dkf
dkf's JournalWhy would a business owner expand and hire if he/she can't make more money?
How do you expect to employ more people if you don't encourage businesses to grow?
Every so often I see a post advocating a cap on earnings and I wonder if they've ever thought it through.
Apple IPhone 5 Store Lines Include Hundreds Getting Paid to Wait
Among the thousands of people expected to wait for hours outside of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s stores today for the new iPhone, at least a couple hundred of them will be paid just to stand there.
In what may be the biggest consumer electronics debut in history, more than 200 people are expected to hold places in line for strangers at stores around New York and the San Francisco bay area for the iPhone 5, Bloomberg.com reported on its Tech Blog. These arrangements were made on the website TaskRabbit Inc., where a user can find workers to do odd jobs such as assembling Ikea furniture or waiting in long lines.
The job broker is capitalizing on the popularity of the iPhone 5, which goes on sale globally today. Apple said earlier this week that advance sales of the smartphone topped 2 million units in one day -- double the record set by the previous device -- after it started accepting orders a week ago.
“I wanted a way to do sort of casual, quick work to make a little extra cash for the move that wouldn’t require extra commitment, that wouldn’t be an actual job to go to every day,” said Sara Clarke, who was hired to wait at the Apple Store in New York’s SoHo district from around 6 a.m.
http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-21/apple-iphone-5-store-lines-include-hundreds-getting-paid-to-wait
Spain eyes pension reform with aid package in sight (accelerating increase in retirement age)
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain is considering freezing pensions and speeding up a planned rise in the retirement age as it races to cut spending and meet conditions of an expected international sovereign aid package, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The measures would save at least 4 billion euros a year as well as fulfil European Union policy recommendations issued in May which senior euro zone sources said were being used as a blueprint for the terms of a sovereign aid programme.
The accelerated raising of the retirement age to 67 from 65, currently scheduled to take place over 15 years, is a done deal, the sources said. The elimination of an inflation-linked annual pension hike is still being considered.
Spain, the new epicentre of the euro zone debt crisis after Greece, Ireland and Portugal, is hesitating to apply for external aid to handle a high public deficit and soaring debt. Its borrowing costs fell on Thursday at an auction of a 10-year benchmark bond but relief may be short-lived.
http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINDEE88K08420120921?irpc=932
Northern Athens municipality suspends services due to lack of cash
The municipality of Acharnes in northern Athens has decided to suspend all of its operations after running out of money.
The municipal council met on Thursday night and voted to stop providing anything other than basic services because of its inability to pay employees’ wages and regular expenses.
“Acharnes Municipality will remain closed indefinitely, until the financial problem can be resolved,” the local authority said in a statement.
The municipality will operate with just skeleton staff, which trash will only be collected from outside schools.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_21/09/2012_462397
Libyan Official: ‘We Don’t Have Enough Power’ To Catch US Ambassador’s Killers
Libyan Official: ‘We Don’t Have Enough Power’ To Catch US Ambassador’s Killers
WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — A Libyan official admitted they will most likely not be able to find the killers behind the deadly attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week.
Interior Ministry spokesman Izzedine Fezzen told CBS News that Libya just doesn’t have the “power” to find the attackers who killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
“We don’t have enough power to catch them,” Fezzen said.
Benghazi’s attorney general also told CBS News that they don’t have the “expertise or technology to do a proper investigation.”
The FBI will be handling the investigation.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/09/21/libyan-official-we-dont-have-enough-power-to-catch-us-ambassadors-killers/
What Mitt Romney Also Said: A Glimpse Of The Endgame?
What we did want to bring attention to, is something else that Mitt Romney said, which has received no prominence in the mainstream media from either side. The import of the Romney statement is critical as it reveals just what the endgame may well looks like.
In response to an audience question:
Romney: [The] former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve. And I met with him, and he said as soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we're issuing—which they've been doing, the Fed's buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that's over, he said we're going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We're living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money. You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year, we wonder who's loaning us the trillion? The Chinese aren't loaning us anymore. The Russians aren't loaning it to us anymore. So who's giving us the trillion? And the answer is we're just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, "Here, we're giving it." It's just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future. You know, some of these things are complex enough it's not easy for people to understand, but your point of saying, bankruptcy usually concentrates the mind.
Source: Mother Jones
And that is how the Fed effectively took over control of the United States, as without it, it is game over. This is also why the ongoing presidential election is a farce, and has absolutely no bearing or significance for the future of the US, whose true ruler does not reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but instead holds America hostage in a powerful Stockholm Syndrome grip from the deep recesses of the Marriner Eccles building located, paradoxically, on Constitution Avenue.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/what-mitt-romney-also-said-glimpse-endgame
Chicago Teachers $10 Billion pension fund paying out $1 billion+ a year...haven't been paying SS
One of the most vexing problems for Chicago and its teachers went virtually unmentioned during the strike: The pension fund is about to hit a wall.
The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has about $10 billion in assets, but is paying out more than $1 billion in benefits a year — much more than it has been taking in. That has forced it to sell investments, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to pay retired teachers. Experts say the fund could collapse within a few years unless something is done.
“There’s a huge crisis,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan research organization in Chicago that works on fiscal issues. “The problem does not get easier by waiting. The problem gets bigger, and starts to become an insurmountable obstacle.”
Teachers in Chicago, as in many cities, do not earn Social Security credit for their years in the classroom.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/teachers-pension-a-big-issue-for-chicago.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043&_r=0
Seals killed in Libya not part of Amb Stevens security detail.
The two former SEALS, Tyrone Woods, 41, and Glen Doherty, 42, were not employed by the State Department diplomatic security office and instead were what is known as personal service contractors who had other duties related to security, the officials said.
They stepped into action, however, when Stevens became separated from the small security detail normally assigned to protect him when he traveled from the more fortified embassy in Tripoli to Benghazi, the officials said.
The two ex-Seals and others engaged in a lengthy firefight with the extremists who attacked the compound, a fight that stretched from the inner area of the consulate to an outside annex and a nearby safe house -- a location that the insurgents appeared to know about, the officials said.
--
In fact, officials said, the two men were personal service contractors whose official function was described as "embassy security," but whose work did not involve personal protection of the ambassador or perimeter security of the compound.
Many U.S. agencies in foreign hotspots like Benghazi rely on and even share contract workers with special skills like those of retired Navy SEALs for security, reconnaissance and threat assessments.
http://www.washingtonguardian.com/revising-libya-story
I admire them even more. They were true heroes in the fullest sense of the word.
CNN: Ambassador Stevens said he was in Al Qaeda hit list.
CNN says they have a source who says Amb Stevens knew he was on a hit list.
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