India: Government Will Track Positions of All Mobile Phone Users
February 16th, 2012Via: The Indian Express:
The government is looking to track all mobile phone users.
As per amendments made to operators’ licences, beginning May 31, operators would have to provide the Department of Telecommunications real-time details of users’ locations in latitudes and longitudes.
Documents obtained by The Indian Express show that details shall initially be provided for mobile numbers specified by the government. Within three years, service providers will have to provide information on locations of all users.
Egregious Vote Fraud in Maine
February 16th, 2012Via: The Rachel Maddow Show:
High Demand for Machinists in the U.S. [???]
February 16th, 2012There is a critical shortage of machinists?
Really?
Millions of people are out of work and these companies can’t fill these positions because of lack of skills?
Via: CNN:
U.S. factories are creating many new jobs. But owners are hard pressed to find skilled American workers to fill them.
There is a “critical shortage of machinists,” a common and crucial position in factories, said Rob Akers, vice president at the National Tooling and Machining Association. “Enrollment in this field in technical schools has been down for a long time.”
The problem comes at a terrible time. Domestic contract manufacturers — known as “job shops” — are seeing a boom in business.
In the case of Win-Tech, a Kennesaw, Ga., manufacturer, orders are coming in fast and furious from its customers in the defense and aerospace industries.
But the company’s owner Dennis Winslow is more concerned than elated.
Winslow’s been trying to add 12 more workers to his staff of 42 to meet the increased demand, but he’s struggling.
“I’m facing a real conundrum,” he said. “There are so many unemployed people in the country. But I can’t find the skill sets that I need. I would hire tomorrow if I could.”
For more than a year, Winslow has been looking for manual machinists, quality control inspectors and machinists trained to use computer-controlled systems.
He said he may be forced to hire people who are not fully skilled, and then train them.
…
As the United States outsourced its manufacturing jobs over the last few decades, the country lost a significant chunk of its manufacturing talent pool, said Mitch Free, CEO of MFG.com, an online directory that matches businesses with domestic manufacturers.
“Now, as manufacturing is slowly coming back, we just don’t have this talent quickly available,” said Free, a machinist by training.
Related: Dumping China for American Job Shops
Several Large Financial Services Companies Facing Credit Downgrades of Two to Three Levels
February 16th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
UBS AG, Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) and Morgan Stanley’s credit ratings may be cut by as many as three levels by Moody’s Investors Service, which is reviewing 17 banks and securities firms with global capital markets operations.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup Inc. (C) are among companies that may be downgraded by two levels, Moody’s said in a statement, adding that the “guidance is indicative only.†Moody’s today cut some European insurers’ ratings based on risks stemming from the region’s sovereign debt crisis.
The potential downgrades, which may raise borrowing costs and force banks to increase collateral, put the ratings company at odds with bond investors, who are sticking with bets that new capital rules and trading limits will make the financial firms safer in the long run. Funding costs have climbed for banks worldwide as Greece’s debt woes roil markets.
The Pentagon’s $51 Billion ‘Black’ Budget
February 16th, 2012If you find this Wired piece interesting, definitely check out, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen. As an outsider, Paglen has no access to the black world, but he sort of feels around the edges of it and you really start to get a sense of how sprawling and massive it is. (And he doesn’t get into any woowoo at all.)
Via: Wired:
The military keeps a lot of little things secret. It could be the exact range of a jammer, sensitive missile data or the timing of a raid. But the larger context — that jammers and missiles exist, or that our forces conduct raids — is unclassified and even listed in the Pentagon’s budget for all to see.
These secrets are different. Their names are obscured by code words, or simply listed as “classified programs.†But with a little digging, we can get a (limited) sense of how much money is being spent on the U.S. government’s most secret military projects. In fact, you can take a look for yourself. We’ve put together this spreadsheet with the latest information. Feel free to add, subtract and edit it — kind of like a classified cash wiki.
Research Credit: bretwalda
Citigroup Whistle-Blower Describes Mortgage Scams
February 16th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
Four years after rotten mortgages helped trigger a global financial crisis, Sherry Hunt said her Citigroup Inc. quality-control team was still finding flaws in new loans that included altered tax forms, straw buyers and borrowers who listed fictitious employers.
Instead of reporting the defects to the Federal Housing Administration, the bank saddled the agency with losses by falsely declaring the loans fit for its federal insurance program, according to a complaint filed yesterday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Citigroup agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle the claims, and admitted that it certified loans for FHA backing that didn’t qualify.
U.S. Student Loans Close In On $1 Trillion
February 16th, 2012Via: Bloomberg:
As outstanding student debt approaches $1 trillion, it’s one more reason record-low interest rates aren’t doing more to boost housing. The tighter lending standards that have emerged in the wake of the recession weigh particularly on younger, first-time home buyers, according to a Federal Reserve study sent to Congress on Jan. 4. These households tend to be younger, often have relatively new credit profiles, lower-than-average credit scores and fewer economic resources to make a large down payment, the report said.
…
Calling it a “student-loan debt bomb,†the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys warned Feb. 7 about the effects of rising student debt on recent graduates, parents who cosigned their loans and older Americans who have gone back to school for job training.
China Plays Major Role in Financing Latin America; Pockets Premiums
February 16th, 2012Meet the new boss…
Via: Financial Times:
Chinese state banks have lent more than $75bn to Latin America since 2005, and in 2010 gave more than the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and US Ex-Im Bank combined, according to a report which highlights China’s growing financial heft in the region.
“On the positive side, it is clear that China is a new and growing source of finance in Latin America,†notes the independent academic report, New Banks in Town: Chinese finance in Latin America.
“That said, and contrary to much commentary on the subject, by and large Latin American nations have to pay a higher premium for loans from China.â€
China has overtaken the US to become Brazil and Chile’s largest trade partner. Many US policymakers fear that Beijing is using cheap rate loans to “buy†influence among left-leaning Latin American governments that are hostile to western interests, and that Beijing uses financing to secure long term commodity supplies.
But in just one example, the China Development Bank, which accounts for the bulk of China’s Latin American lending, extended a $10bn credit to Argentina in 2010 at the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 600 basis points. In the same year, the World Bank lent Argentina $30m at Libor plus 85 basis points.
Printing RFIDs on Paper at Fraction of Cost of Regular RFIDs
February 16th, 2012Via: University of Montpellier Press Release:
Now, researchers in France have developed a way to deposit a thin aluminum RFID tag on to paper that not only reduces the amount of metal needed for the tag, and so the cost, but could open up RFID tagging to many more systems, even allowing a single printed sheet or flyer to be tagged.
…
There are several techniques used to deposit an antenna on PET: etching, electroplating; and on paper: screen printing, flexography and offset lithography. Now, Camille Ramade and colleagues at the University of Montpellier have demonstrated how a simple thermal evaporation process can deposit an aluminum coil antenna on to paper for use as an RFID tag. Aluminum is a lot less expensive than copper or silver, which are used in some types of RFID tag. The researchers suggest that the approach would reduce the cost of RFID tagging to a fifth of current prices, which could represent significant savings for inventory users operating millions of RFID tags in their systems.
Research Credit: bretwalda
Detroit News Opinion Piece: Too Many Poor People, Put Contraceptives in Water Supply
February 15th, 2012Via: Detroit News:
Since the national attention is on birth control, here’s my idea: If we want to fight poverty, reduce violent crime and bring down our embarrassing drop-out rate, we should swap contraceptives for fluoride in Michigan’s drinking water.
We’ve got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don’t have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can’t afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences.
Michigan’s social problems and the huge costs attached to them won’t recede until we embrace reproductive responsibility.
