BOSTON (AP) – A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.
politico: Five years after he put his money behind the Swift Boat ads that helped tank John Kerry’s presidential campaign, Senate Democrats gave T. Boone Pickens a warm welcome at their weekly policy lunch Thursday.
Or at least most of them did.
Kerry skipped the regularly scheduled lunch; his staff said the Massachusetts Democrat “was unable to attend because he had a long scheduled lunch with his interns and pages.”
More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, research suggests.
An estimated 150,000 people with flu symptoms were prescribed the drug through a new hotline and website last week, according to figures revealed yesterday.
AP: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the five banks.
The agency shut down Integrity Bank of Jupiter, Fla., with $119 million in assets and $102 million in deposits, and First BankAmericano, based in Elizabeth, N.J., with $166 million in assets and $157 million in deposits.
Also closed were Peoples Community Bank, West Chester, Ohio, with $705.8 million in assets and $598.2 million in deposits; First State Bank of Altus, in Altus, Okla., with $103.4 million in assets and $98.2 million in deposits; and Mutual Bank of Harvey, Ill., with $1.6 billion in assets and $1.6 billion in deposits.
Headlining the new issue of Sporting News Magazine: our list of sports’ 50 greatest coaches of all time, as selected by a panel of 118 Hall of Famers, championship coaches and other experts.
John Wooden, who at UCLA won a record 10 Division I men’s basketball championships in 12 years, was a runaway winner. SN’s 1970 Sportsman of the Year picked up 57 first-place votes from the panel, which includes seven World Series-winning managers, four Super Bowl champion coaches and the winningest coaches in the NBA, NHL and college basketball.
LED-backlit TVs — an evolution of the standard LCD set — have been on the market since 2004. But the sets in this lab have something that could catapult the technology into the mainstream.
A far lower price.
This lab is deep inside the headquarters of Vizio Inc., the discount electronics company that became the biggest supplier of LCD TVs in North America through its aggressive pricing. When it lowers prices, other manufacturers often have to follow, even if they don’t go quite so low.
Source: Congratulations, we all just got wealthier today! Or I should say that according to the government, we got wealthier-not only today, but in the past as well.
The Commerce Department released its second-quarter GDP report this report and along with it, they revised ALL the GDP numbers going back to 1929.
Today, BEA is releasing revised statistics of gross domestic product (GDP) and other national income and product accounts (NIPAs) series from 1929 through the first quarter of 2009. Comprehensive revisions, which are carried out about every 5 years, are an important part of BEA’s regular process for improving and modernizing its accounts to keep pace with the ever-changing U.S. economy.
Paging Mr. Orwell, to the yellow courtesy phone.
These weren’t small changes either. Here’s a look at the old and new quarterly series which begins in 1947 (in trillions of dollars chained at 2000 prices):
(Fortune Magazine) — In Washington these days, the only topics of discussion seem to be how many trillions to throw at health care and the recession, and whom on Wall Street to pillory next. But watch out. Lurking just below the surface is a bailout candidate that may soon emerge like the great white shark in Jaws: Social Security.
Forbes: What started as a housing and financial crisis has turned into a manufacturing recession.
Even as signs grow that banks are steadying up and the housing market may be stabilizing, unemployment data show just how hard the recession has hit America’s manufacturing centers.
Nationwide, unemployment has jumped to 9.5% from 5.7% a year ago. But for cities focused on manufacturing, it’s been worse. The 10 cities where the unemployment rate has risen the most in the past year, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are all major manufacturing centers, many with ties to the automobile industry.
BOSTON (MarketWatch) – About a week from now, Eric Singer is going to move all of his mutual fund’s investment capital from the sidelines into the stock market. The money has been in Treasurys and money-market instruments for months, but Singer has one big reason why he’s sure it’s time to get in: Congress is going on vacation.
Singer runs the Congressional Effect Fund, which opened in May 2008 with a simple, straightforward strategy: Invest in the stock market only when Congress is out of session.
Boston Herald:Before we cut David Ortiz [stats] any slack because the test was supposed to be anonymous or because he is, you know, a wonderful guy, let us consider the deal his union made in 2003.
The players agreed to one drug test - one quick pee in a cup - and that likely would be it. If fewer than 5 percent of the players tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, it would be done, ostensibly forever.
Gene Orza and Donald Fehr must have felt like they had pulled another one over Bud Selig’s eyes. All the players had to do was stay clean during the offseason and into spring training when they would pass their one and only test, and then they would be free to do more drugs than Amy Winehouse.
What - no more Brett Favre? Just like that, in a New York Jets minute, he’s gone? Really gone? Or just gone? Wink, wink.
Gone just long enough to miss training camp. Gone just long enough to miss the drudgery, repetition and tedium of training camp. Gone for at least a couple of months.
Be honest. You miss him already. You miss the soap opera. You miss the shots of his two-day-old stubble. How does he do that anyway - maintain his stubble at precisely two days old?
Buffalo News:The Pete Rose argument has always been easy for me. Simply, he bet on baseball, he knew the consequences of betting on baseball, he broke the rule and therefore was banned for life from baseball. There was no gray area for interpretation based on performance or popular opinion.
Nobody would question his credentials. Take away years of compulsive gambling and lying, and he coasts into the Hall of Fame. It’s a slam dunk. He has 4,256 hits, the most of all time. He won three World Series titles. He’s one of the best players ever.
CBS:
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is a better man than I am. You already knew that, right? Fine. But this is sincere stuff. It’s no time to be snarky.
It’s no time to be vindictive, either, and when he ruled on Michael Vick, Roger Goodell wasn’t that. He wasn’t vindictive. He was forgiving. Which means he’s a better man than baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who refuses to forgive banished hit king Pete Rose.
Nor is it time to grandstand — and what do you know? Goodell isn’t doing that, either. Which means he’s a better man than Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, who is playing to the masses or the media or the voices in his head when he insists that former New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress should spend years in jail for the crime of shooting himself on accident.
By Art Spander
Day by day, leak by leak, Barry Bonds keeps looking better and baseball worse. Bonds didn’t ruin the game. Bonds didn’t poison pigeons or fail to stand for the national anthem. He simply used performance enhancing drugs.
So, we learn, did a great many others, A-Rod, the Rocket, Manny and now, according to one of those anonymous reports, this one on the New York Times web site which makes it considerably more credible than others, David Ortiz.
CBS: LOS ANGELES — It’s been since 2005 that Reggie Bush played at USC.
More than three years since Yahoo! Sports blew the roof off the sucker with the report that Bush accepted cash and benefits worth $300,000 from some would-be agents.
Fifteen months since an investigation of basketball star O.J. Mayo was made public
THE STRATEGIES were sound, the costs reasonable, the gestures noble, the risks low and the rewards potentially high. Each team made the right call.
There should be no regrets in Oakland for signing Jason Giambi, and none in San Francisco for signing Randy Johnson.
But these are not the farewell tours anybody hoped for. Not the A’s, not the Giants, not their fans - and certainly neither of the players.
Johnson and Giambi take pride in their willingness to prepare, physically and mentally, for the demands of a 162-game schedule.
It seems almost certain at this point that whatever health reform legislation is ultimately enacted by Congress, its principal funding will come from a surtax on the top 1% or so of taxpayers. This is a very bad idea for reasons that have little to do with the economic effects of taxation.
July 31 (Bloomberg) – The Androids are coming. Brace yourself.
Between now and the end of the year, a wave of new wireless smart phones running Android, Google Inc.’s much-discussed but so far little-seen operating system, will crash onto U.S. shores from makers such as Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc.
“China has a huge amount of investment in the United States, mainly in the form of Treasury bonds. We are concerned about the security of our financial assets” was the way China’s assistant finance minister put it. Briefing reporters at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, he added, “We sincerely hope the US fiscal deficit will be reduced, year after year.” Quite sincerely, one suspects, given a US budget shortfall this year that is slated to reach $1.85 trillion
By Stephen L. Carter
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A specter is haunting America: the specter of profit. We have become fearful that somewhere, somehow, an evil corporation has found a way to make lots of money.
Business Week:Recent earnings reports show companies are slashing costs, paying off debt, and stockpiling cash. Meanwhile, economists see signs the economy is slowly improving.
Unfortunately, none of that could prevent a wave of bankruptcies by firms walloped by the recession and credit crisis.
That’s the prediction of experts on bankruptcy, who say too many firms are loaded up with too much debt to survive the next year without defaulting on their debt obligations and filing for bankruptcy protection.
Standard & Poor’s, for example, predicts the default rate for speculative-grade (i.e., junk-rated) companies to hit an all-time high of 14.3%-but not until the first quarter of 2010. The default rate was 9.25% last month, and just 0.79% back in November 2007. (S&P, like BusinessWeek, is a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP).)
Today’s Microsoft-Yahoo partnership is a necessary declaration of war on Google. But while both sides needed Micro-Hoo, writes Douglas Rushkoff, it’s Bill Gates flashing the victory sign.
Perhaps the only thing more amazing than the ability of a newcomer to fundamentally change the landscape of the entire technology industry is the ability of the old guard to adapt to the new terrain. IBM, AT&T, and Intel, to name three, all rebounded strongly from the brink.
July 30 (Bloomberg) — At a time when the financial industry’s credibility is at an all-time low, you would think Wall Street’s finest would break their necks providing transparency.
Not so. Stock analysts continue to promote corporate earnings lies, insisting that net income isn’t really what investors need to know.
Instead, their earnings estimates ignore often huge expenditures that can’t help but affect a company’s health.
In analystspeak, Intel Corp. wasn’t hit with a $1.45 billion fine from the European Union in the second quarter for anticompetitive practices
As the global economy recovers from the current downturn, there is a significant risk that resurgent energy demand will coincide with tight supply, vaulting oil prices higher again. Indeed, prices are already on the rise. Research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), combining macroeconomic modeling with an understanding of industry dynamics, finds that unless business leaders and policymakers act decisively on both oil supply and demand, there is a risk that a second oil shock could follow economic recovery-indeed, one that could be lengthier than the second price spike that hit the world economy in the 1970s.
In the 1970s there was a silver lining to the twin shocks. For a long time after, energy demand remained subdued and the world saw a revolution in energy efficiency and substitution. Never again, policymakers vowed, would they allow soaring energy prices to take their economies hostage.
Barron’s: IT’S GOOD TO BE KING. The only problem is that people expect a lot out of you when you’re king.
Exxon Mobil (ticker: XOM), the largest of the integrated oil and gas companies, didn’t live up to expectations when it announced second-quarter earnings results on Thursday, and shares dipped 1% to $71.28 in early afternoon trading.
Exxon’s report, which proved a disappointment on various levels, should give investors pause, at least in the short term. The company posted earnings of 84 cents a share versus analyst expectations of $1.02.
July 31 (Bloomberg) – Japan’s election next month may produce an unexpected winner: investors.
The more obvious victor will be the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which is widely expected to nudge the Liberal Democratic Party from its almost 55-year grip on power. It would be some of the best news investors have had in many a year.
As a taxpayer in Japan, I can say there is nothing “liberal” or “democratic” about the LDP. It exists for itself, believing its survival is more important than the livelihoods of Japan’s 126 million people. It’s devoid of energy and star power and deserves a good thrashing on Aug. 30.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Very few letters made money during the Crash of 2008. Paradoxically, two of those who did have just abruptly closed.
P.Q. Wall announced this week that he will close his P.Q. Wall Forecast due to health issues. Subscription liabilities will be assumed by Peter Eliades’ Stock Market Cycles and one of Bob Prechter’s Elliott Wave services.
Wall has done this before, but he is now in his late seventies and must be taken seriously. One of the industry’s most colorful characters, he’s had a checkered record. But, ironically, his weird system of charts and cycles seemed to have finally gotten in synch with the market in the last few years. ( See June 5 column.)
NY Times:It is galling to see executives making tens of millions of dollars for running companies that have to be bailed out by taxpayers, but there is little evidence that big pay - or the incentives connected to it - caused the financial train wreck that sent the world into recession.
To the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that no one who counted - traders, chief executives or regulators - understood the risks that were being taken.
A new study shows that banks run by chief executives with a lot of stock were, if anything, likely to do worse than other banks in the crisis.
“Bank C.E.O. incentives cannot be blamed for the credit crisis or for the performance of banks during the crisis,” states the study, by René Stulz, an Ohio State University finance professor, and Rüdiger Fahlenbrach of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
UK Times :After circling Earth 2,208 times and enduring numerous near misses with speeding space junk, Koichi Wakata could be described as the kind of person who flies by the seat of his pants. But the Japanese astronaut proved during his 138 days in space that he is not the kind of person to kick up a stink about things.
As the space shuttle Endeavour prepared to return to Earth yesterday, bringing Mr Wakata home from the International Space Station, where he has been since March, he revealed that he had been wearing the same pair of prototype pants for a month, all in the name of science.
WASHINGTON - Bowing to populist anger, the House voted Friday to prohibit pay and bonus packages that encourage bankers and traders to take risks so big they could bring down the entire economy.
Passage of the bill on a 237-185 vote followed the disclosure a day earlier that nine of the nation’s biggest banks, which are receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout aid, paid individual bonuses of $1 million or more to nearly 5,000 employees.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called health insurers “the villains” in the unfolding story of the health care overhaul on Thursday, ratcheting up an anti-insurer theme trotted out by President Obama earlier this month and encouraged by other Democratic leaders in Congress.
Hill:
Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday blamed Capitol Hill media for setting an August deadline for health reform and Republicans for blocking the bill’s progress.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Conference Secretary Patty Murray (D-Wash.) also acknowledged that critics will “pour it on” during the coming August recess and they plan to respond in kind.
