Issue 10 2011: October
STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE 2011
Year-to-Date through October 21
Dow Jones Industrial Average +4.16%
Standard & Poor's 500 +0.07%
Nasdaq -0.58%
Russell 2000 -8.17%
WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?
Congress has approved $800 billion that the United States has spent on the Iraq war and that country's reconstruction. That's around the same amount Congress authorized for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out banks to avoid economic catastrophe in 2007. And, is close to the price of the president's stimulus plan that attempted to get the economy out of recession in 2009. ..... CBSNews.com
A GREAT CHARITY
American Forests (americanforests.org) has planted nearly 40 million trees in every U.S. state and in 38 countries around the world. As the oldest national conservation nonprofit in America, the organization aims to protect and restore the country's native forests in order to combat the effects of climate change, reverse the decline of air quality, and preserve the availability of clean water. American Forests works with local partners in Western states to rebuild forests and ecosystems damaged by fire; with local governments like Houston and Washington D.C. to improve urban tree canopies; and with schools to promote conservation. It also operates the National Big Tree program, which aims to preserve the largest specimens of every native and naturalized tree species in the U.S. ..... (Note** This charity has earned a four-star rating from Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator ranks not-for-profit organizations on the effectiveness of their programs, their control of administrative and fund-raising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group's highest ranking). ..... The Week
JOBS
"The fundamental appeal of expanding manufacturing is jobs. It is a curiosity of modern life that information companies can create extraordinary social disruptions and vast shareholder wealth but relatively few jobs. Facebook has 2,000 employees worldwide, Google has about 29,000. Even in it's new slimmed-down state, General Motors, a decidedly less-valuable company, has about 200,000 employees. What's more, that number represents only a fraction of the people behind the production of a GM car. For batteries, that value chain would include scientists researching improved materials and companies mining ores for metals; contractors building machines for factory work; and designers, engineers and machine operators doing the actual plant work. By some estimates, manufacturing employs about 65 percent of America's scientists and engineers." Jon Gertner in The New York Times Magazine
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
You no longer have to be a scholar to pore over the ancient texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, thanks to an innovative Web project. Although the scrolls were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek some 2,000 years ago, visitors can now view them in English translation by hovering their computer cursors over digital scans of the text on the website of the Israel Museum. The parchment and animal-skin scrolls, discovered in 1947, contain the Book of Isaiah and details of God's instructions to Moses. ..... The Week
THE COMPUTER YOU WEAR LIKE SKIN
A revolutionary new stick-on "electronic skin" could change our lives. "Personal technology" just got a lot more personal: Scientists have invented an adhesive "electronic skin" no thicker than a hair that "records heartbeats, brain activity, and muscle contractions as accurately as bulkey conventional electrodes, " says Ed Young in Nature. The "skin" adheres to real skin like a temporary tattoo - just add water - and is built out of tiny coiled circuits that can stretch or squeeze, then spring back into shape. Its chief inventor, John Rogers, tells BBC News that it "blurs the distinction between electronics and biology" and meshes "with skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user." "Scientists have had grand visions for integrating the skin with elactronics," says Jon Cartwright in ScienceNOW, hypothesizing advanced medical sensors or "cell phones that you literally wear on your arm." This innovation brings those dreams closer. Potential uses include precise speech recognition, advanced baby monitors amd lab-free research studies. ..... The Week
A VIEWPOINT ON INEQUALITY
"Inequality creates a lopsided economy, which leaves the rich with so much money that they can binge on speculation, and leaves the middle class without enough money to buy the things they think they deserve, which leads them to borrow and go into debt. These were among the long-term causes of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another in schools, in neighborhoods, at work, on airplanes, in hospitals, in what we eat, in the condition of our bodies, in what we think, in our childrens futures, in how we die. Inequality saps the will to concieve of ambitious solutions to large collective problems because those problems no longer seem very collective. Inequality undermines democracy." ..... George Packer in Foreign Affairs and quoted in The Week
A SENSIBLE CUT IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Ireland recently ended the 350-year-old practice of requiring judges to wear British-style white wigs in court. The decision will save the cash-strapped government about $3,000 a wig. .....The Week
MADE IN THE USA - SELLING CHOPSTICKS TO CHINA
A small town in Georgia has created a mini-manufacturing boom in the unlikeliest of markets - selling chopsticks to China. The state's poplar and sweet gum trees provide ideal wood for making the implements, so entrepreneurs have opened a factory in Americus to churn out up to 10 million of them a week. Georgia Chopsticks has already created 80 new jobs, and hopes to hire 70 more people soon. "There's lessons in this," said company director David Hughes. "Small-town America could be a manufacturing center for a lot of small to mid-size companies.." ..... The Week
WOMEN IN THE BOARDROOM
Boardrooms in emerging markets are increasingly populated by women. In China, women account for 32 percent of senior managers, compared with 23 percent in the U.S. and 19 percent in Britain. In India, 11 percent of CEOs are women compared with 3 percent of Fortune 500 bosses in the U.S. and 3 percent of FTSE 100 bosses in Britain. ..... The Economist
CHINESE BEER
Despite being largely unknown in the West, China's Snow beer has been the world's most popular brew for the past three years running, selling 16.5 billion pints last year. That's twice the sales volume of Bud Light, which held the top spot until 2008. ..... London Telegraph
JIM'S STETHASCOOP OF THE MONTH
"Character is like a tree and a reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." ..... Abraham Lincoln, quoted in CNBC.com and The Week
MILT'S MORSEL OF THE MONTH
"Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time." ..... Malcom Forbes, quoted in the Associated Press, and The Week
