services using only safe checks, including patch/hotfix checking, policy compliance checking, and application-layer auditing. Performing an exhaustive audit could take several hours or even days to complete, depending on the number of hosts selected.

• Penetration test : Performs an in-depth penetration test of all systems using only safe checks. Host-discovery and network penetration options will be enabled, allowing NeXpose to dynamically discover additional systems in your network to target. In-depth patch/hotfix checking, policy compliance checking, and application-layer auditing will not be performed.

These templates and their behaviour cannot be modified in the NeXpose Community.

You can run the scan at scheduled intervals as well as manually. Once you initiate the scan, the scanning engine is very fast, and usually completes Penetration Test scan within 5-7 minutes on a fast link.

Scan Results
The scan results are presented in a very clear manner, for each site separately. The Penetration Test template on a Damn Vulnerable Linux 1.5 with active HTTP target was scanned in less then 3 minutes, and identified the following vulnerabilities

• PHP Multiple Vulnerabilities Fixed in version 4.4.9
• PHP Unspecified ‘glob’ Vulnerability
• PHP Crafted UTF-8 Inputs Buffer Overflow
• Apache Signals Sent to Arbitrary Processes Denial of Service
• PHP session.save_path/error_log Values Not Checked Against open_basedir and safe_mode
• Apache mod_imap/mod_imagemap Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability in imagemap File Menus
• HTTP TRACE Method Enabled
• ICMP timestamp response

The reporting, although crippled compared to the commercial versions of NeXpose is still very good. You can schedule report generation and sending, and you can configure a baseline for each report – you get comparative results of the changes between the scans. This is very useful for automated scanning and information required by IT Auditors and Information Security Officers.

Conclusions
NeXpose Community is a valuable addition to the free tools that each security professional can use in his/hers work. It is very useful in terms of automated audits, and very interesting that it integrates with the Metasploit Exploit Framework. It still has glitches and issues on some platforms, but all tools are work in progress, so for the time being just add it to your toolset, don’t replace any tools with it.

Talkback and comments are most welcome

Related posts
Possible Emerging Player In InfoSec Market?
Nessus vs Retina – Vulnerability Scanning Tools Evaluation
Tutorial – Using Ratproxy for Web Site Vulnerability Analysis
WMI Scanning – Excellent Security Tool

These two kitchens aren’t in use at the moment, but a lot of designers and artists worked together to make them happen. A Brooklyn developer invited Pratt School of Design’s students and professors, past and present to contribute to a couple of model apartments in their latest project, Third + Bond.

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Even though an estimated 170 million people worldwide are infected with Hepatitis C, the current treatment can only help about half of them. However, new research suggests that a common vitamin could greatly increase Hepatitis C treatment’s effectiveness.

by Nicole Cutler, L.Ac.

Previous research has provided evidence pointing toward a Vitamin D deficiency in those with chronic Hepatitis C. This association has spawned an interest in how Vitamin D could help those with viral hepatitis. While Vitamin D supplementation may help prevent some complications of advancing liver disease, deciphering this vitamin’s role in Hepatitis C has been relatively limited – until now.

Approximately 15 percent of those infected with Hepatitis C have an immune system that is able to eliminate the virus. Unfortunately, the remaining 85 percent infected with Hepatitis C end up with a chronic illness. If the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is not eradicated, it can progress to more serious forms of liver disease like cirrhosis, liver cancer or liver failure.

Combination Therapy
While great strides in HCV treatment have been made over the past decade, the current standard of care can help approximately 50 percent of those infected beat the virus. Referred to as combination therapy, this standard treatment consists of two drugs: pegylated interferon and ribavirin.

About half of those with the virus do not respond to combination therapy. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry has been dedicating enormous resources into improving these odds. Taking their cue from the successful management of HIV/AIDS, much research is focused on developing a third drug, that when added to pegylated interferon and ribavirin, will create a highly effective triple therapy for Hepatitis C.

Vitamin D for Triple Therapy
Based on results of a preliminary Israeli study, Vitamin D could represent the best possible candidate for a third substance to comprise triple Hepatitis C therapy. As reported at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), adding a daily dose of Vitamin D to the regimen of pegylated interferon-alfa 2 and ribavirin might increase Hepatitis C response rates to therapy.

According to lead investigator Saif M. Abu-Mouch, M.D., from the Department of Hepatology, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel, “This preliminary study confirms the benefit of adding Vitamin D to conventional antiviral therapy in patients with chronic Hepatitis C.” Details of Abu-Mouch’s study are described below:

· 89 participants with HCV were recruited.

· 58 patients received peginterferon-alfa 2b 1.5 ug/kg once per week and ribavirin 1000 to 2000 mg daily (control group).

· 31 patients received the same treatment plus Vitamin D 1000 to 4000 IU daily.

· By the fourth week of treatment, a rapid virological response was seen in 44 percent of the patients who received Vitamin D and in 18 percent of the control group.

· At the twelfth week of treatment, 96 percent of the group who received the addition of Vitamin D and 48 percent of the control group tested negative for HCV.

If the results of this study were to be extrapolated and applied to the general Hepatitis C population, adding Vitamin D could nearly double the current success rate of HCV antiviral therapy. When added to pegylated interferon and ribavirin, even rigorously tested drugs in development haven’t been able to claim a 96 percent success rate. Thus, we can expect to see a great deal of excitement and larger human trials exploring the potential of Vitamin D as the missing ingredient in Hepatitis C triple drug therapy.

Editor’s Note: For more information about Hepatitis C and Vitamin D deficiency, including potential dangers of a Vitamin D overdose, read Caution: Hepatitis C and Vitamin D Deficiency.

References:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2364654/can_vitamin_d_treat_chronic_hepatitis.html?cat=70, Can Vitamin D Treat Chronic Hepatitis C Infection?, Kristie Leong, MD, Retrieved November 28, 2009, Associated Content, Inc., November 2009.

http://www.hcvadvocate.org/news/newsRev/2009/NewsRev-337.html#_Vitamin_D_Boosts, Vitamin D Boosts Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis C, Maryann Gromisch, RN, Retrieved November 28, 2009, hcvadvocate.org, November 2009.

http://www.hepatitis-central.com/mt/archives/2008/10/hepatitis_c_and_11.html, Caution: Hepatitis C and Vitamin D Deficiency, Nicole Cutler, L.Ac., Retrieved November 28, 2009, Natural Wellness, 2009.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/711902, Vitamin D Has Benefits in Chronic HCV Infection, Megan Brooks, Retrieved November 28, 2009, Medscape LLC, 2009.

Care
The Care Quality Commission has published its first major public statement on the quality of adult social care in England. (03 Dec)

Age Concern and Help the Aged have responded to the CQC’s report, describing the state of care homes as ‘unacceptable’ and calling on the Government to ensure the CQC has adequate resources for regular inspections. (03 Dec)

Mencap have responded with a call for the CQC to be ‘rigorous’ in using its powers to improve adult social care. (03 Dec)

Responding to Ipsos MORI research finding that 1 in 6 carers is forced to give up work, Carers UK have called on carers to check they get all the practical and financial support on offer. (04 Dec)

General
Age Concern and Help the Aged have stated that pensioners must not pay the price for the recession. (04 Dec) They have also called for changes to tax rules ahead of the Pre-Budget Report. (05 Dec)

Alzheimer’s Society is to re-organise its management structure in order to deliver services in more locations. (01 Dec)

Andrew Larpent, the CEO of the National Care Forum, has been named Care Personality of the Year. (30 Nov)

The Care Quality Commission has released statements about the chairwoman Baroness Barbara Young stepping down in February 2010. (05 Dec)

The British Association of Social Workers has welcomed the Social Work Task Force’s final report, recommending a reformed training system and a college of social work. The General Social Care Council has also welcomed the recommendations. (01 Dec)

Our schedules for the next couple of weeks are packed. We’re sure yours are, too. But if you want to get together with friends to celebrate the season and don’t have an evening to spare, why not invite friends over for breakfast or brunch? They can fuel up before they head out Christmas shopping.

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(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

Regular readers of “A Dash” may be surprised to see that I have objections to the most recent payroll employment report results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Ironically, my objections come at a time when many critics say it is a “clean” report.  In addition, I think that the problem relates to the measurement of job creation.

Some Background

I hope that I have established some credibility on this subject.  The BLS has a method for estimating the monthly job change, including job creation.  For several years I have insisted that the right way to keep score was to look at the final results, which we eventually know from state employment data, and test the estimates against those results.

Until recently, the results were excellent.

Something happened.  It did not happen at the onset of the recession, as many critics predicted.  In fact, the BLS method had worked through the 2001 recession, something that everyone ignored.

It did not even happen in Q408, at least not very dramatically.  The problem showed up in Q109, as I reported and discussed (here) and in my November preview.

Let’s repeat my recent review of the BLS method for estimating job creation.  If you take a moment to read this carefully, you will see why the critics were wrong before, and are also missing the problem now.

How the BLS Handles Job Creation

The BLS approach is to make an estimate of the total payroll jobs in one month, make another estimate for the next month, and subtract the two to determine the change.  They use an excellent and sophisticated survey technique to do this.  Their historical record, judged by the eventual count from the states, has been very good — until quite recently.

The Survey Problem.  Any time you do a survey, there will be non-respondents.  When the question is something like “How many people favor health care with a public option?” the non-respondent problem takes a simple form.  You need only ask whether the non-respondents are similar to those who actually answered.  Most polls make this assumption.

The employment question is qualitatively different.  We are not asking the opinions of non-respondents.  We are asking whether they are even still in business.  If the BLS were to assume that non-respondents had all ceased operations, they would seriously underestimate total employment.  Historical data conclusively show that the non-respondents are split between those who did not answer and those who are out of business.  The data also show that new job creation, running at about 2 million jobs per month even in recessions, are a predictable function of dying businesses.

Let me emphasize the difficulty.  There are always non-respondents to the voluntary survey, despite the best efforts to get everyone.  If the BLS assumed that the non respondents were all lost jobs, and that the impact was proportional, we would see a loss of 13 million jobs per month, a silly result.  Instead they attempt to impute business deaths and births.  At one point, they assumed a business birth for every death.  This is the natural result from extrapolating the sample to the entire population.

This is not the +/- 100K jobs from sampling error; it is non-sampling error.  This means that the non-respondents are different in an important way from those who answer the survey.  We know this to be true, so the problem is how to compensate.

The Job Creation Estimation.  Because of this, the BLS employs a two-step process.  The imputation step forecasts job creation from job destruction, and includes a cyclical component..  The Birth/Death adjustment, (the only thing cited by most critics, who ignore the more important imputation step), is a residual.  For many years this residual was stable.  The most recent test against the state data indicated a significant error, showing that the BLS estimates have been wrong for nearly a year, especially since Q1 09.

The Result

The preliminary benchmark revisions show that as of March, 2009, the number of jobs was over-estimated by 824K jobs.  When the official revisions are announced in February, for the January report, there will be three important effects:

1. These job losses will be apportioned to the prior eleven months, lowering each by about 75K per month.  (The actual adjustment may vary for technical reasons, but this is a good starting point).
2. The months after March, 2009, will also be adjusted to conform to a new set of calculations.
3. The Birth/Death adjustment, the calculation of the “residual effect” will also be adjusted.  We may see dramatic downward adjustments for most of 2009.

Two years ago I asked BLS experts if the Birth/Death adjustment could ever be a negative number.  The answer was that while it was theoretically possible, it had never occurred in the recession periods during the development of the model.  It is possible that this adjustment will now become neutral or negative, assuming that the BLS maintains the current methodology.

Conclusions

There are several key conclusions.

1. The universal focus on the Birth/Death adjustment is a blunder.  The critics think that because the B/D adjustment added only 30K jobs (not seasonally adjusted) in November, that the problem does not lie with job creation.  The problem lies in the imputation step — far more important than the B/D adjustment.
2. Something important happened at the start of the year – probably the loss of credit available to new businesses.  The strong historical relationship used by the BLS finally broke down.  Without a good estimate of job creation, the BLS monthly change is suspect.
3. Private estimates are important.  For many months, preceding the identification of the breakdown in the BLS method, I have emphasized the need to look at other approaches.  This should now be clear to everyone.

There was a general sense of surprise at the November results, but no one has a clear concept of what went wrong.  TrimTabs has entered an objection, and I agree.  The estimates of job change from our model, and the other approaches that I report each month (including TrimTabs), will prove to be better estimates than recent BLS reports.

It will take some months before we see the actual data to prove this, but I intend to follow up with some estimates.  Meanwhile, I doubt that employment has improved as much as the current report indicates.  It is not consistent with other economic data.

And finally, readers should note that this had nothing to do with BLS bias, manipulating the numbers, or creating “phantom jobs” on demand for President Obama.  It is all about methodology, and the inherent limitations on the survey approach.  The BLS team devised a good approach and implemented it in consistent fashion.  The change in the credit markets – not a normal recession — seems to have undermined their empirical models.

I am reporting about data.  My conclusions are based completely upon where the data leads me.  For many years, the BLS method worked extremely well.  We should now use a variety of methods to assess job changes.

I have a continuing concern about concurrent seasonal adjustment.  More to come….

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• TrimTabs: The Real Job Loss Number Was 255,000
• Gartman: Here’s Why The Unemployment Arithmetic Must Be Wrong
• Rosenberg: There’s Just A 1-In-35 Chance Friday’s Employment Number Was Right

Guy Fieri is one of those people that you either love, or hate (while secretly loving). He’s been touring round the country like a rock star with his Road Show and we managed to catch last nights gig in Kansas City. It was a serious party, but we still walked away with a few tips that you can put to use in your own kitchen!

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Yesterday I participated in a press conference with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu to unveil an exciting new initiative that will drive innovation in the green technology sector, increase U.S. competitiveness in green technology, and create green jobs.   The USPTO initiative, which launches today as the world looks to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, is a pilot program designed to reduce the average processing time of green technology patent applications.    

Through this program, applications already on file in certain green technology areas will be eligible to be accorded special status and examined on an accelerated basis.  To be eligible, applicants must file a no-cost petition for special status and indicate how the invention materially contributes to environmental quality, the discovery or development of renewable energy resources, more efficient utilization and conservation of energy resources, or greenhouse gas emission reduction.  The pilot will be open to the first 3,000 applications for which a proper petition is filed.  If successful, the program may be expanded down the road.  

You can read more about the program in this press release and in my remarks from the press conference, as well as press accounts of the announcement including NYTimes.com and WSJ.com.

We will monitor the program carefully and will share updates with you along the way.  And, of course, we welcome your comments and feedback.

Filed under: Porsche, Volkswagen

Cue Ennio Morricone and the symphonic accompaniment to the endgame: VW has officially taken a 49.9% stake in Porsche. VW paid €3.9 billion ($5.75B U.S.) for its cut, “based on the enterprise value for Porsche AG calculated under a careful due diligence and valuation procedure.” That’s a few shades more than the €3.3 billion amount VW was saying it would pay a few months ago.

In acquiring Porsche, VW not only gains a premium brand that is still among the most profitable in the business, but VW expects its operating profit to jump by €700 million ($1.03B U.S.) over time due to cost-saving synergies. The purchase won’t be finalized until 2011, though, when VW will incorporate Porsche Holding Salzburg, Europe’s largest car dealer which also happens to be owned by Porsche.

You can read VW’s press release – which has an air of something from Napoleon’s PR department after the Battle of Austerlitz – after the jump.

[Source: Volkswagen]

Continue reading Volkswagen takes 49.9 percent stake in Porsche AG

Volkswagen takes 49.9 percent stake in Porsche AG originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Christmas Laptop Sales 2009 are out from all major department and specialty stores. The savings from the Black Friday Deals can now even be better.

From Best Buy, the new Dell Inspiron Laptop with an Intel Pentium Dual-core processor, 3 GB memory, 6 cell lithium-ion battery DVD+RW/CD –RW drive, 250 GB hard drive, 14” wide screen, built-in web cam, and the new Windows 7 Home Premium edition operating system. This unit is going for $449.99. To help personalize this laptop, it is available in three different colors of Pink, Jade Green, or Ice Blue.

For those that prefer a Gateway Computer there is the model NV5212u with a AMD Athlon X2 dual-Core processor with a 4GB memory, 320 GB hard drive with a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive 6 cell lithium-ion battery, built in web cam, a 15.6” wide screen, and the new Windows 7 Home Premium edition operating system. This piece is going for $399.99. There is only one color choice of Cherry Red with this model that is available at this time.

From Walmart comes a Christmas sale on laptop also. The list includes the low prices on eMachines 15.6” eME627-5279 laptop PC with AMD Athlon 64 processor which is 1.6GHZ. The memory is 2GB with a 160 GB hard drive, 15.6” LCD wide screen along with a Wi-Fi and card reader, a DVD-RW/CD drive with a 6 cell battery that can last up to 2.5 hours, and the new Windows 7 Home Premium edition operating system. This sells for $368.00.

These are just a few of the great Christmas Laptop Sales 2009 that are available today.