Apple axe Gene Munster raised his target to $299.
This isn’t surprising. Gene thinks Apple can hit $1,000 a share over the next few years (although he’s wise enough not to say it).
But we do have a friendly question for Gene:
Why $299?
Why not $300?
Is Apple’s stock going to STOP rising when it hits $299? If/when it hits $299, should we dump it and run for the hills?
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One more hour to go, and the market is once again going nuts, with the Dow up nearly 90, and new highs being made all over the place.
Someone who’s steaming?
Nouriel Roubini, Dr. Doom.
As this chart from the Ekonomi Turk, the inverse correlation between Roubini’s popularity (as measured by searches on Google), and The S&P 500 couldn’t be more clear.
Nassim Taleb told us that Roubini is robust, though, because he has vulva casting in his apartment and it hasn’t hurt him at all. But is he robust enough to survive a bull market?
And don’t miss: The complete guide to everyone who got this rally wrong >
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If there’s hope for her…..
In news that should serve as a beacon of hope for singletons everywhere, there’s allegedly loud ramblings around Hollywood that a wedding is on the horizon for 21-year-old celebuspawn Rumer Willis and her longtime BF Micah Alberti. We hear Alberti and the eldest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore are in the process of checking out rings and combing through venues for a ceremony that could take place as early as June.
”I know they already have gone ring-shopping and are debating where to [get married]. … My best guess would be very far from L.A,” a family friend blabs.
The ranks of the young unemployed have swelled.
The March employment report showed that American workers aged 16-24 had an unemployment rate of 18.8%, nearly double the 9.7% unemployment rate for the population at large. Even though these young workers represent only about an eighth of the work force, they account for a quarter of Americas unemployed.
But rising youth unemployment is not just an American problem, points out a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Across the 30 OECD countries, there are nearly 15 million unemployed workers aged 15-24 — four million more than at the end of 2007. In France and Italy, one in four young workers are unemployed; in Spain, 40% are jobless.
The currently high levels of youth unemployment could have negative long-term consequences, the reports authors say.
For disadvantaged youth lacking basic education, failure to find a first job or keep it for long can have negative long-term consequences on their career prospects that some experts refer to as scarring., they write. Beyond the negative effects on future wages and employability, long spells of unemployment while young often create permanent scars through the harmful effects on a number of other outcomes, including happiness, job satisfaction and health, many years later.
One solution, they say, would be to expand apprenticeship programs, which allow young workers to acquire skills and work experience. It seems to be working in Germany, where the ratio of youth unemployment to adult unemployment is 1.5 to 1, compared to 2.8 to 1 across the OECD area.
For more news and data about jobs:
Shmup fans have something to look forward to next month on the PlayStation Network. Eastasiasoft has announced that that’s when Söldner-X 2: Final Prototype hits the Sony download service.
Filed under: Etc.
Despite my better judgement, I had an iPad delivered to my house last weekend. The reasons for the purchase varied from the inexplicable to the absurd, but one of my primary interests was how magazines would adopt/adapt to the new format. Like it or not, Apple’s a leader in mobile content delivery and any publishing house is going to want to be on the “it” platform, just as developers downloaded the iPhone SDK in hoards and the App store became the dominant force for mobile applications.
I’ve checked out some of the general interest pubs (NYT, Time, etc.), which are obviously still getting their sea-legs (and falling on their faces, in many cases), but for gearheads the pickings are non-existent – save Zinio (iTunes link).
Gallery: Car and Driver on the iPad
Continue reading Car and Driver on iPad : A stopgap for the future of online mags
Car and Driver on iPad : A stopgap for the future of online mags originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Golden Globe winner Sharon Stone was spotted in Little Italy this week filming scenes for her upcoming guest arc on NBC’s long-running crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Stone — who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the 1996 hit Casino — is playing a former cop-turned-lawyer for a four-episode arc kicking off April 28. 
Republicans in the Senate used a procedural vote to delay extending unemployment insurance to some of the 6 million Americans who rely on these benefits for day-to-day expenses.
Republicans didn’t mount much of a substantive fight against the measure — only Sen. Tom Coburn spoke out against it. But as it so often happens, where the GOP stalwarts balked, the Wall Street Journal’s editors squawked, preening their fiscal hawk feathers and claiming that jobless benefits were lifting the unemployment rate by up to two percentage points — the equivalent of 3 million jobs.
It seems unlikely that jobless benefits stand in the way of creating 3 million jobs. Think about that figure: 3 million jobs. It is the equivalent of 18 consecutive March’s, when we added about 162,000 positions. The number of total job openings in February 2010 was not even 3 million. It was 2.7 million, according the BLS. The same as in January 2010. The same, in fact, as in February and January 2009, when GDP was busy falling by six-percentage points, annualized. The US economy is moving through a hiring crisis that has little to do with the length of the jobless benefits.
It’s true that unemployment benefits subsidize joblessness, and subsidies generally encourage behavior. But when the WSJ writes that “many unemployed workers don’t start seriously looking for a job until they are about to lose their benefits” it assumes the existence a fecund job market waiting for lazy Americans to get up and apply for jobs. To the contrary, there are five officially unemployed Americans for every hiring position. Americans don’t need unemployment benefits to discourage them from working. The job market is doing that all by itself.
by Christopher M. Bruner
Many thanks to Professor Cheffins for his thoughtful response, in which he highlights an important challenge in evaluating the degree of shareholder-centrism in differing corporate governance systems—the difficulty of quantifying the impact of varying legal strategies for protecting shareholders’ interests. In this reply to the issues raised by Professor Cheffins, I distinguish various metrics of shareholder-centrism and consider the degree to which they are amenable to straightforward cross-border comparison.
Professor Cheffins agrees that U.K. shareholders possess greater governance rights than U.S. shareholders do, but rightly observes that rules of civil procedure and corporate law give U.S. shareholders greater capacity to sue. In the important empirical study cited by Professor Cheffins, he and his coauthors find that lawsuits are far more likely to be filed against U.S. directors—and that these suits produce a far greater volume of published opinions—than is the case in the United Kingdom. These findings lead him to suggest that U.S. shareholders’ capacity to sue may compensate for weaker substantive legal protections.
As Professor Cheffins notes, I address the topic briefly in my Article (at pp. 609–10), and ultimately we agree that the extent to which threat of suit may align directors’ decision-making with the shareholders’ interests is unknown. Given the inherently speculative nature of the question, it may be unknowable—though in my view there remains good reason to conclude that a substantial gap in shareholder orientation remains. While the litigation rate in the United States may vastly eclipse that in the United Kingdom, Professor Cheffins and his coauthors find that liability exposure for directors of U.S. public companies remains exceedingly low. The annual chance of a director of a NYSE- or NASDAQ-listed company facing a corporate lawsuit generating a judicial decision was found to be about 1.1 percent (at p. 706), and the total number of cases found over a seven-year period in which public company directors—inside or outside—had to make out-of-pocket payments could be counted on one hand (three and one, respectively) (at pp. 709–10). To be sure, a high degree of risk aversion, perhaps amplified by reputational considerations, might lead U.S. directors to fear such suits, but appraisal of their liability exposure would not itself seem to militate strongly toward favoring shareholders’ interests. Indeed, such findings might help explain why U.K. shareholders have not pressed harder for expanded litigation rights—particularly where those shareholders are diversified institutions that might reasonably anticipate being just as likely to pay damages awards under such a regime (indirectly, through indemnification and insurance arrangements) as to receive them.
Aside from governance powers and enforcement capabilities, however, there is another important metric of shareholder-centrism—explicit statements of corporate purpose. If strong enforcement capabilities for shareholders were intended to substitute for governance powers in the U.S. corporation—representing a functionally equivalent means of focusing directors’ minds on their interests—then we might expect to find similar expressions of commitment to shareholders in the articulation of directors’ duties. Yet, the U.S.–U.K. divergence is every bit as stark here as it is in the context of governance powers. That U.K. corporate governance places shareholders at the conceptual heart of the corporation is clear—notably in the Companies Act 2006 mandate that directors pursue the best interests of the shareholders exclusively, and in the fact that directors’ powers flow solely from the corporation’s Articles, rather than from the statute. By contrast, U.S. corporate law has remained decidedly ambivalent on issues of corporate purpose, declining invitations to define the corporate enterprise exclusively by reference to the shareholders. In this manner, U.S. corporate law has maintained the flexibility to accommodate other stakeholders’ interests at times of perceived crisis, as when a wave of leveraged hostile tender offers hit in the mid-1980s. Shareholders desiring unfettered freedom to accept such offers sued, to be sure, but the outcome—a decidedly stakeholder-centric approach to takeover regulation (through court decisions in Delaware and statutes elsewhere)—has not remotely approximated the degree of shareholder orientation reflected in the letter of the United Kingdom’s City Code on Takeovers and Mergers and the practice of the associated Panel on Takeovers and Mergers.
To reiterate, Professor Cheffins is absolutely right that the deterrent value of U.S. shareholder litigation remains unknown, and consequently that the precise extent to which shareholder-centrism in U.K. corporate governance exceeds that in U.S. corporate governance “remains at best unclear.” In my view, however, the evidence that a substantial gap exists—both in design and in practical effect—remains compelling.
Over the years, many small cars have been touted as Smart ForTwo competitors but none of those models could ever enjoy the ForTwo success. Chinese automaker JAC is determined to change this pattern as it has readied the IV concept which will get thoroughly previewed at the Beijing Motor Show. There are no real details available but JAC IV gets the style traits from JACs Italian Design Studio. The Italian lines might be good to impress the consumers upfront but the engine also plays an important part in the long run. What the JAC IV does hare in common with the ForTwo is the two-seat arrangement.
This recent entry at Mozilla links shows a Wiimote controlled Firefox. Paul Rouget has written a neat hack which allows us to use the Wiimote with Firefox. Over at his website, Paul writes,
Everybody has his or her own reason to hack Firefox. Mine is usually: “just for fun”.
So, “just for fun”, and to show how far you can go with the extension mechanism, here is a little useless extension I wrote: a Nintendo Wiimote driver for Firefox.
What does it do? It brings Wiimote events to web content. You can change tabs with a “forehand/backhand” tennis drive and, in your web page, make your elements move using Wiimote events (rotation, g-force, position, etc.). Web pages, of course, do not support this API. But, with another extension, such as aJetpack or Greasemonkey, you can “hack” a website to add support for the Wiimote.
although the extension is open-source, it works only for Linux currently. Check out this video:
Wiimote for Firefox from Paul Rouget on Vimeo.
by Doug Kendall
Following
last Friday’s announcement that Justice John Paul Stevens will retire from the
Supreme Court at the end of this term, President Obama hailed the Court’s most
senior Justice as “an impartial guardian of the law.” This description is
certainly accurate, and is perhaps best illustrated by Justice Stevens’
numerous rulings in environmental cases.
First,
it is worth remembering that Justice Stevens came to the Court in 1975, at the
dawn of the modern environmental movement and amid a heady time for
environmentalists in the courts. Just a few years earlier, in a dissent
from the landmark case Sierra Club v. Morton (1972), Stevens’ predecessor, Justice William O. Douglas, had famously argued
that natural resources such as trees and rivers should have “standing,”
positing that if corporations are permitted to represent their interests in
court then so too should other inanimate objects. Meanwhile, in cases of
statutory interpretation, judges on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit had developed a number of doctrines that allowed them to
aggressively second-guess agency decision-making in order to realize the broad
and ambitious goals of environmental statutes. These developments invigorated environmentalists, but they also
introduced a sense of permissive creativity into a rapidly growing body of
environmental law, and exposed judges who made pro-environmental rulings to
allegations of judicial activism.
Justice
Stevens, by contrast, firmly rejected the idea that environmentalism was some
sort of transcendental force that gave judges special powers to enforce broad
statutory goals on their own and overrule regulatory agencies. Most
famously, in Chevron v. NRDC (1984), he
wrote a majority opinion for the Court that sternly rebuked the D.C. Circuit
for substituting its judgment for that of the Reagan EPA, which had sought to
give industry more flexibility in meeting their Clean Air Act obligations.
Though a bitter defeat for environmentalists, Chevron, which holds that
judges must defer to agencies when they make a reasonable judgment about an
ambiguous law, is rightly hailed today as a landmark of both administrative law
and judicial restraint.
Those
same principles—deference to the plain language of statutes and concern about
judicial restraint—are the hallmarks of Justice Stevens’ other landmark
environmental rulings, which have rightly earned Stevens the enduring gratitude
of the environmental world. In Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter Of Communities For A Great Oregon (1995), Justice Stevens wrote for a six -Justice
majority in reinstating the portion of the Endangered Species Act that protects
endangered species’ habitats, which had been struck down by the D.C. Circuit
(which by then had been taken over by Reagan and Bush appointees). This time, Justice Stevens’ opinion corrected
the D.C. Circuit’s narrow reading of an environmental statute by finding that
the language and intent of the Endangered Species Act was clear in forbidding
changes to habitats that will harm endangered species.
In
2002, Justice Stevens wrote another rule-of-law environmental opinion in Sierra
Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a “takings” case
that followed a 15-year period during which the Court’s conservatives, led by
Justice Scalia, had been remarkably inventive in trying to transform the
Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment into a barrier to environmental
laws. Rejecting this bending of the Constitution’s meaning, Justice
Stevens garnered another six-Justice majority in upholding land-use protections
put in place to save Lake Tahoe. The
ruling returned the Takings Clause to its more limited role as a guard for securing compensation for landowners when
the government exercises its power of eminent domain.
Finally, and
perhaps most famously, in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), Justice Stevens
relied on Chevron and the unambiguously broad terms of the Clean Air Act
in holding that the EPA may regulate greenhouse gas pollution using its
existing authority under the Act. This ruling has allowed the Obama
Administration to aggressively combat global warming without waiting for
further action by Congress, setting into motion a chain of regulatory actions that has led to the nation’s very first nationwide auto emissions
standards aimed at greenhouse gases, and may soon lead to the nation’s first
restrictions on CO2 emissions from power plants.
Justice Stevens should be remembered as a great justice
in environmental cases, not because he bent the law to favor environmental
outcomes, but rather because he insisted that the law itself, which dictates
environmental outcomes in many cases, be followed.
Related Links:
The hazards of using toxic coal ash for land development
What the John Paul Stevens retirement means for energy progress
Murkowski wants to save Alaska by destroying it
Twitter has always been mum on some key stats about its service—like how many people have actually signed up to use it. But at its Chirp conference Wednesday, co-founder Biz Stone finally made public some numbers. He says the site now has 105,779,710 registered users—and is adding 300,000 new users a day. About 60 percent of them are coming from outside the U.S.
Possibly most significantly, Stone says that only a quarter of Twitter’s users access the site via Twitter.com, as opposed to a third-party Twitter client. That matters because so many of the traffic stats that have been released by measurement services have not taken into account outside usage. Stone said Twitter’s own stats come from its internal system (called Bird Brain) as well as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Analytics. You can watch the conference live here.
President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan met yesterday during the Nuclear Security Summit and affirmed the strategic partnership between their countries. The leaders discussed their joint interest in achieving the nonproliferation goals of the Summit and in ensuring that Iran does not pose a nuclear threat to the world.
The President relayed his continuing support and appreciation for Prime Minister Erdogan’s efforts on normalization of relations with Armenia, and encouraged him to continue forward toward ratification of the protocols for the benefit of future generations.
###
NOTE: Photo Attached of President Barack Obama as he meets with the Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., April 13, 2010. (Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
The President reiterated his belief that we are open to ideas and eager to work with anyone who is willing to work with us regardless of party. He also made clear that bipartisanship should not be equated with an openness to lobbyists loopholes and special interest carve outs and that he would be unwilling to negotiate on some key issues. And that he could not accept bad policy in pursuit of bipartisanship.
He specifically pushed attendees on derivatives and the recent effort by the financial industry to pressure the Senate to weaken oversight over the same financial products that led to the near collapse of AIG warning that the problems of the future will rest on the steps we take to address derivatives now. He reminded attendees that we proposed a bill almost a year ago and almost two years have passed since the financial industry nearly hit rock bottom, and that Wall Street accountability is long overdue.
In addition, he reaffirmed his belief that we must end taxpayer bailouts, end “Too Big To Fail” and that he would not accept a bill that did not pass that test. Finally he talked about the need for consumer protections and his insistence that the final bill include real independence reminding attendees that a bill that was good for powerful insiders, but not for everyday people is not what the American people deserve.
As he has with other opponents of reform, the President also encouraged attendees to stop the campaign of misinformation being run by financial industry lobbyists and representatives of trade groups. He asked both parties to work together and reminded them that the American people have been through enough—that they deserve quick action on real reform.
The President also reiterated the importance of moving forward on additional assistance for small businesses. Finally, he provided copies of the CEA quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and encouraged those in the room who opposed the Recovery Act to review the findings that it is responsible for approximately 2.5 million jobs through the end of March of this year, putting the Recovery Act on track to save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year.
If the passing of the leadership baton at your club looksmore like a sack race than an Olympic relay, you may need a better plan. Welike to call it a leadership pipeline. Learnall about it and how you can prepare for a smooth transition at your club.
Find more club leadership tools in the Kiwanis MembershipDevelopment Manual-online.
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Turn your next club meeting into a commercial. Enter theKiwanis International convention commercial contest. Create a 60-second spotabout your club, post it on You Tube and send the link, your name and phonenumber to [email protected].It may end up on the big screen at the Kiwanis International Convention inLas Vegas! Find tips, ideas and official rules at [email protected]. Deadlinefor entries is May 14.
This just in … Online education modules are now availablefor club board members and club membership chairs! Grab your member and club IDto checkit out here!
Tomorrow will put finish to the contention that the Tea-Party or Conservative Patriot movement has reached its zenith and would soon cease to be a threat. Thats what theyd like you to think. The MSM (so-called mainstream media) has consistently underestimated the real strength of the Patriot movement. Theyve expended so much time on trying to discredit our movement and everything about it. Theyve tied us to every wild-eyed fringe maniac they could find. They have painted us with that usually reliable liberal brush.
Wonder of wonders, it didnt work. The Patriot Movement has emerged from their collective scathing stronger, smarter, more determined and much larger. More and more people are seeing how deeply they have been betrayed by the passage of health care and the rest of Obamas economy and job killing policies. These people will gravitate towards their local patriot groups too.
Tomorrow we will see an expression of American values, our traditions, our Constitution and our profound belief in God and the God given freedoms we defend. Millions of Americans will attempt, once again, to get a message through to a government in Washington, which so far has proven deaf to the growing crescendo of unrest around the country. As ominous as all the indicators are for the DeMarxists in the coming midterms, Patriot activists are working extra hard to make sure we retire as many people as we can who facilitated the passage of the health care bill. read more »
Maybe you’ll be taking that next tweet a little more seriously, Joe Twitterer: the Library of Congress announced today that they’ll be archiving every public tweet made since 2006. That’s right: Twitter is now your legacy. More »
