Unpaid Teens Bag Groceries for Wal-Mart
August 2nd, 2007Always low prices.
Via: MSNBC:
Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteering†their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws.
DARPA’s 42.8% Efficiency Solar Cells
August 2nd, 2007Do you get it yet?
Via: Treehugger:
Narrowly edging out the previous record set by Spectrolab late last year, two scientists at the University of Delaware have just created a new device that can convert 42.8% of the light striking it into electricity. The solar cell, built by Christina Honsberg and Allan Barnett, splits light into three components — high, medium and low energy light — and directs it to several different materials which can then extract electrons out of its photons.
One of the device’s key elements is an optical concentrator — a lens-type component that increases the cell’s efficiency by directing more sunlight to it than would happen naturally (a boost that contributed in great measure to its record-setting performance). It measures in at just below 1 cm thick, a major improvement over the Spectrolab model which featured a concentrating lens about 1 foot thick. Unlike most concentrators that use a two-axis tracking system to follow the sun, this optical concentrator is also stationary — a major feat.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — which has been funding this and similar efforts through its Very High Efficiency Solar Cell (VHESC) program — hopes to eventually incorporate this technology into portable solar cell battery chargers for American troops. It will now fund a newly formed DuPont-University of Delaware VHESC Consortium to shift production from a lab-scale model to a full-on manufacturing prototype model.
World Stocks in Meltdown Over U.S. Economy Fears
August 1st, 2007Via: Yahoo / AFP:
European and Asian stock markets plummeted Wednesday, mirroring heavy losses the previous day in New York, on mounting fears that weakness in the US housing sector could infect the world economy.
Crash Alert: 5 Steps to Take Immediately
August 1st, 2007For the dawdlers out there, this is decent info re: gambling and paper games.
Via: Money and Markets:
With last week delivering the worst stock market rout in nearly five years, millions of investors are in a state of paralysis.
They’re finally beginning to wake up to the enormity of the meltdown in the housing market.
They’re finally beginning see how it’s impacting their stocks.
But they don’t know what to do about it. Or worse, they’re falling victim to stock brokers whose mantra is “hold on no matter what.”
I hope you’re not among them. But whether you are or not, please listen carefully and act promptly…
Related: Everbank WorldCurrency CDs NOTE: I have no relationship with Everbank.
BEAR STEARNS HALTS REDEMPTIONS ON THIRD HEDGE FUND
August 1st, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Bear Stearns Cos., manager of two hedge funds that collapsed last month, halted redemptions from a third fund after a slump in credit markets prompted investors to demand their money back.
The Bear Stearns Asset-Backed Securities Fund had about $900 million invested in asset-backed securities, including mortgage bonds, spokesman Russell Sherman said today in a telephone interview. The fund was overwhelmed by redemption requests, Sherman said.
The fund’s stumble is a setback for New York-based Bear Stearns and illustrates how the crisis in the subprime mortgage market has spread. The fund had less than 0.5 percent of its assets in securities linked to loans to subprime borrowers, Sherman said. The two funds that collapsed invested almost fully in subprime bonds. Losses have spread to banks, insurers and hedge funds in France and Australia, including one run by Macquarie Bank Ltd.
“This shows you don’t necessarily have to be a subprime fund now to be having problems,” said Bryan Whalen, a portfolio manager in Los Angeles at Metropolitan West Asset Management, which oversees more than $21 billion in fixed-income assets.
Charts: Mass Foreclosures Threaten the U.S.
July 31st, 2007Traders have a word for chart patterns like these: breakout.
Via: Efinance Directory:
Home foreclosure activity continues to soar nationwide over the past year, particularly in the states of Nevada, California, Arizona, and Florida. We’ve compiled a detailed analysis of the foreclosure crisis, including up-to-date graphs depicting recently reported foreclosure activity for these states.
Survey: Americans Broadly Support Surveillance Cameras
July 31st, 2007No measure of number of Americans who have fled the U.S., never to return?
Via: ABC News:
Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians, but credited in London with helping to catch a variety of perpetrators since the early 1990s.
Given the chief arguments, pro and con — a way to help solve crimes vs. too much of a government intrusion on privacy — it isn’t close: 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it.
BP Gets OK to Dump Mercury into Lake Michigan
July 31st, 2007Via: USA Today:
A BP refinery in Indiana will be allowed to continue to dump mercury into Lake Michigan under a permit issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
The permit exempts the BP plant at Whiting, Ind., 3 miles southeast of Chicago, from a 1995 federal regulation limiting mercury discharges into the Great Lakes to 1.3 ounces per year.
Oil Settles Above $78, Setting Record
July 31st, 2007Via: Yahoo / AP:
Oil futures settled at a record high above $78 Tuesday on expectations that crude inventories fell last week and reports of new violence in Nigeria, a large oil producer and key supplier to the U.S.
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. Collapses
July 31st, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. shares plunged 90 percent after the lender said it doesn’t have cash to fund new loans, stranding thousands of home buyers and putting the company on the brink of failure.
Investment banks cut off credit lines, leaving American Home without money yesterday for $300 million of mortgages it had already promised, the Melville, New York-based company said in a statement today. It anticipates that $450 million to $500 million of loans probably won’t get funded today, and the lender may have to sell off its assets.
“They can’t function without access to capital,” said Bose George, an analyst with KBW Inc. in New York. “The company either has to file for bankruptcy or go through some type of rescue or restructuring, and either way will leave almost nothing for the common shareholders.”
American Home caters to borrowers whose credit scores fall just short of standards for top-rated mortgages. The announcement provides fresh evidence that defaults may be spreading from subprime borrowers with the worst credit scores to homeowners with more reliable payment records. The biggest U.S. mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., said last week late payments rose among some of its most creditworthy clients.
Shares of American Home, halted by the New York Stock Exchange early yesterday, plummeted $9.43 from their close on July 27 to $1.04 as of 4:15 p.m. in NYSE composite trading. They sold for $6.39 in pre-market transactions yesterday. Two years ago, they fetched almost $40.
Margin Calls
American Home said it’s “seeking the course of resolution, in this environment, that is least disruptive to its business and to the many thousands of homebuyers to whom it has committed to provide mortgages.”
Creditors made “very significant margin calls” in the last three weeks and American Home still has “substantial unpaid margin calls pending,” it said in the statement. Options may include “the orderly liquidation of its assets.”
