It’s time for the release of TMP Directional Marketing & comScore’s Annual Local Search Study results.

Before we dive into the data, full disclosure: I preside over an interactive division at TMP.

ComScore has administered the study each of the last three years with the purpose of identifying media trends and consumer behavior relative to local search. Trending data provides good insights on how this has changed over those three years.

The study is comprised of two components: an online questionnaire completed by 4,000 respondents and a behavioral component courtesy of comScore’s more than 2 million users. The behavioral component is especially interesting because it provides direct observation of actual local search behaviors.

And Now, the Results…

Year over year, more digital channels become available to more consumers. So it’s no surprise that they’re increasingly being relied on for local business information. Search engines remain the “primary source” of information, while print media usage continues to decline.

Also on the decline is the number of local business searchers who own print directories. In 2009, this represented 84 percent of searchers, down from 89 percent in 2008. Print yellow pages (PYP) usage may be down, but Internet yellow pages (IYP) usage is up, possibly from loyal PYP users migrating online.

The rise of online media as a local business resource is expected. Also expected is the survival of offline media. There is still significant usage.

This illustrates the need for a diversified approach toward media investment in order to nurture maximum lead flow. This is especially true if you’re targeting mature adults (45 years and older). Offline media is still their primary local business resource, 40 percent prefer print directories while only 24 percent prefer search engines.

To understand usage declines, and also identify growth opportunities, it’s helpful to look at the frequency with which media is used.

For example, in the previous graph social media and mobile as “primary sources” of local business information represent 1 percent and 3 percent respectively — not something to get really excited about. However, consider that consumers use them every day or a couple times a week and you begin to take them more seriously (see below chart). Frequency indicates growing reference activity, and in this case it’s a reason to keep emerging advertising opportunities in social and mobile channels on your radar.

Google Maps: Number 1 with a Bullet

Google made significant gains in its share of local searches. Google Maps usage grew from 15 percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2008 to the number one local search site in the second quarter of 2009 with 24 percent market share, according to the comScore IYP/Local Combo Report.

click to enlarge

Interestingly, the ascension of Google Maps usage almost directly corresponds with the transition from what was the 3-Pack last spring to what’s now the 10-Pack. Also exacerbating this trend is Google’s use of implicit searches early in 2009. This illustrates the need for national and local businesses to claim their local business listings, and also to ensure that they’re accurate.

Importance of Ratings and Reviews

From 2008 to 2009, usage of consumer ratings and reviews increased to 25 percent (+3) among IYP searchers and to 27 percent (+5) among general searchers. Additionally, people who use social networking sites for local business information are more likely to use consumer reviews (53 percent).

It’s interesting that, while overall usage of ratings and reviews is only 24 percent, its importance during the business selection process is 57 percent! Because users of ratings and reviews heavily rely on them to select a company to do business with, they should be a serious component of any marketer’s online strategy.

2010 Will be the Year of Mobile

Just kidding, it’s still a few years out. The data reveals that mobile search continues to grow as more consumers have access to smartphone devices. Sixty percent of smartphone users say they have conducted a local search on their phone, versus 19 percent of standard cell phone users that have data connection.

According to comScore, only 12 percent of the mobile devices in today’s marketplace are smartphones. As consumers upgrade their existing devices, we should begin to see the mobile segment become more important to local search.

In closing, a greater percentage of local business searchers expect business results to be within 15 miles from their starting location (63 percent, from 52 percent in 2007). Marketers already leveraging local search know this and have seen its benefits: leads that convert both online and offline.

Super Bowl 2010 commercials featured (again) on YouTube AdBlitz

Would marketers be smarter to take the money they’ll spend on Super Bowl 2010 commercials and use it to by YouTube ads instead?

Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr

Last year, the Super Bowl ranked in $213 million in advertising revenue, according to Kantar Media, until recently known as TNS Media Intelligence.And, for many marketers, that was money well spent. According to Nielson Company, the 2009 game was the most-watched Super Bowl ever, with 98.7 million viewers watching the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals.

But, according to comScore Media Metrix, 128.1 million viewers watched more than 12 billion videos on YouTube.com in November 2009. This means that more Americans visit YouTube each month than watch the Super Bowl.

Oh, and according to a variety of sources, marketers are paying between $2.5 million and $2.8 million for a 30-second spot.

What’s a YouTube homepage masthead unit cost? Well, YouTube doesn’t publish its rate card. And homepage ads come in a variety of formats. But, knowledgeable sources say it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to take over the YouTube homepage to reach tens of millions of viewers with an expandable masthead ad.

Now, YouTube doesn’t attract an audience of 128.1 million viewers each and every day. So, comparing YouTube’s monthly audience with the Super Bowl’s daily audience is comparing apples to oranges.

But, four YouTube homepage mastheads delivered 141 million impressions for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority’s “Vegas Bound” campaign last year. So, advertisers know how to compare apples to oranges.

I talked with Aaron Zamost of Google Corporate Communications this week, hoping to stir up a little partisan controversy between offline and online advertising.

Zamost was in Washington, D.C., which knows all about partisan controversy. But, it appears that President Barack Obama’s request to be more bipartisan was heard by YouTubers — because Zamost reached across the aisle to CBS instead of bashing broadcast TV.

He noted that YouTube AdBlitz 2010 would let YouTubers watch the Super Bowl commercials the minute they air on Sunday, February 7. When the game ends, YouTube will let visitors vote for their favorite 2010 commercial until February 14. And the winning ad will receive ultimate video glory with YouTube homepage recognition.

Zamost also said that smart marketers have already figured out that their target audience is coming to the Internet to view Super Bowl ads. So, they are building up to the big game with behind the scenes campaigns — like KiaSorento’s channel, which provides a sneak peak of Kia’s first big game commercial, which stars the all-new 2011 Sorento and an unbelievably colorful cast of characters.

Hyatt offers 98 cleaners new jobs

Hotel firm bows to outcry over firings

Walmart’s Project Impact: A Move to Crush Competition

Walmart loves to shock and awe. City-size stores, absurdly low prices ($8 jeans!) and everything from milk to Matchbox toys on its shelves. And with the recession forcing legions of stores into bankruptcy, the world’s largest retailer now apparently wants to take out the remaining survivors.

Thus, the company is in the beginning stages of a massive store and strategy remodeling effort, which it has dubbed Project Impact. One goal of Project Impact is cleaner, less cluttered stores that will improve the shopping experience. Another is friendlier customer service. A third: home in on categories where the competition can be killed. “They’ve got Kmart ready to take a standing eight-count next year,” says retail consultant Burt Flickinger III, managing director for Strategic Resources Group and a veteran Walmart watcher. “Same with Rite Aid. They’ve knocked out four of the top five toy retailers, and are now going after the last one standing, Toys “R” Us. Project Impact will be the catalyst to wipe out a second round of national and regional retailers.” (See 10 things to buy during the recession.)

Though that’s bad news for many smaller businesses that can’t compete, Walmart investors have clamored for this push. Despite the company’s consistently strong financial performance, Wall Street hasn’t cheered Walmart’s growth rates. During the 1990s, the company’s stock price jumped 1,173%. In this decade, it’s down around 24% (Walmart’s stock closed at $51.74 per share on Sept. 3). “Walmart is under excruciating pressure from employees and frustrated institutional investors to get the stock up,” says Flickinger. (Read “Can Toys “R” Us Sell Toilet Paper?”)

Many analysts believe that the store-operations background of new CEO Mike Duke will keep investors quite happy. Though the recession finally caught up to Walmart last quarter, when the company reported a 1.2% drop in U.S. same-store sales, Walmart was a consistent winner during the worst days of the financial crisis, as frugal consumers traded down. While most retailers are shutting down stores, Walmart has opened 52 Supercenters since Feb. 1. Joseph Feldman, retail analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, estimates that each store costs Walmart between $25 and $30 million. In order to continue the momentum that it has picked up during the retail recession, over the next five years the company plans to remodel 70% of its approximately 3,600 U.S. stores.

So what does a Project Impact store look like? One recent weekday afternoon I toured a brand new, 210,000-sq.-ft. Walmart in West Deptford, N.J., with Lance De La Rosa, the company’s Northeast general manager. “We’ve listened to our customers, and they want an easier shopping experience,” says De La Rosa. “We’ve brightened up the stores and opened things up to make it more navigable.” One of the most noticeable changes is that Project Impact stores reshape Action Alley, the aisles where promotional items were pulled off the shelves and prominently displayed for shoppers. Those stacks both crowded the aisles and cut off sight lines. Now, the aisles are all clear, and you can see most sections of the store from any vantage point. For example, standing on the corner intersection of the auto-care and crafts areas, you can look straight ahead and see where shoes, pet care, groceries, the pharmacy and other areas are located. And the discount price tags are still at eye level, so the value message doesn’t get lost. (See how Americans are spending now.)

“They are like roads,” De La Rosa says proudly. “And look around, the customers are using them. We’ve already gotten feedback about the wider, more breathable aisles. Our shoppers love them.”

The layout is also smarter. “You can kind of guess where everything is going to be,” says Sharon Tilotta, 73, a shopper in the West Deptford store. The pharmacy, pet foods, cosmetics and health and beauty sections are now adjacent to the groceries. In the past, groceries and these other sections were often at opposite ends of the store, which made it more difficult for someone looking to pick up some quick consumables to get in and out of Walmart. “Under Project Impact, Walmart is providing more of a full supermarket experience within its walls,” says Feldman. “The biggest complaint against them has always been that it takes a long time to get through everything. This definitely improves efficiency.” De La Rosa also points out the party-supply section. Favors, wedding decorations, cards and scrapbooks are all in one area. “In the past, these products would be in three different places,” he says.

And although Walmart won’t admit to targeting specific competitors – “We’re just listening to what our customers want,” De La Rosa says – it’s clear that, under Project Impact, Walmart will make major plays in winnable categories. The pharmacy, for example, has been pulled into the middle of the store, and its $4-prescriptions program has generated healthy buzz. With Circuit City out of business, the electronics section has been beefed up. Walmart is also expanding its presence in crafts. Sales at Michael’s Stores, the country’s largest specialty arts-and-crafts retailers, have sagged, and Walmart sees an opportunity. Stores are chock-full of scrapbooking material, baskets and yarns. “Look, they’re selling the stuff that accounts for 80% of Michael’s business, at 20% of the space,” says Flickinger. “It’s very hard for any company to compete with that.” (Read “That Viral Thing: People of Walmart.”)

Apparel, one of Target’s traditional strengths, gets a prominent position at the center. The color palettes of the shirts and dresses are brighter and more appealing than they’ve been in the past. “Walmart has figured out fashion for the first time in 47 years,” Flickinger says. “They’ve gone from a D to an A-minus.” Briefs and underwear have been shuttled to the back. “That’s a smart move,” Flickinger says. “People know to come to Walmart for the commodity clothing. Now, they have to walk past the higher margin, more fashionable merchandise to get what they need.”

Of course, Project Impact isn’t perfect. You’d think that if Walmart was going to open a massive new store with a cutting-edge layout, the company would at least put a sign up. In West Deptford, it’s easy to miss the entrance to the Walmart – which is buried in the back of a parking lot – while driving along a main thoroughfare. And of course, customers will always nitpick. One elderly shopper complained about a shortage of benches in the store (she needed a rest). Another had a more esoteric, yet legitimate, gripe. “Their meat is leaky,” says Jeff Winter, 30, a West Deptford shopper. “And instead of giving you a wet wipe to clean it off, they give you a dry towel. How’s that going to prevent E. coli or whatever?” (See which businesses are bucking the recession.)

What analysts really want to see from Project Impact, however, is a faster pace of implementation. “The biggest hurdle facing Walmart is the speed with which they can roll this out,” says Feldman. As more Project Impact stores pop up, the existing stores appear worse by comparison. For example, while the merchandise at the Project Impact store outside of Philadelphia really speaks to that particular market – there’s tons of Eagles and Phillies gear – at one regular discount store outside New York City, Minnesota Twins and Seattle Mariners pajama pants wasted away on the racks. There were plenty of associates staffing the electronics section at the Project Impact store; at the discount store, five frustrated shoppers waited in line for help from a customer-service rep. Soon, it was closer to 10.

What about the friendly service? In West Deptford, the associates were sunny and bright. At the New York–area discount store, not so much. “You’ll notice we’ve been in the store for two hours, and no one has even said hello to us,” Flickinger says after he and I toured that store. He’s right, we weren’t feeling any love. But if Project Impact keeps picking up momentum, many more Walmart salespeople, and shareholders, should be smiling.

View this article on Time.com

Freelancers bag cheap office space

Three or four days a week, Boston-area entrepreneur Hooman Hodjat stops into a second-floor office just across the street from Boston’s South Station.

One day, he’ll use the conference room to meet with potential investors. The next day, he may be found at a table, working the phone lines, with a fresh cup of coffee in hand.

And for all this, he pays just $100 a month.

He’s a member at WorkBar, a pioneering new business that offers office space, like a gym offers exercise space.

Hodjat and other WorkBar members sign up, pay monthly dues and come in as often as they want to work.

Instead of treadmills and free weights, WorkBar has laptop charging stations, lounges and free coffee.

WorkBar director Bill Jacobson said the concept evolved after he realized that today’s offices don’t reflect today’s workers.

“The people who are working at home say they miss the other people from the office,” he said.

So far, WorkBar, which officially launches next month, offers two types of memberships. Community members pay $100 a month and must sign on for a six-month commitment. They get to use almost all the services, except the private desks, which are set aside for dedicated members, who pay $400 a month.

The 129 South St. shop is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

And at least three days a week, Hodjat is there.

He is one of the founders of Pickup Zone, a new service aimed at offering consumers relief from unattended package deliveries. With PickUp Zone, people can have their packages delivered to a neighborhood retailer, who will hold them until the person can pick them up.

As a result, Hodjat said, he’s often in the city, meeting with retailers and potential clients.

The convenience is great, said Hodjat, who lives in Framingham.

“My target market is in the city, so I get on the commuter rail, get out at South Station, and walk across the street for my meetings,” he said.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1191126

Christy Mihos aide: ’Financial advantage’ key in 2010 race

BOSTON — The chief political consultant for Cape Cod businessman Christy Mihos said Tuesday his client lost the 2006 gubernatorial race solely because he ran as an independent.

Conservative commentator and author Dick Morris also predicted that Mihos will beat fellow Republican Charles Baker in the 2010 GOP primary and Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, in the general election because of his opposition to Big Dig spending and the “considerable financial advantage” the multimillionaire brings to the campaign.

“I don’t think Baker is going to be a serious problem,” Morris told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think he’s subject to many of the same negatives that Patrick is. Patrick raised our taxes; Baker raised our tolls.”

The criticism harkened back to Baker’s work in the Weld and Cellucci administrations, when he served as the top finance official in the Cabinet from 1994 to 1998. During that time, the state sought to finance the $15 billion Central Artery tunnel project, which has triggered toll increases.

More recently, Patrick signed a 25-percent sales tax hike into law.

Yet Morris didn’t limit his attack there. He criticized Baker, who went on to become president of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, for helping negotiate a state receivership for the troubled insurer and then taking a $1.5 million salary package from the now-profitable company until he resigned in July to run for governor.

“I wonder how popular health insurance companies are,” Morris said. “Let’s put it this way: I’d rather run a hedge fund.”

A Baker spokesman dismissed the complaints.

“Looks like Christy Mihos is back negatively attacking Republicans again,” Baker spokesman Andrew Goodrich said. “Christy’s negative campaign is one reason elected Republican officials from across the state are flocking to support Charlie Baker and see Charlie as our only hope to defeat Deval Patrick.”

Mihos garnered only 7 percent of the vote in 2006, when he squared off against Patrick and Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey. The Christy’s convenience store magnate is running as a Republican this time around.

Mihos has hired Morris to develop strategy. He is a newspaper columnist and Fox News analyst who once served as Democrat Bill Clinton’s political adviser.

His work with Mihos is not the New Yorker’s first venture into Massachusetts politics. He previously ran Ed King’s successful campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis, and also worked on state campaigns to limit property tax increases and elect William F. Weld as governor in 1990 and 1994.

Morris said Mihos’s candidacy will resonate with voters because he fought against cost escalation in the Big Dig project while a member of the Massachusetts Turnpike board of directors. The consultant also said Mihos knows how to cut government spending but won’t be afraid to spend his own money promoting his candidacy — perhaps as early as this fall.

He said Mihos lost 2 1/2 years ago only because he ran as an independent.

“It was a basic mistake to think that as an independent in a highly polarized, partisan year,” Morris said. “I think that people were not in the mood for a third choice.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1191857

Will Biopharma Acquisitions Never Cease? http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2008/08/29/will-biopharma-acquisitions-never-cease.aspx Brian Lawler August 29, 2008 In both the size and quantity of proposed deals, the past 24 months have been busier than ever for biopharma dealmakers. From industry giants like Genentech and Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB) to tiny players such as Mirus Bio, nearly every such drugmaker has generated at least rumors of a takeover. Why now? There are many factors coming together to make biopharmaceutical drugmakers attractive acquisition targets right now, but two particularly stand out. First, big pharmas like Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) are currently flush with cash. However, they’re also facing patent expirations and rising generic competition against some of their best-selling flagship drugs. These drugmakers’ cash has to go somewhere, either through acquisitions, share buybacks, dividend payments, or paying down debt. Some of these options don’t make very much sense right now; with interest rates at historical lows, for example, now’s not the time for big pharma to pare down their debt levels. In addition, some drugmakers park a good portion of their cash outside the U.S. for tax reasons, making foreign biopharma acquisitions more attractive. Given their complex molecular nature and manufacturing processes, many biologically derived drugs and vaccines have innate natural protections against generic competition. In many cases, it can be nearly impossible to make a generic copy of a biopharmaceutical drug, even after its patents have run out. There are plenty of smaller variables at work, too: The weak dollar means foreign large-cap pharmaceutical firms can acquire U.S. drugmakers more cheaply. The biopharma industry has matured in the last 10 years. Biopharma technologies enjoy increasing validation. All in all, the the environment for biopharma deals has never been stronger. What does Big Pharma want? As with many previous deals for small-molecule drugmakers in the past, big pharma has generally offered its biggest premiums and juiciest deals to mid-sized biopharmaceutical firms with mature assets. Here’s a chart of some of the biggest biopharma acquisitions or proposed deals in the past 24 months: The deal Share-price premium* Main reason for offer Genentech acquired Tanox for $919 million. 47% To gain rights to Tanox’s share of the asthma drug Xolair AstraZeneca acquired MedImmune for $15.6 billion . 21% To get Synagis and vaccines Takeda acquired Millennium Pharmaceuticals for $8.8 billion. 53% Multiple-myeloma drug Velcade plus biologics pipeline Bristol-Myers proposed to buy ImClone Systems (Nasdaq: IMCL) for $4.5 billion. 30% Cancer drug Erbitux plus biologics pipeline Roche proposed to buy Genentech for $43.7 billion. 8.8% To gain more control over Genentech *Compared to the day before the offer was made. In addition to heated acquitision activity, drugmakers have forged a slew of record-breaking partnership deals for biopharmaceutical assets. For example, in 2006 GlaxoSmithKline struck a deal with Genmab, worth as much as $2.1 billion, for one of the latter company’s late-stage monoclonal antibody drug candidates. Many of these deals involved drug developers working with technologies that competitors have previously validated, but in recent months, large-cap pharma has even started to bite on new unproven technologies like Cell Genesys‘ GVAX cancer vaccine. However, these deals have generally drawn smaller amounts of up-front cash (and some bad outcomes, too). What tempting targets remain? Even as the biopharmaceutical sector grows by leaps and bounds in the 21st century, with drugs like Millennium’s Velcade, Genentech’s Avastin, and ImClone’s Erbitux entering the market, there are still very few independent pure-play biopharmas. This fact alone boosts these companies’ attractiveness to would-be acquirers. Here’s a partial list of some of the juiciest biopharma assets potentially still up for grabs: Company Current market capitalization What they have to offer Seattle Genetics (Nasdaq: SGEN) $880 million 2 compounds in later-stage testing, antibody-drug conjugate technology Alexion Pharmaceuticals $3.5 billion One drug already approved to treat a rare genetic disorder, multiple label-expanding studies under way Medarex $950 million Seven compounds in at least phase 3 testing that could generate royalties, fully human monoclonal antibody technology Momenta Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: MNTA) $530 million Technology to potentially develop a range of biosimilar drugs Regeneron Pharmaceuticals $1.7 billion One approved compound, another that could compete broadly with Genentech’s Avastin Other drugmakers also have interesting biopharmaceutical assets, like Biogen Idec, Elan (NYSE: ELN), and Genzyme. But for a variety of reasons, including their large size or the nature of their existing partnership agreements, they’d be more difficult for a potential buyer to acquire. A year from now, I’ll be very surprised if every drugmaker on the above list remains independent. There are only so many mature biopharma assets to go around, and as the past months have shown us, big pharma isn’t afraid to snap them up.

Americans Renew Their Love for Cars — Online

By KEVIN HELLIKER

Anne Fleming felt deeply confident as a negotiator—except whenever she entered an automotive dealership, where research shows that women pay more for cars than men.

So last October the former apparel executive in Pittsburgh launched a Web site called Women-Drivers.com, which offers negotiating tips, as well as reviews of female-friendly dealerships. In just nine months, the site has received reviews from several thousand women car shoppers. “We’ve gotten enough feedback to start ranking the female-friendliest dealerships,” says Ms. Fleming.

Despite a historic drop in U.S. auto sales, Women-Drivers.com is just one of scores of new automotive Web sites being launched that cater to car enthusiasts. For consumers, the Internet is helping to solve some of the most confounding aspects of buying a car, from comparing prices and reading reviews to getting tips on bargaining tactics. And the plethora of new sites for automotive buffs appears to demonstrate that Americans’ love affair with cars is alive and well.

Even as U.S. auto sales have fallen by about 30% this year from a year earlier, more than 100 new auto-related Web sites have been launched, says research group Hitwise. That brings the total number of such sites to nearly 5,000, more than for all but a few other industries. Since 2005, the ranks of automotive writers have grown to 2,700 from 1,600, says Autowriters.com, a site that tracks car writers for the auto industry.

Purchasing-related auto sites have generally experienced declining readership this year. But many sites that offer news and commentary and reviews have grown. Magazine stalwarts like Car and Driver, Road & Track, Automobile and Motor Trend now operate online editions. Fast gaining in the battle for car-news junkies is Autoblog, a five-year-old site whose motto is, “We obsessively cover the auto industry.”

Sexy Auto Spokescougars

Kennedy Death Cuts Broad Health Bill Odds, Hatch Says

By Nicole Gaouette

Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) — Congress is less likely to pass sweeping health-care overhaul legislation following the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a leading Republican said.

“You’re not going to get this big, broad Democrat spending bill — you’re not going to get Republican support,” Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and close friend of the Massachusetts Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Hatch said Kennedy’s status as Congress’s leading liberal often convinced Democrats they could support deals he had struck with Republicans. “That’s why Senator Kennedy was so important,” Hatch said. “I don’t know if another Democrat has the same clout in Congress.”

Expanding coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured Americans and lowering health-care costs was Kennedy’s life’s work, colleagues said, and is now President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority. Lawmakers failed to get health-care bills through Congress before the August recess. Obama, who is pushing lawmakers to overhaul a health-care system that accounts for about 18 percent of the nation’s economy, said Aug. 20 that “we’re going to get this done one way or another.”

Hatch said Kennedy provided deep experience on health care, united factions within the Democratic Party and worked well with Republicans.

Kennedy’s Work

“Kennedy could bring together all of the base groups of the Democratic Party,” Hatch said on ABC’s “This Week,” recalling that Kennedy worked on health legislation for more than three decades. “In every case, he fought as hard as he could, but when he recognized that he couldn’t get everything he wanted, he worked with the other side. If he was here, I don’t think we’d be in the mess we’re in right now.”

Kennedy’s illness meant he was absent from Congress for much of the past year, though his staff said he kept abreast of the health debate through frequent phone calls. Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who temporarily took over from Kennedy as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told the panel that Kennedy was watching their debate on C-SPAN television and calling him daily to offer feedback.

Four of the five congressional committees with jurisdiction over health have passed bills that would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years. The Senate Finance Committee has stalled over a number of issues, including whether to create a government-run insurance plan, require employers to provide workers with insurance, and impose new taxes that could range from taxing the richest Americans to levies on generous health plans.

Public Plan

Not all Democrats support the idea of a public plan, which Obama has said would be his preferred way to generate more competition among health insurers. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu told CNN she would “tend not to” support a bill that included a public option. “I think we can do it without a public option,” the third-term Democrat said. “Hopefully we can keep working. That’s what Ted Kennedy would want us to do.”

John Kerry, now the senior Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Finance Committee, said he was confident a health-care bill would be passed and he urged Republicans to avoid being “bound by ideology.”

“When we get reality on the table we can have a good conversation,” Kerry said on the ABC program. “I believe we can do this. I think better judgment will prevail.”

Senate Bill

When the Senate returns in September, it will take up the bill the Senate health committee put together in July, Dodd said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said the bill is “sitting there,” ready to be worked on with the Finance Committee.

“If we can get these bills together and sit down with each other, we can produce a strong, vibrant, vitally needed national health care legislation on accessibility, quality and affordability,” Dodd said.

Health-care costs now account for about 18 percent of GDP, according to the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, and are projected to rise to 34 percent by 2040.

“The country cannot afford this, Dodd said on CNN. “How we get there is the challenge before us.”

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, said bipartisan cooperation on the issue was crucial. “Doing nothing and thinking that we’re going to get out of this expense is not an option,” Cantwell said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Getting true competition into the system and giving consumers choice is what the Democrats and Republicans should be joining ranks on,” Cantwell said.

Democrats Alone

Democrats including Senator Charles Schumer of New York have said that if Senate Finance negotiators — three Republicans and three Democrats — can’t reach a deal by Sept. 15, Democrats may have to pass the bill on their own.

The majority party could use a legislative maneuver called reconciliation which allows the Senate to pass a bill with 51 votes instead of the 60 typically needed for controversial pieces of legislation.

During the August recess, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus convened meetings of the six senators on the committee who are working on a bipartisan compromise.

Any agreement they reach would have to be coordinated with a plan passed by the Senate HELP committee. The three House committees with jurisdiction over health will meld their bills together after lawmakers return from recess. The House and Senate bills would have to be reconciled before being voted on by both chambers.

Protests at Meetings

The Senate adjourned on Aug. 7 and will reconvene on Sept. 8. Many of the town hall meetings lawmakers held to discuss health-care during the recess were disrupted by protests.

Administration officials have urged lawmakers to honor Kennedy by getting health reform passed.

“The best possible legacy is to pass health reform this year,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said recently. “Hopefully every step along the way they’ll ask themselves ‘What would Teddy do?’”

Dodd said Kennedy’s death will push his colleagues to work harder at passing legislation.

“We don’t have the luxury of wallowing in our grief; we’ve got to get up and get this done,” Dodd said. “We’re going to roll up our sleeves and do what Teddy would have done and get health-care done.”

– With assistance from Jeff Plungis in Washington. Editors: Ann Hughey, Bill Schmick

To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.

U.S. payment-card industry grapples with security

By Ross Kerber

BOSTON (Reuters) – Fresh details of large-scale cyber attacks against data processor Heartland Payment Systems Inc and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers show the challenges facing the efforts of the U.S. credit-card industry to upgrade security measures.

While both companies say their computer networks met the tough new standards meant to prevent data breaches, Visa Inc said Heartland at least may have let its guard down.

The positions reflect broader disagreements in the industry, as squabbling between merchants and financial firms over technology and the cost of systems upgrades continues to impede progress, said Robert Vamosi, an analyst for California consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

“They both need to fight fraud and they are fighting each other,” he said.

The financial stakes are getting higher. Fraud involving credit and debit cards reached $22 billion last year, up from $19 billion in 2007, according to California consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

The security of consumer information came under renewed scrutiny on August 17 when a 28-year-old Florida man, Albert Gonzalez, was indicted along with two other unnamed hackers for breaching the computer networks of Heartland and Hannaford, both of which said they were in compliance with security requirements.

Those standards were set by a council that includes the world’s two largest credit card networks, Visa and MasterCard Inc; fast-food leader McDonald’s Corp; oil major Exxon Mobil Corp; and big banks Bank of America Corp and Royal Bank of Scotland Plc.

All these companies face rising costs linked to fraud and its prevention. Of the 275,284 complaints received last year by the government’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, 24,775 were tied to credit or debit card fraud, up from 13,033 in 2007 and 9,960 in 2006.

Yet some 5 percent of the largest retailers and restaurants still have not met compliance deadlines set in 2007, according to Visa.

Even companies that meet the standards could be vulnerable should they lower their guard, Visa security executive Ellen Richey said last spring in a speech critical of Heartland.

“It was the lack of ongoing vigilance in maintaining compliance that left the company vulnerable to attack,” she said in March.

Merchants, for their part, complain via trade groups like the National Retail Federation that Visa and MasterCard are asking them to pay more than their fair share for security upgrades.

Some retail executives also say Visa and MasterCard have been slow to adopt better encryption technology and cards with high-security computer chips because of the associated costs.

“I can’t even tell you how many sour, disgruntled calls I get from retailers,” said Gartner Inc technology consultant Avivah Litan, who also works with banks.

GOVERNMENT REGULATION?

At Heartland, Gonzalez was charged with stealing more than 130 million payment card numbers, a record. Previously the biggest such hacking case was at TJX Cos Inc, where federal prosecutors last year accused Gonzalez and others of conducting an electronic break-in starting in 2005 that companies said compromised as many as 100 million card numbers.

Gonzalez, who is awaiting trial, has pleaded not guilty to the charges related to TJX, which had not met security standards at the time of the data breach.

This time, prosecutors say Gonzalez and his co-conspirators penetrated Hannaford and Heartland’s systems in late 2007 with code known as “structured query language,” which the security standards require companies to protect themselves against.

They also charged the ring breached systems at convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc, roughly in August 2007. The company said the breach only affected transactions at automated teller machines owned by a third party at some of its stores, and wouldn’t comment further.

A spokesman for Hannaford, a unit of Belgium’s Delhaize Group, said an audit unit of Verizon Communications Inc showed it met the security standards.

Heartland said through a spokesman that its systems had been checked by audit firm Trustwave of Chicago as recently as April 2008 — about four months after prosecutors say the hackers began their theft.

The security standards represent “the lowest common denominator and the bad guys have figured out how to get around some of the weaknesses,” the spokesman said.

A Verizon spokesman confirmed it had audited Hannaford and found it to meet the standards, but declined to elaborate. A Trustwave spokeswoman said the firm wouldn’t comment.

Security is critical to Heartland because it processes card payments for merchants, and its stock dropped sharply in the two months after the attack was discovered.

In response, Chief Executive Robert Carr has tried to reassure customers and stepped up calls for better data encryption.

Ultimately, should the payment card industry fail to get its act together, it could face more government regulation, said Cynthia Larose, an attorney at Mintz Levin in Boston.

“If the stakeholders cooperate, we would see much better security,” she said.

(Editing by Matthew Bigg and Gerald E. McCormick)

Kennedy’s Death Opens Up Succession Debate

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By Steve Adams – The Patriot Ledger

A torch extinguished: Ted Kennedy dead at 77

HYANNIS PORT, Mass. – The greatest heights eluded Ted Kennedy over a lifetime of achievement and pain. No presidency. No universal health care, chief among his causes.

Instead, Kennedy built his Washington monument stone by stone, his imprint distinct on the Senate’s most important works over nearly half a century. He toiled across the Potomac River from the graveyard of his fallen brothers.

The last of the Kennedys who fascinated the nation with their ambition, style, idealism, tragedies — and sometimes sheer recklessness — Edward Moore Kennedy died late Tuesday night at 77. A black shroud and vase of white roses sat Wednesday on his Senate desk, which John Kennedy had used before him.

So dropped the final curtain on “Camelot,” the already distant era of the Kennedy dynasty.

The Massachusetts senator’s extended political family of fellow Democrats and rival Republicans, steeled for his death since his brain-tumor diagnosis a year ago yet still jarred by it, joined in mourning. Kennedy was the Senate’s dominant liberal and one of its legendary dealmakers.

Just last year he jumped into a fractious Democratic presidential nomination fight to side with Barack Obama, giving the Illinois senator a boost that had the air of a family anointment.

“For his family, he was a guardian,” Obama said Wednesday. “For America, he was a defender of a dream.”

The president, vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, was awakened after 2 a.m. and told of Kennedy’s death. He spoke soon after with the senator’s widow, Victoria, and ordered flags flown at half-staff on all federal buildings.

Kennedy will be buried Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery after a funeral Mass in Boston, where Obama is to deliver a eulogy.

Kennedy will lie in repose at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston before that.

Also buried at Arlington, the military cemetery overlooking the capital city, are John and Robert Kennedy; John Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline; their baby son, Patrick, who died after two days, and their stillborn child.

To Americans and much of the world, Kennedy was best known as the last surviving son of the nation’s most glamorous political family. Of nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy, Jean Kennedy Smith is the only one alive.

To senators of both parties, he was one of their own.

“Even when you expect it, even when you know it’s coming, in this case it hurts a great deal,” said Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Politicians also calculated the consequences for Obama’s push for expanded health coverage. For several months, at least, Kennedy’s death will deprive the Democrats of a vote that could prove crucial for his signature cause of health reform.

His illness had sidelined him from an intense debate that would have found him at the core any other time. Conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, his improbable Republican partner on children’s health insurance, volunteerism, student aid and more, said the Senate probably would have had a health care deal by now if Kennedy had been healthy enough to work with him.

“Iconic, larger than life,” Hatch said of his friend. “We were like fighting brothers.”

He was the last of the famous Kennedy brothers: John the assassinated president, Robert the assassinated senator and presidential candidate, Joseph the aviator killed in action in World War II when Ted was 12.

He lost his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, less than two weeks ago, saw the bright promise of nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. end in a plane crash in 1999 and struggled with excesses of his own until he became a settled elder statesman.

Like Obama, Kennedy was a master orator. But the words that live for the ages seem to be those he uttered in tragedy or defeat.

Older Americans remember his eulogy of Robert Kennedy, when he asked history not to idealize his brother but remember him “simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Remembered, too, is his speech conceding the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination to the incumbent Jimmy Carter. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die,” he said.

By then, his hopes of reaching the White House had been damaged by his behavior a decade earlier in the scandal known as Chappaquiddick.

On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge and into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, on Martha’s Vineyard, and swam to safety while companion Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in the car. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident; a judge said his actions probably contributed to the young woman’s death. He received a suspended sentence and probation.

Kennedy’s legislative legacy includes health insurance for children of the working poor, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, family leave and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He was also key to passage of the No Child Left Behind Education law and a Medicare drug benefit for the elderly, both championed by Republican President George W. Bush.

In the Senate, Republicans respected and often befriended him. But his essential liberalism marked him as a lightning rod, too. He proved a handy fundraising foil motivating Republicans to open their wallets to fight anything he stood for.

In 1980, Kennedy’s task of dislodging a president of his own party was compounded by his fumbling answer to a question posed by CBS’ Roger Mudd: Why do you want to be president?

“Well, I’m, uh, were I to, to make the, the announcement, to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country,” he began.

It’s a question that all savvy politicians ever since make sure won’t catch them unprepared.

In his later years, Kennedy cut a barrel-chested profile, with a swath of white hair, a booming voice and a thick, widely imitated Boston accent. He coupled fist-pumping floor speeches with charm and formidable negotiating skills.

“I think that once he realized he was never going to be president — that that was not the legacy he had to follow — he really worked at becoming the best senator he possibly could,” Leahy said. “And he did.”

He was first elected to the Senate in 1962, taking the seat that his brother John had occupied before winning the White House, and he served longer than all but two senators in history.

Kennedy was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent surgery and a grueling regimen of radiation and chemotherapy.

He made a surprise return to the Capitol last summer to cast a decisive vote for the Democrats on Medicare. He made sure he was there again in January to see his former Senate colleague sworn in as president but suffered a seizure at a celebratory luncheon afterward.

His survivors include a daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen; two sons, Edward Jr. and Patrick, a congressman from Rhode Island, and two stepchildren, Caroline and Curran Raclin.

Edward Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer in 1973 at age 12. Kara had a cancerous tumor removed from her lung in 2003. In 1988, Patrick had a non-cancerous tumor pressing on his spine removed. He also has struggled with depression and addiction and recently spent time at an addiction treatment center.

___

Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman in Washington, Philip Elliott in Oak Bluffs, Mass., and Bob Salsberg contributed to this report.

Consumer confidence soars

Sentiment reading increased to 54.1 in August, well above economists’ expectations.

Final weekend of clunkers program draws big crowds

EMILY FREDRIX / AP Business Writer

From Vermont to California, exhausted but appreciative car dealers watched their lots grow empty as crowds rushed to trade in gas guzzlers during the final weekend of the popular Cash for Clunkers program.

The hectic pace of the $3 billion rebate program accelerated in the final weekend, after the government announced the program would end at 8 p.m. EDT Monday, two weeks earlier than expected.

Adding to the urgency, some dealers had said they would stop Cash for Clunkers sales even earlier to make sure the government reimbursed them for the rebates — or because they didn’t have enough eligible cars left.

In the final hours, customers streamed in.

“We thought about it a couple weeks ago,” said Annette Palmer, 51, at Town and Country Honda in Berlin, Vt., on Saturday with her husband. They hoped to trade in a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee for a Honda CR-V.

“We kind of dragged our feet. Then we heard it was closing and we picked up our feet and ran,” she said.

Though short of some new models, such as the Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Nissan Altima, many dealers were still selling as many cars as they could before Monday night’s deadline.

Standing outside one of his Hyundai dealerships in Appleton, Wis., John Bergstrom said customers traded in 100 clunkers throughout his fleet of 20 dealerships on Saturday and 100 the day before. They were his two biggest sales days during the clunkers program.

“That’s about as good as it gets,” Bergstrom said. “It’s going out with a bang.”

In all, Bergstrom said his dealerships — whose brands include Ford, GM and Toyota — sold 800 cars during the program, boosting sales 30 percent. He had to bring in extra staff to deal with the paperwork, but the sales were worth the hassle, Bergstrom said.

At Universal City Nissan in Los Angeles, Alberto Vasquez said keeping up with the pace of the program has taken a toll on employees. Some labored past midnight to wrap up last-minute deals.

“Are we tired? Definitely,” said Vasquez, the dealership’s director of training. “But it’s also bittersweet, because we’re happy that we’re selling cars.”

The dealership has sold more than 700 vehicles through the program and brought in extra staff to help enter information on the government’s reimbursement Web site.

Cash for Clunkers has been wildly successful in spurring new-car sales and getting gas-guzzling models off the road, though some energy experts have said the pollution reduction is too small to be cost-effective. Customers receive rebates of between $3,500 and $4,500, depending on the improvement in fuel efficiency from their old vehicle to their new one. As of early Friday, nearly half a million cars had been sold through the program.

But the new sales left many dealers worried about not being reimbursed by the government. As of Friday, dealers had been reimbursed for just a small fraction of the billions in sales.

Some dealers chose to stop participating over the weekend so they could have enough time to process and file the paperwork, including AutoNation Inc., the nation’s largest auto dealership chain.

At Toyota Direct in Columbus, Ohio, employees were told to double- and triple-check paperwork so it wouldn’t be rejected for reimbursement, said Jim Collins, the dealership’s assistant general manager.

Sales picked up on Saturday, though the dealership had only 20 new cars eligible for sale under the program. Sales employees sometimes jogged paperwork into the manager’s office to keep up with the pace.

The dealership won’t take any new sales on Monday so it can be assured of reimbursements, Collins said.

“We have quite a bit of paperwork, but is it worth the selling of a car right now? Absolutely,” he said. “We like to sell cars. That’s what we’re in business to do.”

Martin Main Line Honda in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore stopped its Cash for Clunkers sales at noon on Saturday. But by late afternoon there were still groups of people wandering the lot.

General sales manager Michael Freeman said the program had been “overwhelming,” with 115 clunker sales and big surges in customer traffic at the start and now at the end. He’s aiming to get the final stack of paperwork filed before Monday’s deadline.

“I have people upstairs, that’s all they’re doing — paperwork,” he said. “The backlog is a nightmare, and it’s starting to be a nightmare at the end.”

Customers were feeling the urgency, too.

In Appleton, Wis., April DeKeyser looked at her new Mazda 3 2010 and still had trouble accepting that it was hers.

The 22-year-old nurse from Brussels, Wis., had wanted to trade in her Chevy S10 truck as soon as the clunkers program began. But she had a hard time finding the car she wanted and had to run to numerous dealers.

DeKeyser said she knew she had to get the rebate this weekend. Without it, she wouldn’t have bought her new car.

“I would have waited,” she said. “Basically, I would have driven the other vehicle until it died.”

——

Associated Press writers Alex Veiga in Los Angeles, Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, Ron Todt in Philadelphia and David Gram in Berlin, Vt., contributed to this report.

Find this article at:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090824/AUTO01/908240319/Final-weekend-of-clunkers-program-draws-big-crowds

On the slow train to financial reality

For years, Massachusetts has been blessed with leaders who understand the vital importance of public transportation, so planners are in the habit of thinking big, rather than saying no. But the need for restraint is apparent. Federal transportation officials rejected a long list of proposed transit and highway projects in 2007 in part because it lacked any fiscal modesty. While the state slashes health programs amid plunging revenues, it expects to spend $29 million to design a connection downtown between the Red Line and the Blue Line – never mind that the money to build the $300 million project won’t come through anytime soon.

A Privileged World Begins to Give Up Its Secrets

About 10 years ago, when I was working in Frankfurt, Germany’s banking capital, I was invited to the top floor of the glittering skyscraper headquarters of one of the country’s most venerable banks. There, I was treated to something that, it was made clear to me, few eyes usually had the privilege of seeing — a tour of its private art collection, an impressive spattering of modern and ancient European and American masters.

The point was, those pictures reflected the bank’s wealth. And the fact the secretive treasures were kept forever behind closed doors for the enjoyment of the privileged few reflected its power.

If that seems like a different era, it is. Banks around the world are reeling, as we know; the European banks’ losses are among the most ruinous. And their prestige and putative secrecy and independence received a further blow last week, when the government of Switzerland agreed to release to the United States the names of 4,450 American citizens suspected of using secret Swiss accounts at UBS, the country’s biggest bank, for tax evasion.

The victory for the United States was made possible by evidence from an American-born whistleblower — code name Tarantula — a disgruntled former UBS employee from the Boston area who was working in Switzerland. Until he left the bank, he was part of a UBS team that made frequent trips across the Atlantic to aggressively market investment strategies to rich Americans to elude the scrutiny of the Internal Revenue Service.

But it would be wrong to see the settlement as a one-off strike against just one bank by a single government. It is in fact the result of a broader political moment created in the wake of the global financial crisis when disenchantment with financial globalization is causing governments to repatriate wealth back to within national borders, especially at a time when countries badly need to balance their books.

Just a few years ago, in the pre-crisis era, the shadowy workings of cross-border banking — and what may or may not have been happening there — were generally overlooked.

And, while some of the alleged tax evaders may be the war criminals, gunrunners or despots usually linked with secret foreign bank accounts, the target of the latest efforts are much more likely to include rich businessmen and high-net-worth individuals. “There is a political movement because of the financial debacle,” said one veteran European banker who insisted on speaking anonymously because he has retired. “They are turning toward the so-called rich and want to hurt them.”

Of course, the United States looks at it a bit differently. Prosecutors have contended that in the UBS case alone, wealthy Americans hid billions of dollars, thereby evading taxes of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

While Switzerland is arguably the largest off-shore center, it is not the only one. Supporters of its banking secrecy code point out that the code is wrapped up in the country’s claims to neutrality and being above the global political fray. But secrecy has also turned out to be immensely lucrative; according to some estimates one-quarter of the world’s offshore money now resides in Switzerland.

Other countries or territories have copied the model — Liechtenstein, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Macao and Hong Kong among them. And while Switzerland is probably seen as the most conservative, blue chip, upstanding offshore haven, the others are measured by a sliding scale of probity and association with dubious business practices, if not crime. The European banker said that in the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, he worked in Switzerland where he said agents of Russian expats would show up with “boxes of cash” from Cyprus, a popular haven for capital fleeing the Russian authorities and the country’s post-collapse chaos.

The backlash against this illicit world has not been confined to the United States; it is apparent across Europe, too.

France will become of one of the first European countries to put in place a new tax treaty with Switzerland to improve transparency and access to banking information. Germany is in discussions with Liechtenstein over issues related to tax evasion by German companies and individuals. Liechtenstein has also struck a disclosure agreement with Britain, encouraging British clients of Liechtenstein banks to volunteer information to British tax authorities in return for reduced penalties. In Italy, tax officials have started an investigation into whether the estate of the late Gianni Agnelli, the former chairman of Fiat, has money hidden away in Switzerland. In Britain, the government has become particularly exercised by tax competition — the offering of low tax rates and other advantages like tax secrecy to lure capital away.

In the Swiss settlement last week, the American authorities got the information they needed after they saw an opportunity in the weakness of UBS, a bank that once enjoyed a sterling global reputation but has suffered billions of dollars in losses linked to United States subprime securities and had to be saved by a big government bailout last October. For the Swiss government, the deal lifts the immediate threat of heftier legal action and frees the bank — one of the mainstays of the Swiss economy — to concentrate on recovery.

But will anything really change? Although the United States is supposed to learn the identities of a few thousand tax evaders, those names will go first to an intermediate tax administration in Switzerland for review. The actual process of recovering the names may become lost in bureaucracy and foot-dragging.

Moreover, as The Times reported last week, smaller Swiss banks say they are confident that they can continue to profit by finding new, more elaborate ways to protect the privacy of their clients. Those banks continue to help clients hide billions of dollars through complex structures in offshore havens.

But the I.R.S. commissioner, Doug Schulman, said the agreement with UBS was a “major step forward” in the government’s efforts to pierce bank secrecy, and he warned that “wealthy Americans who have hidden their money offshore will find themselves in a jam.”

In the new political climate, expect to see a few rich Americans shifting uncomfortably.

The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers

(CNN) — Facebook, for better or worse, is like being at a big party with all your friends, family, acquaintances and co-workers.

There are lots of fun, interesting people you’re happy to talk to when they stroll up. Then there are the other people, the ones who make you cringe when you see them coming. This article is about those people.

Sure, Facebook can be a great tool for keeping up with folks who are important to you. Take the status update, the 160-character message that users post in response to the question, “What’s on your mind?” An artful, witty or newsy status update is a pleasure — a real-time, tiny window into a friend’s life.

But far more posts read like navel-gazing diary entries, or worse, spam. A recent study categorized 40 percent of Twitter tweets as “pointless babble,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if updates on Facebook, still a fast-growing social network, break down in a similar way. Take a CNN quiz: What kind of Facebooker are you? »

Combine dull status updates with shameless self-promoters, “friend-padders” and that friend of a friend who sends you quizzes every day, and Facebook becomes a daily reminder of why some people can get on your nerves. Watch as Facebookers reveal bugbears »

Here are 12 of the most annoying types of Facebook users:

The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore. “I’m waking up.” “I had Wheaties for breakfast.” “I’m bored at work.” “I’m stuck in traffic.” You’re kidding! How fascinating! No moment is too mundane for some people to broadcast unsolicited to the world. Just because you have 432 Facebook friends doesn’t mean we all want to know when you’re waiting for the bus.

The Self-Promoter. OK, so we’ve probably all posted at least once about some achievement. And sure, maybe your friends really do want to read the fascinating article you wrote about beet farming. But when almost EVERY update is a link to your blog, your poetry reading, your 10k results or your art show, you sound like a bragger or a self-centered careerist.

The Friend-Padder. The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site. Schmoozers and social butterflies — you know, the ones who make lifelong pals on the subway — might reasonably have 300 or 400. But 1,000 “friends?” Unless you’re George Clooney or just won the lottery, no one has that many. That’s just showing off.

The Town Crier. “Michael Jackson is dead!!!” You heard it from me first! Me, and the 213,000 other people who all saw it on TMZ. These Matt Drudge wannabes are the reason many of us learn of breaking news not from TV or news sites but from online social networks. In their rush to trumpet the news, these people also spread rumors, half-truths and innuendo. No, Jeff Goldblum did not plunge to his death from a New Zealand cliff.

The TMIer. “Brad is heading to Walgreens to buy something for these pesky hemorrhoids.” Boundaries of privacy and decorum don’t seem to exist for these too-much-information updaters, who unabashedly offer up details about their sex lives, marital troubles and bodily functions. Thanks for sharing.

The Bad Grammarian. “So sad about Fara Fauset but Im so gladd its friday yippe”. Yes, I know the punctuation rules are different in the digital world. And, no, no one likes a spelling-Nazi schoolmarm. But you sound like a moron.

The Sympathy-Baiter. “Barbara is feeling sad today.” “Man, am I glad that’s over.” “Jim could really use some good news about now.” Like anglers hunting for fish, these sad sacks cast out their hooks — baited with vague tales of woe — in the hopes of landing concerned responses. Genuine bad news is one thing, but these manipulative posts are just pleas for attention.

The Lurker. The Peeping Toms of Facebook, these voyeurs are too cautious, or maybe too lazy, to update their status or write on your wall. But once in a while, you’ll be talking to them and they’ll mention something you posted, so you know they’re on your page, hiding in the shadows. It’s just a little creepy.

The Crank. These curmudgeons, like the trolls who spew hate in blog comments, never met something they couldn’t complain about. “Carl isn’t really that impressed with idiots who don’t realize how idiotic they are.” [Actual status update.] Keep spreading the love.

The Paparazzo. Ever visit your Facebook page and discover that someone’s posted a photo of you from last weekend’s party — a photo you didn’t authorize and haven’t even seen? You’d really rather not have to explain to your mom why you were leering like a drunken hyena and French-kissing a bottle of Jagermeister.

The Maddening Obscurist. “If not now then when?” “You’ll see…” “Grist for the mill.” “John is, small world.” “Dave thought he was immune, but no. No, he is not.” [Actual status updates, all.] Sorry, but you’re not being mysterious — just nonsensical.

The Chronic Inviter. “Support my cause. Sign my petition. Play Mafia Wars with me. Which ‘Star Trek’ character are you? Here are the ‘Top 5 cars I have personally owned.’ Here are ‘25 Things About Me.’ Here’s a drink. What drink are you? We’re related! I took the ‘What President Are You?’ quiz and found out I’m Millard Fillmore! What president are you?”

You probably mean well, but stop. Just stop. I don’t care what president I am — can’t we simply be friends? Now excuse me while I go post the link to this story on my Facebook page.

All AboutFacebook Inc.

Find this article at:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/20/annoying.facebook.updaters/index.html?iref=newssearch

Lisa van der Pool – Article Courtesy of the BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL

Retirees Ignore Bonds At Their Own Risk

BOSTON — When it comes to investing, most retired Americans have it backwards. Instead of investing in bonds — things that provide a return on capital, those seeking retirement-income security tend to invest in things that provide a guaranteed return of capital. Doing so could lower one’s standard of living, especially when short-term interest rates fall.

“Retired households seeking a secure and dependable income should prioritize return on capital over return of capital,” wrote Anthony Webb, author of a report released this week by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“Households need to make a conscious effort to learn to focus less on the market value of their investments and more on the consumption they can support,” he said.

To Webb’s way of thinking, “the true risk-free asset is a portfolio of bonds and, in particular, inflation-protected bonds of appropriate maturities.” In other words, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities or TIPS. Read his report.

That’s not what most investors are doing now. Most retired Americans prefer investments such as Certificates of Deposit and T-bills — investments that provide safety and liquidity. For instance, 86% of households nearing retirement have bank accounts, while just 33% own stocks directly and just 7% own bonds directly, according to another CRR study. Read that study (PDF).

Yes, short-term deposits do provide a guaranteed return of capital, but they don’t offer guaranteed returns, Webb said. And that’s what most retired households need.

“The ultimate objective of retirement saving is to finance consumption,” Webb wrote. “The standard of living of a household that invests in short-term deposits is at risk if short-term interest rates fall. In contrast, changes in interest rates and bond prices may have no effect on the standard of living of a household investing in bonds.”

Given that, how might you re-jigger your portfolio?

Ladder your bonds

In a perfect world, if you knew in advance how much of your capital you planned to consume or spend in the future, you would put together a bond portfolio with income payments that matched your consumption needs. In other words, you would ladder your portfolio. And you would match your asset (the bond) with your liability (your expenses.)

For his part, Michael Zwecher, author of a forthcoming book on retirement, said another way to achieve the nearly same result is to ladder Treasury STRIPS or what are sometimes called zero-coupon securities. These are securities that pay a fixed rate of return and are stripped down to single payment components, he said. As single payments, they sell at a discount and rise over their life to pay par on maturity.

“They can be set up in a ladder to provide steady or customized income streams,” he said. Plus, STRIPS are highly safe and liquid. What’s more, STRIPS are standardized and mature on either Feb. 15 or Aug. 15 each year. Currently they can be bought to cover maturities ranging from 2010 to 2039, he said. Learn more about Treasury STRIPS at this site.

Meanwhile, Aaron Skloff, chief executive officer of Skloff Financial Group said that corporate bonds currently provide “excellent risk/reward” for retirees. “Fears of mass defaults have waned, as the ‘definite’ collapse of the global financial system has once again become a remote probability.” He said investors concerned about buying a “bad” bond should consider a basket through an ETF or bond fund.

Duration matching

Unfortunately, laddering a bond portfolio “probably requires more knowledge and patience than most households possess,” Webb said. Instead, you might try what he calls the simple version of this strategy. “Invest in a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund investing in bonds with an average duration that equals the household’s life expectancy,” he said.

“Early in retirement, the household would invest mostly in long-dated bonds. Later in retirement, it would gradually rebalance its remaining assets in favor of shorter maturity bonds, matching the reduction in its remaining life expectancy,” Webb said.

Optimize your asset allocation

To be sure, you wouldn’t invest 100% of your retirement nest egg in bonds. Instead, Webb suggests that to optimize the amount you invest between stocks and bonds. And to do that you need to consider your entire retirement-income portfolio. For instance, he said Social Security is similar to owning TIPS. And having a defined-benefit pension plan is similar to owning regular or what he calls nominal bonds.

“Those sources of income are good substitutes for inflation-protected and nominal bonds in household portfolios, and households with large amounts of these sources of income should invest larger proportions of their financial assets in equities than otherwise similar households,” he said.

Others also urged investors not to over-invest in bonds just because they provide a guaranteed rate of return. Don’t confuse certainty with safety, said Harold Evensky, the president of Evensky & Katz. “The payment on bonds, assuming no default, may be certain but for most investors a total allocation to bonds is certainly not safe,” he said.

“The problem is that most investors require a real after-tax return that significantly exceeds the return provided by fixed-income investments. As a result, an over-concentration in bonds will result in a gradually decreasing living standard.”

What’s more, Evensky said it’s important to consider all the risks that come with investing in bonds, including interest-rate risk, credit risk, and inflation risk, before you start moving money out of CDs and T-bills.

“Unless the [Center for Retirement Research] is in the business of pumping bond sales, I think that it would do well to frame the results of its study with the reality of risks other than market volatility.” he said.

Robert Powell is the editor of Retirement Weekly. Learn more about Retirement Weekly here .

Copyright © 2009 MarketWatch, Inc.

Beantown showdown: JetBlue and Southwest face off

By SAMANTHA BOMKAMP (AP)

Article Courtesy of:  Associated Press

NEW YORK — The cool kids of the airline industry are giving big-city travelers more opportunities to show who they like more.

For years, JetBlue and Southwest catered to customers in the same way — with cheap fares and good customer service — but avoided much head-to-head competition in major markets. These days, they are trying to distinguish themselves as they ramp-up competition in places like New York, Washington, Baltimore — and starting this weekend, Boston.

Fliers stand to benefit as these airlines expand in the Northeast. This rivalry not only pits one popular low-cost carrier against another; it puts further pressure on other airlines to stay competitive with them.

It also means JetBlue and Southwest must find ways to differentiate themselves. Southwest is touting its fewer baggage fees and more extensive nationwide presence, while JetBlue is highlighting its live TV service and its own comprehensive route system.

Just over a month after Southwest began flying out of New York’s LaGuardia — eight miles from JetBlue’s base at John F. Kennedy International — Southwest begins service on Sunday from Boston’s Logan International Airport. In September, Southwest starts service between Boston and Baltimore.

A few years back, their flights mostly crossed paths in places like Burbank, Calif., and Orlando, Fla.

The move to New York was a game-changer for Southwest. Formerly it concentrated on smaller, less-congested airports, where it could count on quick turnarounds, a key to its low-cost model.

And with Southwest breathing down its neck, JetBlue has had to make a more aggressive defense of its traditional turf, cutting fares and mulling new routes.

Expect to see low fares discounted further on routes where Southwest and JetBlue will compete out of Boston — especially to Northeastern markets, Chicago and Los Angeles.

When Southwest announced it would fly from Boston to Baltimore for as low as $49, JetBlue said a week later it would launch the same route — offering tickets for $10 less.

“It makes me think of gunfighters in the Old West — who is going to be the last man standing?” said Harlan Platt, a finance professor at Northeastern University who follows the airline industry.

Dallas-based Southwest is the biggest U.S. airline by the number passengers flown. JetBlue is tenth, but it’s No. 2 at Logan.

Much of JetBlue’s model of low fares and quick turnarounds came right out of Southwest’s playbook. It’s no wonder. JetBlue founder David Neeleman started JetBlue in 1999 after he was fired from Southwest.

In 1993, Southwest bought a little-known discount charter airline called Morris Air, based in Salt Lake City. Its co-founder — Neeleman — came to Southwest.

But that didn’t last long. Southwest founder Herb Kelleher — a cigarette-smoking, Wild Turkey-drinking Texas lawyer that revolutionized the airline industry in the 1970’s — fired Neeleman after just five months. Neeleman, a Brazilian-born Mormon father of nine who’s never touched booze, had new ideas for expanding Southwest that were scoffed at by long-time executives there.

JetBlue (originally NewAir) was started with $130 million from investors — the most ever for a startup carrier. Neeleman attracted several Southwest executives to the new airline as well. Three Southwest veterans are with JetBlue today. One worked with Neeleman since his days at Morris Air.

JetBlue started with a single flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It now has 650 daily flights to 56 cities. Its rapid growth has now started to plateau, but JetBlue is still steadily adding new service in markets larger carriers have turned away from — like the Caribbean.

JetBlue has been in Boston for five years, although it’s only recently targeted the city as a focus of its expanding operations.

Southwest will start Boston service with five weekday nonstops to Chicago-Midway and Baltimore-Washington International, with connecting and direct service to 48 other spots including Houston, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Boston is familiar with Southwest because of its service in nearby Manchester, N.H., Providence, R.I., and Hartford, Conn. — three markets it has been serving for about a decade.

Both carriers’ low fares and brand loyalty should give them a leg up against major carriers in Boston. It’s already worked for JetBlue. The airline has worked its way up to second place at Logan in passenger traffic, behind American and ahead of US Airways, which operates a Boston-New York and Boston-Washington shuttle service.

“When you enter a town the size of Boston as really the sole low-cost carrier (like JetBlue did), you really can pick off a lot of the legacy carriers,” finance professor Platt said. “But when the last two gunfighters are JetBlue and Southwest, you’ve got another game.”

Platt thinks Southwest eventually will win the discount competition with JetBlue in Boston because of its large network and image as an anti-fee airline with ads that say “Your Bags Fly Free.” Southwest lets two bags fly free, but charges for a third checked bag. JetBlue charges for the second checked bag.

JetBlue wants more business travelers, as does Southwest, which has tried to lure them with its “Business Select” option launched two years ago. Passengers that pay a premium can go to the front of the boarding line. Neither airline offers business or first class seats.

JetBlue said in July that although it has not focused on courting business travelers in the past, it’s landing more of them in New York and Boston as companies cut travel budgets.

Because of their cheap fares and high customer service rankings, both airlines have legions of loyal travelers. Part of that loyalty can also be traced to fresh marketing that tries to put some fun in flying. JetBlue’s tongue-in-cheek ads have urged executives to get off their private jets and fly JetBlue. In Southwest TV ads, CEO Gary Kelly told customers “It’s On” in New York.

Both airlines are on YouTube. Blogs and Twitter are also important parts of their brands.

Kelleher and Neeleman no longer run the airlines they started. Kelleher, 78, stepped down as chairman last year, but he is still under contract until 2013. Neeleman, 49, runs Azul Airlines in Brazil — a venture he started after he was pushed out of JetBlue in 2007 following the company’s bungled response to a Northeast snowstorm, leaving 130,000 passengers stranded or delayed.

But the airlines they started still have the low-cost, passenger-savvy traits of their founders. Both have flown farther and lasted longer than some of their larger competitors. Platt thinks the big airlines may have something to worry about now in Boston — and JetBlue will have to ramp up its game, too.

“Boston has really been a two-horse town with (two major carriers dominating service there),” he said. “Just the mere presence (of another low-cost carrier) is going to change the landscape.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Cleantech Forum Boston Visit the Cleantech Boston Website: CLICK HERE and Learn More. The first cleantech investment boom (2001-2008) was driven by rapid growth and experimentation. A second cleantech investment boom is being driven by a new emphasis on capital efficiency, and engaging governments—which, combined, are now the single largest investor in cleantech. Leverage new government funding Cleantech Forum® XXIII in Boston, September 8-10 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, will have a strong focus on governmental programs given that worldwide governments have pledged billions of investment capital to clean technologies. Themed The Second Cleantech Investment Boom: Aligning Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Government Stimulus, this year’s East Coast Cleantech Forum in Boston will assemble CEOs, investors, scientists, policy-makers and other industry pioneers to drive demand and open cleantech markets. Explore latest developments in climate change and resource scarcity driving markets for clean technologies Measure the current global economic climate and its relationship to cleantech Gain access to capital and industry pioneers Network and learn from cleantech pioneering innovators, corporates and investors Connect with industry insiders Keynote speaker: Matt C. Rogers, Senior Advisor for Recovery Act Implementation, U.S. Department of Energy Rogers oversees the U.S. DOE’s disbursement of energy-related stimulus funding. He reports to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and will offer insights at the Cleantech Forum into how the cleantech sector can best interface with the U.S. government to access billions in DOE funding. Rogers was formerly leader of McKinsey’s North American Petroleum Practice and was an advisor to the Obama presidential transition team. Previously, Rogers was Senior Partner in McKinsey & Company’s San Francisco office where he helped establish their clean technology practice. Other speakers include: Matt C. Rogers Senior Advisor for Recovery Act Implementation U.S. Dept. of Energy Joseph Stanislaw Senior Advisor, Energy & Resources Deloitte Tom Cain Managing Partner SAIL Venture Partners Neal Dikeman Partner Jane Capital Dennis Costello Managing Partner Braemer Energy Ventures Chuck McDermott General Partner RockPort Capital Hull McKinnon Principal Altira Group Leonard Schlesinger President Babson College Jonathan Rhone CEO Nexterra Systems Stanley Kowalski III Chairman FloDesign Kelly Warner CEO Deerpath Energy R.J. Lyman Partner Goodwin Procter Investor Jim Paull Founder Stellaris Mark Donohue Clean TechnologyEntrepreneur-In-Residence Babson College Scott Smith U.S. Clean Tech practice leader Deloitte Dan Goldman Executive Vice President GreatPoint Energy Tom Carbone CEO Nordic Windpower Mitch Tyson CEO Advances Electron Beams Tom Mennino Mayor City of Boston Terry Yosie President and CEO World Environment Center Pat Cloney Head of Bus. Dev. Mass. Gov.’s office Marianne Wu CEO Mohr Davidow Ventures Michael Meehan CEO Carbonetworks Jamie Kiggen Senior Managing Director Blackstone David Marcus CEO General Compression Vicky Sharpe, Ph. D. President and CEO Sustainable Development Technology Canada Scott Voss Principal HarbourVest Partners, LLC Andy Hirsch Partner Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati Jim Gordon President Energy Management Inc John Danner CEO Northern Power Christina Lampe-Onnerud CEO Boston Power John Mizroch Counsel Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati Jonathan Guerster CEO Groom Energy Click here for Cleantech Forum XXIII Boston preliminary agenda » The three day Cleantech Forum XXIII Boston features: Discussions on the challenges cleantech entrepreneurs and innovators face navigating government loan guarantee programs Stimulus and Policy Workshop Developments in the emerging markets of India and China Opportunities to interact with CEOs of professional investor-selected cleantech growth companies looking for advice, capital, partners, customers and talent – a hallmark of Cleantech Forums An Entrepreneurial MasterClass clinic Presentation of a new Cleantech Product Innovation award, and Multiple tracks, with sessions exploring latest developments in carbon, industrial energy efficiency, biomass, CPV, infrastructure opportunities and challenges, next generation wind, waste to energy, energy storage and more Who should attend Cleantech Forum XXIII? Investors: Limited partners & investment banks Venture capitalists, angels, corporate and institutional investors Hedge fund and private equity managers Project financiers and asset managers Industry leaders and influencers: Corporate energy and sustainability executives Cleantech entrepreneurs Utility and industry executives Professional service providers such as lawyers, accountants and consultants Governments, economic development councils, policy makers, scientists and researchers Seven years of global market leadership Cleantech Forum XXIII Boston is one of the Cleantech Group’s five premier events each year across North America, Europe, China and India. The Forums provide insight, investment opportunities and unparalleled networking for the world’s leading investors, growth companies and global corporations. Join us in Boston, site of the American revolutionary tea party, as the industry forges the next clean technology revolution.

The Martha’s Vineyard Times

Mass in top 10 for stimulus spending

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, AUG. 13, 2009…..The state, local governments and private entities in Massachusetts have received $4.44 billion and spent more than $2.02 billion, 45 percent, through the federal stimulus law, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

That percentage of spending puts Massachusetts seventh among states in the rate of putting stimulus funds into the economy, Executive Office of Administration and Finance officials said Thursday. By the end of the life of the stimulus in fiscal 2011, the state expects to receive $9.22 billion for spending out of $514 billion doled out nationally, as well as $4.28 billion in tax benefits, compared to $272.52 billion nationally.

Testifying Thursday before the Legislature’s Committee on Federal Stimulus Oversight, budget officials said the federal funds had helped save budgets for important social welfare programs, spark infrastructure development and retain jobs. But “evolving” federal guidance has made it difficult to track the number of jobs created, they said.

Much of the funding has been used in the state budget, effectively preserving jobs that may have been cut.

Secretary of Administration and Finance Leslie Kirwan said stimulus spending was one facet of the Patrick administration’s effort to turn around the Massachusetts economy, which has seen tens of thousands of job losses and deteriorating tax collections in recent months. Other aspects include the state’s borrowing program, an accelerated bridge repair program, as well as investments in broadband, clean energy and life sciences.

Of the $2.02 billion in stimulus funds spent, state agencies are responsible for $1.47 billion, including $419 million for education, $1.02 billion for safety net programs, $12.4 million for public safety efforts, $8.1 million for labor and workforce development programs and $4.5 million for transportation programs. The rest flows directly into cities and towns, school districts and non-governmental entities.

Spending deadlines for hundreds of millions of dollars of transportation infrastructure funds have been met and exceeded, said Jeffrey Simon, director of the Patrick administration’s Office of Infrastructure Investment, which oversees much of the stimulus spending. Those deadlines included a 120-day window to spend $153 million on highway repairs – Massachusetts spent $191 million – and a 180-day timeframe to spend $159 million on transit – the state has spent $164 million as of two weeks ago – Simon said. If those deadlines had not been met, the state would have had to return the money to the federal government.

Administration officials said they were struggling to quantify the number of jobs created by ARRA funds because of “evolving” guidance for how to calculate job gains and job retention.

“We’re on version three now of directives from [the federal Office of Management and Budget],” Simon said. Simon pointed to an October 10 deadline for reporting such numbers, when the state hopes to have clearer guidance.

Sen. Marc Pacheco, who co-chairs the stimulus oversight committee, said he expected “a good news story” when those job numbers were available.

Kirwan later said she expected the numbers to show that “most likely thousands of local jobs” had been created or retained. She, as well as committee co-chair Rep. David Linsky, said the federal funds for safety net programs – food stamps, mental health services and others – had saved lives.

Since March 19, the last time Administration and Finance officials came before the committee to discuss stimulus funding, Simon’s office has hired two veterans of Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office to help oversee infrastructure spending. The two, Stephanie LeBlanc and Douglas Rice, who respectively serve as infrastructure assessment manager and compliance and reporting manager, worked on Big Dig cost recovery efforts for Coakley. Simon said hiring officials with that experience made “a statement” about the administration’s seriousness about ensuring that public dollars are spent wisely.

Kirwan told committee members the administration had hoped to evenly spread its stimulus funds through fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011, but steep deterioration in revenue collections moved state policymakers to frontload much of the stimulus spending to help balance the fiscal 2009 budget.

“When the governor first put this budget together for fiscal ’10, we had not yet experienced the revenue losses for April and June,” she said, noting that those two months saw revenues miss benchmarks by $500 million and $180 million, respectively. “At this time last year, we still had not lost a dollar of revenue. We did not until the middle of September last year have any loss of revenue.”

Comptroller Martin Benison also testified at the hearing, describing his office’s efforts to track and report on 34 separate grant awards overseen by OMB. Twenty departments – 16 executive agencies, two non-executive departments and two colleges – are responsible for administering those grants, which have totaled more than $500 million to date. Much of that includes a $412 million use of education funds to offset a fiscal 2009 local aid reduction.

Benison said his office holds weekly conference calls with stimulus stakeholders to coordinate reporting efforts.

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AutoTrader.com sees big jump from ‘clunkers’

The Chevrolet Camaro claimed the No. 1 spot on AutoTrader.com’s most viewed new vehicles list for the third month in a row, topping off what has become one of the first positive months for new car sales in over a year.

Cash-for-Clunkers brought consumers on-line and into showrooms in July to look for cars, reflected in AutoTrader.com site traffic of 15.3 million unique visitors to the site during the month of July. July marked the seventh month in a row that AutoTrader.com has seen its unique monthly visitor count top 15 million, the company said.”We have been waiting for the pent-up demand for new vehicles to uncork all year, and Cash-for-Clunkers has provided the jolt the industry needed,” said AutoTrader.com President and CEO Chip Perry. “Consumers have been turning primarily to the Internet to research information about cars and prices, and that research is finally being put into action as these shoppers turn into buyers at dealerships across the country.”

Among new vehicles, the all-new Chevrolet Equinox saw an impressive 197% increase in views, moving it from 99th to 18th year-over-year. Similarly, the recently redesigned Ford Fusion saw an increase in views of 28%, enough to move the midsize sedan from 35th to 16th overall. Ford also saw an increase in asking prices for the new Fusion of 12%, with the average price of vehicles listed on AutoTrader.com being $24,798. This compares well the Fusion’s chief competitors, the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, which had average listing prices of $25,217 and $24,487, respectively.

Continuing to look at Ford vehicles, the new F-250 full-size pick-up, which saw a severe drop in sales last July due to record-high $4 per gallon gas, also saw a significant year-over-year increase in consumer activity, with views increasing 87%. Finally, Kia saw one of the largest increases in views among brands as a whole, as consumer activity around vehicles such as the newly-introduced Soul crossover and the new Forte compact sedan helped move the brand to its first-ever appearance on the top 10 Most Viewed Manufacturers list.

“With demand for many cars high now, supplies of vehicles at many dealerships have run short,” said Perry. “For consumers looking to now take advantage of the CARS legislation by purchasing a popular model such as one of these, turning to AutoTrader.com to locate a dealer with the exact new vehicle of their choice is certainly the smart way to go.”

Used & CPO Car Activity

Among used and CPO vehicles, the Ford F-150 saw a 31% gain to become the most viewed used vehicle, while the BMW 3-series once again topped the list of most viewed among CPO vehicles. More notably, prices for used vehicles across a variety of segments rose, with trucks seeing the largest jumps from last year’s lows. The biggest gainer was the Chevrolet Tahoe, which saw an increase in average asking price of 20% compared to July of 2008.

“Excepting last summer’s unusual selling situation brought about by record high gas prices, the consumer demand for larger vehicles such as SUVs has generally continued unabated,” said Perry. “Though we are beginning to see a gradual shift in consumer tastes to smaller vehicles, it will be a while before we see many Americans ready to abandon their bigger vehicles entirely.”

For more information visit: www.Autotrader.com

We agree with much of Attorney Gennari’s advice on how to prepare for your pitch to a venture capitalist or other private investors. For bandwidth-constrained founders, they are most concerned with the efficacy of finding and attracting the attention of appropriate investors. From this perspective, entrepreneurs and business execs should consider a forum specifically designed with input from the region’s leading private capital investors to offer an effective and efficient venue for identifying, screening, matching and assessing investment suitability of rapidly growing companies. Speed Venture Summit is New England’s premier event for business executives to speed pitch their growth story to private capital investors: in the course of a single day, they meet face-to-face with six different groups of the region’s leading private capital investors. For more information, please visit www.speedventuresummit.org

Downsizing the big banks: A long-term solution

Financial News – Can IMF be global banker?

THINK AGAIN BY ANDREW SHENG

FLYING to Boston for a conference on the global crisis, I went into the famous Harvard Coop bookstore in Cambridge. It was like my favourite candy store, I dashed here and there, picking up books I could not get in Asia and browsed new books that I could not see from Amazon.

Boston hosting 1st Latino professional convention

As the nation’s first Latino Supreme Court justice is set to be sworn in today, Boston will welcome its first-ever convention of Latino professionals.

Some 2,000 members of the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting are expected to gather here starting today for their national convention.

A Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau official said this will be the biggest gathering of Latino professionals ever in the Hub.

The association’s Boston chapter – which has more than 1,500 members – is the nation’s largest, said Romina Wilmot, vice president of marketing and public relations for the Hub chapter.

She attributed the Boston chapter’s success to its leadership and the region’s growing number of Latino professionals. In the past decade, Boston’s Latino population has grown 21 percent, to 103,000, according to city data.

“We have had very strong and active leaders, who are very passionate about this group,” said Wilmot, a former advertising specialist for Marshall’s who relocated from Honduras to Boston as a young girl.

The conference runs through Wednesday and association members will be gathering in three different hotels in the Copley Square area.

As attendees gather for their first day of meetings, many will be celebrating Sonia Sotomayor’s swearing in as Supreme Court associate justice.

“I’m sure everyone will be discussing that,” Wilmot said.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1189894

Apartments, museum lead race for Greenway site

BRA says proposals most consistent with its plans for parcel

Boston chefs scalded in ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

It was a rough night for the two Massachusetts chefs competing in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which premiered Tuesday on Fox TV.

Fitchburg diner owner David “Louie” Cordio was booted in the middle of dinner service by chef Gordon Ramsay – the only contestant in six seasons to be kicked off the reality TV show even before the first elimination ceremony.

The two-hour show ended with a cliffhanger. Fans of Boston chef Andy Husbands, nominated by his team for elimination in the second round, will have to tune in next Tuesday to see if he’s dispatched.

It was a memorable, if short, run for Cordio, who in one scene doffed his shirt to do a champagne-fueled cannonball into a hot tub.

Now he wants to go mano-a-mano with Ramsay outside the kitchen. “Put all the spatulas and spoons aside,” Cordio, 45, said. “I just want a cage match.”

So is Cordio bitter about his early exit and Ramsay’s criticism of his signature dish? “It’s TV, what can you do?” he said. “Somebody has to go out first. I just think chef Ramsay is a clown, if you ask me.”

The 16 “Hell’s Kitchen” contestants had 45 minutes to prepare their signature dishes for the series’ first challenge, and Cordio made sausage gravy over biscuits.

“Ah, (expletive) me, what is it?” was Ramsay’s first reaction.

Cordio asked Ramsay what was wrong with the dish, noting he sells “5 gallons” of it a week at his 50/50 Diner in Fitchburg. “It tastes like gunk!” Ramsay replied after spitting out a mouthful.

The final straw for Ramsay was Cordio’s performance on the meat station on opening night of the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant. After reaming Cordio for putting the rack of lamb in the oven without searing and seasoning it – and wasting a heaping plate of it – Ramsay ordered him to get out of the kitchen and pack his bags.

But Cordio had a parting shot for Ramsay in his final closeup: “He can kiss my (expletive) ass!”

Tremont 647 chef Husbands, who also failed to win a point for his signature dish, had problems with allegedly undercooked chicken during the second night of dinner. “It was tough, and I definitely goofed some stuff up,” said Husbands, who was hit with one of Ramsay’s “you (expletive) donkey” insults.

Husbands was sweating it in the hours prior to the show’s airing, as evidenced by his Twitter tweets. He went from a “little” nervous to “losing my mind” and “head about to explode” a few hours before.

***

More Boston Restaurant News

A new jazz lounge and eatery is headed to Columbus Avenue in Boston’s South End.

The Stork Club Boston is drawing its inspiration from speakeasies and its name from the former Stork Club that operated in New York City from 1929 to 1965 and drew the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, J. Edgar Hoover and the Kennedys.

It’s taking the place of Circle Plates and Lounge, an upscale French restaurant that opened last October in the former Bob’s Southern Bistro space and closed six weeks later.

Managing partner Ziad Chamoun, previously director of operations for the Barking Crab restaurants in Boston and Newport, is buying out the current owner.

“The goal is to bring back a place where there’s conversation and music, and artists and people from different groups within Boston can come in and enjoy,” spokesman Marc Deley said. “There will be weekly live jazz music, but it will be more atmospheric jazz.”

The 88-seat Stork Club Boston is slated to open Aug. 11.

***

Executive chef Jeff Poliseno’s menu of comfort food “with a twist” that’s meant to be shared will be served until 1 a.m., an hour before closing, with prices of $7 to $17. Poliseno formerly worked at American Seasons on Nantucket and as executive chef at Boston’s Vox Populi.

***

A little bit of news on the restaurant replacing Excelsior at Boston’s Heritage on the Garden.

London’s Marlon Abela Restaurant Corp., which Himmel Hospitality is partnering with to run the restaurant, has posted a help-wanted ad for a “Provencal-style bistro.”

The Turning the Tables column runs every other Friday. Send restaurant tips to

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1186780

Globe says readers to pay for Web site

The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale.

News of the Globe’s intention to charge for Boston.com came a day after News Corp. [NWS] Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced his company would start charging for content at all of its news Web sites, including the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, a popular British tabloid. News Corp. already charges for some access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site.

Globe spokesman Bob Powers said charging for Boston.com appears inevitable.

“It’s going to happen one way or another,” Powers said. “We are looking at several different options, and the goal would be to generate revenue.”

Ainsley also told Globe union bosses the combination of price increases and labor cost reductions, including $20 million in union concessions, have put the paper on better financial footing.

He said union concessions, plus $8 million in Globe management givebacks and the $18 million the company expects to save by closing its Billerica printing plant, have all helped, sources said.

The Times’ quarterly report filed yesterday shows the company spent $30 million to close its Billerica printing plant. Sources have told the Herald that at least one outside party was interested in the plant, but was rebuffed.

Ainsley refused to answer questions about the potential sale of the Globe at yesterday’s meeting, saying his Times Co. overlords had ordered him to keep mum.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1189673

News Corp. plans fees for newspaper Web sites
/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1189759

Nonprofit Globe no easy fix
/business/media/view.bg?articleid=1188720

Young investors wary of jumping into market lows

By Erin Kutz

BOSTON (Reuters) – Young investors may accept the argument that those who begin investing when stocks are cheap end up with more retirement money, but after the turmoil of the past year, some find it hard to put their money in the market.

Asset managers and analysts say that those who invest in rock-bottom stocks of a bear market will see share values rise for decades.

But many in their 20s and early 30s are not buying rosy projections, due to immediate financial pressures and exposure to the longest recession since the 1930s Great Depression.

“I would keep all my money in cash,” said Alex Corbacho, a senior at Boston University.

The trend has some worrisome long-term implications. Stock brokers may find themselves largely shut out of a big customer base, and demand for equities will likely be crimped as investors favor safer havens, hurting the stock market’s prospects. It’s also unclear whether these young investors will have accumulated enough to fund their retirements when the time comes.

Corbacho is no stranger to markets. At age 13 he invested his birthday money and a matching donation from his father, $1,000 in total, in tech stocks only to feel the sting when the Internet bubble burst.

He carried the lesson with him in early 2008, after seeing signs of economic trouble as an intern at a Boston investment bank. He put the majority of his stock investments, which had reached about $5,000, into a certificate of deposit instead.

Corbacho doesn’t plan returning to stocks for a few years after graduation and is instead focusing on saving.

The recent market collapse has made holding cash for immediate expenses far more attractive to young people than investing, said Rodger Smith, managing director of Connecticut consulting firm Greenwich Associates.

“They are taken aback by how much they lost and how quickly they lost it,” Smith said.

The early exposure to such dramatic declines could restrain many from investing aggressively when they are older and have accumulated more money to put into the market, some say.

Asset managers, financial advisers and investors agree that young people will emerge from the financial crisis more educated, and more cautious, about managing their money.

“I do think they are taking a more practical and slightly more conservative view of the world,” said Michael Doshier, vice president of Fidelity’s Workplace Investing Group.

Corbacho said his generation should not expect to accumulate sudden wealth like some in the past.

“We might be a little smarter and a little wiser moving forward. We will have been more conservative and more observant and won’t have 65 percent of our life savings invested in equities,” he said.

Assets in U.S. retirement plans fell 22 percent in 2008 or nearly $4 trillion, with almost 75 percent of the drop in the second half of 2008, the Investment Company Institute found.

“These folks need to be resold on the idea that a 401k is a long-term investment,” said Smith, who oversees a profit-sharing plan for his firm and advises younger investors.

LONG-TERM CONCERNS

Financial advisers have long suggested that those further from retirement invest more heavily in equities, then switch to less risky assets as they near their golden years.

But the portfolios of those in their early 20s don’t reflect that advice. At Fidelity Investments, those 20-24 years old invest 31 percent of their 401ks in equities, compared to those 50-59 years old with 35 percent equities investments.

Overall, those saving for retirement have pulled back from stocks. In June, 48 percent of all Fidelity 401k participants were in equities, down from 53 percent a year ago.

Those in the investment industry say young investors should buy stock early and often.

“The key message is that it’s not a bad time for everybody,” said Christine Fahlund, senior financial planner at T. Rowe Price.

Ita Mirianashvili, a 35-year-old fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, has confidence in long-term stock market prospects.

“I know the downturn cycle we are in will continue for some time but it will come back,” she said outside a MIT class that simulates a stock trading room.

But concerns about inflation, heavy government spending and rising bankruptcies has left many young investors uncertain.

“It’s still difficult to be bullish … for the long-run,” said Ashan Walpita, a 2009 Boston University graduate and former president of the school’s finance club.

Other short-term obstacles may hold young investors back. Employer-sponsored retirement plans often give people their first market exposure but with many graduates not finding work, they are yet to get started on making investments.

(Editing by Mark Egan and Cynthia Osterman)

‘Yes We Can’ vs. ‘Tell Washington No’:

Public passions seen rising on health care overhaul

Public passions are rising on health care overhaul

WASHINGTON — Booed, jeered and occasionally cheered in a raucous session with the public, a Democratic senator said Monday that other lawmakers can expect the same as they face voters on the divisive issue of overhauling health care.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the harbinger of things to come,” Pennsylvania’s Sen. Arlen Specter said a day after facing the rowdy crowd in Philadelphia. A House member who was surrounded by protesters shouting “Just say no!” to Democrats’ health plans in Texas over the weekend accused Republicans of organizing the opposition.

“This mob … did not come just to be heard, but to deny others the right to be heard. And this appears to be part of a coordinated, nationwide effort,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said in a statement. “What could be more appropriate for the ‘party of no’ than having its stalwarts drowning out the voices of their neighbors by screaming ‘Just say no!’”

With Congress’ monthlong recess looming, lawmakers are encountering growing public doubts about President Barack Obama’s push to remake the system for providing medical care, evident in polls that find confidence in the president’s handling of the issue has fallen since January.

The White House is determined to frame the debate on its terms this month and counter fears about government-run insurance plans, a growing federal deficit, the impact on small businesses, abortion and end-of-life provisions — all issues that have dominated the health care debate. Political parties and special interest groups will add to the cacophony by spending millions of dollars on competing ads.

For lawmakers such as Specter and Doggett, the weekend events captured the public mood and the obstacles for the Obama administration.

At Specter’s forum Sunday in Philadelphia, some chanted Obama’s “Yes we can” campaign slogan, while others carried signs that said, “Tell Washington no.”

Specter and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius faced an antagonistic, standing-room-only crowd at the National Constitution Center. Specter said he thought political organizations orchestrated some of the commotion, but individuals with serious concerns — some in dire medical conditions — were there as well.

“I do think there’s a big concern in America,” Specter said in an interview Monday. “We heard it yesterday about the growing deficit and national debt.”

Specter is a recent Republican-turned-Democrat who indicated earlier this year that he’s open to a government health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers, an idea backed by Obama and many Democrats.

Four of five congressional committees have approved versions of health care bills, but lawmakers fell short of Obama’s deadline for the House and Senate to vote on bills before their August recess. That sets up a September showdown on the legislation and all sides have moved into high gear.

The House has begun its recess, with the Senate to follow on Friday, as lawmakers continue to work on bipartisan legislation.

Frustrated with the pace of those talks, Democratic leaders promised to push a sweeping health care bill through the Senate whether they get Republican support or not.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the third-ranking Senate Democrat, raised the prospect of the leadership crafting a bill to Democratic specifications and using a rare legislative procedure to expedite it.

“We will have contingencies in place,” Schumer told reporters on a conference call. “These plans will likely be considered as a last resort, but they are on the table.” He would not elaborate.

After numerous delays, three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee are facing a Sept. 15 deadline to wrap up secretive talks and come up with a plan.

“If we cannot produce a bipartisan solution by then, you have to wonder if the Republicans will ever to be willing to agree to anything,” Schumer said.

However, one of the negotiators — Republican Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming — said Monday he did not recognize such a deadline, and another, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said: “I don’t like deadlines.”

After those objections were voiced, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said that senators were looking at a target date internally but “the main thing is we got to get it right.” Baucus said a draft bill would be ready by the end of this week.

Senators have plenty of action on the Senate floor this week, including a vote on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, but health care is still a focus. Senate Democrats are lunching at the White House Tuesday and will hear from White House adviser David Axelrod and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina at a closed-door session Thursday.

Schumer said Democratic leaders continue to look at invoking a procedural maneuver that would allow them to pass the health bill with 51 votes instead of 60. That route is viewed as a last resort, in part because it would probably limit the breadth of policy initiatives.

On the same call, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., accused Republican leaders of trying to hinder bipartisan progress to deny Obama a political victory.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scoffed at the complaints. He noted that Schumer himself hasn’t committed to supporting whatever the Finance Committee negotiators produce and that other Democrats have also criticized the plan that’s taking shape.

“Seriously, how can any Democrat who doesn’t support what the bipartisan group of Finance members is working on complain about there not being a bipartisan approach?” Stewart asked. “Has Sen. Schumer or anyone in the Democrat leadership offered a bipartisan bill?”

Schumer and many other liberals favor a strong new government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers, and all the plans approved so far have included that. But Republicans nearly uniformly oppose a new public plan, saying it would drive private insurers out of business, so the Finance negotiators are looking at a system of nonprofit health co-ops instead.

Schumer said negotiations on the Finance bill were continuing.

“No one’s drawing any lines in the sand right now, but I feel very strongly we need a public option and that fight is continuing,” he said.

Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

General Electric Co. rose the most in three months after U.S. Representative Barney Frank said manufacturers that already own finance businesses should be allowed to keep the units under revised banking rules.

GE increased 92 cents, or 7.5 percent, to $13.18 at 10:27 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares earlier climbed 8.8 percent, the biggest intraday gain since April 13.

GE, Harley-Davidson Inc. and companies that already have finance arms or industrial-loan businesses known as ILCs should be able to retain them without being subject to Federal Reserve oversight of their manufacturing operations, Frank said in an interview with Bloomberg News yesterday. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, heads the U.S. House Financial Services Committee.

“While numerous uncertainties remain, we are reducing our probability assumption for a costly separation to 25 percent from 50 percent and this drives our higher target,” Terry Darling, an analyst with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote today in a report. “Greater potential for a manageable regulatory outcome should prompt investors to focus on longer-term benefits of economic and credit stabilization to GE shares.”

Darling raised his 12-month share-price estimate for GE to $15 from $13 and changed his rating to “buy” from “neutral.”

GE Capital

GE, the world’s biggest non-bank financial company, said July 28 during a Webcast meeting with analysts that it has been “very active” in opposing any rules that might force it to split off its GE Capital finance unit, which has $557 billion in assets. GE is also the world’s biggest maker of power-plant turbines, locomotives, medical-imaging machines and jet engines.

Steven Winoker, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, raised his estimate for GE’s 2009 per-share profit by 3 cents to 99 cents. He lowered his 2010 estimate by 3 cents to 94 cents a share on concerns profit growth in the non-finance divisions may slow.
“The risk/reward balance is improving over a longer, about three-year, time horizon,” Winoker wrote in a note to clients today. “However, we believe the stock is likely to remain range-bound in the near term due to skepticism concerning GE’s earnings power and the potential for dilution.”

Credit-default swaps protecting against a default by GE Capital fell 35 basis points to 260 basis points, according to CMA DataVision.

Financial Regulation

President Barack Obama’s administration is seeking to tighten regulation of the financial industry to reduce the likelihood that any one company’s potential failure would hurt the broader markets and economy. Frank, a leader in Congress in transforming Obama’s plan into legislation, said this week he plans to get the bill through the House by October and to Obama for his signature before the end of the year.

“The Fed was worried about being a regulator, about being held responsible for a lot of industrial activity,” Frank said. “We will work with them to resolve that issue.”

There are ways to allow companies like GE to stay intact and have their finance arms regulated more closely, Frank said. The structure didn’t cause the financial crisis, and it shouldn’t be an obstacle to regulation, Frank said.

“This particular arrangement is not part of the problem,” Frank said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rachel Layne in Boston at rlayne@bloomberg.net; Alexis Xydias in London at axydias@bloomberg.net.

Financial tech web plays arise from ashes of economy

Article Courtesy of:  MASS HIGH TECH

Former MIT computer scientist Jim Psota hopes that Panjiva can attract more gatherers of esoteric data to help serve traders.

When the world financial markets fell apart last fall, the prognosis was dire for startups bent on selling information technology to financial services firms. But entrepreneurs and investors in Massachusetts’ financial services IT sector didn’t blink: And now, three new companies founded or funded here are developing new models for both individual investors and data-driven money managers.

Panjiva Inc., a New York company with a Cambridge-based development team, is aggregating, cleaning and analyzing global trade data. Another New York firm, Covestor Inc., has taken funding from Boston-based Spark Capital for a service that allows users to automatically co-invest with other investors. A third company, Lexington-based StreamBase Systems Inc., has applied its real-time complex event-processing engine to the rising global tide of micro-blog posts on Twitter.

Providing investors with new sources of information, however obscure, remains a good business model, said Battery Ventures general partner Michael Brown, who invested in Panjiva. “When it comes to the guys who are managing money, it’s all about that little nugget of data that you can use,” he said.

Founded in 2007 by MIT computer scientist Jim Psota and former Boston Consulting Group associate Josh Green, Panjiva has taken in $5.5 million so far from Battery and a dozen angel investors. Its data sources include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shipping records, reports from overseas factory inspectors, and a Chinese government insurer’s due diligence on eight million  companies. Last week, the company launched a partnership program designed to attract other gatherers of esoteric data relevant to trade.

The two originally envisioned a customer base of importers, but Panjiva has seen growing interest from the data distribution channels that target investor communities, Green said. Overseas factories often shutter with no warning, crippling a company’s supply chain. “To the investor community, there’s often little transparency about how much (supply chain) risk those companies are facing,” he said.

Last week, StreamBase, founded in 2003 by serial entrepreneur Michael Stonebraker, announced it had adapted its complex event processing system to support semantic analysis in real time on the stream of comments and dialog on the microblog sharing service Twitter.

“It’s pretty well understood on Wall Street that companies with the best data are going to make the most money,” said StreamBase CTO Richard Tibbetts. Changing trends in brand sentiment on Twitter may be the data point that influences a decision, he said.

Covestor hopes to capitalize on trends at the opposite end of the pool, where private individuals are disillusioned with Wall Street money managers. The company’s online service, launched last week, is designed to let investors piggy back on trades and investments made by a single other investor — who may or may not be a professional.

“Right now, you’re only able to follow the however many thousand professionals around the world,” said co-founder Perry Blacher. “We all know people we think are good at investing. Why can’t I invest alongside one of them?”

To navigate prohibitions against paying commissions to nonqualified, private investors, Covestor treats its record of investors’ trades as publishable information and charges a subscription fee, Blacher said. Followed investors receive $120 a year per subscriber, and the company itself reaps a fixed management fee of 0.5 to 1.5 percent.

Covestor is similar to existing services like the Motley Fool website’s Caps network, which lets investors share predictions — except it takes out the work of researching and making investments yourself, said Richard Gibble, director of the Hughey Center for Financial Services at Bentley University.

For investors chary of part-time day trading and mistrustful of Wall Street money managers, that “plug-and-play model” may be a compelling offering, he said. “The markets are complicated,” Gibble said. “Even if you know what you’re doing, it’s not easy to make money. Even for me, I like to think I know what I’m talking about, but it takes a lot of time. If you don’t have that time, you have to outsource it.”

Awesome Foundation attracts small-project entrepreneurs

About 50 people turned up at the BetaHouse technology co-working space in Cambridge last night to hear how they could get $1,000 to fund their own “awesome” pet project.

Twelve trustees have each agreed to contribute $100 a month to the loosely organized “Awesome Foundation,” which promises $1,000 each month to fund “awesome” projects.

“It’s just that extra spark to push people to be creative and try out their idea,” said trustee Emily Daniels. “I could spend that $100 on some random shopping trip, or I could inspire someone to do something great. I don’t know why more people don’t do this.”

Daniels, who directs an English-language-learning program in Cambridge and helps organize the creative electricity maker community Dorkbot-Boston, is typical of the tech-minded trustees at the Awesome Foundation.

However, many of the 250 ideas submitted so far have nothing to do with technology, and that’s okay with founder Tim Hwang. “We do want to establish ourselves as an organization that funds a whole range of different things,” he said.

Hwang said the new initiative has received requests from people wanting to start chapters and sign up trustees in four countries. For now, he said, the number of trustees will remain limited while the group establishes itself, he said.

Trustee Matt Lake, a programmer at Watertown-based health care IT company Athenahealth Inc., said as long as the project is feasible, ethical and legal, it doesn’t matter whether it is sustainable over the long-term. “I want to see something eye-opening and inspirational,” he said.

“It’s kind of the broken windows theory, in reverse,” said trustee and BetaHouse co-founder Jon Pierce, referring to the social theory that minor crimes like vandalism or illegal dumping, unchecked, can lead to serious crime. “If you flip that on its head you can say here’s all this great stuff going on, and we’re going to showcase it and encourage it.”

The Awesome Foundation is accepting grant applications.  http://awesomefoundation.org.

White House reviewing ‘cash for clunkers’ program

WASHINGTON – The White House said Thursday it was reviewing what has turned out to be a wildly popular “cash for clunkers” program amid concerns the $1 billion budget for rebates for new auto purchases may have been exhausted in only a week.

Transportation Department officials called lawmakers’ offices earlier Thursday to alert them of plans to suspend the program as early as Friday. But a White House official said later the program had not been suspended and officials there were assessing their options.

“We are working tonight to assess the situation facing what is obviously an incredibly popular program,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said of the Car Allowance Rebate System. “Auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that all valid CARS transactions that have taken place to date will be honored.”

Gibbs said the administration was “evaluating all options” to keep the program funded.

A Transportation Department official said the department was working with Congress and the White House to keep the program going. The administration officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the discussions.

The CARS program offers owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Congress last month approved the program to boost auto sales and remove some inefficient cars and trucks from the roads. The program kicked off last Friday and was heavily publicized by car companies and auto dealers

Through late Wednesday, 22,782 vehicles had been purchased through the program and nearly $96 million had been spent. But dealers raised concerns about large backlogs in the processing of the deals in the government system, prompting talk of a possible suspension.

A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association found about 25,000 deals had not yet been approved by NHTSA, or nearly 13 trades per store. It raised concerns that with about 23,000 dealers taking part in the program, auto dealers may already have surpassed the 250,000 vehicle sales funded by the $1 billion program.

“There’s a significant backlog of ‘cash for clunkers’ deals that make us question how much funding is still available in the program,” said Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the dealers association.

Alan Helfman, general manager of River Oaks Chrysler Jeep in Houston, said he was worried that the government wouldn’t pay for some of the clunker deals his dealership has signed because they aren’t far enough along in the process.

His dealership has done paperwork on about 20 sales under the clunker program, but in some cases the titles haven’t been obtained yet or the vehicles aren’t yet on his lot.

“There’s no doubt I’m going to get hammered on a deal or two,” Helfman said.

The clunkers program was set up to boost U.S. auto sales and help struggling automakers through the worst sales slump in more than a quarter-century. Sales for the first half of the year were down 35 percent from the same period in 2008, and analysts are predicting only a modest recovery during the second half of the year.

So far this year, sales are running under an annual rate of 10 million light vehicles, but as recently as 2007, automakers sold more than 16 million cars and light trucks in the United States.

Even before the suspension, some in Congress were seeking more money for the auto sales stimulus. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., wrote in a letter to House leaders on Wednesday requesting additional funding for the program.

“This is simply the most stimulative $1 billion the federal government has spent during the entire economic downturn,” Miller said Thursday. “The federal government must come up with more money, immediately, to keep this program going.”

Michigan lawmakers planned to meet on Friday to discuss the program.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said they would work with “the congressional sponsors and the administration to quickly review the results of the initiative.”

General Motors Co. spokesman Greg Martin said Thursday the automaker hopes “there’s a will and way to keep the CARS program going a little bit longer.”

___

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dealers riding clunkers to the bank

Allure of $4,500 boost for trade-in pulls buyers into auto showrooms

By Sean Sposito, Globe Correspondent  |  July 30, 2009

Massachusetts auto dealers say the new “cash for clunkers’’ voucher program is giving them a much-needed boost in business this week.

The federal promotion – which offers buyers an instant discount of up to $4,500 when a qualifying vehicle is traded in for a new, fuel-efficient model – was rolled out over the weekend, and by yesterday dealers were reporting a jump in sales. Buyers have an additional incentive, too – avoiding the 25 percent increase in the state sales tax that takes effect Saturday.

While there have been complaints that the program is too complicated and won’t ultimately cure automakers’ ills, for now area dealers are just happy to see customers flocking to their showrooms.

“It’s the best week in several years for people in the automotive industry,’’ said Dan Quirk, president of Quirk Auto Dealerships. Quirk said the prospect of shaving thousands of dollars off the price of a car is driving up activity at his 10 showrooms.

Quirk said he usually sells about 1,500 cars a month, but expects to do significantly better in July. “We’ve probably sold 350 just this weekend, 120 through cash for clunkers,’’ he said.

Kevin Haggerty, 60, of Pembroke was shopping at Quirk Chevrolet in Braintree on Monday, hoping to trade in his 1999 Ford F-150, which he estimates is worth around $1,600, as a clunker. The Chevrolet Colorado he was eyeing had already been sold, but Haggerty expects to eventually buy a new car under the voucher program.

“I’m 90 percent sure that I’m going to make a move, unless something is too pricey,’’ he said.

Juan Banos, lead sales manager at Expressway Toyota in Dorchester, said his dealership closed about 30 cash for clunkers deals over the weekend alone. Banos said that even if the program increases monthly sales modestly, he’ll consider it a success.

“An extra 10 to 30 deals, we make at least an average of $1,000 per deal, that’s $30,000 for the dealership just in one weekend,’’ he said. “That could either make it or break it, as far as quotas go.’’

Gregg McCutcheon of Brockton said he was motivated to shop by the promise of cash for clunkers, formally the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS. The $1 billion program, which will run through Nov. 1 – or as long as the funds last – allows $3,500 to $4,500 trade-ins on cars that get less than 18 miles per gallon and are less than 25 years old. The money can be applied only toward new cars, and there are other restrictions.

“Cash for clunkers is what got us out here,’’ said McCutcheon, 57, after he bought a car from Mansfield Jeep-Chrysler. But McCutcheon ended up with a 2007 Chrysler Town & Country van instead of a current model.

“I’m 6-foot-6,’’ he said. “The dashboards on the new ones seemed to come out a little bit further, so I picked up a used one.’’

Not buying a new car meant McCutcheon wasn’t eligible for the CARS program, however.

Despite the upbeat moods in showrooms, some dealers said the paperwork associated with the federal program has been overwhelming. Reidar Davies, general sales manager of Prime Honda in West Roxbury, said his dealership has already written more than 40 cash for clunkers deals, but it has required a lot of extra effort.

“The paperwork is extremely, extremely rigorous and demanding,’’ he said. “It requires a ton of data entry.’’

And submitting the deals for government approval online has been painfully slow, Davies said.

Melissa Steffy, general manager at Herb Chambers BMW and Mini in Boston, said sales made with customers over the weekend are just now getting processed online.

“It’s a matrix to put these deals together,’’ Steffy said.

Even signing up to participate in the program was a headache for some dealers. Karen Aldana, a spokeswoman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said more than 20,000 of the nation’s 25,000 auto dealers have enrolled in the program. But the demand was so high that some dealers could not get onto the agency’s website, she said.

Some local auto industry officials are trying to put the promotion in perspective. With Chrysler merging with Fiat to survive, and General Motors emerging from bankruptcy propped up by $50 billion in taxpayer funds, no one is saying automakers’ troubles are history.

“It’s a $1 billion program and the money will go fast,’’ Quirk said of cash for clunkers. The funding translates to about 225,000 vehicles – just one week of sales across the country.

Sean Sposito can be reached at ssposito@globe.com.

Questions raised about George Regan award Hub PR exec denies using ethnic slur

An ex-Boston magazine scribe insists Boston PR man George Regan called him an ethnic slur, and now there’s a call to block one of the country’s biggest civil rights organizations from honoring the Hub spinmeister.

Regan denies calling John Gonzalez a “wetback,” but the writer is sticking by his story.

“It’s 100 percent true,” Gonzalez told MediaBiz yesterday.

Gonzalez said he was working on a piece about the Herald’s Inside Track reporters in 2006 when he called Regan for a comment. Regan represented both the Herald and Boston magazine at the time. (The Herald is no longer a Regan client.)

“I call him for a comment, and he freaks out and he starts screaming at me. We’re going back and forth, and it just escalated out of nowhere and he said, ‘You listen to me, you (expletive) wetback,’ ” Gonzalez said.

Regan said he never called Gonzalez a wetback. “I told him he was very wet behind the ears and I know I’m right,” he said yesterday.

Gonzalez said Boston magazine brought Regan in for a sitdown and the PR king said, “if I said what you think I said and that offended you then I’m sorry.”

Regan said yesterday that he never apologized. “I never apologized because I did nothing wrong. I apologized for losing my temper,” he said.

“I know my business very well,” Regan added. “I know how words can hurt. You don’t have to say anything discriminatory to make your point. And if you have to resort to name-calling, you probably don’t belong in the business.”

The Anti-Defamation League of New England – a Regan client – plans to bestow the media bigshot with its top honor Sept. 9, when Regan will be feted by hundreds at its annual leadership dinner at the John F. Kennedy Library.

The event co-chairs include a bevy of Regan clients, including Legal Sea Foods czar Roger Berkowitz, Suffolk Construction honcho John Fish and Entercom radio exec Julie Kahn.

Berkowitz said he’s known Regan for over 20 years and said he’s never made any derogatory or inflammatory comments about anyone. “It would be completely out of character,” Berkowitz said. “It sounds like someone wants a vendetta.”

Earlier this month, the ADL received an anonymous letter detailing the Gonzalez-Regan exchange.

ADL exec Derrek Shulman said they plan to go ahead and honor Regan because he’s been a tremendous community leader for 25 years. “Apparently, George said no such word or words and there was some kind of misunderstanding,” Shulman said.

Gonzalez says Regan shouldn’t be honored.

“He’s achieved a certain status in Boston through fear-mongering, basically, and somebody needs to stand up to him and call him what he is. He’s a bully,” he said.

Microsoft, Yahoo agree on long-sought search deal

Prez’s mea culpa goes over smooth at Irish pub

President Obama’s call to Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley wasn’t only a turning point in a national firestorm – it was also a big hit among the beer drinkers and eavesdroppers who heard Crowley take the call at Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub in Kendall Square.

“I ran over to grab some drinks, and the bartender told me, ‘Hey, they’re on the phone with President Obama,’ ” waiter Kyle Shearer said with a nod toward the back table where Crowley had been seated with a group of colleagues. “I couldn’t believe it until I got close enough to hear Obama’s voice.”

Shearer said he overheard the president apologize to Crowley and ask if there was anything he could do. Two days earlier, Obama had suggested Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” by charging Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. with disorderly conduct.

Minutes after the phone conversation, the president appeared on the large TV screen on the wall of the bar.

“The president was on TV, talking about the man I was standing next to,” Shearer said. “Even I felt powerful. And I’m just a lowly waiter.”

Afterward, the mood of everyone in the pub lifted, he said, and a couple of cops bought a round of Bud Light.

The brush with history left Maine visitors Brad and Tammy Curtis and Roddy and Karen Rublee awe-struck yesterday. For the past 21 years, the friends have made an annual pilgrimage from Bangor to take in a Red Sox game.

“When we heard the cheer, my husband said, ‘It must be soccer or cricket,’ ” Tammy Curtis said. “I mean, what were the chances of us walking into all that?”

Both Crowley and Gates said Friday they plan to take the president up on his offer to have a beer at the White House.

“I have spent my entire career as an academic attempting to bridge differences and promote understanding among all Americans,” Gates said in a statement released yesterday by his lawyer, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree. “To that end, I have pledged to do all that I can to help us learn from this unfortunate incident.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1187096

White House hopes Gates, Crowley come for beer
/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1187320

Buyers trying to beat hike in state sales tax

Retailers of big-ticket items from refrigerators to cars are preparing for shoppers to come in droves this weekend and make purchases before the sales tax jumps to 6.25 percent on Aug. 1.

Area car dealers say they already have seen an increase in customers and sales this month.

“This is the best month we’ve had in 45 years,” said Don McEwen, general manager of Lundgren Honda in Auburn. “It’s completely unexpected. It’s amazing.”

Herb Chambers, who owns 46 car dealerships in Massachusetts and Rhode Island — and seems to be the only dealer opening new locations this summer — said sales have picked up month after month this year.

“If somebody was planning on purchasing a car in August or September, it’s probably worthwhile for them to buy it in July and save that tax,” Mr. Chambers said. “If you weren’t planning on buying a car this year, then there would be no incentive.”

A customer buying a $25,000 Honda Accord would pay $312.50 more in tax if the purchase was after July 31. For a $44,000 BMW sedan, the tax would be $550 higher after the end of the month.

The sales tax increase is on people’s minds, said Mark Wagner, president of Wagner Motor Sales, which has dealerships in Shrewsbury and Boylston. “This weekend will be the tell-tale, I believe,” he said.

“(Sales) have been touch and go. It’s tough to forecast … People are waiting a little bit longer and seeing what’s out there.”

Bob and Sylvia Myhal walked into the Wagner Kia showroom in Shrewsbury yesterday afternoon, and a little while later, they walked out as the owners of a new Kia Amanti, a $32,000 sedan.

Mr. Myhal said he was pushing to buy a new car before the sales tax hike. “On small purchases, it won’t matter, but on large purchases, it’s going to hurt a lot of people,” he said.

The incentive of a lower sales tax is not the only thing motivating car shoppers. Perhaps the bigger incentive is the federal government’s Car Allowance Rebate System, better known as the cash for clunkers program, which rolls out today.

The program allows owners of old, inefficient “clunkers” to trade them in for a $3,500 or $4,500 rebate toward purchases of new, fuel-efficient cars. The old gas guzzlers get scrapped. Details are at www.cars.gov.

The staff at Lundgren Honda has written more than 20 advance orders for customers taking advantage of the federal program. The Honda Fit, which gets 30 miles per gallon, highway and city combined, is one of the most popular sellers, according to Mr. McEwen.

Dennis P. Pietro, Internet sales director at Harr Toyota on Gold Star Boulevard in Worcester, said customers are looking for economical cars, like smaller SUVs, or pre-owned rather than new vehicles. Business has increased 20 percent over last month.

“By the weekend we’ll probably see 30 to 35 percent more,” he said.

He’s not happy about the sales tax increase. “I think the government is a bunch of (expletive) morons,” Mr. Pietro said. “It is what it is, I guess.”

Lawmakers have said raising the sales tax was necessary to avoid steep budget cuts to important services, including public transit. Retailers say higher taxes will drive more shoppers to the Internet and to New Hampshire.

Jon B. Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said retailers have been struggling because of the recession, and because of poor weather in May and June. “Now we’re staring down the barrel of a 25 percent sales tax increase,” he said. “A lot of (retailers) are somewhat shell shocked by the tax increase.”

Although support for another summer sales tax holiday is hard to find on Beacon Hill, retailers are pushing for it. Mr. Hurst said that the holiday did not spur as much spending last year as it did in 2007, but, he said “More than any year prior, we could really use it this year.”

The state said it lost $15 million in sales tax revenue during the tax holiday last year, but Mr. Hurst said that money is made up in other ways: more people working on the weekend means more income tax revenue, and more people shopping means more meals tax and gas tax revenue.

Bernie Rotman, vice president of Rotmans Furniture & Carpet in Worcester, said he’s expecting many customers to make purchases over the next week to beat the sales tax hike. “I think it’s going to be a good thing, but it’s short-lived, and it’ll be a bump,” he said. “Far more impressive would be a sales tax holiday.”

Some stores, including Rotmans and Percy’s, a Worcester TV and appliance store, are offering a 5 percent discount as another incentive to customers.

“They all say the same thing, ‘We want to buy it before August 1,’ ” said Alan Lavine, sales manager at Percy’s, where shoppers are looking for refrigerators, TVs, washers and dryers.

As for what happens in August: “There could be a backlash,” he said. “I’ll worry about that when it happens.”

Contact Priyanka Dayal by e-mail at pdayal@telegram.com.

Now Google parks its tanks right outside Microsoft’s gates

* John Naughton

What’s the toughest question a venture capitalist can ask? Answer: “What will you do if Google enters your market?” The web has been buzzing with speculation that senior Microsoft executives are now asking that question. The truth is that they have been asking it for quite a while. In an intriguing interview he gave several years ago, Bill Gates observed that the only company out there that reminded him of Microsoft in its early days was Google. He didn’t elaborate, but most of the audience knew what he meant: a company that was smart, agile and hell-bent on world domination.

The reason for the excitement last week was Google’s announcement that it was developing an operating system – and dominance of the market for operating systems is the source of Microsoft’s power.

Until now, Google had studiously ignored this part of the market, which seemed like a smart strategy: after all, only a fool attacks on the enemy’s strongest front.

Instead Google concentrated on picking off other pieces of Microsoft territory, starting with Hotmail (attacked with Gmail), MSN (Google Talk), Microsoft Office (Google Docs and Apps) and, latterly, Internet Explorer (the Google Chrome browser).

With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, this can seem like a purposeful route-march towards the ultimate goal – replacement of Microsoft as the dominant company in the computing universe. In that sense the announcement of an upcoming Google OS can indeed be seen as the opening salvo in the final battle.

But there’s another way of looking at it. The intriguing thing about the Google announcement is not that it is developing an OS, but that it is switching tack. For nearly two years the company has been developing a Linux-based OS for mobile phones under the Android label. Most of us who have used Android assumed it was only a matter of time before a version tailored for Netbooks was released.

But that is not what Google announced. There wasn’t much technical detail in the company’s blog post, but the one thing that is clear is that the new OS will be – in its words – “a natural extension of Google Chrome”. It is, they go on to say, “our attempt to rethink what operating systems should be”.

If true, we have reached a significant milestone because what the Google guys propose amounts to turning the world upside down. Up to now, the operating system was at the heart of every computing device, transforming the machine from an expensive paperweight into something that could do useful things – running programs, managing displays, handling keyboard and mouse, etc. And because the OS had to be able to do all of this, it was the largest, most complex and most important piece of software of all.

In the old paradigm, the web browser was just another program the OS had to support. When the PC was the platform, that made perfect sense, but that paradigm has been steadily eroding. As broadband penetration increased, more and more people began to get their “computing” services not from their PC but from server farms over the net. Imperceptibly, we have been moving into a world in which, to repeat an old mantra, “the network is the computer”.

If the network is indeed the computer, then the browser – our window on to the network – becomes the key piece of software. For many people today, the browser is the only program they really need. So it was only to be expected that somebody would eventually ask why we needed vast, clunky, expensive operating systems (such as Windows Vista, say) when really all that is required is a life-support system for a browser. That’s what the Google engineers have asked. Their answer is that only a minimalist OS is now needed, and that is what they are developing – and what millions will be running in the latter part of 2010.

We have been here before. In 1995 the founders of a firm called Netscape had the same idea. If the web was going to be the key application, they reasoned, surely the browser could effectively become the operating system. They were unwise enough to say this in the hearing of Bill Gates, who realised instantly it posed a serious threat to Microsoft’s core product. At that moment, Netscape’s fate was sealed: careless talk costs companies.

But that was then and this is now. And whatever else it may be, Google ain’t Netscape. Ask Mr Gates.

Harvard pres.: School has tough choices in decline

By MELISSA TRUJILLO – 18 hours ago

Billions of lost endowment dollars later, though, Faust faces a much different reality.

“We can’t have chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. We have to decide which one,” she said.

It’s a question few at Harvard expected Faust to be forced to answer in the infancy of her presidency.

Her appointment in 2007 was hailed as a historic turning point for the 373-year-old university. Faust, then the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Civil War scholar, would be the first woman to step into the country’s most high-profile presidency and appeared perfectly suited to cool tensions within the faculty after the controversial five-year tenure of Lawrence Summers.

She would have the nation’s richest endowment to work with — $34.9 billion in 2007.

But by last fall, the crashing economy began to pull down even the country’s most famous university. Its endowment fell to $28.7 billion, and the university estimated it would drop 30 percent for the fiscal year that ended Tuesday. The steep decline is particularly difficult for Harvard, which gets roughly one-third of its budget from endowment earnings.

Much of Faust’s time now is spent figuring out how Harvard can weather the downturn, through layoffs, early retirement packages, cuts in services, even changes to breakfast menus for undergraduates. She said further reductions in the endowment distribution next year will mean more cuts.

“People say to me often now, ‘This must not be what you expected,’ and my response is that it would be foolish not to expect surprises in a university presidency,” Faust said recently, sitting in her office in Massachusetts Hall.

“I’ve used the metaphor of marriage about this, saying I signed on for sickness or health or richer or poorer. And it’s turned out to be quite a ride,” she said laughing.

Most faculty and students still strongly support Faust, despite a general unease on campus about Harvard’s finances. For many, Faust’s warm and inclusive demeanor remains a welcome change from her predecessor.

Summers, now President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, was pressured to leave after a series of high-profile clashes with faculty — conflicts that worsened after his comments that innate ability may partly explain why few women reach top science posts.

“I think the crucial issue that undermined his leadership was he was extremely abrasive,” said J. Lorand Matory, a professor of anthropology, African and African American studies now planning a move to Duke in the fall. “He did not display a talent for listening to his fellow administrators.”

Faust cited listening as a key component of her leadership, not an easy task at a university notorious for its segmented colleges, schools and institutes, all with their own management.

“I learn what people are telling me, but I also learn where they are politically, where they need to be moved towards in order to get done what we need to get done,” she said.

Faust says part of her desire to look at all complexities of an issue comes from her background as a historian. Her most recent book, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” looked at how the vast numbers of soldiers who lost their lives during the Civil War changed how Americans understood and coped with death. It was a finalist for both the National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for history.

“I think historians understand how we’ve been affected by attitudes and assumptions that have shaped our institutions and our families and our socialization,” she said.

She cited her decision earlier this year to save money by pausing construction of a new $1.2 billion science building, the first phase of a planned 50-year expansion into Boston’s Allston neighborhood across the Charles River from Cambridge. The university is now reviewing how much — if any — of the project to continue.

“It’s a very fraught question. It involves the city, it involves the community, it involves constituencies with totally different interests,” she said. When the decision is made, she said, “I think that people will feel that we’ve really thought it through in a considered and responsible way. Moreover, I will know that we will have thought it through.”

Faust has been criticized, though, for being too cautious at the beginning of the economic crisis and for failing to strongly communicate her vision for a new, leaner Harvard. Anger spread on campus last week, for example, when Faust announced the layoffs of 275 employees.

“Because of this sort of mild demeanor, we’re kind of wondering what’s going to happen,” philosophy professor Warren Goldfarb said. “She hasn’t stepped up and said, ‘This is what we’re going to have to do.’ ”

Added student Andrea Flores, president of the Harvard Undergraduate Council: “I can kind of see where they’re coming from in the sense that I don’t think Harvard is being very forward thinking, but I think that’s because we’re covering things that needed to be addressed in the past.”

Faust said it has been a challenge to keep people focused on the university’s strengths, from its commitment to financial aid for all students who need it to its ability to gather experts from multiple schools and disciplines to tackle large problems like global health or global warming.

“It’s a challenge in this environment to keep people’s eyes on the really important issues that give us all something to believe in,” she said. “I’m thinking a lot about that this summer.”

Regardless of how much anger bubbles on campus over layoffs, budget cuts and faculty reductions, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz said Faust also has a great deal of goodwill, which should help her weather the economic downturn. Goldfarb and Flores also expressed overall approval for her tenure thus far.

Once the crisis ends, Dershowitz said, Faust will be in position to push her own bold agenda.

“You have to give her time. … Everybody would be thrilled if we end up in a few years not worse than it is today,” she said. “Everyone wants Drew to succeed, everybody is rooting for her.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Montana resort for elite sold for $115 million

By MATTHEW BROWN (AP) – 1 day ago

BILLINGS, Mont. — Montana’s ultra-posh Yellowstone Club is in new hands, following a $115 million deal that the new owner hopes will close the door on the resort’s much publicized descent into bankruptcy.

Eight months ago, the millionaires-only club was on the verge of liquidation, a victim of its prior owners’ excesses and the broader economic downturn that choked off the flow of money fueling the club’s rise.

On Friday, CrossHarbor Capital Partners of Boston bought the 13,600-acre private ski resort about 50 miles south of Bozeman at what was considered a bargain-basement price.

The firm’s managing partner, Sam Byrne, had offered to buy the club last year for $470 million and had already invested more than $200 million in club real estate over the last several years.

Byrne acknowledged Friday the club’s once-sterling reputation will need some polishing.

“It’s going to take time to win back the trust of members and the community and re-establish the brand,” he said. “We’re confident that the place has a bright future.”

The resort was nearly pulled apart last year during the bitter and high-profile divorce of its founders, Edra and Tim Blixseth. Later came revelations that the pair had drained tens of millions of dollars from the resort, helping push it more than $400 million into debt.

The collapse was extraordinary for an enterprise that counts Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates and hotel magnate Barry Sternlicht as members.

Those who are allowed to join must buy real estate with price tags that can top $10 million, and pay a $300,000 deposit. The privacy members thought their money was buying was shattered when the club’s rolls were made public as part of its bankruptcy case.

With the Blixseths now out of the picture — and fighting each other over the remains of a personal fortune once estimated at $1.3 billion — members are looking to Byrne to get the club out of the headlines.

“There’s going to be a massive sigh of relief, a collective sigh of relief,” said Bill Curtis, a club member and the chief executive of CurtCo Media, which publishes the Robb Report, a magazine that caters to the wealthy.

Only about 300 of the club’s more than 800 available memberships have been filled since it opened in 2000. Just three properties changed hands during its months in bankruptcy.

Curtis said Friday’s deal will shake up the market for the club’s property, but he cautioned that the resort isn’t out of rough waters yet.

“If you ask me what the economy’s going to do, it’s going to continue to make it a challenge,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen overnight.”

Byrne said more than $150 million on top of the purchase price has been pledged to pay for improvements at the resort.

That’s likely to include the club’s 120,000-square-foot centerpiece Warren Miller Lodge — left unfinished despite a reported $100 million investment.

Byrne also said he persuaded a large group of members to put money behind his plans to recapitalize the resort. He declined to offer specifics.

The club will continue to be managed by the Discovery Land Co., brought in last year when Edra Blixseth took over the operation following her divorce.

Tim Blixseth tried to scuttle the deal between his ex-wife and Byrne until the day the sale became final. He has claimed they colluded to drive the resort into a financial hole so Byrne could scoop it up on the cheap.

Those claims were repeatedly rejected by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ralph Kirscher in Butte, Mont., and on Thursday he denied Tim Blixseth’s latest effort to block the deal through a court-ordered stay.

In his opinion, Kirscher said the parties in the sale had acted in good faith. He said Tim Blixseth’s “generalized allegations of misconduct” were irrelevant.

He added that the case — which involved more than 100 lawyers and resulted in several spin-off lawsuits that are still being resolved — “was of a magnitude never seen before in this court.”

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Uneasy times for the Shapiro family

Ties to Madoff could spur effort to recover investment gains

The festive affair belied the uneasy times for the Shapiro family. Three days before attending the party, Shapiro son-in-law Robert Jaffe was accused by federal regulators of delivering $1 billion in client funds to Madoff, reaping $150 million in improper payments in return. Jaffe denies the charges.

Rocking no more

Its eye on sports, CBS pulls plug on legendary WBCN

By James Reed and Erin Ailworth, Globe Staff | July 15, 2009

It was more than 40 years ago, on a March night in 1968, when WBCN-FM (104.1) decided to break from its classical music format. Instead of Bach, listeners that evening heard “I Feel Free,’’ by the Eric Clapton-led rock band Cream, and right then Boston’s local music scene was transformed.

Yesterday, it was upended yet again, by the same station.

CBS Radio Boston, which owns WBCN, announced it would pull the plug on the station, which helped make household names of some of the biggest musical acts to come out of Boston, so it could accommodate other changes in local radio.

Next month, a sports talk radio station, The Sports Hub, will replace the music station WBMX, or Mix 98.5 FM, adding a third sports radio show in a town that seems to have an insatiable appetite for all things sports. Mix 98.5 will then take its “modern rock, conservative format’’ to WBCN’s slot.

And WBCN, whose slogan, “The Rock of Boston,’’ had become as seminal as some of the performers the station championed early on – including Aerosmith, The Cars, J. Geils Band, U2, and Elvis Costello – will morph into an online-only station available at wbcn.com.

New sports talk station will take on WEEI.

It was stunning news for generations of Boston music fans, who grew up with the station at a crucial time in rock music’s evolution, and for local bands, who had come to rely on WBCN as the one place that might land them their big break. WBCN came of age with some of rock’s pivotal figures, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix, and its disappearance from the dial is as much a signal of the changing musical scene as it is of drastically changed listening habits. (One word: iPod.)

“Once their ratings started going down the tubes, I thought to myself, ‘Somebody’s not getting it in corporate,’ ’’ Charles Laquidara, one of WBCN’s quintessential personalities from 1969 to 1996, said from his home in Hawaii. On his Facebook page, he addressed WBCN’s fans: “It was a great station. It was also a great time in radio history. I know we can never go back to that, but there will be something someday.’’

Mark Hannon, senior vice president and market manager of CBS Radio Boston, said in an interview yesterday it is a “sad moment to see a station with 40-plus years of heritage coming out of format.’’ But, he said, “the rock genre in this marketplace is extremely crowded, and ’BCN has struggled in the past few years to stay competitive.’’

The decision, which will take effect Aug. 13, will ripple well beyond the airwaves, too, given the station’s longtime support for local bands.

In addition to “Boston Emissions,’’ ’BCN’s two-hour, weekly program showcasing local talent, the WBCN Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble has been a popular battle of the local bands since 1979. Occasionally, its winners went on to find national success. After winning the Rumble in 1983, ’Til Tuesday, Aimee Mann’s new-wave band, was signed to Epic Records; the cabaret-punk duo the Dresden Dolls emerged victors in 2003.

Anngelle Wood, who organized this year’s Rumble, said yesterday she was not sure of the event’s future. “Boston Emissions,’’ which she also hosts, will move to sister station WZLX in August.

The longtime ’BCN personality who became known simply as Oedipus said the loss of the station will cut deeper than some might realize.

“WBCN was a fabric of the community,’’ he said. “It was part of Boston, like the Red Sox. It was more than just music. It completely enveloped the lifestyle of people in Boston and the Northeast. And it no longer does that. It had to make this change. It’s reflected in the ratings.’’

Word of ’BCN’s demise was greeted with mixed emotions at competing stations, where program directors, many of whom grew up listening to ’BCN, said they’d been expecting the downfall. A Cornerstone Research Inc. report looking at men ages 18 to 49 in metro Boston shows ’BCN ranking in the number 11, 12, and 13 spots from January to May, with roughly 4 percent of the area’s listening market.

“The general public must be very surprised, but industry insiders have known they had their problems – let’s just leave it at that – for a number of years. So, we’re not really stunned,’’ said Ron Valeri, program director at WAAF and Mike FM. Still, he said it’s “a bittersweet victory.’’

At 101.7 WFNX, program director Keith Dakin recalled the heyday of WBCN, when personalities like Laquidara and Mark Parenteau graced the station’s airwaves.

“It’s great for us. We’ve lost an alternative rock competitor,’’ said Dakin. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s sad to lose a legendary rock station in this market, but as far as the competitive landscape, it’s great for a station like ’FNX.’’

Parenteau, a DJ at WBCN for 20 years, beginning in 1978, said that before corporate ownership, the station encouraged its on-air talent to be outrageous and play what they wanted.

“We didn’t make a lot of money, but we had a lot of freedom. We could play jazz, comedy, whatever,’’ Parenteau said. “But as we made more money, we had less freedom. It was like a deal with the devil.’’

Still, the station was enormously influential.

“If ’BCN added a band, 30 or 40 stations would add that band because we seemingly knew what we were doing,’’ he said. “The sort of station ’BCN used to be is definitely dead. Radio today is all driven by boards of directors looking at the stock market. They want the sure thing, and they want to play it over and over.’’

Before he was lead singer in the J. Geils Band, Peter Wolf was one of the founding DJs at WBCN. He started there in 1968, interviewing the likes of Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Sun Ra, and Roland Kirk. Wolf said he is neither surprised nor upset the station is going away. “For me, ’BCN ended a long time ago,’’ he said. “When it became corporatized, it lost the unique qualities that made it vital to the community.’’

Despite its founding in 1955 as a classical station, ’BCN became “the underground rock station in Boston,’’ said Scott Fybush, editor of NorthEast Radio Watch, an industry trade journal. “They were playing stuff that had no other home on the radio and people who had never had a reason to own an FM radio before were going out and buying an FM radio to hear this.’’

The station struggled for at least the last decade, propped up by its coverage of the Patriots and, at least for a time, Howard Stern’s syndicated show

Fybush called CBS Radio’s emphasis on building a sports station with Patriots coverage, a “smart move,’’ because it gives listeners something they can’t necessarily load onto their iPods – live coverage of games.

Of course, more sports and more talk means less rock for Boston listeners.

But Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, said for many around Boston, that change had already begun.

“The ’BCN that most people are going to be sad about losing this afternoon,’’ Ross said, “went away a while ago.’’

Mark Shanahan and Don Aucoin of the Globe staff contributed reporting.

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Don’t throw the keys to the Fed

By Mark T. Williams  |  July 2, 2009

THE OBAMA administration’s plan to close the existing regulatory gap by using the Federal Reserve Bank as the main systemic-risk regulator is theoretically sound but a bad idea under existing Fed structure.

The Fed employs thousands of examiners stretching from Boston to San Francisco in an attempt to ensure a safe and sound banking system. They are the first line of defense in our banking system, ideally providing a financial firewall against excessive risk taking by physically inspecting banks and ensuring that adequate capital is available to support risk activities. Ratings provide a health scorecard and a comparison with peer institutions.

Although Fed examiners scored major banks such as Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, why didn’t they pick up on the bad banking behavior that President Obama characterized as “wild risk taking’’ on Wall Street? This trend should have been discovered, except that the Fed is adverse to change and its examiners are way behind the regulatory curve.

If the financial market was a gun fight, the Fed would be carrying pea shooters while the Wall Street structured-product gurus would be carrying AK-47s. The sophistication gap facing those charged with measuring and protecting our financial system is staggering.

Meantime, the corporate culture at the Fed has made examiners second-class citizens compared with the more glamorous monetary policy geeks and the economists who roam the marbled hallways. Of the 12 sitting Fed presidents, none came up through the ranks from examiner. Fed examiners continue to have a limited advancement track and salaries at least one-fifth less than those of the people who create the derivatives on Wall Street. How can the Fed attract the best and brightest this way?

The Obama plan would give more responsibility to the Fed at a time when it hasn’t earned it. The recent banking debacle makes clear the Fed has failed to demonstrate that it is capable of taking this added responsibility. Handing the Fed this new duty, given its recent track record, is the equivalent of giving your teenager a new car right after he wrecked the last one. This significant sophistication gap at the Fed, compared with market counterparts it is charged with regulating, is why the Fed didn’t detect the growing risk taking by the major banks. Examiners did not have the adequate training, skills, or tools needed to go head-to-head with the Wall Street rocket scientists.

Why, for example, didn’t the Fed examiners see the growing threat of derivatives? These financial products that got so many banks in trouble were first concocted in the financial laboratories of First Boston and Salomon Brothers back in 1983. The Fed should have had time to amass an understanding of how such derivatives worked, and what kind of financial damage they could cause if used in excess or for the wrong purpose.

But under its current charter, the Fed is not held accountable for a job poorly done. In response to the current banking debacle, there have been no penalties, demotions, firings, or even a public hearing on how and why the Fed dropped the ball. Moreover, when banks do fail (approximately 40 so far this year), it’s the FDIC, not the Fed, that must clean up the mess.

Before the Obama administration expands the Fed’s role and throws it the keys, it is important to fix the varsity-versus-jayvee vulnerability at the Fed. At minimum, this will require that more capital (human and financial) be committed to specialized hiring, training, and increased use of state-of-the-art risk-measurement tools (e.g., computer modeling). The goal is to improve the use of risk-focused exams and to create a skilled examination staff that can detect and halt wild risk taking before the company, market participants, and the economy are harmed.

In addition to the Fed being held more accountable, there must be implementation of performance-based incentives for a job well done. Equally, there needs to be clear consequences to the Fed for poor performance. Only after we plug this regulatory sophistication gap at the Fed can confidence in this agency be restored.

Mark T. Williams, a former Federal Reserve Bank examiner, teaches finance at the Boston University School of Management.

State Street Says SEC May Sue Over Bond Investments (Update4)

By Christopher Condon

June 29 (Bloomberg) — State Street Corp., the world’s largest asset manager for institutions, may be sued by federal regulators over bond funds that investors said lost money because of bets on risky mortgage-backed securities.

The company, based in Boston, said in a regulatory filing that it received a Wells notice stemming from a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into disclosures and management of fixed-income investments through 2007.

The notification typically lets recipients respond to investigators’ claims before the agency’s five-member commission approves legal action. The SEC may decide not to pursue a case.

State Street, the manager of $1.4 trillion as of March 31, has been sued by investors claiming its funds took too much risk by investing in securities tied to home mortgages. The firm set aside $618 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 to settle legal claims stemming from losses linked to subprime home loans. It made $417 million of payouts as of Dec. 31.

“It’s not a long-term negative, but it could affect near- term earnings if they have to pay civil penalties,” Gerard Cassidy, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Portland, Maine, said in an interview.

State Street said in the SEC filing that it’s cooperating with the agency and with related probes by securities regulators and the attorney general in Massachusetts. Arlene Roberts, a spokeswoman for State Street, and John Heine, a spokesman for the SEC in Washington, declined to comment.

The company rose 18 cents to $48.50 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. It has gained 23 percent this year, compared with the 13 percent rise for the Standard & Poor’s index for asset managers and custody banks.

Prudential Lawsuit

Prudential Financial Inc., the second-largest U.S. life insurer, sued State Street in October 2007 on behalf of 200 retirement plans for $80 million, the amount lost in two bond funds that were designed to closely track benchmarks. About 28,000 retirement accounts were affected.

The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, alleged State Street changed the investment strategies of the funds and made “undisclosed, highly leveraged investments in mortgage- related” assets.

State Street lost a bid to have the case thrown out in September. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell rejected the company’s claim that investors haven’t been injured because Prudential reimbursed them.

Robert DeFillippo, a spokesman for Prudential, declined to comment on the SEC’s action.

Galvin Probe

Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin, the top securities regulator in Massachusetts, said in April his office was investigating State Street for allegedly misleading pension funds over the risks of their investments.

Evergreen Investments agreed this month to pay $40 million to settle claims by the SEC that it overstated the performance of its Ultra Short Opportunities Fund from February 2007 to its closing in June 2008. When values were changed, investors were informed selectively, the agency said. The fund has been liquidated. Boston-based Evergreen was acquired by Wells Fargo & Co. in its takeover of Wachovia Corp.

OppenheimerFunds, a unit of Springfield, Massachusetts- based Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., was sued this month by investors seeking to recoup losses allegedly caused by mismanagement of the Oppenheimer Pennsylvania Municipal Fund.

The SEC has opened more than 50 inquiries and brought at least 10 cases linked to subprime loans since rising defaults triggered the global credit crisis in 2007.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Condon in Boston at ccondon4@bloomberg.net

winmy697f3

Music network startup OurStage tunes in $3M funding

If you had a wager on which startups could put together venture cash right now, you probably wouldn’t pick an online social community for pop bands and their fans.

In the case of OurStage Inc., you’d lose that bet. The Chelmsford-based startup, launched in 2006, has raised $3 million of a $6 million new round of financing, bringing its total financing up to $20 million, company officials report.

In March 2008, OurStage raised $17 million from a syndicate of over 100 individual angel investors, assembled through Signature Capital LLC, an investment firm with operations in Florida and Portland, Maine.

Last December, the company went back to angels looking for additional funds.

“In the November-December-January time frame everything was dark for everybody,” said CEO and founder Ben Campbell. “We were in a phase where we needed to raise money and no one was opening their pocketbooks.”

But in early 2009, the company won sponsorship deals with MTV, Citadel Radio and RadioOne. Since then, it has closed five or six deals with household-name companies, which it plans to announce later this year, Campbell said. Add that to the fact that since its early days, it has slashed its burn rate neary by two thirds – to about $700,000 per quarter, and the company was able to get enough volume of small players to see it through, he said.

The site is on track to reach profitability by the middle of 2010, he said.

Such sponsorships net OurStage costs per thousand impressions (CPMs) in the range of $10, while standard ad serving yields $3.50 to $4, Campbell said.

A secondary source reaps subscription fees from booking agents, who use the site like a professional job search tool, tracking band rankings in various geographies to scout acts for their venues.

That’s similar to what a company called Sonicbids Inc. has been doing for some time, said Stephanie Kellar, an assistant professor of music business management at Berklee College of Music.

“Sonicbids were the first folks ever to come up with the electronic press kit. Their whole deal is to connect bands with venues,” Kellar said. “OurStage takes that a step farther adding the social media.”

A third revenue stream, now in beta mode, would allow paid subscribers to test the popularity of certain songs in specific demographics. Labels could do this before signing a band to a recording contract ­— and advertisers could use the service before committing to a song for a commercial, Campbell said.

That’s a compelling case for labels, who not only suffer from poor CD sales but have seen their hit rates drop dramatically, he said.

Kellar said major labels have been slow to embrace customer-centric marketing – and that’s been to the advantage of smaller, more nimble independent music producers.

“Some people are really reticent about change,” Kellar said. “If you’re not ready to push that envelope, then your competitors will start chomping at your market share. And that’s what happened to the major labels.”