FRANKFURT - A top European Central Bank official says the 17 countries that use the euro need an "urgent overhaul" of their banking and financial system to deal with the debt crisis, including a multinational authority with the power to restructure and bail out banks.
Peter Praet said in a speech Friday in Milan that the eurozone crisis has been undermining much of the crossborder financial markets' integration brought about by the euro. In particular, bond and money markets now charge some countries much higher interest premiums because of a perceived increase in risk.
"The euro area financial stability framework needs an urgent overhaul," said Praet, who is part of the six-member executive committee that runs the ECB's daily operations.
He called for a eurozone-wide banking regulator with the money and authority to restructure banks operating across borders. Fears that banks may need government bailouts, potentially overwhelming public finances, have been a key driver of the eurozone debt crisis, most recently in Spain. Yet banking regulation remains largely at the national level, where officials have been slow to force shaky banks to restructure. Restructuring or recapitalizing banks can be expensive for governments and shareholders.
Praet also called for a eurozone-wide deposit insurance program similar to the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Both measures would be funded by the private sector, not the government, so that taxpayers "would be shielded from picking up the bill for future banking crises," Praet said.
The eurozone countries already have national deposit insurance but a stronger backstop would offer depositors more reassurance and forestall the possibility of destabilizing bank runs.
Both ideas have been widely discussed by economists but so far EU officials and member governments have not moved forward on the issues.
Money and morality - New Statesman
All money tends to corrupt, and absolute money corrupts absolutely. This is an ancient message. You can find it in the Bible ("the love of money is the root of all evil"), in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers and Renaissance moralists, and more recently in the Occupy movement that set up camp last year outside St Paul's Cathedral. This Wednesday, the cathedral was packed for a rather more sedate explanation of the same ideas featuring the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel.
Sandel, currently plugging his new book What Money Can't Buy, has been difficult to avoid in recent days. His central thesis is twofold. Firstly, when you put a price on something you alter its intrinsic properties, and this can be morally corrosive. Secondly, the past few decades have seen a market economy replaced by a "market society" in which "everything is up for sale". Markets, he says, "are not neutral instruments, they crowd out values worth caring about" - values like altruism, human dignity and the common good. As a result we have seen a great hollowing-out of communality and public political discourse.
He asks such questions as: is it right to create a market in blood, rather than rely on altruistic donors? Should unhealthy people be given financial incentives to adopt healthier lifestyles? Should school pupils be "bribed" to read books or achieve higher marks? To all these questions Wednesday's audience answered an emphatic "no", which suggests that Sandel is, at least in terms of public opinion, pushing at an open door.
This may explain the tremendous popularity he now enjoys. (The Guardian described him the other day as "currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English" and suggested that his latest book "should be the bedside companion of every Miliband aide".) The free market "experiment" of the past few decades has led to rising inequality and an economic disaster, the only beneficiaries of which would seem to be a handful of already wealthy bankers. We should not be surprised if Sandel's deeply traditional complaints about the corrosive effect of money on the human soul find a ready echo, especially when voiced in a cathedral whose history and location give it a somewhat ambiguous relationship with wealth.
The idea that money has destroyed all vestige of civic virtue was hackneyed already in Roman times. For all Sandel's current vogue on the progressive Left, his message is inherently a conservative one, in that it implicitly looks back to a Golden Age before money ruined everything. Another way of saying this is that there's nothing new about the "market society".
One of Sandel's examples relates to privately-run prisons in California in which convicts with sufficient means can upgrade to a better cell. This was standard practice in 18th century London. Also popular in the 18th century was the "tontine", a form of gambling in which a group of people pooled their resources and the last one left alive collected the jackpot: not too dissimilar, in essence, from the market in third-party life insurance that Sandel criticises today.
But then to talk about the 18th century is to realise just how much more thoroughgoing the marketisation of society used to be. From the horrors of the slave-trade and the near-slavery of indentured labour, to the open purchase of Parliamentary seats through "rotten boroughs", almost everything was up for sale. Commissions in the British army and civil service appointments were bought, rather than given on merit, well into the 19th century. What we think of as basic public services such as policing and the upkeep of roads were wholly private or at best put out to tender. And it's unlikely to be a coincidence that prostitution in the 18th century was vastly more extensive and exploitative than anything seen today.
The present-day "market society", for all its deficiencies, is a pale shadow of the ruthless and money-driven world of two or three centuries ago. Sandel is squeamish about students hiring out their foreheads to advertisers or paying homeless people to stand all day in queues so that a richer and busier person can get into Congressional hearings. There used to be an actual trade in human beings. Things aren't likely to get that bad again, however badly things go in Greece.
At least when something has a price it shows that someone puts a value on it. Not charging for goods or services can lead to problems of a different order. The BBC's Stephanie Flanders, taking part in the debate at St Paul's, pointed out that in the age of the internet, many goods and services which would in the past have been paid for are available for free. The thought struck me that perhaps not charging for a service, or expecting things to be free, can be at least as morally corrupting of basic goods as Sandel believes money is.
If people expect to, and can, receive their news and entertainment for free, why should they pay for it? And how can the producers make an honest living? The Bank of England's Andrew Bailey contends that free banking distorts the market, is less transparent and leads to poorer service to consumers. It is at least an arguable case. And as regards to "free" internet services like Google and Facebook, it has well been said that the non-paying users are not the customers, but are themselves the product.
Is money the source of the problems Sandel identifies, or rather a convenient scapegoat for human beings who can't bear too much reality? You can't buy a friend, he points out, because if you know you've paid someone to be nice to you it ceases to be a "real" friendship. Has he never noticed that rich people tend to have more "friends" than poor ones? Sandel also raised the example of a professionally written wedding speech. Would the bride and groom feel quite the same way, he wondered, if they knew that the best man had spent $150 dollars on buying a speech rather than investing his heart and soul by writing it personally? Perhaps not, but it's not obvious to me why the payment of money in itself is corrupting.
The problem, surely - if there is a problem - is that the speech is not the best man's own; not that he has paid for it. I rather doubt that the newlyweds would be happier to learn that the best man had found the speech on a website and simply downloaded it for free.
Money market fund assets rose to $2.569 trillion - Yahoo Finance
NEW YORK (AP) -- Total U.S. money market mutual fund assets rose by $1.19 billion to $2.569 trillion for the week that ended Wednesday, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.
Assets of the nation's retail money market mutual funds fell $1.26 billion to $889.51 billion, the Washington-based mutual fund trade group said. Assets of taxable money market funds in the retail category fell $820 million to $702.41 billion. Tax-exempt retail fund assets fell $450 million to $187.10 billion.
Meanwhile, assets of institutional money market funds rose $2.45 billion to $1.679 trillion. Among institutional funds, taxable money market fund assets rose $3.43 billion to $1.592 trillion; assets of tax-exempt funds fell $980 million to $87.06 billion.
The seven-day average yield on money market mutual funds was 0.03 percent in the week that ended Tuesday, unchanged from the previous week, said Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet Inc. in Westborough, Mass.
The 30-day average yield was also unchanged from last week at 0.03 percent. The seven-day compounded yield was flat at 0.03 percent. The 30-day compounded yield was unchanged at 0.03 percent, Money Fund Report said.
The average maturity of portfolios held by money market mutual funds was unchanged from the previous week at 45 days.
The online service Bankrate.com said its survey of 100 leading commercial banks, savings and loan associations and savings banks in the nation's 10 largest markets showed the annual percentage yield available on money market accounts was unchanged from last week at 0.13 percent.
The North Palm Beach, Fla.-based unit of Bankrate Inc. said the annual percentage yield available on interest-bearing checking accounts was unchanged from the week before at 0.06 percent.
Bankrate.com said the annual percentage yield on six-month certificates of deposit was unchanged from the previous week at 0.22 percent. The yield on one-year CDs was also unchanged at 0.33 percent. It was flat at 0.53 percent on two-and-a-half-year CDs and held steady at 1.13 percent on five-year CDs.
Money-lender jailed and told to pay back £60,000 - jarrowandhebburngazette.com
AN illegal money-lender was today jailed for eight months in prison and ordered to pay back thousands of pounds of criminal cash.
Stuart Bell, of Newcastle Road, South Shields, will have to pay £60,000 following a confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
At Newcastle Crown Court on Tuesday, April 24, Bell pleaded guilty to engaging in activity requiring a licence between January 2005 and June 2010.
Today, he was sentenced to eight months in jail for prividing unlicensed loans and ordered to pay back the cash.
He was given 28 days to pay the £60,000, or he will face 19 months in prison on top of his sentence, as default.
Bell was arrested in June 2010 after an investigation by Northumbria Police and the North East Illegal Money Lending Team into his illegal money lending activities.
His home was searched and a number of items relating to illegal money lending, including hand-written repayment schedules, were seized.
A confiscation order is based on the value of the defendant’s assets at the time it is made.
The benefit figure is the amount of profit the court decides the defendant has ‘earned’ through crime.
Detective Inspector Paul Knox of Northumbria Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit, said: “We are pleased with the outcome of the confiscation hearing.
“Financial outcomes can be as much of a deterrent as going to jail.
“Anyone found making money from any type of crime will be caught and will be dealt with appropriately by the courts.
“This confiscation order clearly demonstrates that crime does not pay.”
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Print this pageNASB Financial Announces Consent Order - RTT News
5/25/2012 4:18 PM ET
(RTTNews) - NASB Financial, Inc. (NASB: News ) said Friday that its subsidiary institution, North American Savings Bank, F.S.B. has agreed to a Consent Order with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Bank's primary regulator.
The Consent Order replaces and terminates the previous Supervisory Agreement the Bank had entered with the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Bank's previous federal regulator.
The Consent Order requires that the Bank establish various plans and programs to improve the asset quality of the Bank and to ensure the adequacy of allowances for loan and lease losses. The Consent Order also requires the Bank to obtain an independent assessment of its allowance for loan and lease losses methodology, to conduct independent third-party reviews of its commercial and construction loan portfolios and to enhance its credit administration systems.
Among other items, it also requires that the Bank's written capital maintenance plan will contain objectives that ensure the Bank's Tier 1 leverage capital remains equal to or greater than 10% of adjusted total assets and that the Bank's risk-based capital remains equal to or greater than 13% of risk-weighted assets. As of March 31, 2012, the most recent quarter-end, the Bank's actual Tier 1 leverage ratio and risk-based capital ratio were well above these levels at 13.5% and 16.5%, respectively.
The Consent Order does not direct the Bank to raise capital, make management or board changes, or restrict lending.
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com
Business demands early poll - Australian Financial Review
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Julia Gillard cross paths during a division at Question Time Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Michael Smith and Jenny Wiggins
Business leaders are calling for an early election, warning that the political uncertainty created by a federal government lurching from crisis to crisis is eroding confidence and forcing them to put investment decisions on ice.
Chief executives of top-100 listed companies interviewed by the Weekend Financial Review said “enough is enough” as a string of political scandals coupled with a deteriorating economic picture meant Australia could no longer afford to have a question mark over key policy areas.
They singled out uncertainty over the carbon tax, industrial relations, the national broadband network and the mining tax as the main areas of concern that could be resolved if the Gillard government went to the polls. “Business needs some stability, we have short enough parliamentary terms as it is. If those are mirrored by internal instability along the way, it really isn’t helpful for anybody,” the chief executive of rail and ports giant Asciano, John Mullen, said.
A Nielsen poll for the Weekend Financial Review two weeks ago found 52 per cent of Australians would like an election to be held as soon as possible, up from 50 per cent in February.
The business community’s confidence in the Gillard government, already damaged by the leadership challenge by Kevin Rudd in February, has further eroded following the Peter Slipper and Craig Thomson scandals.
Senior executives in the mining, retail, energy, financial services, transport and construction industries questioned by the Weekend Financial Review said an election was the only way to stop business being undermined at a time when the European debt crisis, falling stockmarkets and weak consumer confidence were rattling sentiment.
Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes said during the week that businesses were reluctant to spend money in the present political environment.
“When Parliament are concentrating on the marginal nature of the government and the vote, and concentrating on individuals, then it doesn’t work well to give a degree of confidence for both investors and consumers,” Mr Brookes said, although he stopped short of calling for an early election.
Myer joined David Jones this past week in issuing a profit downgrade following a sudden deterioration in sales. Mr Brookes blamed uncertainty created by the carbon tax and rising living costs for fewer people shopping in his stores.
The chief executive of building materials group Adelaide Brighton, Mark Chellew, said it was time to let the public vote on a number of policies that would hurt business, such as the carbon tax.
“Enough is enough. I think the government should call an early election and let the people decide,” Mr Chellew said.
“The government is implementing a number of policies which we think are detrimental on business, and the public should have the right to make a decision about the future of this country.”
The mining community has also lashed out at the Gillard government over taxes and workplace relations.
BHP Billiton chairman Jac Nasser attacked the government earlier this month, calling for an overhaul of the industrial relations system.
Treasurer Wayne Swan has criticised mining billionaires Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer in comments that upset the resources sector at a time when it is dealing with rising labour, capital and tax costs.
BC Iron chief executive Mike Young said an election should be held “the sooner the better”, saying the government, Mr Thomson and the independents holding the balance of power had all done the wrong thing by clinging onto power.
“The country is in suspended animation at the moment and you can’t do anything. Their bare-faced determination to stay in power is just breathtaking.
“I just can’t wait until they are gone,” Mr Young said.
“It makes my blood boil that we, of all countries on Earth, aren’t holding our head up high and being very proud of what we have achieved.”
The managing director of Lend Lease’s Australian construction business, Peter Brecht, said he was worried policy decisions were being delayed.
“Politics are very difficult at the moment . . . I think it does [affect us]. It’s a confidence issue, we just try and work through that,” he said.
“We try and encourage everyone to get on with it but we don’t like to see decisions delayed or postponed. They get caught up in the politics.”
Asciano’s Mr Mullen, who has been battling industrial relations disruptions at the company’s port operations for almost two years, said constantly changing policy was not healthy.
“We studiously try to avoid backing one horse or another or making specific comments on any individual thing but it’s clear to the whole of corporate Australia that insecurity and instability is just not good for the country,” he said.
“Whichever side is in power, or whatever the situation, the chopping and changing and reversal of policies and stated objectives is a perpetual threat of any changed government.”
AGL Energy chief executive Michael Fraser stopped short of calling for an election but said the energy sector was exposed to political uncertainty.
“Businesses right across Australia want to see stability in politics and stability in policy settings so we can make long-term investment decisions,” he said.
The chief executive of insurer IAG, Mike Wilkins, said: “Certainty is what Australian business looks for. Any uncertainty is not good for confidence and a clear and solid direction is paramount from our political leaders.”
Not everyone agrees, however. Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly said earlier this month that the government’s critics should back off. Some chief executives would not go on the record to call for an election but were highly critical in private of the political situation.
Several senior chief executives, however, said in private that Ms Gillard was more impressive than her public image portrayed.
Some business leaders also privately expressed concern about the quality of the Coalition leadership.
The Business Council of Australia declined to comment on whether the government should call an early election.
But president Tony Shepherd said this week government policy must balance the needs of different groups.
Someone's making money in Greece: Burglars stealing cash stashed under mattresses after families take it out of banks - Daily Mail
- Andreas and Emilia Karabalis, both 80, had €80,000 taken from island home
- Billions of euros hidden in cupboards and under floorboards across nation
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Warning: Greeks are being urged to keep their money in the nation's banks and not to stash their cash at home (file picture)
Greeks are being urged to keep their money in the nation's banks and not to stash their cash at home - as thieves continue to profit from the country's economic uncertainty.
Police say brazen burglars are making off with hundreds of thousands of euros, on an almost daily basis, as they raid homes where money is hidden in cupboards or under the mattress.
Andreas and Emilia Karabalis, both 80, are just one of the many victims targeted by unscrupulous robbers.
The couple took out €80,000 and hid it in their home, on the island of Lefkada, because they thought their bank would collapse. But days later thieves came in the night.
Emilia said: 'We were sleeping. The two masked burglars came to our bed and tied us up. They hit us. They robbed us - they didn't leave anything, it was torture.'
Husband Andreas added: 'Our life is black now. They took our life's savings. We lost everything.'
No-one knows exactly just how much cash lies stashed in Greek homes, secreted in cupboards, at the back of the ice-box, beneath the floor or under the mattress.
But by any guess it is well in the billions, and burglars are after their share of loot which is both highly portable and virtually impossible to recover.
Greece's debt crisis has plunged it into five straight years of economic contraction, thrown half of its young people out of work and may see it ejected from the eurozone.
Civil disorder: As well as the targeting of homes, there has also been violence on the streets of Greece in recent months
In the past two years, Greeks have withdrawn from banks more than €72billion - or close to €7,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. And much of that has been taken in cash.
Police say gangs who may have once eyed 'hard targets', - like the banks themselves, or jewellers - are now going after homes of ordinary people, where there is far less risk and often large stashes of cash freshly withdrawn from savings accounts.
'Many people have withdrawn their money from the banks fearing a financial crash, and they either carry it on them, find a hideout at home or in storage rooms,' said national police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis.
He said: 'We urge people to trust the banking system, leave their money there, or at least in a safe place, not hide it at home, where they must anyway take the basic security measures.
Little wonder: But with shares in Greek firms plunging, and the nation's banks having to be bailed out, many think keeping their money at home is the sensible option
'Some people don't even lock their doors and windows.' The unexpected bonanza is attracting foreign crime networks, he said, including two from ex-Soviet Georgia which police dismantled in recent months, blaming them for 300 burglaries.
Crime is just one hazard for people storing unusually large hoards of cash, most of which are not insured.
GREEKS HIT BY UNCERTAINTY OF ECONOMY, AND NOW BY THIEVES
Carpenter George Psychogios, 30, withdrew his savings of €8,000 and kept them in his house at Arta, a small town 200 miles from Athens and known principally for its Byzantine stone bridge and a 13th-century church.
He said: 'I hid the money in two different places before leaving for a trip. When I came back it was all gone. They broke into the house through a balcony door and they took it all.
'We used to sleep outside with the doors unlocked. Now we don't feel safe even when we lock up. They break into homes, shops, businesses. There is a surge in robberies here.'
In Iraklion, a working class neighbourhood of Athens, local people say some thieves have become so brazen they often prowl in broad daylight, even when a family is in.
'We were sitting on the front veranda chatting when they jumped from the roof to the back yard and got into the house,' said pensioner Mattheos Michelakakis, 61.
Before he realised what had happened, they had made off with his family's gold.
'Burglars hear that people are scared and withdrawing money and they hit homes randomly hoping they will be lucky,' he said.
'I feel like I've been naive. We always used to leave all the doors open; we had nothing to worry about.'
There are tales of savings going up in smoke in fires or, as in one case, being lost when a pensioner withdrew his life savings - then died suddenly, before telling his family where they were hidden.
Theft, though, seems the biggest risk and the crime wave has spread far beyond the big cities into rural areas where robbery was little known.
According to the central bank, Greeks withdrew €72billion from bank accounts between January 2010 and March 2012, leaving just €165billion behind.
Since then, withdrawals have accelerated further after an inconclusive May 6 election led EU leaders to talk openly of Greek exit from the single currency.
Some of that money was wired abroad and some spent, but much of it was hidden in homes, either in cash or converted to gold. If Greece leaves the common currency area, any money left in Greek banks would probably be turned into drachmas worth a good deal less. Euros stashed in a box at home would still be euros.
'People have already taken their money out of the bank. The rest are doing it now because they are afraid we will be kicked out of the eurozone,' said one police officer.
Among cases he said he had come across in the past week: a man reported €30,000 in cash and gold stolen from a storage room next to his house and an elderly woman had her life savings of €100,000 stolen from her apartment.
That woman's home also happened to be packed full of cartons of long-life milk and boxes of pasta - in case, she explained, the economic crisis led to food shortages.
Stashing cash is as old as Greece. The countryside is dotted with archaeological sites where the ancients squirreled away their silver drachmas to hide them from marauding armies.
Greek museums are rich in treasure whose owners never made it back.
'Hiding valuables - small or larger amounts of coins, golden, silver, even bronze - was very widespread in antiquity, especially in times of war, crisis or difficulty,' said George Riginos of the Association of Greek Archaeologists.
'Sometimes the owner would perish and this is how they reached us, hidden in the ground, in holes in the wall, small vases under the floor or leather bags.'
Future archaeologists may yet stumble on some of the buried treasure of the euro zone crisis of 2012. A senior banker tells the story of a family on the island of Rhodes who recently visited their local branch, trying desperately to figure out how much their late father had withdrawn before he died.
Not trusting the bank, the old man had taken out his life savings. But he hadn't told anyone where he hid it. His children were searching everywhere, tearing down walls in the house trying to find it, but with no luck.
Accusations that climate science is controlled by money are mistaken - Wired.co.uk
One of the unfortunate memes that has made repeated appearances in the climate debate is that money isn't just influencing the public debate about science, but it's also influencing the science itself. The government, the argument goes, is paying scientists specifically to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is the major culprit in recent climate change, and the money available to do so is exploding.
Although the argument displays a profound misunderstanding of how science and science funding work, it's just not going away. Just this week, one of the sites where people congregate to criticise mainstream climate science once again repeated it, with the graph accompanying this story. That graph originated in a 2009 report from a think tank called the Science & Public Policy Institute (notable for using the serially confused Christopher Monckton as a policy advisor).
The report, called " Climate Money: The climate industry: $79 billion (£50.4 billion) so far -- trillions to come" (PDF) and prepared by Australian journalist Joanne Nova for the Science & Public Policy Institute, claims to show how money has distorted climate science. There are several aspects to this argument, but we'll start with the money itself.
Who's got the money?
Many discussions have focused on the fact that businesses with a
large carbon output (like fossil fuels extractors) have funded PR
and lobbying efforts that, in part, have attempted to undercut the
scientific case for human-driven climate change. It notes that
there is now significant money being made by companies that build
carbon-neutral energy sources and energy efficient technology, some
coming from tax incentives and subsidies. In addition,
carbon-trading markets are predicted to grow rapidly over the
coming decades. Combined, the report asserts, this money provides
an incentive to keep the spotlight focused on carbon.
In short, some of the green industries are now in the same position as their fossil fuel counterparts, in that they have an incentive to shape policy and the public support for it. There's a definite element of truth to this, although there are clearly reasons other than climate change -- ocean acidification, energy security, extending the lifetime of finite resources -- for promoting efficiency and green energy.
But the key thing here is that, at best, these companies can influence things like public perception and policy responses. They don't influence the underlying science because almost none of them are paying any scientists to gather data. So, although a focus on the income of various companies might tell us something about public opinion, it doesn't really say much about the science.
The false assertion that money is distorting the science comes, in part, from a spectacular misreading of the graph that accompanies this article.
The graph ostensibly shows how the US has gone from essentially funding nothing in the way of climate research to spending over $7 billion (£4.47 billion) a year. But the vast majority of that money is in the form of "Climate Technology," and a careful reading of the report indicates that this goes to things like wind and solar power, biofuel production, and things of that nature. None of that money goes to the researchers who are actually generating the results that point to anthropogenic warming, so it can't possibly provide an incentive to them.
The money that is actually going to climate science is on the bottom of the graph, in purple. And, as that shows, funding has been essentially flat since the early 1990s. (Funding has gone up slightly in recent years, but is still in the neighbourhood of $2 billion (£1.2billion) annually.) A lot of that money doesn't actually go to scientists, either, as it pays to support everything from some of NASA's Earth-monitoring satellites to land and ocean temperature monitoring.
The other issue with this graph is that it gives the false impression that funding shot up from nowhere around 1990. The truth of the matter is that the US has been funding climate science for decades. It's why we have things like a record of CO2 levels that goes back to the 1950s, temperature records that span over a century, and a detailed history of periods like the ice ages. People didn't just suddenly start studying this stuff in 1990 -- and much of the work from before that date was funded by the government. What changed was the accounting. There are over a dozen different branches of the government that fund some sort of science, but it wasn't until 1990 that the government formed the Climate Change Science Program, which started aggregating the expenditures across agencies.
There has never been any sudden boom in government funding for climate research that is luring people onto the research track, much less inducing them to support the consensus view. If anything, many years of flat funding would provide an incentive for people to look to getting out of the field. The graph, held up as evidence that climate scientists are being led around by money, actually shows the exact opposite.
Where's that money going?
But maybe that money is somehow being directed in a biased manner,
distributed in a way that ensures the current consensus is
supported. "Where is the Department of Solar Influence or the
Institute of Natural Climate Change?" Nova asks, elsewhere
claiming, "Thousands of scientists have been funded to find a
connection between human carbon emissions and the climate. Hardly
any have been funded to find the opposite."
This displays an almost incomprehensible misunderstanding of how science research works. Thereare institutes that are dedicated to studying the Sun -- the Naval Research Laboratory has one, as does NASA. But those institutes are focused on learning about what the Sun actually does, not squeezing what we learn into some preconceived agenda. For decades, solar activity has been trending downwards, even as temperatures have continued to rise. It's not that the researchers are being induced or compelled to some sort of biased interpretation of the data. Reality just happens to have a bias.
The same thing works in other areas as well. A number of countries have spent large sums of research dollars to put Earth-monitoring satellites in orbit, not with the intent of finding anything in particular, but because monitoring the Earth can tell us important things. This hardware has imaged the Greenland ice sheet -- again, not because of some sort of bias, but because the sheet is very big and very significant. Most of these studies have suggested that ice loss is accelerating, but a recent one concluded, "sea level rise from Greenland may fall well below proposed upper bounds."
The researchers weren't from some sort of "Institute to discover a stable sea level." They were from departments focused on polar research and Earth sciences. What Nova doesn't seem to get is that the people who study the planet actually pay attention to what the planet tells them, not to what their institute may be titled.
(Incidentally, this paper is also a clear indication that research that indicates things aren't as bad as they could be not only gets published, but makes it into very prestigious journals.)
Like many other self-proclaimed skeptics, Nova also has the bizarre idea that research normally proceeds by "auditing" existing studies. "Auditing AGW research," she writes "is so underfunded that for the most part it is left to unpaid bloggers who collect donations from concerned citizens online." But nobody audits the JPL to see if it's handling the Cassini probe properly; geneticists aren't being asked to open their books so that other scientists can see if they're fudging the numbers.
Science simply doesn't proceed through audits. The Greenland paper linked above provides a much more typical picture of how things work. The researchers behind it didn't simply reanalyse what others had done; they got new (and, in many ways, better) data that addressed the same issue and provided a more comprehensive picture of what was going on at the ice sheet's glaciers.
In short, you generally don't make an impression on science by auditing past data; you do it by coming up with better data.
It's pretty strange that people find in the graph (which shows research stuck in neutral for decades) evidence of a flood of money into climate science that distorts its conclusions. But it's unfortunately typical that an argument focused on climate science leaves the facts behind from the start.
Source: Ars Technica
Small Business Strategies: Slow summer can be opportunity - USA Today
Some small businesses, especially those in the travel or hospitality industries, will be having their busy season.
For the rest of us, summer can mean the doldrums: Fewer customers. Prospects out on vacation. Lower income. And a house full of kids and visitors to top it all off.
What's a small-business owner to do?
You could sit by a pool and drown your sorrows in a margarita. (I'll take mine on the rocks with salt, thank you very much.) But if you can't afford that, I've got six steps to help grow a more successful small business this summer.
1. Make a splash on social media. You've been meaning to learn how to use one of the many social-media sites — such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter — for your business, but you've just been too busy.
Use these slower summer months to spend some time figuring out which ones are right for you. Be sure to check out some of the many tools that make ongoing management of your social media activities easier and faster, such as HootSuite or Roost.
2. Network like crazy. All those backyard barbecues, softball games, and pool parties you get invited to are potential networking events, especially when they involve more than immediate family and friends.
If you're not getting many invitations, check out what's going on in your community. Try going to a Meetup group, Chamber of Commerce mixers, even neighborhood chili cook-off. Be sure to bring your business cards, mingle, and have a good elevator pitch ready so people you meet can easily remember what you do.
3. Update — or launch — your website. If you're like me, your website is outdated, but you haven't had the time to freshen it up.
Perhaps you don't have a website at all.
Summer is a good time to give your website a facelift. It doesn't have to be extensive, but make sure you have all the newest — and correct — information. Perhaps you want to add some e-commerce functionality, so customers can buy directly from you. And check to see that it looks good on mobile devices, too.
4. Turn those business cards into gold. I know you've got a stack of business cards from people you've met, but they're not doing you any good lying around your desk.
Yes, I know they take time to enter into a database. But, hey, it's summer. It's the perfect opportunity to get all these contacts into something like Salesforce or PipelineDeals. At least enter their contact info into your digital address book in Microsoft Outlook or Gmail.
If you have a ton of cards, like I do, you might want to buy a digital business card reader. They work fairly well now.
5. Start a simple e-mail newsletter. I'm a huge fan; I've got a monthly newsletter of my own with business tips.
They're easy to create and manage, and they keep your name as well as any specials or news in front of prospects and customers. Once you have names in a database or Microsoft Excel file, it's easy to import them into a simple newsletter program.
Or you can just enter the info into the e-mail newsletter service.
We use Emma, but other options include include Constant Contact; Vertical Response; and a free or inexpensive one that many small-business owners use, such as Mail Chimp. If you're very ambitious, you could even write 12 newsletters in summer and have monthly newsletters ready for the whole year.
6. Tackle a project. We all have a wish list of projects we would like to take care of someday.
You may have some new products or services in mind to develop, a new marketing campaign, organizing inventory, or cleaning out a back room to turn into an office.
Summer is a good time to take care of at least one of these. You'll feel a real sense of accomplishment if you do.
Of course, summer is also a good time for recharging your batteries. So maybe sitting by the pool with a margarita isn't such a bad idea.
Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop and publisher of books for entrepreneurs. Her most recent book is The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies. Register for Rhonda's free newsletter at PlanningShop.com See an index of Abrams' columns here. Twitter: @RhondaAbrams. Facebook: facebook.com/RhondaAbramsSmallBusiness. Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2012.
It seems like there should be some middle ground between unstable banks and mattresses. Do they have post office boxes or safety deposit boxes in Greece? Money seems like it would be safer there than in a home that can easily be robbed.
- P. Leeper, Columbus, Ohio, 25/5/2012 20:27
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