The industries where jobs can be found include: Accounting, Information Technology, and even food service. This is all according to government data.

There are several surveys out now that are indicating that many companies won’t be hiring anytime soon, but a lot of the companies in the industries listed above will be looking for new recruits and are already out there actively seeking employees.

After shrinking for an entire year, four quarters in a row, the economy is expected to pick up a bit for the July through September quarter; this could lead employers to take away hiring freezes and start hiring people again. However, even with the new unemployment numbers out and showing a decrease in the total number of those who are unemployed, unemployment is expected to increase to 10% by the end of the year. Total job openings stayed steady through June according to the Labor Department.

Of course there are plenty of accounting jobs out there. The college I graduated from often boasts their 100% placement rate for accounting graduates. That number just seems crazy to me. After all, they just took a lot of the same classes I took to get through business school, yet most of them end up working in their field within weeks of getting their diplomas.

This map basically means that the lighter color, the more equally the wealth in the country is distributed. You can tell where the most people suffer due to the darker shades of green seen throughout the  map.

The countries with the biggest gap between poverty and wealth are the South American nations and some central to southern African nations.

Canada, Australia, much of Europe, and even some African countries all have fairly good wealth distribution throughout.

The United States falls into the same category as Russia, India, Italy, England, Portugal, and Uzbekistan to name a few.

Source

It can be amusing when a corporation goes through an identity crisis. Usually a corporate name change stems from the board or owner’s desire to move the company in a new direction or to pretend that they know what the consumer wants. I suppose sometimes they actually do know what the consumer wants, but more often a name change on an established company makes customers go, “huh?” more than anything else.

I think that more often though, companies decide to change their corporate name to get out from under a dark cloud that they imposed only on themselves.

Here are some of the worst of the worst corporate name changes:

The Shack::Radio Shack. This was so bad that I had to write about it in a previous post. While I now know that the company isn’t completely changing its name to the Shack, I still am not quite sure what the company was thinking when they decided it would be a good idea to align their company with a rickety old building. When I think Hi Tech, I’m not thinking about shacks.

Xe :: Blackwater. Earlier this year Blackwater decided that it would change its name to Xe because the Blackwater name was tarnished thanks to a 2007 incident that led to the death of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Thankfully, even after the name change the government did not renew the company’s contract.

Altria :: Philip Morris Co. When the company changed its name on the same exact day that the company was cleared of responsibility for a woman’s smoking related death in late January 2003, it obviously wanted to escape the bad PR it had been getting. However, all that ended up happening was a magnifying glass on the company. Every time customers are reminded about the name change, they are reminded that this is the same Philip Morris they knew and they only tried to change their name to escape responsibility.

SyFy :: SciFi. This one I can’t quite figure out. All the cable station did was change the spelling of the already abbreviated name.

You can read more about bad name changes as well as the worst offender, I’ll give you a hint, it has something to do about the company who changed the name of the Sears Tower, all at the SOURCE.

In the United Kingdom, there are things called umbrella companies. What exactly is an umbrella company and why does anyone need them? Well, an umbrella company is a company that serves as an employer to people who are working as independent contractors that work under a temporary contract. This is necessary in the United Kingdom because of legislation that was passed in 2007. The IR35 legislation created tests that would determine one’s employment status and therefore, their tax benefits.

Umbrella companies offer payroll solutions for these types of employees. The way I understand it, the contracts are drawn up for the umbrella company and the “independent contractors” are then sent to work with the employer.

Umbrella payroll services are typically used when an umbrella company is used to handle an independent contractor. So in a sense you are employed but mostly have the costs associated with self employment such as health care and no paid vacation time.

I don’t think that I like the idea of an independent contractor being taken care of by an umbrella company. I believe, as a temporary worker myself, that the umbrella company just is another company that finds itself paying taxes and typically a independent worker must now pay something to this company or their contract is otherwise effected by the need for an umbrella company.

I find this situation similar to a union in which sometimes a person might be able to find a job on his own but instead is placed into a job that she/she might not be qualified for and every two weeks must give a percentage of their check to the union to help support it. However, unlike a union a umbrella company can usually terminate the employ more easily than a union based worker could be removed by the company that he is working for.

The stock market has been doing better as compared to the same time last year, which was just a month or two after the biggest financial disaster of the decade. However, there have been some bumps along the way. If you look at something that has unfolded over just the past two or three weeks. Dubai was going bankrupt and there looked to be no one to save the country. That is, until today when Abu Dhabi surprised the country with it’s own $10 billion bailout.

With the country accepting a payment like that, it is easy to see why the stock market has kind of shot up today. Investors of the oil rich nation have had their fears calmed regarding the longevity of the emirate.

That is not the only financial news that has helped out the markets today. Citigroup has also announced this morning that it would be paying back $20 billion of bailout money that it has received from the United States government. The move will help put Citi back in control of its own company and will help out the government, which just passed a huge spending bill.

Financial news over the past two weeks has really been overshadowed by the whole “Tiger Woods” debacle. His story has completely caused a media frenzy and no one has mentioned that the Dow Jones has been over 10,000 for a while now. While there is plenty of good financial news to report on, there aren’t many news organizations that are doing so right now (that is, unless you watch cable news which has to report on several different things to fill up the time).

It looks like the Obama administration is taking some steps in the right direction to ensure financial fiascoes like the one we’re finally emerging from never happens again. It looks as though financial regulations proposed by the president could mean simpler and smaller banks and financial institutions. In the new system, small banks wouldn’t carry the weight of the financial system and if it failed, the only way it could be saved is if it could find help from another bank or investor.

I’m glad to hear that the government is taking steps to keep something like this from happening again, because we all know how popular bailouts were when the government started handing out tens of billions of dollars to failing banks (sarcasm doesn’t always come out the best over written word, but I think many of you know that’s what I was going for).

To avoid having to do that again, President Obama’s regulatory plan is calling for large financial companies to “pay a heavy price for the system-wide risk they pose.” Under the plan, large companies like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc would face much stricter scrutiny and would be required to have more liquid assets as a buffer against a recession or another financial disaster like we have seen in the last year. Also, the banks would be required to anticipate and prepare for their own failure and would be required to draft very detailed descriptions of how to pick the company apart quickly without causing any harm to the overall financial system.

“Without banning them we’re providing some pretty heavy penalties for entering” the top group of institutions that could pose a risk to the entire financial system, said Diana Farrell, deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council. “The regulator might say to a large institution, ‘Make sure there is very good reason to allow yourself to get that big, or that interconnected, or that complex because the penalties will wipe out any advantages, such as lower cost of capital, you might have.’”

There will be companies that have to just accept the new regulations and deal with them because to compete in the global capital market, some firms have to be large. I would guess that most would limit their size, however.

If it is possible for advertisers to get yellow journalist (you could call him an entertainer as there is no journalistic ethic in his broadcast) Glenn Beck off the air, it will happen soon. It all started when he uttered the following sentence on his show:

“This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people … this guy is, I believe, a racist.”

And that was that. The website ColorofChange.org decided to launch an assault against the television personality directed directly at the show’s wallet. The organization began going after the show’s advertisers and so far it has successfully gotten 20 advertisers to stop advertising on the show after the comment was made. The most recent in the list of advertisers to quit the show are Wal-Mart, Best Buy, CVS, Travelocity, Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank, Broadview Security, and Re-Bath.

A move like this could bring production of a show like this to a stand still. Cable news programs (as well as all programs) depend heavily on advertisers to keep the lights on, and without the big advertisers Fox News may end up canceling the show or replacing it with some other personality.

The companies that have pulled out of the program are some of the companies that have the biggest marketing budgets in the business and this program will really hurt unless it can, somehow, make it up to everyone. However, I don’t see anything Glenn Beck doing to either help the situation or any of the boycotters out there planning on letting up anytime soon.

While people like Glenn Beck are allowed a right to what they say, he needs to realize that every word that he says has a consequence and sometimes you have to apologize for saying things that are hurtful…If we all went around saying exactly what we thought all the time then half the population would be hiding under a rock crying.

It looks like the recession has made its way into pop culture. HBO has a new series called “Hung” and in its premier recently, it showed scenes of Detroit factories that were abandoned and had a voiceover talking of how the city has now fallen. The series focuses on a man named Ray Drecker, a guy that many can relate to these days.

Drecker was a star athlete in his younger days and is now having a hard time; he is divorced, behind on bills, and lost his job as a high school football coach because of some budget cuts the school had to perform.

The recession is going into its second year and the economy has found its way into pop culture; movies and tv shows have altered their scripts to put the tones of the recession in the stories. Also, plenty of books are offering frugal ideas and tips.

Long running tv shows like the Simpsons have also started talking about the recession. In one episode Homer and Marge have to sell their house because their mortgage payment had gone through the roof. On 30 Rock the characters had to deal with budget cuts. Even the kids from South Park had to learn a lesson about the recession.

Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation, said, “On the one hand, it’s good when it becomes part of popular culture because people are talking about it and thinking about it, But on the other hand, it’s bad when people are obsessing about it to the point of absurdity.”

In past downturns, the recession has been a way to escape from the problems, but this time, it seems as though pop culture wants to immerse itself in the current situations everyone is facing.

If you look back to shows like Dynasty, in the 1980’s the show was very popular and featured people with a very flamboyant lifestyle where they would flaunt their money. They also thrived during the 1980’s recession.

During the Great Depression big musicals also became very popular.

“If you’ve got a loved one dying of cancer, you may not want to watch, as your entertainment, movies of loved ones dying of cancer,” Thompson said.

I don’t necessarily enjoy watching people suffer in a recession, but I do really like to know that other people, even those in television shows, feel the same way that everyone else does. It makes me feel like Hollywood is connected to the real world and that at least the writers understand what is going on with the average American.

Art is supposed to imitate life I thought. This would be the best way to do so. People want to find solace, this is not a cancer.

JPMorgan Chase has decided to drop a clause from the credit card contracts that it has members sign when they sign up for cards. The clause is the highly disputed mandatory arbitration clause.

So, why exactly are arbitration agreements bad?

Arbitration can (and often does) give the company the ability to really mess you over in any kind of lawsuit. If you have a legal dispute with a company, you can’t take them to court…you take them to arbitration. Also, if you decide to take the company to arbitration, you will be forced to share the costs of the services with the company.

A group of people cannot form a class action lawsuit against a company that has a mandatory arbitration agreement in the contract.

Typically in arbitration, the company will be allowed to pick who the company is who provides the arbitrator.

The entire situation is meant to give consumers the short end of the stick in a lot of cases where large companies are involved.

However, now that Chase Card Services has decided to remove the mandatory clause from the contracts, it will open up the doors to things like class action lawsuits. Because of this, the company will likely be a bit more careful and scrupulous with its business actions.
The reason the banks had arbitration to begin with is because they claimed that it was more fair to the consumers because they were cheaper and took less time. When you look at the negatives that come from arbitration though, you can see that it often does not favor the consumer. In many cases, the odds are definitely against the person who wants to sue the company.

Chase isn’t the first company to take the clause out. Bank of America has done the same thing in the past few months. There are still plenty of businesses and corporations (and, yes, banks) that mandate arbitration. I believe that some banks will always require arbitration for mortgages.

How important is car safety to you? It is definitely at the top of the list to me. After being in a car accident where my 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier was victoriously mauled by an 18 wheeler, knowing the safety rating of automobiles is something that I think is quite important.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a report recently that named the top vehicles for safety for 2010. The list last year was comprised of over 90 cars, while this year the list has been taken down to only 27. While this may sound like cars are becoming less safe, the IIHS put new stipulations in how it tested for auto safety…this year it included information about how the roof held up against rollovers.

The areas that were tested this year was the 40 mph frontal crash test, side crash test (which tests to see how a passenger would fare if they were to be hit by an SUV or truck), rear crash protection, rollover, electronic stability control and bumper evaluations at low speeds of 3 or 6 miles per hour (I believe this one has more to do with how much it would cost to fix a small parking lot accident rather than safety in such an accident).

The 27 autos that were picked are broken up into five categories large, midsize and small cars as well as midsize and small SUVs.  Those were the only categories where vehicles made the cut.

LARGE CARS

Buick LaCrosse
Ford Taurus
Lincoln MKS
Volvo S80

SMALL CARS

Honda Civic
4-door models (except Si)
with optional ESC
Kia Soul
Nissan Cube
Subaru Impreza
(except WRX)
Volkswagen Golf
4-door models

MIDSIZE CARS

Audi A3
Chevrolet Malibu
built after October 2009
Chrysler Sebring
4-door models with optional ESC
Dodge Avenger
with optional ESC
Mercedes C class
Subaru Legacy
Subaru Outback
Volkswagen Jetta sedan
Volkswagen Passat sedan
Volvo C30

MIDSIZE SUVs

Dodge Journey
Subaru Tribeca
Volvo XC60
Volvo XC90

SMALL SUVs

Honda Element
Jeep Patriot
with optional side torso airbags
Subaru Forester
Volkswagen Tiguan

Of course, these are just considered the safest cars. There are other cars that are safe, but didn’t get the highest marks. Something interesting I noticed while searching through the IIHS site is that the cars that didn’t come up as “Top Safety Picks” weren’t tested for rollover safety, in the small cars category anyway.

After all the mess that has been going on with Toyota/Lexus with the recalled floormats,  I’m actually surprised to not see them on the list at all. One would think that they would do something to make their cars more safe to get high safety picks for 2010 after that fiasco. I suppose there’s always next year, right?

In a time when there are a lot of businesses that are trying to do things to be more environmentally friendly, you don’t hear a lot about smaller online businesses that are doing things to try to help out however they can. A Portland web design company is trying out a few things that help reduce its carbon footprint.

Through using newer innovations such as “green” pest control and more energy efficient lighting as well as some of the more environmentally friendly things that have been around awhile like using cloth napkins rather than paper towels and utilizing the public transportation system, the website development company has done a lot of little things to improve itself.

Something else that Synotac is doing that is very nice for not only the company, but for everyone is its encouragement of volunteerism. Sometimes it can be difficult to get employees to volunteer, but in this corporate culture that Synotac has created, it is accepted and many of the employees are happy to do it.

I like that the company is making it part of its corporate culture rather than just trying to implement a few extra things. With companies like this, being environmentally friendly is something that everyone strives for on a daily basis. This goes much further than just putting in a few CFLs or opening the windows when it’s nice out. This is part of who the company is and that is what is really important.

In the United States, we know that home prices have fallen dramatically and therefore, housing has become more affordable. In the United Kingdom the same phenomenon is happening. After the Bank of England reduced interest rates in the country to half a percent, affordability of homes has increased since Q3 2007.

In 2008, the median home price in the United Kingdom fell 16% during 2008 and through this year, it hasn’t improved.

When calculating affordability of housing, there are two things that are taken into account: The rate of interest and the average earnings of citizens in that area. Even though unemployment in the United Kingdom is on the rise just as it is in the United States, housing prices seem to be falling at the same rate or even faster in some areas.

In some of the priciest areas of the United Kingdom, the home affordability percentage has increased. In London, the affordability percentage has come down from 56% to 34%. The number is so low that it is actually below the long term average.

The most affordable areas included Copeland in Cumbria, there the affordability percentage of 22% means that the interest rates are low and the disposable income is higher. Of course, there is always “the other side of the coin” where home affordability is still poor. North Cornwall is the “least affordable” area that was surveyed with 63%. South Buckinghamshire came in at 62%.

Even though affordability is on the rise, it can still be difficult for first time home buyers to get the loans they need for mortgages. In the United States, it is awfully difficult for anyone to get a loan, particularly first time buyers who may not have a lengthy credit report. First time home buyers are also being warned against buying a home right now because of the unsteady job market.

Even worse than the job market in the United Kingdom is the threat of negative equity in their homes. No one wants their home’s mortgage to be considered “underwater.” It is something frightening to consider when buying a home and even worse when you know that you’re paying on a mortgage every month that is now more than the house is worth. In this kind of economy, that is not always feasible…which is why many people have defaulted on their mortgages. For example in the United States, many people in California, Las Vegas and Miami all saw this problem. While other areas did witness negative equity issues, these were the worst. In some cases, the mortgage on their home was double what their house was really worth. When someone is faced with that and they have lost their job, I can understand why they don’t feel as though it is affordable to continue paying on their home.

For more information visit the SOURCE

The Business Insider had an article from September 18th that said what companies, using a Market Cap to Enterprise Value ratio, might be going bankrupt in the future. A lower MC/EV score means that is a company that is far more likely to go bankrupt.

I found some of the companies on the list to be a bit surprising.

Here is the list from the Business Insider:

The number one company that is likely to go bankrupt with a EV/MC ratio of 32% is Hertz. The company had to take out a huge amount of debt to fund its fleet in May. In June, the rating of the company was dropped by Moody’s.

Number two on the list is Textron. The company sells business jets, which is not the business to be in right now. The company had to write off $2.3 billion and cancel a new jet design. The MC/EV ratio is 39%.

Number three is Sprint/Nextel. I am not that surprised to see Sprint make the list, but I really have high hopes for the company because I suppose I have a lot of loyalty toward the company. In reality, Sprint’s poor decision to buy Nextel and the fact that it is hemorrhaging customers (well, hopefully this will slow down due to the new phone offerings and actual great deals on service) has led to the company having a MC/EV ratio of 41%.

Number four, and perhaps the most surprising to me on the list, is Macy’s. The original article asks if anyone shops at department stores anymore and I can honestly say, from what I’ve seen…yes they do and they do in en masse. Same store sales fell all year (but, really, what retailer has done that well this year?). The company has $2.4 billion worth of debt set to mature over the next five years. The MC to EV ratio is 47% for Macy’s.

Fifth is Mylan. Mylan bough Merck’s generic sales an business department in 2007 and overpaid for it. Because of the bad deal it got, it is facing $5 billion in long term debt. Mc/EV ratio for the company is 51%.

If you would like to read the rest of the list, please visit the source.

After all the uproar that banks have started regarding overdraft fees for ATM and debit card transactions, the Federal Reserve has put a new rule in place that requires banks to get their customers’ consent before they are able to charge fees due to an overdraft. The rule is to go into effect on July 1st.

The rule came after consumer groups kept getting complaints from customers and members of Congress even said that the overdraft fees were unfair.

Many people believe that if their debit card is cleared for the charges, then there isn’t a problem with the amount of money in the bank.

I have always found it odd that overdraft fees always come from the smallest of charges and it is often something like a cup of coffee. I can only remember getting an overdraft fee once and it was for a soda from a convenience store. The only problem I had was the bank, which I had just visited and checked my balance, said I had more than $25 in my account.

It turns out some banks participate in a strange accounting practice that allows for small transactions to go through while deposits get put off.

I am really happy that the Fed got involved and decided to put this rule into effect. I wish it would have been put into place a bit earlier than July 1st of next year, but I suppose better late than never. Now if only some people were able to recover some of the overdraft fees that have been collected over the years for the “funny” accounting rules I was talking about earlier.

There are plenty of people across the country as well as around the world who have something to say about the United States economy and Wall Street. The two have been skipping down the recession highway hand-in-hand for the past year and everyone sees it.

Executive pay is one of the things that gets a lot of people particularly fired up and you really know that the executives are making too much money when Bill Gates says they are.

Gates had this to say, “It was a bad milestone in controlling executive salaries when that $1 million cap went on. The compensation problem is a very interesting problem. I do think compensation is often too high, but it’s a very tough problem to solve.”

The cap he is talking about is a $1 million cap in executive pay that went into effect in 1993. Since the cap was put in place, companies have found other ways of showering their executives with gifts and other things such as lucrative stock options. The stock options were often worth FAR more than a year’s salary at one of the companies would have been.

The $1 million limit on salaries encouraged companies to instead give executives lucrative stock options, sending pay to vast new heights.

Gates also worries about the government’s control of AIG, “I do worry that when the government owns an entity like AIG that you can greatly devalue that entity by having it essentially have to behave as though it is part of the government. It is an unnatural situation when the government owns a lot of a private company. Unfortunately there is a view that it should exist for a long term. There is some devaluation of what that asset would have been worth if it hadn’t had to go through that kind of management structure. It is unavoidable.”

Bill Gates is one of the people who benefit from lucrative stock options with his company (which he stepped down from to focus on philanthropy). However, I do not see Microsoft taking down the entire United States economy like the banking industry did.

Source

Google is now offering free Wi-Fi at 47 airports across the United States for the holiday season this year.

The airports that will be participating in the program are:

* Austin (AUS)  * Baltimore (BWI)  * Billings (BIL) * Boston (BOS) * Bozeman (BZN) * Buffalo (BUF) * Burbank (BUR) * Central Wisconsin (CWA) * Charlotte (CLT) * Des Moines (DSM) * El Paso (ELP) * Fort Lauderdale (FLL) * Fort Myers/SW (RSW) * Greensboro (GSO) * Houston (HOU) * Houston Bush (IAH) * Indianapolis (IND) * Jacksonville (JAX) * Kalamazoo (AZO) * Las Vegas (LAS) * Louisville (SDF) * Madison (MSN) * Memphis (MEM) * Miami (MIA) * Milwaukee (MKE) * Monterey (MRY) * Nashville (BNA) * Newport News (PHF) * Norfolk (ORF) * Oklahoma City (OKC) * Omaha (OMA) * Orlando (MCO) * Panama City (PFN) * Pittsburgh (PIT) * Portland (PWM) * Sacramento (SMF) * San Antonio (SAT) * San Diego (SAN) * San Jose (SJC) * Seattle (SEA) * South Bend (SBN) * Spokane (GEG) * St. Louis (STL) * State College (SCE) * Toledo (TOL) * Traverse City (TVC) * West Palm Beach (PBI)

The idea behind the program is to get people to donate. When they connect to the network at whatever airport they are in, they will be prompted to donate to any of a list of nonprofit organizations. The donations are not mandatory.

Google will be matching donations to a charity up to $250,000.

Along with the airports that are offering the free Wi-Fi, Google is also putting free internet on Virgin America flights.

The promotion lasts until January 15, 2010.

Something I noticed about this list is that some of these airports already offer free Wi-Fi. I do not fly often, but I was aware that Charlotte’s (CLT) airport offers free Wi-Fi. I know that because while I was waiting on a flight I was in a frenzy  trying to make a post deadline.

Find out more about the program here.

Advanta Corp is a company that offers small businesses credit cards in the United States. Yesterday the lender filed for bankruptcy protection. The company, in its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Deleware District, listed assets of $363 million and debts totaling $331 million.

The company came into hardships after many of its small business clients simply could no longer afford to pay the balance or the minimum payment on credit cards lent by the company because they had also come under economic hardships. According to the company, it is trying to collect $2.7 billion from the accounts of 360,000 customers. The accounts are closed to new charges, but the outstanding balance is killing the company.

It had decided to shut down its credit card lending business five months ago to try to keep something like this, or worse, a takeover of its bank by the FDIC, from happening. however, it appears as though the bank will likely be taken over by the FDIC shortly because its level of capital is below regulatory requirements.

The company said that it has almost $100 million in cash and cash equivalents available, but would not be capable of meeting all of the debt obligations that will become due. There are around $138 million of senior retail investment notes still outstanding. The company’s largest unsecured debt holder is the Bank of New York Melton; it is investing in $230 million in debt for the lender.

Due to the announcement, of course, the stock for the publicly traded company fell 70%. It fell from 25 cents to 8 cents after hitting its all time low of just seven and a half cents.

Not included in the bankruptcy filing is Advanta Bank Corp. Also, customers who are making payments to their credit cards need to continue making payments on time because this has no effect on those accounts.

There are several oil platforms directly in the path of Tropical Storm (but was once Hurricane) Ida. Production on some Shell, Exxon and Chevron platforms has come to a stop for right now, but the storm is expected to leave the area sometime tomorrow. So far, Chevron has shut down its Tahiti, Blind Faith and Petronius platforms and Exxon has pulled all of its nonessential staff from platforms that are in the path of the storm.

The Tropical Storm isn’t very powerful right now and has weakened since leaving the Yucatan peninsula. Currently, it’s projected path has it making landfall somewhere near Mobile, Alabama. Thankfully, the waters near the coastlines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida have cooled this year. Since mid-October, the weather in these areas has been quite unseasonably cool and that causes any tropical systems to really “lose steam.”

With some of the platforms shutting down production in the Gulf, oil prices will likely inch up, but not soar like they do when there is a greater demand for oil or a large storm finds itself in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil has neared $79 a barrel again in trading today. This is probably more because of the weak U.S. dollar rather than the Tropical Storm.

I suppose, for those living on the coastlines of the United States, this year was extremely mild as opposed to how it could have been. Even though many places saw lots of rainfall over the summer (much, MUCH more than usual, especially in the Southeast), there weren’t many hurricanes to make landfall and do a lot of damage this year. Now hurricane season is almost over.

In a act only a crazy, but extremely wealthy, old man would decide to use, Rupert Murdoch has announced that he wants to make his websites invisible to Google’s search engine.

Why would anyone want to do that? After all, if someone has never discovered the site, the best way to obtain that reader is through a search engine. Well, he doesn’t see it that way. He said, “If they’re just search people, they don’t suddenly become loyal readers.”

However, in my opinion, having someone be able to find your site through search is the best way to GET new readers and if someone is reading your site that’s better than them not reading your site, right? Plus, how is someone going to become a loyal reader if they don’t know about the site? I always thought the best way that sites become popular is because they are able to be searched for.

I have a list of websites I read everyday; many of them are websites I searched for.

Murdoch is also planning on doing something that has really failed to “take off” in the past; he wants to put his news sites behind a “subscription wall.” His reasoning behind this move is that websites as well as blogs don’t earn “serious money.” He currently has this in place at the Wall Street Journal; at the site you can read the first couple of paragraphs of an article but if you want to read more, you have to be a subscriber. Typically, the same article or something with similar content can be found by searching through Google or some other search engine for free.

He did say that he feels that the same “search engine people” are the ones who “steal” stories from his sites. He said, “they just take them.”

This man really underestimates the power of Google and other search engines. I also think that he is too stubborn to realize when he’s made a mistake. What I mean by that is when his plan fails to work, he won’t go back to the way things were. He will keep his “news” sites subscription based where very few people will read it and the sites will quickly fall in every ranking.

Last month, the United States’ unemployment rate was 9.8%, the newest figures show that the unemployment rate has increased to 10.2% and it is the highest it has been since April of 1983. Official figures show that the country lost 190,000 jobs with the majority of the losses coming from construction, retail, and manufacturing.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are 15.7 million unemployed people in the country, which is up over half a million from the previous month. The number is up 8.2 million from the time the recession officially began in December 2007.

The number of people who are long-term unemployed (those who have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks) has remained pretty steady. There were 5.6 million long term unemployed people in October; meaning that 35.6% of those who are unemployed have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks.

According to the New York Times, the “underemployment” rate (part-time workers and people who have given up the job hunt altogether) is at 17.5%.

Of course this is more bad news, but it is right on track with what analysts were thinking. After all, they did say that unemployment would hit 10% by the end of the year.

There are fields that aren’t doing so badly; the health care profession has added over half a million jobs since the beginning of the recession.

Perhaps with the holiday season, some of the merchants will be hiring at least temporary workers. While temporary work isn’t the most ideal for a lot of workers, it is something that will help pay the bills for those who are cash-strapped right now.

Flash orders give some traders an edge in the purchase or sale of their stocks. The advantage is only a split second advantage, but it is enough to get the attention of the SEC.

For the next 60 days, the change will be up for public comment and could be adopted by the SEC after that time.

Flash orders are one of those things that sometimes occurs in the trading world. They really have started to become quite a hot issue on Wall Street though due to people asking questions about fairness on the Street.

From MSNBC:
A flash order refers to certain members of exchanges — often big companies — buying and selling reports about continuing stock deals milliseconds prior to that information being made public. A number of big banks and financial companies, using high-speed PC programs, can get a speedy, sneak peep at how additional investors are trading, giving them a brief peek into the direction of the market.

The other rule on the table includes more transparency from credit rating companies. For its role in the subprime mortgage mess, the industry that performs credit ratings has been shamed. The practices of these companies (which includes Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service, as well as Fitch Ratings) will be able to be seen by the public and will also be subject to restraints.

It is not fair when some companies have the ability to trade before the general public is allowed to do so. When there are ultra high speed computers and company information and reports available, then of course they will have an small advantage. I do not believe that the flash ordering has been exactly beneficial to a lot of companies on Wall Street because if you look at how many companies have performed over the past few months and especially when you look at the last year, you can tell that they are not exactly doing great. Many of the banks and financial institutions have only remained open only by the grace of our taxpayer dollars.

I am glad that they will no longer be helped out by any of the money that I pay the government. I know that the general public of the United States is ready to go after the boards of many of these companies because of all the bonuses that they seem to be raking in every couple of months; and I have to agree with the general public on this one.

These rules can be seen at the MSNBC article I’ve linked below. I would like to see what the SEC does with the public comments over the next two months. In 60 days, we will see how the market is doing and I am sure that will have some impact on the SEC’s decision as to what it is going to do with the new rules.

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According to Trim Tabs Investment Research firm, the United States shed another 284,000 jobs for the month of October.

The results came out today from the research firm. While it is less than the 358,000 jobs that were lost in September, it still makes the total number of jobs lost 5.9 million in the last 12 months. Not only are the jobs being lost, but people are also having a hard time making the amount of money they once were.

The research firm made another note in its research that salaries are still falling. The level of salaries from September 2008 to September 2009 dropped 5.3% and from October 2008 to October 2009 4.6%.

The firm obtains its information from analysis of daily income tax deposits to the Treasury from the amount of salaried United States employees.

The unemployment figures for the month of October should be coming out in the next week or so. The official report will tell us just how bad we did for the month. I don’t think that October will be as bad as September was, however, there is an issue regarding how many jobs were created versus jobs lost. Also, like I always say when I write a post about unemployment, the only people who are counted in unemployment figures are those who are actively seeking work.

There are a lot of people out there who have given up on the job hunt for right now. I would like to see a report on those people, honestly. I believe that a report like that would give people a real idea as to how many people do not have a job right now. It should be broken up into categories such as “stopped looking” or “not interested” just so everyone can tell the categories apart. If everyone was lopped into a “don’t have a job and not looking” category, that would include everyone from exasperated ex-business executives to new moms (or dads) who want to stay at home and take care of the baby.

Ford posted a third quarter profit of $997 million which equals out to 29 cents per share. Just a year earlier, the car maker posted a loss of $129 million.

Ford said that it attributed the success it saw in the third quarter to the Cash for Clunkers program.

I am personally glad to see that Ford saw a good quarter. As the only United States auto manufacturer that did not take any money from the government, I believe that a lot of people are preferring it to other US automakers. However, thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program, a lot of the automakers had pretty good third quarters. It is likely that the fourth quarter won’t be as nice to the auto industry.

Right now, Ford is really trying to promote all the features of its cars. This is compared to how GM is promoting how its improved quality in its cars. I believe that Ford has always had better quality cars when compared to General Motors anyway. While Ford has been talking about Sync features and awards, GM is left to compare its cars to Hondas and Toyotas. It is a difficult race that GM is competing in and I believe that it might be the wrong battle for the company. I just don’t see the people who are brand loyal to Toyota or Honda switching to a GM car.

I haven’t personally seen too many Chrysler ads. I have seen a lot of ads for Jeep, but none for actual Chrysler branded cars.

Target will be starting mobile phone sales inside its stores. While most retail stores such as Target and Walmart and even Best Buy offer mobile phone sales, the way that Target is going to be selling mobile phones will be a bit different than others do.

Target will be outsourcing its mobile phone sales to Radio Shack. Because of this, Radio Shack will be opening up kiosks inside the store. Any consumer will be able to buy the same brands they can get other places. They will have T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless.

According to the article, you won’t be able to buy Sprint phones at the kiosks, but I can’t see that holding because Sprint has always been one of the main carriers that sold at Radio Shack stores.

This could be a good idea for smaller retailers; however Target is a pretty big store with a large retail footprint. Target has the ability to sell and the room to sell the phones and plans, but I suppose that they have felt as though this would be the best way to do it and would benefit everyone in the deal.

There wasn’t a lot of information released about the deal between Target and Radio Shack. However, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, California said that Kiosk Operations (a subsidiary of Radio Shack that will be operating the kiosks inside the Target stores) is likely paying Target for the ability to operate In its stores. He said that it is likely for the company to pay between $30,000 and $40,000 per year for retail rent. It is likely that Kiosk Operations will also be paying Target a small amount of its sales, which is probably going to be less than 10 percent.

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Friday market the largest amount of United States government take overs in one single day since the beginning of the financial crisis and the almost complete collapse of the financial sector of the United States.

The nine banks (which brings the total to 115 for the number of failed banks in 2009) that were taken over showed that there is a trend in the banking industry that banks are begging to be injured by bad loans that are going south quickly.

Even with these bank failures, these are smaller banks. The largest was still Washington Mutual when it was seized just over a year ago in September 2008.

The banks, which were being held by FBOP Corp, were acquired by U.S. Bancorp to the tune of $18.4 billion in assets as well as $15.4 billion of deposits. U.S. Bancorp has been going around this year purchasing distressed assets.

It is unsettling to know that banks are still failing and will likely continue to fail as more loans begin to mature and become due. There is also an issue that is coming up concerning Option-A mortgages’ rates resetting in the next year. These were a lot like the subprime mortgages that caused so much of the financial crisis. When they reset in the next couple of years, we could actually see a bigger problem than what we saw in the past two years with subprime mortgages and foreclosures.

With foreclosures on the rise and unemployment really not letting up either, the problem with banks is also going to likely get worse before it gets better. I am not sure if there will be more bank takeovers in the next year, but the FDIC was already hurting from all the banks it had to pick up after they failed

According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the Federal Reserve should lose its ability to bail out “big, failing financial firms like AIG and Bear Stearns.”

He said, “Any firm that puts itself in a position where it cannot survive without special assistance from the government must face the consequences of failure. The proposed resolution authority would not authorize the government to provide open bank assistance to any failing firm.” He went on, “We cannot put taxpayers in the position of paying for the losses of large private financial institutions. We must build a system in which individual firms, no matter how large or important, can fail without risking catastrophic damage to the economy.”

Many taxpayers would agree with Geithner, while many of the banks would likely not. I have to say that I do agree with him to a point definitely. With as much money as we, as American citizens, have invested in these companies, we should be able to control them a bit better than they are now (for example, we should definitely have been able to do something about the grossly overpaid executives at AIG). However, once we start controlling the companies, people start screaming about how it is not right in a free market system.

Geithner suggests that large firms that are failing should be received by the FDIC and then it can decide whether to “unwind, dismantle, sell or liquidate.” If these companies should so choose to liquidate, then they can be purchased by other companies or they can be broken into many other branches.

The main reason why I feel like this is such a good idea is that I think that companies should be held responsible for their actions. Like the picture posted above (which I know I posted as a funny post a week or so ago), these banks are allowed to steal and “plunder” and still be able to escape with all their loot. It is not the way a company is supposed to be run. These companies should have been forced to figure out a way to liquidate or sell from the beginning. Allowing them to continue to operate with the taxpayer’s money is absolutely insane. Particularly when you consider companies that took BILLIONS (like, AIG). Those companies will never be able to pay back that money.

At least when the government bailed out the car companies, there were hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers that were benefiting because they wouldn’t be losing their jobs. At the same time, the executives of those companies weren’t taking outrageous salaries either. It is as though the financial companies that took the bailout money do not run on the same system. It is just absolutely ridiculous how out of control the whole thing got.

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Earlier this year, Charles Joyce and James Voigt sued Pepsi and tow of its distributors in a state court in Wisconsin. Their claim was that PepsiCo stole trade secrets from some of the plaintiff’s confidential discussions in 1981 about selling bottled water. They claimed that Pepsi took that information and developed Aquafina.

PepsiCo’s lawyers said that they did not receive notice of the lawsuit until September, the case was in April. The judge in the case had no other option but to enter a default judgment. Due to Pepsi’s lawyers’ silence, a damages award was given that totaled $1.26 billion as of September 30.

Of course, Pepsi’s lawyers filed motions to vacate the order on October 13, because they said that they didn’t get the lawsuit until October 6th.

In court papers, PepsiCo claims it first received paperwork from North Carolina agent on Sept. 15 when a copy of a co-defendant’s letter was forwarded to Deputy General Counsel Tom Tamoney in PepsiCo’s law department. Tamoney’s secretary put the letter aside and didn’t tell anyone about it because she was “so busy preparing for a board meeting,” PepsiCo said in its Oct. 13 motion to vacate.

Another breakdown, according to the AmLaw story: Lawyers for PepsiCo distributors Wis-Pak Inc. and Carolina Canners Inc. made court appearances in June and July. PepsiCo was at a loss to explain why it hadn’t heard about the case from them. “It’s just another unfortunate thing that didn’t come together,” PepsiCo spokesman Joe  Jacuzzi said.

In seeking to dismiss the case, PepsiCo argues that the statute of limitations should preclude the lawsuit. Furthermore, “the $1.26 billion judgment that has been entered is unprecedented in size and justice requires that PepsiCo have a chance to defend itself,” the company said.

While it is unlikely that the judge will vacate the order in the state, but perhaps the judgment can be reduced from the annoying-ly high $1.26 billion judgment.

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Sprint can’t keep itself from hemorrhaging money as well as customers. The nation’s third largest retailer announced their third quarter earnings and they obviously weren’t too great.

As subscribers dropped the carrier, it found itself losing $478 million, 17 cents per share. This is a greater loss than the company saw in the third quarter last year of $326 million, or 11 cents per share.

The loss the company had was greater than what analysts were expecting. The majority were expecting an average loss of 15 cents per share.

The net operating revenue for the company was also down to $8.04 billion. This represents a 9 percent drop from the $8.82 billion it was making last year during the same quarter.

So, where did the money go? I would guess it followed the 545,000 wireless customers it lost during the last quarter alone. The company actually lost 801,000 post paid Sprint subscribers, but 801,000 signed up for its Boost Mobile prepaid service.

When the dust settled, Sprint was left with 48.3 million subscribers. There is a pretty large gap between Sprint and its next biggest competitor; AT&T Wireless (which currently has over 80 million subscribers. However, it is still ahead of the smaller T-Mobile cellular provider with just over 32.8 million customers.

It’s not all bad news for the company, however. In its earning statement for the third quarter, Sprint also talked about how it has had improvement in customer care satisfaction for the past 7 consecutive quarters as well as opening its 4G network to 17 different markets, and it has launched (and will be launching) 16 new touchscreen, full keyboard smart phones.

In my honest opinion, Sprint has bent over backwards to keep a lot of their subscribers happy. I don’t know what they’re doing to lose so many subscribers, but I would imagine it has something to do with the company’s phone lineup. I can’t imagine it being the actual network because (at least in my opinion) the service is great anywhere I go. I even had reception in a basement on the college campus near me while my friend with an iPhone did not.

Kenneth Feinberg is the pay czar that is in charge of how the banks that took bailout money are running. When Bank of America proposed to cut pay for its top executives and top paid employees, he gave his own proposal in which he insisted the cash part of their salaries are to be reduced by 94% from the levels they were in 2008.

The letter that Feinberg sent to Bank of America’s chief administrative officer, Steele Alphin, outlined exactly what would be going on with their pay. Here is the summary:

•Retention and guaranteed bonuses are prohibited.

•The majority of one’s paycheck must come in stock awards, which aren’t redeemable for two years.

•Base salary will not exceed $500,000 and on average will be 94% lower than in 2008.

•Total compensation (retirement, fringe benefits, bonuses) will be 62% less than in 2008.

•Long-term bonuses can be awarded, but only after review by the pay czar’s office, and such bonuses must be in the form of restricted stock not redeemable for three years and subject to forfeit if the employee leaves the bank.

•All bonuses can be “clawed back” if the employee is terminated for misconduct or financial statements supporting the bonus turn out to be inaccurate.

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Ok, so it’s unlikely that anyone that was making the huge amounts of money that the top executives making would be happy about rules set on how much money that they can make.

I am glad that the pay czar is setting rules on how much money these guys can make. If the banks weren’t operating on the taxpayer’s dollar then perhaps they could be trusted to do whatever they wanted, but are using federal money to pay their employees a crazy salary and huge bonuses, so they can’t be trusted.

The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into exactly why a Northwest Airlines airplane that was headed to Minneapolis would have overshot the airport by more than 100 miles this week.

Northwest Flight 188 was on its way to Minneapolis from San Diego when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers. While the radio was out, the plane flew right over the airport and failed to land. Once the radio was working again, the plane was able to turn around and land safely at the airport.

There have been a couple of rumors floating around suggesting that the flight crew were arguing and that was the reason for the radio black out. Then again, there were other rumors suggesting that they simply fell asleep.

This isn’t the first issue that Delta Airlines (which now owns Northwest Airlines) has had in the past few weeks. Just last week, a Delta flight was flying from Brazil to the company’s hub at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport and it landed on a taxiway instead of the runway, which was right next to it. The crew had been flying all night and landed the plane in the dark. Luckily, no one was injured in this incident either.

Both incidents happened right as the Federal Aviation Administration began reviewing and updating rules as to how long a pilot can fly over a given amount of time.

Plane incidents like this can be avoided by the FAA simply putting the rules into place now. People shouldn’t be falling asleep while they’re operating an airplane. If they could take shifts (like any other kind of job) then perhaps this wouldn’t happen. More people are feeling as though they have to outperform everyone now just so that they can keep their jobs.

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