Monday, November 30, 2015

Amazon: Soon to Conquer Home Delivery? Or Become a Terrorist's BFF?

A drone delivers a package to your home.

Do you tip the drone?

Or will the drone trip you into unforeseen dangers?

Will terrorists learn how to exploit Amazon Prime to deliver explosives, nuclear waste, toxic poisons or baby parts to your backyard?

What kind of security will there be at the Amazon warehouses when bad guys take over and send Amazon Prime delivery drones to your home?

You might receive something you never ordered and would never want in a million years.

What if the Bad Guys work with Google and Facebook - using their deep data profiles that means you will never have privacy ever again - and start eliminating people?

Someone doesn't like Christians, or immigrants, or Republicans, or what? 

You have no privacy anymore.

Now that drones can deliver packages to your home, there is little security and nowhere to hide, certainly no way to remain private.

There is no Jack Bauer coming to rescue you.

Let's imagine - this is not hard to do - that Seattle, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. Power People decide to profile you, vilify you, and target you.   Why not deliver a bit of nasty to your backyard or doorstep?

Right now, only Seattle Billionaires know for sure!

The Seattle Billionaire who owns Amazon also owns the Washington Post newspaper.

Google and Facebook can and do control the content and type of news that is delivered to your device. 

What happens when bad things happen and the news never gets delivered?

George Orwell somewhere is whistling a tune you will start hearing very soon.  PB

Friday, November 20, 2015

Why Fewer Jobs? Fewer New Small Businesses


Fewer Jobs = Phew!  We need more jobs!

A report highlights why the U.S. needs new small businesses, especially as the economy remains stagnant for tens of millions of Americans. 

Too many people are underemployed, or stuck with part time work hoping for more hours, or simply stopped looking because they can't get hired.

Yet, those people are not counted and get ignored when selected official unemployment figures are widely reported by the media.

A report about small businesses emphasizes the direct impact new small businesses have on creating new jobs.

More new businesses = more new jobs.  This should be common sense.  But, we all know it is not common sense in Washington D.C., no matter what slogans get repeated.    PB
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From the Wall Street Journal online:

Newly formed businesses are adding jobs at a much slower pace than a decade ago, a factor that’s containing employment gains even six years into the expansion.

The number of jobs created by new businesses fell 7% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2014...

From a decade ago, the figure is down 18%.

“Look at the rate of new-business formation, that’s fallen for a couple decades in a row,” Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council annual meeting...

The latest data comes from Labor Department’s Business Employment Dynamics report.

That report showed private-sector employers added a fairly paltry 226,000 jobs in the first quarter [three months, not just one month], a starkly different picture than reported by the monthly jobs report...
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http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/11/19/why-it-matters-that-new-businesses-are-creating-jobs-more-slowly-than-a-decade-ago/

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

What's killing department stores

When revenue moves from one large space to another, there are clear reasons.

Shoppers are smart.  Shoppers are sharp.

Shoppers know what they want.   PB
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From USA Today online:

Department stores are in a tough spot - which is exactly where they don't want to be right before the holidays.

The four department stores in the Standard & Poor's 1500, including J.C. Penney (JCP), Kohl's (KSS), Macy's (M) and Nordstrom (JWN), are expected to eke out just 1.2% average revenue growth in the critical calendar fourth quarter...

That pales next to the 10%, 3.8% and 2.3% average growth expected from discount stores, apparel retailers and computer and electronics retailers, respectively...

Get this: Amazon alone is expected to haul in $36 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, far exceeding the roughly $24 billion all four department store chains are expected to generate in revenue as a group for that same period.

That's a massive lost opportunity for the department stores flowing online...

Macy's, perhaps more than any other, shows how the department store model is under serious pressure.
The most valuable department store by market value has posted lower revenue growth in every fiscal year since 2012, says S&P Capital IQ...

Nordstrom, which focused more on the high-end consumer, is holding it together better...
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Link: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2015/11/18/department-stores-fight-retail/75992622/



Friday, November 13, 2015

Paris: Coordinated Massacres in "deadliest violence to strike France since World War II"

From France 24 online:

At least 120 people were killed in a wave of simultaneous attacks on Friday evening in Paris, in the deadliest violence to strike France since World War II.

Gunmen and bombers attacked busy restaurants, bars and a concert hall at six locations around Paris on Friday evening, killing scores of people in what a shaken President François Hollande described as an unprecedented terrorist attack...
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Link: http://www.france24.com/en/20151114-paris-france-lockdown-after-deadly-terror-attacks

Al Gore's "24 Hours of Reality" in Paris Interrupted by "Reality" of Mass Murder of 135+ Innocents

From the Associated Press during night of Paris massacres:

A Paris webcast of an all-star marathon event about climate change was suspended after the deadly attacks in that city Friday night...

More than 135 people have been killed in a series of shootings and explosions across the city.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was due to host the 24-hour live webcast from the foot of the Eiffel Tower to drum up attention for this month's international climate summit in Paris...

Gore's aim is to raise awareness about global warming a few weeks before world leaders gather for the COP 21 Paris climate summit opening Nov. 30.

French President Francois Hollande and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan are among other officials scheduled to take part in the event.
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Link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CLIMATE_COUNTDOWN_AL_GORE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-13-20-04-04

Sunday, November 8, 2015

America Still Isn't Working: 6 years of weak, lame, herky-jerky jobs growth

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From Investors.com:

A strong employment report for October hasn't solved a conundrum that has persisted for five years: As jobs are created and the jobless rate falls, the number of Americans in the labor force keeps dropping.

The Labor Department reported Friday that, including revisions from August and September, hiring was up a brisk 283,000 - about double the meager pace of recent months.

Gains were widespread in industries, including business services, health care, retail, food services and even construction, suggesting a housing bounce.

Average wages rose 0.35% to $25.20, indicating many workers got raises.

We'd love to see 12 months or more of this. Solid job gains accompanied by wage growth should be the norm in a recovery.

But for six years now, progress on the jobs front has been herky-jerky.

Every slice of good news seems to be followed by a slip back into the rut of slow growth and wage stagnation...

Labor-force participation, meanwhile, shows no improvement.

The number of those over the age of 18 who are working or looking for work remains at a 35-year low, and participation has fallen most for younger workers between 18 and 30.

How can it be that more jobs mean fewer Americans in the jobs market?

One answer is that employers are having a devil of a time finding workers with the useful skills that businesses need.

That's an indictment of our schools and colleges and the tens of billions of dollars we spend on myriad government-financed job-training programs.

America needs nurses, welders, truck drivers, electricians, mechanics, engineers, carpenters and accountants.

Where are they?
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Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/110615-779635-october-jobs-report-americans-still-not-working.htm

Monday, November 2, 2015

Bill Gross at Janus: Loses $500 Million account

It looked like a great opportunity. 

Bill Gross, the world's best bond manager for several decades, left the firm he built leaving hundreds of billions of managed assets behind.

He started fresh running a very small fund.

Smart guy + small money = great capacity to move swiftly among opportunities without having to create large positions to make outsized returns.

It didn't happen after one year.   Is it like Michael Jordan retiring from the Bulls, but coming back to play with the Wizards?

Gross is still one of the smartest investment guys around.

His ongoing success is probably a matter of drive, focus and determination.  He has a lawsuit against his old firm.  That's the kind of distraction that can distort motivation.    PB
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From Pensions and Investments magazine online:

An unidentified institutional investor redeemed nearly $500 million from the unconstrained global bond strategy managed by Janus Capital Group Inc.'s William H. Gross during the quarter ended Sept. 30, slicing about 23% of assets from the strategy.

The withdrawal marks a setback for Mr. Gross, who joined Janus in late September 2014 after an abrupt exit from Newport Beach Calif.-based Pacific Investment Management Co., the firm he co-founded four decades ago.

Since taking the helm of Denver-based Janus' Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and associated portfolios, initial inflows have turned into recent net redemptions.

At the time of his departure from PIMCO, Mr. Gross was managing the world's largest bond fund, the Total Return Fund, which then had $201.5 billion in assets. He also headed the smaller $18.3 billion PIMCO Unconstrained Bond Fund.

Issues apparently remain unresolved regarding his departure from PIMCO; a month ago, Mr. Gross filed a lawsuit against PIMCO, claiming that he was forced out of the firm.

When Mr. Gross arrived at Janus, the unconstrained bond fund, launched in May 2014, held about $13 million in assets.

In November 2014, about a month after Mr. Gross' arrival, Janus announced that a private vehicle managed by Soros Fund Management LLC had invested $500 million in a separate account managed by Mr. Gross that would follow the global unconstrained bond fund strategy.

By April 2015, the fund reached a peak $1.514 billion in mutual fund assets, according to data from Chicago-based Morningstar.

But that amount also included about $700 million of Mr. Gross' own money. To be clear, that total does not include the $500 million from Mr. Soros' fund...
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Link: http://www.pionline.com/article/20151102/PRINT/311029974/big-redemption-marks-end-of-gross-1st-year

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Japan’s Buddhist temples are going out of business

From the Economist.com
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...In 1950 the Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto was burned down by a schizophrenic monk who adored the place.

Today’s temples, by contrast, are fading away in a puff of indifference.

Japanese people are growing less religious, and less numerous, every year.

You might think that funerals would keep modern temples busy.

Nearly 1.3m people died last year in Japan (a post-war record); Buddhism has for centuries been the religion of choice at funerals and in spiritual care for the bereaved.

But with costs often in the region of ¥3m ($24,700), funerals in Japan are among the priciest in the world.

Cremation is followed by a ritual in which the bereaved use chopsticks to pluck the charred bones of their loved ones from a tray and place them in an urn.

A priest mumbles incantations and bestows a posthumous name. It’s all rather elaborate.

So cheaper alternatives are becoming increasingly popular... 

Many families are opting to scatter ashes in forests or oceans, or even send them by post to collective graves.

The Koukokuji Buddhist Temple in Tokyo runs an automated indoor cemetery packed with over 2,000 small altars storing the ashes of the deceased.

That helps their families avoid the expense and inconvenience of a remote country plot. A website lists prices, options and walking distances to local train stations...
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Link:http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21677261-japans-buddhist-temples-are-going-out-business-temples-doom