Friday, September 28, 2012
Debt crisis: S&P slashes eurozone growth forecasts - live
The eurozone will not start to grow until at least 2014, according to forecasts by Standard & Poor's, as the rating agency said it now expected Spain's economy to contract by 1.4pc next year.
How America's Biggest Bank Makes Money
The age-old model of banks taking in deposits and lending them out is only part of the story for the biggest banks. Often, they make more money from fees and trading.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Gulf Cleanup Training Ignores Advice From Health Agency, Official Says
Joseph Hughes, director of the worker training program at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, said the course fails to incorporate important information. Among the subjects not included are chemical inhalation, the health effects of dispersants, and the risks of direct contact with weathered crude oil.
Hughes' agency, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, helped develop the training. "We tried to recommend what we thought the right training topics were, but all of those were not included," he said.
As we reported on Wednesday, cleanup workers are continuing to suffer health problems that they believe to be related to chemical exposure, including vomiting, dizziness, and nose and throat irritation.
Hughes also said the course's four-hour duration -- a fraction of the 24-hour training usually required for cleanup workers who may be exposed to hazardous materials -- is insufficient and rests upon a faulty interpretation of safety regulations. In 1990, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a directive following the Exxon-Valdez disaster that allowed the minimum training to be cut to four hours for workers performing low-risk tasks such as beach cleanup.
"The idea of the Exxon-Valdez exemption is that they would not have direct contact with crude oil or weathered oil," Hughes said. However, he said that some spill responders receiving the four-hour training, such as booming and skimming workers on vessels, are "definitely having direct oil contact."
BP spokesman Toby Odone stated that the safety trainings are appropriate for the work people are doing. "Training for Vessels of Opportunity and shoreline workers is 4+ hours and includes properties of oil, insect bites, heat, marine operations such as laying and collecting boom," Odone wrote in an e-mail. The Vessels of Opportunity program employs local boat operators and crews in cleanup activities.
Odone also wrote that workers going into oiled areas are accompanied by a technician with 40 hours of training, and that the training was approved by the government. "It was developed with OSHA and approved by OSHA and the US Coast Guard," he wrote.
OSHA is in charge of monitoring workplace safety for the cleanup. We at ProPublica have been trying to get in touch with officials there since Monday to discuss the safety trainings, but haven't yet gotten a response.
Hughes said that his office is pressing Unified Command -- the interagency spill response team that consists of BP, Transocean, the Coast Guard and numerous federal agencies -- to implement an eight-hour training course for those at greater risk of contact with hazardous materials. The course would include the chemical exposure curriculum that is not provided in the current trainings.
"The group that I'm still concerned about is the booming and skimming workers," Hughes said. "There's an effort under way to increase the training of those workers that's being discussed at the highest level."
On Wednesday, Aubrey Miller, senior medical adviser in Hughes' agency, testified to a House subcommittee that OSHA is "working with BP to develop a new eight-hour curriculum for worker safety and health training," according to a transcript of his remarks provided by the agency.
Hughes said he had not heard any dates for when this eight-hour training program would start.
As it stands, Hughes said the training goes against the precautionary principle -- the concept that the possibility of harm is enough to warrant action to reduce the risks to public health.
"We thought it was backwards," he said of the current curriculum, "that it had a reduced amount of protection for workers."
Source: http://feeds.propublica.org/~r/propublica/energy-environment/~3/DSY3mSF62ws/
Morgan Solar Announces Low Cost, High Efficiency Solar Power System
(Toronto, Canada) Morgan Solar Inc., a Toronto based solar energy start-up specializing in concentrating solar optics, has developed a new type of high concentrated photovoltaic system called the Sun Simba HCPV. By reducing the required materials and complexity of the system, Morgan Solar will deliver a highly efficient HCPV system mounted on a dual [...]
Source: http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/press/morgan-solar-low-cost-solar-power-system/
Weekend Warriors No More
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL gives viewers an intimate look at how deployments of National Guard troops to Iraq affect the state Governors' ability to swiftly respond to domestic disaster at home and impact the families left behind. Traveling to New Jersey, the Journal follows families preparing for the deployment of nearly half of New Jersey's National Guard to Iraq.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/GnBz2_rOoA0/profile.html
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Episode 389: Handling Other People's Money
We revisit three radio pieces, on how blind trusts work, how the European Central Bank has been flexing its muscle, and why public pension plans are about to look less healthy.
Offshore U.S. oversight of derivatives may bolster defenses against JPMorgan-type losses
The CDS indices involved in the JPMorgan trades are already encompassed under CFTC’s anti-fraud and anti-manipulation regime, and a clearing house clears trades in the CDS indices.
Beyond the numbers: do banks manage risk?
The models that banks use to measure their risk have come in for criticism since the financial crisis erupted and, again, have been highlighted by the recent JPMorgan losses.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
LBJ's Path to War, Part I
As President Obama prepares to announce how many more troops he will send to Afghanistan, Bill Moyers remembers the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the agonizing decisions that escalated America's involvement in Vietnam. Through Johnson's secret tapes of phone calls and conversations, and his own reminiscences, Moyers recalls the events that plunged us ever deeper into war.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/EKE4zi0CljM/profile.html
Wage Freezes and Banked Sick Days
Teachers are in the news for all the wrong reasons as we kick off back to school season and it could well be said that their collective reputation amongst Canadian taxpayers is hitting an all-time low. The self-proclaimed “Education Premier” Dalton McGuinty has put teachers’ compensation levels squarely in the public eye and now both...
Wage Freezes and Banked Sick Days appeared first on Canadian Finance Blog.
Related Posts:- Teaching Is A Great Job If You Want To Start A Side Gig
- This Is Why You’re Screwed
- Going, Going, Not Gone: A New Workforce Economy
Source: http://canadianfinanceblog.com/wage-freezes-and-banked-sick-days/
MP Pensions, More Cuts, and Friday #Shoutouts Gangnam Style!
This week Ottawa got back to work (I find that phrase interesting since it sounds like the entire City of Ottawa goes on vacation when Parliament is out, wich is not the case). Our diligent MP’s have returned and the nastiness begins fresh for the fall. The debate about MP Pensions (the real gold-plated pensions [...]
MP Pensions, More Cuts, and Friday #Shoutouts Gangnam Style! is a post from: Canadian Personal Finance Blog and follow me on twitter as well: Big Cajun Man, daily updates from all over the Blogosphere. Subscribe to my comments feed as well!
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CanadianFinancialStuff/~3/9VRBH5Fwczo/
Monday, September 24, 2012
Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Bill Moyers checks in with JOURNAL contributor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center Kathleen Hall Jamieson on how dirty politics will play out in this final stretch to the election.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/uMdpTm2M6ds/profile2.html
Deadly Libya Attack a Major Blow to CIA
Schmitt, Cooper & Schmidt, NYT
WASHINGTON "” The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of militant armed...
WASHINGTON "” The attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans has dealt the Central Intelligence Agency a major setback in its intelligence-gathering efforts at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of militant armed...
Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/09/24/deadly_libya_attack_a_major_blow_to_cia_291005.html
Brookhiser on Buckley
National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser talks about his mentor William F. Buckley, Jr. and today's conservative movement.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/H8v79UNDUNM/profile2.html
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Vancouver Housing bubble?
According to one of the U.S.’s most renowned housing market analysts, Vancouver’s housing bubble is more extreme today than California’s was a few years ago. Robert Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index, which measures U.S. house prices, told BNN late last week that “Vancouver looks like part of California” when it comes to its housing market. Both [...]
Source: http://www.canadianpersonalfinance.com/vancouver-housing-bubble.html
Mortgage Meltdown
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL travels to ground zero of the mortgage meltdown-Cleveland, Ohio. Correspondent Rick Karr takes viewers to Slavic Village, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the nation when it comes to the spate of foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis. There, more than 1,000 homes stand vacant and decaying in a neighborhood that once thrived with families living the American dream of home ownership.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/hselDEMJeeI/profile.html
Debt crisis: live
Germany's highest court prepares to rule on whether Europe's permanent bail-out fund is legal, as European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso sets out his vision for the EU's future in his annual "state of the union" speech.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Mark Danner
Barack Obama was elected on a message of change, promising a new era of diplomacy and international cooperation – but can the President deliver a new vision of America? Reporting from the world's most troubled hotspots, Mark Danner has seen countless deaths over ethnic and political divides, and witnessed firsthand how U.S. attempts to exploit those conflicts have resulted in disastrous unforeseen consequences. Danner speaks with Bill Moyers about Obama's challenges in resetting the mindset of America from war to peace, and redefining the US as a nation. Danner was a staff writer for many years at The New Yorker, contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and his latest book is Stripping Bare the Body, which chronicles the moral history of American power over the last quarter century.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/IA_RXn58raw/profile.html
My Take – The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets
Peter Schiff is a huge pessimist about the future of the U.S. economy. For that reason, he was arguably one of the best people to author The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets. This book is one of many in a series of “Little Books” whereby each book focuses on specific area of investing [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/myownadvisor/CsCc/~3/icPt7RLgiIM/
Dodge Poetry Festival
Bill Moyers celebrates poetry at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, which included renowned poets Coleman Barks, W.S. Merwin, Stanley Kunitz, Kurtis Lamkin, among many others.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bmjvodcast/~3/SpThdw9hQJo/watch3.html
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