10 Wednesday AM Reads

June 3, 2015 7:30am by

Made it to mid-week. We have your Brooklyn sourced, locally grown, morning train reads:

• It is incorrect to refer to FIFA as being ‘fraught’ with corruption or ‘riddled’ with crime. FIFA is itself a corrupt act. FIFA is itself the crime.” (Grantland)
• The Characteristics of Good Financial Advice (Certifiable Planner)
• Forget GDP: Here’s the new way Wall Street is measuring the US economy (Business Insider) but see Inflation Misses Fed’s 2% Target for 36th Straight Month (Real Time Economics)
• Apple’s Tim Cook Delivers Blistering Speech On Encryption, Privacy (TechCrunch)
• The Surprising Persuasiveness of a Sticky Note (Harvard Business Review)

Continues here

 

 

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  2. rd commented on Jun 3

    Re: FIFA corruption

    I was puzzled by the title of the article “Zurich is stained”. This is Zurich in Switzerland, right? Zurich, the home of private secretive Swiss banks that historically have been the first stop for corrupt dictators, Nazis, drug lords, and tax evaders to do their banking. I can’t possibly see how anybody would notice the blotch of FIFA mustard on the carpet that has been covered with multiple bigger stains over the past century.

    The primary thing that is keeping the Swiss from catering to every source of dirty money on the planet now is competition from other locales that have figured out that harboring dirty money is very good business as long as you can keep it out of the public eye.

  3. hue commented on Jun 3

    The Insecure American http://nyti.ms/1G5vWsL 47 percent said that they would not have the resources to meet an unexpected expense of $400 — $400! They would have to sell something or borrow to meet that need, if they could meet it at all.

    Ex-NFL running back Lawrence Phillips sends letters from prison: ‘This place is a jungle’ http://usat.ly/1GZGoCP // John Madden talks NFL changes; says Super Bowl will haunt Pete Carroll http://lat.ms/1AKeh9V “Pretty soon, these (receiver) gloves are going to be able to catch a ball without a hand in them.”

    Infant Terrible? Five Years and 311 Cities Later http://ubr.to/1IgMZKA UberX is in the terrible twos, it’s the part that growing like a rocket and truly disrupting. I drive UberX, it’s a blast. Last weekend, I ubered an attorney in Atlanta who friends are Ubering. not for the money, for the fun and meeting people. also met a Tom Brady look a like who wants to Uber to get away from the ball in chain on the weekends lol

    my one celebrity passenger was Salman R.
    Are you the Salman?
    So how is the world since you wrote the book?
    Oh, it’s great now, I can move around and go where I want.
    No no no, I meant how is the world?
    smiles, oh Much worse.
    Well not so random, Rushdie is a professor at Emory, which is holding his manuscripts.

    • hue commented on Jun 3

      after i dropped him off, i thought of what i should have said, i’m more impressed about your ex, celebrity chef lakshmi padma than the satanic verses, lol

    • Jojo commented on Jun 3

      Paul Krugman – “America remains, despite the damage inflicted by the Great Recession and its aftermath, a very rich country. But many Americans are economically insecure, with little protection from life’s risks. They frequently experience financial hardship; many don’t expect to be able to retire, and if they do retire have little to live on besides Social Security.”
      ———–
      The upper limit on SS taxes should be removed and SS benefits should be increased significantly.

      A lifetime of work with 7% SS taxes (up to the current limit) taken out every year (and not even counting the equal 7% that the government gets from the company on your behalf) should be worth more than a measly $2300 maximum per month at the current full retirement year.

    • hue commented on Jun 3

      or means testing. i’m sure the CONServatives will love that. does Warren Buffett need his Social Security? he will get his checks no matter what.

      One of my buddies said his uncles tried to decline or give back their checks but there was no way to do that lol

    • intlacct commented on Jun 4

      I’m impressed, hue.

    • VennData commented on Jun 3

      Wait no! Twenty five years.

      The GOP must find the Whitewater Behgazi Connection! It just PROVES how evil the Clinton’s are for not yet revealing their evilness

    • intlacct commented on Jun 4

      It is amazing. A bunch of people essentially wrong, hypocritical, with no ‘there’ there – still being listened to.

      I like the anti-Hillary crew for her being too conservative. She did try to get through the public option, 20+ years ago, correct? She has at least some substantial bona fides…

  6. VennData commented on Jun 3

    Illinois’s Rauner should be governing Fanastyland

    ​”…Rauner’s plan relied on $2.2 billion in anticipated savings from a change in pension law that he admitted would require a constitutional amendment to enact. Even assuming everything were to go Rauner’s way in the amendment process, actual savings wouldn’t kick in until fiscal year 2017. Democrats also contend that $3.6 billion in other cuts outlined in Rauner’s budget book run variously afoul of collective bargaining agreements, consent decrees and federal and state law, and that the Rauner administration hasn’t taken the necessary legislative steps to try to pave the way for such cuts…”

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-rauner-budget-illiinois-madigan-cullerton-perspec-0603-jm-20150602-column.html​

  7. VennData commented on Jun 3

    Republicans and Democrats should debate year round.

    “…Sanders said that if Americans saw Democrats and Republicans debate the issues earlier in the election cycle, they would better understand Republicans’ views…”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bernie-sanders-republican-debates

    It would be funny watching the GOP justify cutting State Department funds to justify their Clinton Whitewater fishing expeditions.

    Dance GOP! Dance.

  11. James Cameron commented on Jun 3

    Great read.

    “It’s nice to know that Herr Blatter won’t be able to sleep tonight. And that he’ll finally get to sleep around half past five. And at six o’clock someone will slam a car door outside and he’ll be shooting out of bed and under the bed. Serves him right. He’s not a nice man.”

    How a curmudgeonly old reporter exposed the FIFA scandal that toppled Sepp Blatter

    http://goo.gl/N2HrAl (WAPO)

  12. Jojo commented on Jun 3

    Last Task After Layoff at Disney: Train Foreign Replacements
    By JULIA PRESTON
    JUNE 3, 2015

    ORLANDO, Fla. — The employees who kept the data systems humming in the vast Walt Disney fantasy fief did not suspect trouble when they were suddenly summoned to meetings with their boss.

    While families rode the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and searched for Nemo on clamobiles in the theme parks, these workers monitored computers in industrial buildings nearby, making sure millions of Walt Disney World ticket sales, store purchases and hotel reservations went through without a hitch. Some were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

    Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

    “I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

    …

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Jun 3

      Remember that the next time you hear BS about a shortage of STEM workers. It’s all about getting free labor from indentured servants. Complain about anything and WHOOSH, there goes your visa and you’re on a plane back to India. US worker, complain about anything, WHOOSH, you’re in the unemployment line with someone from India sitting at your former desk. Who wins? The 0.1%

    • Jojo commented on Jun 4

      In this case, it would seem to make sense to vote with your feet and avoid vacationing at Disney properties. And pass this article to your friends and convince them that they should do the same. The only thing corporations understand is money. If their revenue declines due to a boycott, then perhaps they will see the light.

    • Jojo commented on Jun 5

      Updated info. About time someone in Congress is looking into these hijinks instead of just rubber stamping H1B visa increases!
      ————-
      Senator Seeks Inquiry Into Visa Program Used at Disney
      By JULIA PRESTONJUNE 4, 2015

      Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a Democrat, called on Thursday for the Department of Homeland Security to investigate a temporary visa program for highly skilled immigrants after a report in The New York Times that technology employees at Walt Disney World in Orlando and other companies lost their jobs to immigrants and had to train their replacements.

      In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Mr. Nelson asked him to examine “potential misuses” of a visa program known as H-1B.

      The Times reported Wednesday that about 250 Disney workers were laid off last year and many were replaced by immigrants hired by an outsourcing company based in India.

      Before leaving, some of the laid-off workers had to train immigrants on H-1B visas to do their jobs.

      …

      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/politics/senator-bill-nelson-seeks-inquiry-into-disney-world-immigrant-hiring.html

  13. RW commented on Jun 3

    5 overhyped media trends that turned out to just be a big recession

    Conventional wisdom in the United States is and has long been that the Great Recession at the close of the previous decade marked a structural break in important social and economic trends. Proponents of this view often like to portray themselves as a minority of embattled truth-tellers, but from New York Times columns to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner dismissing stimulative policies as a “sugar high,” the structural view has dominated both the media and the practical policy debate.

    But a closer look at the trend data shows this is much less true than people thought. The real story of the past seven years is that the Great Recession was just really, really big. As the recovery continues, the shifts are melting away and revealing something far more boring: that things are going right back to normal.

    • rd commented on Jun 3

      The Bangladesh disaster was a re-run of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in NYC in 1911. A jury found the owners not guilty of murder although they did lose a civil lawsuit. However, the insurance company paid them damages that were significantly more than they paid to the victim’s families. So justice was not met in that specific instance.

      However, over the following several years, the Triangle fire revolutionized building and industrial safety. Many of our modern industrial and fire safety codes came about because of that event.

      It is good to see that consumers are being reminded again of the costs of their inexpensive clothing. The same can be said for many other products. One of the reasons they are cheap is because they are being manufactured under safety and environmental conditions that would not be permissible in the US (although not for lack of trying to emasculate regulation by some companies). I understand the cheaper labor part, but it is immoral the way companies are shifting to unsafe, polluting manufacturing to cut costs. Hopefully, these countries can begin to step up their game in those areas. They have one big advantage – we had to invent many of the rules and technologies while they can implement them directly. So hopefully they can improve their conditions much faster than we did.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

    • willid3 commented on Jun 3

      and while the labor is cheaper, it really doesnt make the products all that much cheaper, if you compare like quality goods. cause you also have add transportation costs to the mix. but executives do seem to love it, cause they seem to get higher wages from the deal

    • Jojo commented on Jun 3

      And custom fees. And extra taxes. And….

    • intlacct commented on Jun 4

      “we have an estimate. not a count”

      It’s called sampling. Do you invest in companies with inventories? If so, apparently this process is acceptable to you in some cases.

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