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Archive for February, 2012

Bishop begins charity triathlon

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Comedian John Bishop has begun his epic triathlon to raise money for the BBC charity Sport Relief.

The 45-year-old set off on his bike from the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Monday morning.

He aims to cycle 185 miles (298 km) to the coast in less than 24 hours, he will then row across the English Channel.

The final leg of the sporting feat will see him run three marathons in three days, finishing in London on Friday.

Just before he kicked off the challenge, he said: "I am not sure how I'm feeling really right now, it feels a bit like I am in a Mission Impossible movie with the Eiffel Tower behind me.

"I just need to get my head down and get a few miles under my belt."

'Fatigue'

The comic from Liverpool, will be joined along the way by various celebrity friends, including Dermot O'Leary, Frank Skinner and Robbie Savage.

His trainer Greg Whyte, said: "The cycle alone is an extremely long distance to cover in less than 24 hours, even for an experienced ultra-endurance athlete.

"In addition to the fatigue in his legs, John will suffer in his hands, arms and neck from sustaining his cycling position for such a long time – not to mention his bum and groin."

Bishop is hoping to raise enough money to pay for a vaccine against five deadly diseases for 250,000 children in Africa, and also to help people living with difficult circumstances in the UK.

The triathlon will be the subject of a BBC documentary called Bishop's Week Of Hell, which will show his journey.

It will be shown during the build-up to the Sport Relief Weekend, which takes place from 23-25 March.

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Conservationists launch drive against overfishing in Gulf

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Abu Dhabi: Demand for fish in the Gulf region has put a significant burden on certain species, threatening some to near extinction.

A fish consumption research carried out by Emirates Wildlife Society (EWS) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) shows that about 66 per cent of UAE residents eat fish at least once a week. The most frequent selection is, of course, the hamour.

Hamour is a member of the Grouper family that is popular in the Gulf region. It is considered by fishermen to be a lazy fish because it does not swim as much as other fish, so it’s easy to catch.

The hamour population has declined by about 90 per cent due to overfishing at seven times its natural sustainable level, research shows.

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EWS and WWF launched the "Choose Wisely" campaign to create awareness on the status of fish stocks in the UAE.

"It has only been over the last three decades, with the commercialisation of this sector and habitat destruction, that we have started witnessing an alarming decline in our fish stock," said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, managing director of EWS.

Political donations: Lessons from the past

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

A billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate has said he might donate $100m (Â£64m) to support Republican Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. He joins history's long list of great – and ignominious – political money men.

Sheldon Adelson, who is worth an estimated $25bn, is almost single-handedly responsible for keeping Mr Gingrich's bid for the Republican nomination afloat, analysts say.

He and his wife have already donated $10m to a nominally independent political fund that has bought adverts for the former House speaker's campaign.

"What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we've been experiencing for almost four years," Mr Adelson told Forbes Magazine.

"That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people's lives."

Mr Adelson's big contributions place him among a new generation of US political money men freed to donate millions by recent Supreme Court decisions that overturned campaign finance restrictions.

But he is part of a long tradition – stretching back into antiquity – of wealthy men who used their cash to buy political influence.

Here are some lessons he could heed:

Known to historian Plutarch as "the richest of the Romans", Marcus Crassus got even richer by staking Julius Caesar's military career and his later election as Roman consul.

"We never would have heard of Caesar without Crassus," says Philip Freeman, chairman of the classics department at Luther College in the US state of Iowa and author of a recent biography of Caesar.

Born in a household of relatively modest means, Crassus aligned himself with Roman dictator Sulla and grew rich by taking property Sulla had expropriated from his own political enemies.

He made "the public calamities his greatest source of revenue", Plutarch wrote, and also made lots of money as a contract tax collector.

In 61BC, Caesar was named to a military post in Spain, but his creditors sought to prevent him from leaving Rome.

Crassus guaranteed his debts – to the sum of about $23m (Â£14.6m) in 2012 figures, by Prof Freeman's calculation.

Two years later, Caesar ran for election as consul, the highest political office in the Roman republic. Crassus funded his campaign, which depended on officially condemned but widespread vote-buying, Freeman says.

In return, Caesar pushed through legislation giving the contract tax collectors a break in the amount of money they had to return to the central government.

"It's like if Mr Gingrich got to be president and passed a bill making casinos tax exempt – for his benefactor back in Las Vegas," says Prof Freeman.

"It was a great financial play for Crassus purely in monetary terms."

Sir William de la Pole of Hull was a 14th-Century wine importer, wool merchant and financier who lent staggering sums of money to King Edward III to finance his lavish lifestyle and his wars in France and Scotland.

"There's no doubt that Pole did acquire a great deal of wealth, and wealth brought him social status," says Jonathan Sumption, a historian and jurist who has written three volumes about The Hundred Years War.

"His sons went on to become Earls of Suffolk, noblemen, which nobody would have accused William of being. You couldn't do much better than that. This was simply the normal way in which money was converted into status."

Pole's involvement with the crown began in earnest in 1327, when he lent Edward III Â£2,001 (about Â£1.4m in today's money, according to Measuringworth.com, a calculator devised by economists at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to hire mercenaries to fight the Scots.

In 1336-1337, Edward III sought to exploit the wool industry to finance the start of the Hundred Years War with France.

Pole organised other wool growers into the Wool Company, in effect purchasing from Edward III the right to export wool on privileged terms, Mr Sumption says.

Between June 1338 and October 1339, he lent the crown Â£111,000 (more than Â£86m in 2012 figures).

For Pole himself, the story did not end well.

Edward III grew resentful at his dependence on Pole and imprisoned him for two years. He was released because the king again needed his help raising money.

Edward defaulted on his debts because the wars cost more than his tax revenue, Mr Sumption says, and Pole and his partners went bust.

"Lending to the king was a mug's game," Mr Sumption says. "The problem was that if you didn't you were likely to be ruined anyway."

When Edward VI ascended to the throne in 1547 at the age nine, members of the Tudor court began jockeying for position and influence.

Two of the top intriguers were his uncles Edward and Thomas Seymour.

Edward Seymour managed to have himself declared Lord Protector of the Realm, Governor of the King's Person and later Duke of Somerset, making him the most powerful man in the court.

But Thomas Seymour, who had been well placed under Henry VII, found himself increasingly frozen out.

Among his several schemes to gain influence over the boy king, Seymour began supplying him with pocket money, telling him "you are a beggarly king, you have no money to play or to give".

Edward VI, who had reportedly complained to Seymour that Somerset "deals very hardly with me and keeps me so straight that I cannot have money at my will", wanted the cash to pay for musicians in his court and to reward his personal servants, says John Cooper, a lecturer in early modern history at the University of York.

Seymour gave the king Â£188 (about Â£70,400 in today's value), funnelled in part through Edward's personal servants and his tutor.

"It's a political gamble that fails very dramatically," Mr Cooper says.

When Somerset found out about that and other intrigues (Seymour also flirted with the teenaged Princess Elizabeth, whom he may have hoped to marry), he had him arrested and charged with treason.

He was beheaded at the Tower of London.

On hearing of his execution, Elizabeth said: "This day died a man with much wit, and very little judgment."

Among the liberals incensed about the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Stewart Mott, the black-sheep son of a wealthy Detroit car manufacturing family.

Mott, who described himself as an "avant-garde philanthropist", donated more than $200,000 to the 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, and about $400,000 in 1972 to George McGovern, the Democratic challenger to President Richard Nixon, according to Mr Corrado, the campaign finance expert.

His big contributions in part led Congress to enact strict limits on direct contributions to political campaigns that remain in effect to this day (though giving to independent committees are unlimited).

"He identified with their politics, and whatever one means by progressive, he was it," says Victor Navasky, professor of journalism at Columbia University.

"He cared about them, and he hoped to help them attain the White House."

Despite Mott's seed money, Mr McGovern suffered one of the greatest political defeats in American history, winning only the state of Massachusetts and Washington DC.

Mott's support for liberal candidates earned him a spot on Nixon's infamous enemies list. Nixon aide Chuck Colson listed him as "nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates".

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Need for Efficiency in China’s Banks

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Richard Jackson, one of the few non-Chinese nationals to have served in top management in China’s state-run banking industry, has an insider’s view of the effects of China’s policy on business.

Résumé

Education: Fellow, Chartered Insurance Institute, London
Career: Oversaw Ping An Group’s banking business from 2005. Spent nearly 20 years with Citigroup Inc. Named president of Shenzhen Development Bank in May 2010.
Extracurricular: Red wine and working

Mr. Jackson, president of the midsize Shenzhen Development Bank Co., says Beijing’s measures to slow credit growth will check the proliferation of nonperforming loans, but they come with risks in the long run. The Chinese government has long addressed inflation by slamming the door on bank lending—besides imposing an overall credit-growth limit on the sector, it also increases reserve ratios at individual banks thought to be making too many loans. But the effect on small private business is to drive them to the informal lending market, where they face annualized interest rates as high as 100%.

“Over the next 10 or 15 years, the biggest challenge facing the whole financial sector is how we allocate capital and credit more efficiently,” says the 55-year-old Briton.

Mr. Jackson spoke with Rose Yu in Shenzhen about the challenges on the horizon and his optimism about being a small fish in the ocean of China’s banking sector. The following interview has been edited.

WSJ: Analysts at foreign banks tend to be bearish on China’s banks, citing exposure to local-government financing vehicles. Do you find such exposure risky?

Mr. Jackson:If I compare China with other trading blocs, I think China still has some advantages. First, China has financial resources, so it has some flexibility. One of the problems in Europe is they have no flexibility as they’ve exhausted their resources. Second, China has a strong system of governance; when the government decides something, we will really see it done. The third thing is China still has growth although the growth rate is slowing. Europe doesn’t have growth. If we look at the U.S., we are seeing a little bit of growth returning to the economy. But it’s an election year, so politically it will be very difficult for the U.S. government to do anything.

The problem we have is the efforts that have to be taken to stimulate the economy usually end up with more and more investment in fixed assets. There’s only so much fixed assets that you can absorb, and then after that they become nonproductive. That’s the challenge that China faces.

WSJ: How do you mitigate the impact of slower growth?

Mr. Jackson: After the merger, we will be a big bank with 1.2 trillion yuan ($189 billion) in assets. But our share of China’s banking market is still very small. If you are very small, it’s like you are a small fish in the ocean. It doesn’t really matter whether the tide is in or out. You’re always going to be able to swim somewhere there’s food. We need to be careful but we should also be looking for opportunities. I don’t think it will affect our performance too much.

WSJ: In banking, how is China different from the West?

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MIA.JACKSON

Bloomberg

Richard Jackson, president of Shenzhen Development Bank

Mr. Jackson: The Chinese banking industry is still largely a domestic commercial banking business. The risk profile is very different to that of some big multinational banks. That’s why China’s banking industry was protected from the 2008 crisis.

In the next 10 to 15 years, it will probably change a little bit. Big Chinese banks are beginning to go international with their corporate customers. That’s how the U.S. and European banks became international.

The question is whether or not Chinese banks will follow the Western model completely and whether they will embrace investment banking. That was a big mistake in the West.

WSJ: Chinese banks sometimes get differential reserve ratios or “punitive bonds” if they are thought to be lending too much. This happens behind closed doors. What do you make of this government operation?

Mr. Jackson:The use of administrative measures helps promote stable development in the industry, but in the longer run it will have some disadvantages in terms of the allocation of resources.

Over the next 10 or 15 years, the biggest challenge facing the whole financial sector is how we allocate capital and credit more efficiently. We’ve got to look at more liberalization in the securities industry, so companies can raise capital more easily. Also, we’ve got to look at freeing up pricing controls, with interest-rate deregulation.

WSJ: What’s been your experience managing a Chinese bank as a foreigner?

Mr. Jackson: I don’t really feel I’m a foreigner. I’ve lived abroad for 30 years. The industry here has a lot in common with the industry in other places that I’ve worked, such as Poland, Hungary and Korea. If I have any value it’s the experience that I’ve built up over the last 30 years. I’ve gone through seven mergers and acquisitions around the world, including this one in China. Hopefully my experience of integrations has some value.

WSJ: What’s the toughest decision you’ve made as a manager?

Mr. Jackson:Decisions involving people are more difficult because of emotional element and because they are human beings. The whole point of managing is to be able to make decisions based on information, experience and advice, and make them quickly and get on with it.

WSJ: When hiring for your team, what do you look for?

Mr. Jackson:There are two things: One is attitude and the other is aptitude. If you have somebody joining your team that has an attitude which is very different to the value of the team, it will become very disruptive, particularly in some senior persons. The second thing is aptitude. You are hiring somebody because of their professional skills you want, but you’ve still got to figure it out whether the skill the person has represents the maximum potential they have or whether they still have capacity for further development. If you hire somebody with a set of skills for today, but they have no development potential, then tomorrow they are going to be a problem.

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One Master Mines Another

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

By JONATHAN LOPEZ

Amsterdam

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was an artist of paradoxes. Renowned for his depictions of modern life—the ballet, the racecourse, the café-concert—he felt nowhere more at home than in the print room of the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he spent hours on end making sketches after old etchings and engravings. “No art was ever less spontaneous than mine,” he once wrote in a letter to a friend. “What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters.”

Rembrandt & Degas

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Through Oct. 23

Then travels to the Clark Art Institute and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The current exhibition at the Rijksmuseum offers a focused look at what Degas learned from a specific great master: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). On view in a single, graciously proportioned gallery are 22 paintings, drawings and prints—11 works each by Degas and Rembrandt—including Rembrandt’s shadowy, bust-length “Self-Portrait as a Young Man” (c. 1628-29) from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and Degas’s self-portrait of about 1857-58 from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Using frequent side-by-side comparisons to emphasize visual similarities between these works, the exhibition reveals that Degas’s early efforts at forging a personal style were interwoven with an intense and sincere interest in Rembrandt. Although the show’s binary pairing of the two artists tends, by its nature, to stint the complexity of Degas’s relationship to tradition, the case that emerges is nonetheless compelling.

Alte Pinakatothek

‘Self-Portrait as a Young Man’ (c. 1628-29) by Rembrandt

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

‘Self-Portrait’ (c. 1857-58) by Edgar Degas

The son of a wealthy banker, Degas dutifully enrolled in law school in 1853, at the age of 19, but lasted only one year before yielding to a passion for art. He briefly attended France’s premier art school, the École des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, where he found the teaching methods stultifying. He then opted for a rigorous three-year program of self-guided study in Italy, planning to consult the works of the Renaissance masters while visiting with Italian cousins.

Strangely, it was in Italy that Degas came under Rembrandt’s spell. Among the young artists who congregated at the French Academy in Rome—including the portraitist Léon Bonnat, the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau and the printmaker Joseph Tourny—Rembrandt was a revered symbol of artistic individualism, due in part to his outsider status in the canons of art history as taught at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Instructors at the École accorded a measure of respect to Rembrandt, especially for the deep humanity of his work, but they did not encourage students to imitate him. Rembrandt’s use of broken, sketchy outlines to suggest atmospheric effects and his tendency to define forms through chiaroscuro—dramatic contrasts of light and shade—placed him starkly at odds with the classical mode of drawing favored by the École. French academic tradition held that Italian Renaissance artists like Raphael, whose ideal lines seemed to cleave space effortlessly into form and void, furnished the best examples for study.

The printmaker Tourny, who collected etchings by Rembrandt and brought a small printing press with him to Italy, inspired Degas to try making prints in the Rembrandtian manner, as three etchings on the exhibition’s first wall make clear. Degas’s faithful copy of the 1637 Rembrandt etching “Young Man in a Velvet Cap” is juxtaposed with the original, and nearby hangs an etched portrait that Degas made of Tourny in much the same spirit. Tourny, whose face is cast into shadow, adopts a pose similar to the figure in the Rembrandt etching—seated, with arms folded, leaning on a table—and even sports a velvet chapeau.

At this early date, Degas’s draftsmanship lacked some of the freedom and authority it would later attain, and it therefore suffers somewhat in a direct comparison with Rembrandt. Whereas the dense thickets of crosshatched lines in Rembrandt’s etchings fully exploit the expressive possibilities of chiaroscuro, Degas defines the folds and creases of Tourny’s coat with an almost mechanical system of crosshatching, reminiscent of 19th-century line engravings. The mismatch between this fussy technique and the larger drama of the image evidently bothered Degas; another work on view captures his attempts to remedy the problem.

In this c. 1865 reworking of the Tourny portrait, Degas used the original etching plate but left areas of excess ink on it during the printing process to create fields of shadow independent of the etched lines. The effect is eminently Rembrandtian, as the figure emerges from almost total darkness. Degas also used expressive inking on a self-portrait etching from this period, one of the most striking works in the show. Here, the young artist appears as a shadowy figure in a frock coat and broad-brimmed hat—a modern Frenchman thrust into the gloom of 17th-century Amsterdam by means of art-historical homage.

While the case for Rembrandt’s influence on Degas’s etchings is clear and unassailable, matters become more complex when one turns to the exhibition’s four painted self-portraits by Degas—all of which date from just before or during the artist’s Italian sojourn—as these works actually draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources, not just Rembrandt. In the Degas self-portrait of c. 1857-58, lent by the Clark Art Institute, for example, one sees plain traces of Rembrandt in the deep shadows, in the intentionally unfinished details of the coat and shirt collar, and in the overall sense of role-playing—staid Degas wearing a jaunty red kerchief seems more than a bit theatrical. That said, this work’s shadows are limpid in a way that Rembrandt’s seldom were, and Degas’s melting eyes and dreamy countenance have as much in common with Raphael’s self-portrait in the Uffizi as with any picture by Rembrandt.

But part of Degas’s genius, as curator Jenny Reynaerts takes pains to show, was an ability to appreciate and synthesize styles that might seem, at first glance, completely incompatible. “Van Dyck is a first-rate artist,” Degas once wrote to Moreau. “Giorgione also, Botticelli also, Mantegna also, Rembrandt also, Carpaccio also.” Hardly a surprise, then, that the American collector Louisine Havemeyer, wife of sugar tycoon H.O. Havemeyer, once remarked that “It takes special brain cells to appreciate Degas.” The main accomplishment of this intelligent exhibition is to help those special brain cells perceive how Degas eventually subsumed his fascination with Rembrandt into a larger artistic project that melded a wide array of influences into a new style that owed as much to the past as to the present.

Mr. Lopez is editor-at-large of Art & Antiques

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Worldly Wise: Wall Street admits bonus culture’s ills

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Imagine if you could hear directly, albeit anonymously, from the normally secretive bankers and traders who manufactured and sold the trillions of dollars in toxic debt securities that pushed the world’s financial system to the brink of disaster in 2008.

Would they defend themselves and their actions, or show a degree of remorse for what they caused and have not been held accountable for?

Well, you can find the answer to that question in Conversations With Wall Street, a compact — and largely overlooked — book by Peter Ressler and Monika Mitchell published last year..

Ressler and Mitchell worked together at a Wall Street executive search firm that specialised in finding senior people for fixed-income trading departments. They placed in their positions of leadership many of the bankers and traders who ended up causing the financial crisis that we are still trying to recover from.

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Stop being a micromanaging mom

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Get 2 FREE YEARS of Parenting magazine – Subscribe Now!!

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Can’t decide what to watch on TV? A new app may help

February 29th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

By Natasha Baker

SAN FRANCISCO |
Mon Feb 27, 2012 5:00am EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Channel surfers know that finding a great show to watch on television can be a daunting task, especially among the hundreds of channels available.

Peel, an app for iOS and Android, aims to solve the problem by providing personalized recommendations based on the television shows that users already like. The app is similar to how Pandora recommends music, or how Netflix suggests films.

“It stemmed from recognizing the complexity that the average user is faced with when selecting the right TV program,” said Scott Ellis, the vice president of marketing for Peel.

“We wanted to move away from the channel grid that has become so pervasive and think about content at the core of the experience.”

Released last year as a personalized TV guide, the app was relaunched last month to incorporate a social platform for sharing and discovering television shows with friends.

According to Ellis, the impetus for incorporating a social platform was to replicate the “water cooler” type of conversations that tend to be the way most people discover new content.

“It’s about how to use an intelligent app to find the right show to watch based on the shows I like today and based on shows my friends are watching,” he said.

Through the app users can share their favorite shows with friends, as well as their “guilty pleasures”, which Ellis said usually consist of reality shows. Friends’ favorite shows are also accounted for in the algorithm that makes content recommendations.

The app also pairs up with the Peel Smart Remote for consumers who want to control their television sets without using their remote controls. The pear-shaped piece of hardware takes commands from the app and then uses infrared to control the television, settop box, or virtually any other device in a user’s living room.

“You can go from discovering, to selecting and then watching,” Ellis said, adding that the device solves another modern day problem — having too many remotes.

Ellis said that once more devices incorporate infrared, it will be possible to control the television without requiring another piece of hardware.

The company has partnered with Samsung, which has pre-installed Peel on select devices that have infrared. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, launched in October, was the first device to incorporate what they call the Peel Smart Remote app.

“Within a single element experience, users can discover shows and control the television set without purchasing a separate piece of hardware,” he said.

Ellis said that the next steps for the app are to integrate a more interactive second-screen experience for television shows. The company plans to focus on the social aspect of the app going forward, and to announce a partnership with a major television show in the coming weeks.

Peel is a free app available in the United States.

(Reporting by Natasha Baker; editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Banks Await a Second Big Lift

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Dow Jones Global Indexes | Global Stock Markets

Europe’s sputtering financial system will get another shot in the arm this week from the European Central Bank. The immediate impact will be muted, but it will be positive in the long run.

On Wednesday, the ECB will try to work its magic again, repeating its long-term refinancing operation, or LTRO, effectively providing banks with unlimited three-year loans at rock-bottom interest rates. A similar program in December resulted in 489 billion euros in loans. A lower take-up this time will signal that confidence is returning to Europe’s beleaguered financial system, while a bigger outlay would signal caution, although it still would be good news for sovereign bonds, especially those of Italy and Spain, which will benefit from greater liquidity. If the LTRO restores a little more confidence in the system—and it should—then Europe’s muddle-through strategy will stand a better chance of succeeding.

The funding will help asset prices, but the result won’t be as pronounced as in the first LTRO. “The surprise element isn’t there,” says Gustavo Bagattini, European economist at RBC Capital Markets in London, who expects the loans to total about €500 billion. That’s in line with ECB President Mario Draghi, who expects Wednesday’s LTRO to be about the same size as December’s.

Some economists are more bullish, predicting an amount between €350 billion and €450 billion. “Since the ECB is already expanding the balance sheet and confidence is improving, I think it will be better if the LTRO is lower than the last one,” says Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank in London, who looks for the outlay to be €410 billion.

The December LTRO is as close as Europe has come to deploying a “big bazooka” to tackle the euro-zone debt crisis. The importance of the move wasn’t fully appreciated at the time, but it removed the threat of a liquidity squeeze because the net liquidity of €210 billion met European banks’ refinancing needs in the first quarter. Importantly, it also revived interbank lending and kick-started stock markets across the Continent. The Stoxx Europe 600 index has gained 8.3% since the start of 2012. It closed Friday at 264.77, down 0.4% on the week.

FINANCIAL STOCKS HAVE BEEN the biggest winners in Europe this year, climbing 14.9%. It is a sign of growing confidence that on Friday, regulators in Italy followed counterparts in Spain and France in lifting the temporary ban on short selling in financials that was imposed last year.

“It isn’t a good time to be underweight financials,” says Neil Wilkinson, manager of Royal London Asset Management’s European Growth Fund. He has broad exposure to the sector but declines to highlight specific stocks.

One of the effects of the LTRO is to increase the size of the ECB’s balance sheet. In theory, that should help weaken the euro, which would benefit the euro zone’s exporters. But the euro has been resilient in the past couple of months, gaining 4% against the dollar since the start of 2012 to trade Friday at $1.3462. Wilkinson is gaining exposure to exporters through companies like Nestlé, whose American depositary shares trade under the symbol NSRGY, and Alstom (ticker: ALO.France), which have strong positions in emerging markets.

European companies with greater exposure to the U.S. and Asian markets are a good way to profit from the euro-zone uncertainty.

So What?

Investors were uninspired by Greece’s bailout deal. Upbeat earnings helped on Friday.

Email:
jonathan.buck@barrons.com

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Yen stabilizes after hitting record high

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The dollar strengthened against the Japanese yen Thursday ahead of a conference call of G-7 finance ministers that might be the first step toward intervention by Japanese authorities in currency markets.

The call comes after twin natural disasters pushed the yen to a record high against the dollar, and fears over the country’s unfolding nuclear crisis continue to spook investors.

On Wednesday, the dollar fell as low as 76.54 against the yen in late trading, dipping under the previous all-time low of 79.75 set in April 1995. By Thursday afternoon, the dollar had stabilized around 79 versus the yen.

Reports published in advance of the conference call speculated that finance ministers would voice a measure of support for Japanese efforts to weaken the yen.

For an economy facing a tough road ahead, a weaker currency would be a good thing. A stronger home currency will make Japanese goods more expensive in overseas markets, to the detriment of Japan’s manufacturing industry.

Under normal circumstances, intervention would be frowned on by other central bankers, but because of the scale of the disaster, Japanese authorities might be given a free pass by their counterparts.

Despite the nation’s turmoil in recent days, the yen has long been a haven for risk-averse investors.

In the coming months, Japanese corporations are expected to repatriate vast amounts of capital. Those funds are currently tied up in foreign markets but will be needed to facilitate rebuilding. That phenomenon would act to strengthen the currency further.

At this point, most analysts see global risk as the dominating factor for the yen’s rise. In addition to the natural disasters in Japan, Portugal’s credit rating was downgraded on Wednesday. And violence in the Middle East and North Africa continue.

All that uncertainty is sending investors scurrying for cover, moving from high-risk assets into cash and bonds.

If Japan is able to arrest the yen’s appreciation, it might allow the country to turn its attention to other matters: calming equity markets, bolstering government bonds and starting the rebuilding process.

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Secret Life Of Ice

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Story By: Talk of the Nation

Photographer and videographer Edward Aites, of Seattle, submitted this time-lapse video to Science Friday. He looked at ice through a macro lens and cross-polarizing filters, and found a colorful, surprising landscape. This is ice like you’ve never seen it before.

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Romney Hopes ‘Native Son’ Status Will Help In Mich.

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Story By: by Ari Shapiro

Michigan holds its Republican primary on Tuesday. Though Mitt Romney has a home-state advantage, the former Massachusetts governor has been locked in a tight battle with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

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EPA Finalizes Air Toxic Emissions Standards for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Production Facilities/Standards will cut harmful emissions that impact local communities

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

Release Date: 02/14/2012Contact Information: Enesta Jones (News Media Only), jones.enesta@epa.gov, 202-564-7873, 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued strong final standards requiring facilities that produce polyvinyl chloride and copolymers (PVC) to reduce harmful air emissions, which will improve air quality and protect people’s health in communities where facilities are located. Exposure to toxic air pollutants, like those emitted from PVC facilities, can cause respiratory problems and other serious health issues, and can increase the risk of developing cancer. In particular, children are known to be more sensitive to the cancer risks posed by inhaling vinyl chloride, one of the known carcinogens emitted from PVC facilities.

The final standards are based on currently available technologies and will reduce emissions of air toxics, such as dioxin and vinyl chloride. Facilities will have the flexibility to choose the most practical and cost-effective control technology or technique to reduce the emissions. Facilities will be required to monitor emissions at certain points in the PVC production process to ensure that the standards are met.

Currently, there are 17 PVC production facilities throughout the United States, with a majority of these facilities located in Louisiana and Texas. All existing and any new PVC production facilities are covered by the final rule.

PVC production facilities manufacture PVC resins that are used to make a large number of commercial and industrial products at other manufacturing facilities. These products include latex paints, coatings, adhesives, clear plastics, rigid plastics, and flooring.

EPA had a 74-day public comment period and held two public hearings on the proposal before issuing the final rule.

More information on the final rule: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t3fs.html

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Published by: United States Environmental Protection Agence (EPA) (yosemite.epa.gov)

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Palau country profile

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

More than 200 volcanic and coral islands, many of them surrounded by a single barrier reef, make up the northern Pacific nation of Palau.

Tourism is low key, though growing in economic importance. Many visitors come from Taiwan, with which Palau has diplomatic ties. Taiwanese aid boosts the economy. The government is Palau's largest employer.

Monoliths and other relics are reminders of an ancient culture that thrived on the islands, and despite Western trappings many Palauans identify strongly with their traditions and rites.

Palau's recent history has been dominated by outside influences from Spain, Britain, Germany, Japan and the US. Palau saw some of the region's fiercest fighting in World War II.

There is concern that the low-lying islands could be badly affected by rising sea levels due to climate change.

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Wanted to Buy: MF Global Claims

February 28th, 2012 | Author: Zach Richards

By DAN STRUMPF

Since MF Global Holdings Ltd. filed for bankruptcy protection last year, some customers of its failed brokerage have had little choice but to wait for the full return of their cash.

Investors that gobble up claims in bankruptcy or other distressed situations have begun approaching former MF Global customers with offers to buy their claims for cash at a discount. Dan Strumpf reports on Markets Hub. (Photo: Reuters)

That is beginning to change. Lately, investors that gobble up claims in bankruptcy or other distressed situations have begun approaching former MF Global customers with offers to buy their claims for cash, at a discount.

The moves are similar to offers that emerged after the December 2008 disclosure that Bernard Madoff‘s investment-advisory firm was a Ponzi scheme. Speculators ranging from boutique investment firms to big banks have been transacting for claims of defrauded Madoff customers with the expectation that the trustee will be able to recover and return additional funds.

In the MF Global matter, the investment firms’ offers are a bet that the trustee attempting to recover an estimated $1.6 billion in customer assets will find and return more—perhaps all—of the missing funds. Customers who choose to sell to these firms essentially relinquish their claim to the rest of their cash in exchange for money now.

Brokerage customers have already been reunited with 72% of the funds they lost access to at the time of MF Global’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing. One firm, Triax Capital Advisors, based in New York, is offering to bring that figure to 88% in exchange for a customer’s claim to the remainder of their funds.

Barrett Mikelberg, director of business development at Triax, said he has talked to between 60 and 80 customers of MF Global since late December about the possibility of buying their claims. He is targeting customers with larger claims totaling $1 million or more. None with claims that large have struck a deal yet, he said. But in the past week, a small number of customers with claims under $1 million have agreed to sell, he said.

“I’m willing to buy any claim,” Mr. Mikelberg said. “I don’t discriminate on size.”

David Rosen, for one, isn’t ready to deal. Co-owner of energy trading firm Rose Trading, he said he has been approached by multiple firms offering to buy his $50,000 claim. He is holding out. “I personally believe that at the end of the day the U.S. government, the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] and the U.S. futures industry will not allow for a customer loss,” he said.

The trustee liquidating MF Global’s brokerage says on its website that it takes no view on whether customers should sell their claims.

Another firm, ASM Capital, said that in the past week it has begun mailing letters to customers with two different offers. The first offer is similar to Triax’s: the remainder of a customer’s claim for a discount. The second offer is for a smaller fraction of the customer’s claim now, plus a stake in any additional payout from the trustee.

“We’re trying to reach all customers, as many as possible,” said Adam Moskowitz, chief executive of ASM Capital, based in Woodbury, N.Y. “This is part of what we do here on a regular basis.”

Mr. Moskowitz declined to disclose how much he is offering customers. He said he is optimistic that additional money could be returned to customers partly because the trustee controls $1.4 billion that he is holding in reserve for matters such as litigation. “Whether or not all of that gets freed up to pay creditors is yet to be determined,” Mr. Moskowitz said.

For both customers and the investors, the deal is a gamble. The trustee overseeing the liquidation, James Giddens, has said he has no further plans to return funds to customers in bulk; rather, claims from customers for the rest of their funds were due to the trustee by Jan. 31.

Mr. Giddens has said that he faces challenges in getting back the remaining funds. Last week, he said he has traced a majority of the cash transactions made by MF Global during its final week in October, when a shortfall in customer accounts began to emerge. But he also said retrieving that money could be difficult and will involve “very complex legal and factual determinations.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that a “significant amount” of customer money could have “vaporized” in the chaotic final week before the firm’s bankruptcy filing.

In the Madoff matter, the value of offers for claims has fluctuated widely, from as low as 20 cents to as much as 75 cents on the dollar. So far, Mr. Madoff’s customers have received 6.5% of their principal back between distributions by trustee Irving Picard and the Securities Investor Protection Corp., a securities-industry group that provides insurance for bankrupt firms. That represents more than $1.1 billion of the $17.3 billion in potential claims.

—Michael Rothfeld contributed to this article.

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