AIB execs - in excess

AIB seeks return of bonuses and end of executive pay cap - Financial Services News | Business News | The Irish Times - Wed, Jan 29, 2014: "The Government currently imposes a cap of €500,000 on bank executives and no bonuses are allowed. In 2012, AIB chief executive David Duffy was paid a salary of €475,000 and a pension payment of €71,000 for a total remuneration of €546,000.
This move on pay was said to be part of a long-term strategy by AIB to retain and secure key staff. The bank is concerned that it could lose key personnel to rival Bank of Ireland, which has largely freed itself of State influence having repaid its contingent capital notes and preference shares.
The Government’s holding in Bank of Ireland is just under 14 per cent, compared with 99.8 per cent with AIB."



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The Murdoch 'Fox" is out of the 'Journal' bag - the 1% problem

Venture capitalist slammed for Kristallnacht comments: "The latest example is U.S. venture capitalist Thomas Perkins. In a letter to The Wall Street Journal, Perkins said that the "rising tide of hatred of the successful 1 percent" was akin to the persecution of the Jews during Nazi Germany.

Perkins' comments have been met with incredulity and criticism—not least given the timing of his comments: Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

Regarding the anger directed toward the 1 percent, Perkins wrote: "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?""



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Chocolate one can sink one's teeth into!

P&G's Chocolate Toothpaste: Innovation or Desperation? - Businessweek: "Procter & Gamble’s R&D folks seem to have been busy working on their shark-jumping skills.

In a conference call with investors and analysts this morning, the consumer-goods giant touted a new line of Crest toothpaste aimed at “experiential” customers (as opposed to people who brush their teeth without “experiencing” the act at all). The line, which P&G (PG) promises to start selling soon, comprises three flavors: “Mint Chocolate Trek,” “Lime Spearmint Zest,” and “Vanilla Mint Spark.” Here’s how the Crest marketing team describes the new paste: “It’s a whole new world of deliciousness for toothbrushes everywhere.”"



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Simple things that matter the most in life

Perhaps I could have treated my mother better - Life & Style | Trends, Tips, News & Advice | The Irish Times - Thu, Jan 23, 2014: "A realisation that came too late
It was a hard thing to stand at that stone 18 months ago and consider that I could have treated her better. Perhaps I could have loved her more or at least said “I love you” more often, especially at the end. And I only realised all this when she was gone."



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Simple things that matter the most in life

Perhaps I could have treated my mother better - Life & Style | Trends, Tips, News & Advice | The Irish Times - Thu, Jan 23, 2014: "A realisation that came too late
It was a hard thing to stand at that stone 18 months ago and consider that I could have treated her better. Perhaps I could have loved her more or at least said “I love you” more often, especially at the end. And I only realised all this when she was gone."



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Cost of living? What about the cost of being dead? | by Zoe Williams The Guardian

Cost of living? What about the cost of being dead? | Zoe Williams | Comment is free | The Guardian: ""F uneral poverty" – that's the phrase they use at the National Association of Funeral Directors. Like "fuel poverty", "heat poverty" and "child poverty", this is just a long way of saying "poverty": another way to express the situation in which an event or thing that everybody will sometime need is nevertheless hopelessly out of reach of a fair proportion of them. One in five people can't afford funerals – given that the "cost of dying" now averages £7,622, the number of people who are knocked sideways by it financially, for years afterwards, probably considerably exceeds 20%."



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Wealthy Consumption....lessons for the poor

Wealth of 85 richest people equal to that of poorest 3.5bn - World Economy News | Latest Trends & Markets | The Irish Times - Mon, Jan 20, 2014: "Global inequality has increased to the extent that the €1.2 trillion combined wealth of the 85 richest people is equal to that of the poorest 3.5 billion — half of the world’s population — according to a new report from development charity Oxfam.
And the report, entitled Working For The Few, claims that growing inequality has been driven by a “power grab” by wealthy elites, who have co-opted the political process to rig the rules of the economic system in their favour.
Oxfam called on attendees at this week’s World Economic Forum, which brings together politicians and business leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, to take a personal pledge to tackle the problem by refraining from dodging taxes or using their wealth to seek political favours."

$28,000 a Night: Hotels Race to Attract Superrich Clientele - NYTimes.com:

In most hotels, luxury is measured by the thread count of the linens (minimum 400, please) or the brand of the bathroom toiletries. But for those at the highest end of the market, where the only restraint on consumption is how conspicuous they want to be, a race to the top has broken out, with hotels outdoing one another to serve this tiny, if highly visible, niche.

Take the Jewel Suite by Martin Katz at the New York Palace, one of two recently opened specialty suites. The three-story, 5,000-square-foot space — a sort of penthouse Versailles — itself resembles a jewel box, albeit one with its own private elevator and views of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.

It’s hard to imagine Louis XIV being left wanting. The floor in the entryway on the 53rd floor is glittering black marble arranged in a sunburst pattern, while a 20-foot crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling. The living room sofa is a brilliant sapphire blue and a tufted ivory chaise has a pearlescent sheen. Two floors up, in a second living room next to a vast private terrace, the wet bar (one of two in the suite) and half-bath are swathed in a sparkling wall covering, and an angular lavender sofa calls to mind an amethyst crystal. Iridescent tiles lining the private rooftop hot tub give the impression of sinking into a giant opal.

.....

Ms. Danziger described it as a “shock and awe” campaign that would help drive bookings of regular rooms. “You’ve got the brand building side and you’ve got where the money is really being made.”

In the end, the rich are getting richer, and the hotels are looking to serve them, Mr. Loeb said.

“The income stratification is more dramatic and that brings this on,” he said. “That’s what we’re really talking about, highly conspicuous consumption as wealth flows from the broader population to a very small subset.”

Birds and flight- more insights, even more questions

BBC News - Fly like a bird: The V formation finally explained: "Scientists from the Royal Veterinary College fitted data loggers to a flock of rare birds that were being trained to migrate by following a microlight.

This revealed that the birds flew in the optimal position - gaining lift from the bird in front by remaining close to its wingtip.

The study, published in the journal Nature, also showed that the birds timed their wing beats.

A previous experiment in pelicans was the first real clue to the energy-saving purpose of V formations. It revealed that birds' heart rates went down when they were flying together in V."

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Housing versus lattes, Australian version

Not buying lattes won't help me buy a house | Bridie Jabour | Comment is free | theguardian.com: "When a house in my crappy street in a fairly crappy Sydney suburb sold for more than $900,000 a few months ago, I shrugged and threw the flyer triumphantly announcing the sale in the bin. Owning a home in a city like mine is as remote to me as getting a seat next to Lady Gaga on the first commercial space flight. And that would be a hell of a lot cheaper anyway.

I could not afford the tiny 130-year-old two bedroom townhouse that I call home – with its leaky roof and absolute lack of built-in cupboard space – even if I wanted to, which is a melancholy inducing thought. I don’t like to dwell on my likely-to-be-eternal lack of home ownership too often, because what's the point? It is just a fact of my life, like having to put on sunscreen at 6.30am before I go outside for 15 minutes if I want to avoid burns. I can deal with it, but it doesn't stop for being irked at home-owners thinking I could own a decent place, if I really wanted to."

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Money talks, and buys- even Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords - latimes.com: "The telecom companies claim their chief interest is in providing better service to all customers, but that's unadulterated flimflam. We know this because regulators already have had to make superhuman efforts to keep the big ISPs from degrading certain services for their own benefit--Comcast, for example, was caught in 2007  throttling traffic from BitTorrent, a video service that competed with its own on-demand video.

Amazingly, even after Comcast was found guilty of violating this basic standard of Internet  transmission, the FCC greenlighted its acquisition of NBC, which could only give the firm greater incentive to discriminate among the content being pipelined to its customers. "

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Fat Chance For McPeople

US obesity epidemic linked to divide between rich and poor - World News | Latest International News Headlines | The Irish Times - Mon, Jan 13, 2014: "Obesity among children from lower earning families rose compared to their well-off counterparts, according to a study that suggests the US weight epidemic may be another sign of a growing divide between rich and poor.
Using data from two national surveys of children ages 12 to 17 years old, researchers from Harvard University and Insead analysed parents’ level of education as shorthand for socioeconomic status, a measure of education, income and occupation.
The study today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found that children from less educated families exercised less and didn’t cut their calories as much."

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Fat Chance For McPeople

US obesity epidemic linked to divide between rich and poor - World News | Latest International News Headlines | The Irish Times - Mon, Jan 13, 2014: "Obesity among children from lower earning families rose compared to their well-off counterparts, according to a study that suggests the US weight epidemic may be another sign of a growing divide between rich and poor.
Using data from two national surveys of children ages 12 to 17 years old, researchers from Harvard University and Insead analysed parents’ level of education as shorthand for socioeconomic status, a measure of education, income and occupation.
The study today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found that children from less educated families exercised less and didn’t cut their calories as much."

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Want unregulated, free markets but don't want to pay free market prices????

Is Uber’s Surge-Pricing an Example of High-Tech Gouging? - NYTimes.com: "In Kalanick’s mind, the variable pricing benefits passengers: They pay more, but they are buying certainty and shorter wait times, and wait times spent in the comfort of their homes, or bars or offices, rather than on the street. But paying a flat rate for a taxi is so deeply, deeply ingrained that it feels as if Uber is breaking the rules by suddenly charging more. After all, for as long as taxis have been around, governments have required them to charge standardized fares both as a consumer protection and as a way of regulating the market. (London issued rules about the number of horse-drawn carriages on its streets and the fares they were able to charge back in the 1600s, during the reign of Charles I.)"

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Price of inhumane behaviour

Black rhino hunt permit brings $350,000 at controversial auction | Environment | theguardian.com: "Officials from the Humane Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have said that while culling can be appropriate in abundant animal populations, all black rhinos should be protected given their endangered status.

An estimated 4,000 black rhinos remain in the wild, down from 70,000 in the 1960s. Nearly 1,800 are in Namibia, according to the Safari Club.

Critics have said any hunting of a rhino sends a bad message to the public. "This auction is telling the world that an American will pay anything to kill their species," Jeffrey Flocken, North American regional director of the Massachusetts-based IFAW, said. "This is, in fact, making a spectacle of killing an endangered species."

The auction took place in downtown Dallas under tight security. Organisers hoped to at least break the previous high bid for one of the permits in Namibia, which was $223,000, and had said the amount could be as high as $1m. The nation offers five permits each year, and the one auctioned on Saturday was the first to be made available for purchase outside Namibia."

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College Sports, Academics and Universities- Who is to blame for poor citizenship in the populace?

CNN: Some college athletes play like adults, read like 5th-graders - CNN.com: ""They're pushing them through," said Billy Hawkins, an associate professor and athlete mentor at the University of Georgia.
"They're graduating them. UGA is graduating No. 2 in the SEC, so they're able to graduate athletes, but have they learned anything? Are they productive citizens now? That's a thing I worry about. To get a degree is one thing, to be functional with that degree is totally different."
Hawkins, who says in his 25 years at various universities he's witnessed some student-athletes fail to meet college reading standards, added: "It's too much for students reading below a college level. It's basically a farce.""

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Business Week Provides New Definition of 'Rosy', courtesy Macy's

Macy's New Store Openings and High Profit Forecasts Trump Layoffs News - Businessweek: "Layoffs at the department store giant came alongside several coups. Macy’s said same-store sales in the past two months increased by 4.3 percent over the year-earlier period—thoroughly respectable particularly given JC Penney (JCP)‘s decision to not reveal holiday sales numbers. Meanwhile, Macy’s also forecast 2014 profit of $4.40 to $4.50 per share, well ahead of analyst expectations."

“They are a running a good business, and hats off,” Stifel Financial Analyst Richard Jaffe told Bloomberg.

VIDEO: Macy's Job Cuts Reflect Changes in Retail: Trujillo

Through that lens, the company’s decision to lay off 2,500 workers and close five stores looks quite different—possibly even rosy. Admittedly, it’s bleak for the soon-to-be-unemployed, but Macy’s said the moves will save $100 million a year. Meanwhile, its total head count will be static at about 175,000 because the company is opening stores elsewhere and hiring in other areas.

Meryl Streep - straight talk on Disney

Meryl Streep Blasts Walt Disney During Emma Thompson Tribute - Starpulse.com: "Actress Meryl Streep ripped Walt Disney Tuesday night while honoring fellow star Emma Thompson during the National Board of Review Awards Gala.

Thompson, who stars in Saving Mr. Banks, the story of Walt Disney's (Tom Hanks) 20-year struggle to wrestle the rights to Mary Poppins from author P.L. Travers (Thompson), won the award for Best Actress for her work in the film.

Streep, who presented the award, paid tribute to her pal with a rousing nine-minute speech, in which she blasted the legendary moviemaker as anti-Semitic, racist and sexist.

Streep asked the audience to choose with their applause between a "short, sweet, kind of funny" version of her tribute, or the "long, bitter, more truthful version." They chose the latter."

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Carbon based Pollution- and EU leadership

Pollution Seen Costlier After EU Intervention: Carbon & Climate - Bloomberg: "Carbon prices are poised to rebound from a three-year slump as European Union member states vote today on a plan to reduce a record glut of pollution permits.

The cost of emitting carbon dioxide will jump to 7.75 euros ($10.55) a metric ton by the end of the year, from 4.76 euros yesterday, according to the median of nine analyst and trader estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. Representatives of the EU’s 28 member states will cast their final vote after 2.30 p.m. in Brussels on the plan that would temporarily cut the number of permits by half of the annual supply for the 12,000 power plants and factories in the trading system.

The benchmark contract in Europe’s $72 billion market fell 65 percent in the past three years as contracting economies curbed demand for permits. Cheaper carbon eroded the incentive to burn fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy. Higher prices may boost costs for Essen, Germany-based RWE AG, which burns coal to generate as much as 48 percent of its power output, while aiding nuclear-power generators including Electricite de France SA and Fortum Oyj."

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Boeing Boeing Gone- the middle class, that is....

The Boeing vote and the death of the middle class - latimes.com: "Boeing executives maintained that major concessions were needed from the machinists' union to guarantee the 777X program for Seattle. They said the intense competition in the aircraft industry and price discounts demanded by customers made the givebacks essential.

But what's really happening is that Boeing, which is as financially healthy as it's been in years, is aggressively steering the fruits of its success to its executives and shareholders and shortchanging the workers who got it there.

Let's start at the bottom, with the contract. Actually, it's an eight-year extension to a pact that doesn't expire until 2016. Under its terms, Boeing will abandon its traditional defined-benefit pension plan, substituting an expanded 401(k). The old plan will be frozen, meaning that accruals to pension benefits from worker longevity and wages will shortly cease. (Pension values that workers have already earned they'll keep, as is required by federal law.)

As is true of all 401(k)-style defined contribution plans, the new system places more of the risk of retirement security on the workers, leaving the company largely risk-free. It will match employee contributions up to a certain level, but there's no guarantee that it won't seek to cut that commitment in the future.

The contract limits general pay increases to 1% every other year through 2023, outside of cost-of-living raises and a quality incentive program that could add up to 6% of pay, but could also yield nothing. And it shifts more of the cost of health insurance to the worker, raising deductibles and the workers' share of premiums. Workers who pay $66 a month for family coverage now will be paying $234 by the end of the contract. 

Any way you cut it, the workers are getting squeezed. A Boeing machinist job, once the reliable foundation of a middle-class lifestyle, will be much less of one in the future. It won't be exactly hard time--with average pay about $70,000 "it's still one of the best deals you can get for a blue-collar worker without a college degree," observes Leon Grunberg, a labor relations expert at the University of Puget Sound--but it shrinks the workers' economic horizons considerably, especially for younger workers.

Most significant, Grunberg says, is Boeing's attack on the defined-benefit pension. These have been disappearing all over corporate America, but until now companies with strong unions haven't shared in the trend.

"This is a harbinger of what's going to happen in the unionized sector," Grunberg told me. Boeing thus achieved a double-barreled victory--it shed its pension obligations and made the union less relevant to its workers' lives with one stroke.

So if Boeing is gaining so muich with this deal, where are the gains going? The answer, as is true throughout corporate America, is to shareholders and executives. Under Chairman and Chief Executive James McNerney, who took over in 2005, the company has increased its dividend every year but one, from $1.05 to $2.92 in 2014. That's a total increase of 178%, including a huge bump of 51% this year alone. 

At the same time, the company has authorized $17 billion in share buybacks. That's just another way of shoveling money out to shareholders, and surely accounts for a good portion of the company's handsome run-up in share price over the last year, when it has appreciated by more than 80%.

McNerney has done well by doing so good for his shareholders. In 2012, the last year reported by Boeing, he collected $27.5 million in cash, bonus, stock and option awards, and other pay. That was a 20% raise over the previous year, in which he got a roughly 16% raise over 2010. He must be a superman to be so uniquely responsible for the company's success--his 2012 pay was almost as much as that collected by the next three highest-paid members of his executive team combined.

Despite Boeing's insistence that it couldn't survive without concessions from its workers, the real question is whether its executives are sowing the seeds for its long-term decline.

The issue emerged earlier with the fiasco of its mass-outsourcing of components for its vaunted 787 Dreamliner airliner. The firm's determination to have the parts built and assembled all over the country and the world before final assembly in the U.S. made the project billions of dollars over budget and three years late. Only then did the company discover that it had given the important work to inexperienced companies without bothering to impose adequate oversight. That was the admission of then-commercial airline chief Jim Allbaugh in 2011. (A year later, he was out on his rear end.)

Others wonder whether in outsourcing so much engineering work, Boeing isn't helping to educate its own future rivals about how to eat its lunch. "Boeing effectively gave Tier 1 suppliers a large part of its proprietary manual, 'How to Build a Commercial Airplane,' a book that its aeronautical engineers have been writing over the last 50 years or so," writes Dick Nolan, a professor of business administration at the University of Washington.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-the-boeing-vote-20140106,0,6329457.story#ixzz2pfeOmxBy

Apple, Amazon downgraded 'on moral and ethical grounds'

Apple, Amazon downgraded 'on moral and ethical grounds': "One analyst blacklisted several companies on Monday, citing a reason not often (or possibly ever) heard on Wall Street—moral and ethical grounds.

In the report, Ronnie Moas, Standpoint Research's founder and director of research, downgraded Apple stock from a "hold" to a "sell," reiterated a "sell" recommendation for Amazon.com shares and initiated Philip Morris stock with a "sell" rating."

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Google in goo over taxes

Google faces £24m British tax bill over staff share scheme routed through Ireland - Technology Industry News | Market & Trends | The Irish Times - Mon, Jan 06, 2014: "Google is expected to be hit with a British tax bill of at least £24 million (€29 million) after a review by revenue officials of a staff share scheme that was routed through its Irish operations.
A recent rule change by HMRC, the British revenue commissioners, could similarly affect Facebook and Apple, who also have their European headquarters in Ireland.
Google has made a provision for the expected tax bill in the accounts of its UK operation, which have been under scrutiny by British tax officials since 2010, according to a report in yesterday’s Sunday Times.
The internet giant, which employs close to 3,000 staff in Dublin, awards shares in the company to its 2,000 UK staff each year. Google paid £51 million to staff under the scheme in 2011 and £50 million in 2012."

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Trash talk heats up - The Hindu

Trash talk heats up - The Hindu: "Reclaim Our Beaches, a non-profit student initiative has been looking at waste management issues for a long time. In 2010, the group conducted a Spatial Mapping of Chennai’s beaches along with Transparent Chennai, where they mapped how much trash different parts of Elliot’s Beach received at different points of time. To help with locations for trash bins, they also had a heat map containing a point density algorithm to show the most concentrations of trash. In 2012, they released ‘The Adyar River Estuary Waste Audit Report’ and found that the estuary contained 663 unique products belonging to 11 different categories like food and drink, household etc. About 85 per cent of these products were packaged in plastic or silver foil. “Beach clean-ups are a superficial way to deal with waste management,” says Siddharth Hande, co-founder, ROB. “This is a much larger problem because there is garbage not just because of littering but because a lot of the garbage is not eco-friendly. This is not just about waste but about what it has and where it is coming from.”"

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The vast gap between the Discovery CEO and the Bangladesh worker

Discovery CEO Stands to Make $110 Million in 2014 Pay - Bloomberg: "Discovery Communications Inc. (DISCA) Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav stands to make more than $110 million in compensation in 2014, the first year of a new contract that keeps him at the cable-network giant through 2019.

Including salary of $3 million, $6.6 million in potential bonuses and more than 1 million performance-based restricted stock units, Zaslav’s compensation would reach about $110.1 million this year, based on the value of the shares at today’s close. "


Bangladesh’s Poor Left Struggling as Power Fight Risks Gains - Bloomberg: "Standing on a dusty road in Bangladesh’s capital, Tanjila Begum weighed her options for getting to work at a garment factory as a planned political rally to scrap a Jan. 5 election kept buses off the streets.

For a moment, she considered walking 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to avoid taking a rickshaw for 40 takas ($0.51), four times more than a bus ride and about 20 percent her average daily wage. In the end, Begum shelled out the cash, as she risked being docked a day’s pay if she arrived late.

“People like me suffer the most from this political unrest,” she said from her home in Rampura, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Dhaka, recalling her ordeal on Dec. 29. “I cannot stay home. I need food, and for that, I need money.”"

THings are heating up, as far as global temperature is concerned

Global temperatures to rise at least 4°C by 2100 | Science Recorder: "According to a December 31 news release from the University of New South Wales, scientists estimate that by 2100, global average temperatures will rise at least 4 degrees Celsius if carbon dioxide emissions are not scaled back.  Additionally, researchers say that the continued increase in global average temperatures will result in an additional 4 degrees Celsius by 2200. "

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