August 21, 2015

Why Many Orange County Riders Got Off the Bus

CA: Why Many Orange County Riders Got Off the Bus

NICOLE KNIGHT SHINE ON AUG 21, 2015
SOURCE: MCCLATCHY


Aug. 20--Casting into sharp relief the shifting socioeconomic forces that likely underlie a long slide in ridership, roughly 70 percent of former bus riders have joined the ranks of motorists, and 36 percent no longer call Orange County home, according to a transit survey released last week.

The independent survey of 1,200 onetime bus riders comes at a time when manufacturing jobs continue to lose ground to the service sector and Orange County residents are increasingly priced out of the housing market. Amid this, bus riders appear to abandon the mass transit staple as soon as they can afford a car.

The Orange County Transportation Authority commissioned the poll earlier this year. An agency panel reviewed the findings last week, aiming to stave off further ridership losses following a 30 percent slide from 2004 to 2014. A new transit plan is expected to go before the board of directors in November.

To counter further declines, OCTA has discounted youth fares, is looking to consolidate stops on existing routes and is rolling out a mobile ticketing app. It also is considering simplifying fares and adding express service, where buses run along existing routes but make fewer stops. .....................(more)

http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/12105757/why-many-orange-county-riders-got-off-the-bus

August 21, 2015

Keiser Report: $32 trillion in pointless trading

Published on Aug 20, 2015
In this special episode of the Keiser Report from Chicago, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the $32 trillion in pointless trading each and every year, which results in bankers and brokers getting rich at the expense of churned chumps. In the second half, Max interviews Janet Tavakoli of Tavakoli Structured Finance about the latest use of derivatives to transfer wealth from the general fool public.

August 21, 2015

Iran Deal Puts Aipac at Risk of Losing Its Biggest Fight

(Bloomberg) The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has long had an outsized reputation for clout and effectiveness. Lawmakers jockey to speak at its events, seek its backing and woo its members for campaign contributions.

Now Aipac, the most prominent pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., is rapidly losing ground in its biggest test as it mounts an all-out campaign to kill President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

The effort to stop the Iran agreement pits it not only against the president but also a swath of the American Jewish community. While Aipac is on the same side as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Republicans who are taking on the Democratic president, American Jews voted more than 2-to-1 for Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012.

This debate “is treacherous because it exposes too much of the leadership of the Jewish community as being out of step” with the majority of Jews, Robert Wexler, a Jewish former Democratic congressman from Florida, said in an interview. ..............(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-08-21/iran-deal-puts-aipac-at-risk-of-losing-to-obama-in-biggest-fight

August 21, 2015

What Smartphone Sales Said about the Debacle in China

What Smartphone Sales Said about the Debacle in China
by Wolf Richter • August 20, 2015

[font color="blue"]“Saturation” is the new Economic Reality. But this is Worse.[/font]


Smartphones conquered even impoverished consumers in desperately poor countries, giving them access to things they couldn’t even imagine a few years ago. The devices and the activities they spawned have been one of the world’s growth engines. China’s consumers adopted them at stunning rates. But even that growth engine is slowing down on a global basis. And in China, it just skidded backwards into the ditch.

Globally, smartphone sales in the second quarter rose 13.5% to 329.6 million units, the slowest year-over-year growth rate since 2013, Gartner reported today. What drove growth were cheaper 3G and 4G smartphones in emerging markets in Asia/Pacific – excluding China – Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The winners in these markets were Chinese and local brands.

But in China – the world’s largest market for smartphones, accounting for 30% of global sales last quarter – unit sales fell 4%, the first decline ever.

Gartner’s explanation of the phenomenon, after years of mind-bending growth, featured the very unwelcome S-word:

China has reached saturation – its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers. Beyond the lower-end phone segment, the appeal of premium smartphones will be key for vendors to attract upgrades and to maintain or grow their market share in China.

It’s getting tough in China. “Saturation” inspires fear. It turns a market into a war zone of pricing and innovation, of margin pressures and profit declines. There will be shakeouts and losers. But in China, it’s worse: the market actually shrank. ...........................(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/08/20/how-bad-is-it-in-china-smartphone-sales-fall-for-first-time-ever/

August 21, 2015

What Smartphone Sales Said about the Debacle in China

What Smartphone Sales Said about the Debacle in China
by Wolf Richter • August 20, 2015

[font color="blue"]“Saturation” is the new Economic Reality. But this is Worse.[/font]


Smartphones conquered even impoverished consumers in desperately poor countries, giving them access to things they couldn’t even imagine a few years ago. The devices and the activities they spawned have been one of the world’s growth engines. China’s consumers adopted them at stunning rates. But even that growth engine is slowing down on a global basis. And in China, it just skidded backwards into the ditch.

Globally, smartphone sales in the second quarter rose 13.5% to 329.6 million units, the slowest year-over-year growth rate since 2013, Gartner reported today. What drove growth were cheaper 3G and 4G smartphones in emerging markets in Asia/Pacific – excluding China – Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The winners in these markets were Chinese and local brands.

But in China – the world’s largest market for smartphones, accounting for 30% of global sales last quarter – unit sales fell 4%, the first decline ever.

Gartner’s explanation of the phenomenon, after years of mind-bending growth, featured the very unwelcome S-word:

China has reached saturation – its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers. Beyond the lower-end phone segment, the appeal of premium smartphones will be key for vendors to attract upgrades and to maintain or grow their market share in China.

It’s getting tough in China. “Saturation” inspires fear. It turns a market into a war zone of pricing and innovation, of margin pressures and profit declines. There will be shakeouts and losers. But in China, it’s worse: the market actually shrank. ...........................(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/08/20/how-bad-is-it-in-china-smartphone-sales-fall-for-first-time-ever/

August 21, 2015

Germans begin the looting of Greece

(MarketWatch) — To the victor goes the spoils.

The ink was not yet dry on the new European bailout accord for Greece before German companies started their plundering of Greek assets.

Per provisions of the “agreement” imposed on Greece, the Athens government awarded the German company that runs the Frankfurt Airport, Fraport, a concession to operate 14 regional airports, mostly on the islands like Mykonos and Santorini favored by tourists, for up to 50 years in the first privatization of government-owned assets demanded by the creditors.


The airport deal had been agreed upon last year by the previous Greek government and then suspended by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s newly elected government this year as part of his pledge to prevent the fire sale of valuable public assets at bargain-basement prices.

The airport deal gives Fraport the right to run the facilities as its own for 1.2 billion euros over the 50 years and an annual rent of 23 million euros. The German company is also pledging to invest significantly in upgrades for the airports. ................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/germans-begin-the-looting-of-greece-2015-08-21?dist=beforebell

August 20, 2015

The U.S. coal industry is in shambles, and the casualties are mounting

(Bloomberg) The U.S. coal industry is in shambles, and the casualties are mounting. There are bankruptcies, mothballed power plants, and most dramatically, unemployed miners.

Since 2011, when coal prices began an unrelenting slide, cash-strapped companies have cut almost 10,000 jobs a year. That’s a pace of downsizing not seen since highly productive mining machinery (pdf) proliferated in the 1980s and early 1990s, shrinking the need for manpower.



This time, though, U.S. coal production is going down, not up. China’s slowing imports of the fuel are one reason. A bigger one is the boom in cheap natural gas, which has taken market share from coal at power plants and will probably keep doing so.

“The shale revolution has driven natural-gas prices so low that it makes sense for utilities to switch fuels,” William Foiles and Andrew Cosgrove, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts, said in a recent note. “More coal miners will likely find themselves out of work.”

No U.S. coal basin is feeling that pain like Central Appalachia, the mountainous stretch of southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and neighboring states that looms large in American lore as the cradle of the coal industry. ..............(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-20/what-cheap-gas-did-to-tens-of-thousands-of-coal-jobs

August 20, 2015

Credit Traders Gird for the Worst as Fed Loses Its Grip on Debt

(Bloomberg) What happens when the Federal Reserve loses its stranglehold over debt markets? Investors are finding out.

The selloff in corporate bonds is deepening and investors are seeking safety in the longest-dated government debt, which does best when the economy does worst. Defaults are rising as oil tumbles and investors are looking for the best ways to hedge against credit losses.

All this comes as the Fed does, well, nothing much. Instead, it’s China that’s taken the lead with new rounds of financial stimulus in the face of slowing growth. But some days it’s a free for all, with even Kazakhstan wielding its influence.

“Financial markets are desperate for the Fed to drive trading themes, but the ‘world’s central bank’ has fallen to the second rank this summer,” or sometimes third, Jim Vogel, an interest-rate strategist at FTN Financial in Memphis, Tennessee, wrote in a note Thursday. ......................(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-20/credit-traders-gird-for-the-worst-as-fed-loses-its-grip-on-debt

August 20, 2015

Mental illness a growing concern on tennis tours

(ESPN) For Petra Kvitova, everything changed thanks to a single, simple text message. It was February, and the Czech tennis standout had just landed in Doha, Qatar, for the next stop on the hectic tennis circuit. Seven months after winning her second Wimbledon title and four months after clinching another Fed Cup, she ought to have been on a high. But something was wrong. She felt empty, listless and, most worrying of all, unable to explain why.

Kvitova was preparing for her second-round match against Serbia's Jelena Jankovic when she checked her text messages. Among them was one from her longtime coach, David Kotyza.

"I think it's a good idea to take a break," he said. "Otherwise, I don't know how long you are going to keep on feeling this way."

Taken aback by the message, the 25-year-old knew something had to be done. She thought it over "for four days and for four nights" until she realized Kotyza was right. The pair had discussed her feelings in January during a tournament in Sydney in a conversation that had Kvitova on the verge of tears. Mentally and physically, she was exhausted.

.....(snip)......

American Mardy Fish suffered cardiac arrhythmia in 2012, a setback that eventually led to a severe anxiety disorder that left him unable to leave his house at times. His return to the tour at Indian Wells in March 2013 was greeted with delight by his peers. Fish, who has played only sparingly since, remains on medication and undergoes therapy. He will hang up his rackets for good after his run at the Western & Southern Open, where he won his first-round match Monday, and then the US Open, his final tournament. ......................(more)

http://espn.go.com/tennis/story/_/id/13394731/tennis-mardy-fish-far-only-player-dealing-mental-illness

August 20, 2015

Meet the Presidential Hopeful Who'd Quit After Signing a Single Law

from Rolling Stone:



Meet the Presidential Hopeful Who'd Quit After Signing a Single Law
Lawrence Lessig's plan for a 'referendum' presidency is so crazy it just might work

By Tim Dickinson August 19, 2015


Most people considering a presidential run dream of eight years in the White House. Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig proposes that his term should last a single day — just long enough to sign into law a transformational election rights bill, before resigning and passing responsibility for governing our reformed American democracy to his vice president.

Lessig calls his proposed legislation the Citizens Equality Act of 2017. It would end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, extend ironclad voting rights to U.S. citizens and make Election Day a national holiday. Most vital to Lessig, it would move toward public financing of elections — giving every voter something like a $50 voucher to back the candidate of her choice, blunting the influence of special interests.

A Democrat who once clerked for arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Lessig does not offer a plan to fix Citizens United or the unlimited donations to super PACs. But he insists his bill is the essential first step to making our representative democracy once again represent voters, rather than the nation's tiny donor class or well-heeled oil lobbyists.

Lessig's "referendum" candidacy is an intriguing longshot, with unexpected upsides: As the man who would handpick the vice president (soon-to-be president), Lessig suggests that his victory could be the key to installing a liberal heartthrob like Elizabeth Warren, or even a titan of Silicon Valley like Sheryl Sandberg, in the Oval Office. ...................(more)

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-presidential-hopeful-whod-quit-after-signing-a-single-law-20150819#ixzz3jMuW1lkn