By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 7, 2009
BAGHDAD -- Even as the U.S. military scrambles to support a troop surge in Afghanistan, it is donating passenger vehicles, generators and other equipment worth tens of millions of dollars to the Iraqi government.
Under new authority granted by the Pentagon, U.S. commanders in Iraq may now donate to the Iraqis up to $30 million worth of equipment from each facility they leave, up from the $2 million cap established when the guidelines were first set in 2005. The new cap applies at scores of posts that the U.S. military is expected to leave in coming months as it scales back its presence from about 280 facilities to six large bases and a few small ones by the end of next summer.
Some of the items that commanders may now leave behind, including passenger vehicles and generators, are among what commanders in Afghanistan need most urgently, according to Pentagon memos.
Officials involved say the approach has triggered arguments in the Pentagon over whether the effort to leave Iraqis adequately equipped is hurting the buildup in Afghanistan. Officials in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees both wars, have balked at some proposed handovers, and previously rejected an approach that would have granted base commanders even greater leeway.
U.S. commanders in Iraq say they have been judicious in assessing what equipment to earmark for donation. Alan F. Estevez, a deputy undersecretary of defense, wrote in an e-mail that "an important and vital goal is to leave behind fully functioning bases to the Government of Iraq to enable Iraq's civil capacities."
But a U.S. military official critical of the process said the new regulations allow too much latitude to commanders, provide little oversight and fail to account for the urgent need of American forces in Afghanistan, which need the same kinds of items that the troops in Iraq are leaving behind.
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"How can a generator or an SUV or a relocatable building be excess if you are buying the very same thing and sending it to Afghanistan?" said the official, who is involved in the process and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"In Iraq, people drive around in new Yukons, Suburbans, Envoys and new pickups," the official said. "In Kandahar, you find troops from the same U.S. Army driving around in broken-down, 15-year-old, right-hand-drive clunkers with bald tires."
Brig. Gen. Peter C. Bayer Jr., the chief of staff for the ground forces command in Iraq, said that though the Army wanted to make equipment available to units in Afghanistan, it was often more cost-effective to donate vehicles and other goods to the cash-strapped Iraqi government than to pack and ship it.
"In many cases, we'll spend more between labor and transportation than the equipment is worth," Brig. Gen. Bayer said. "We're not talking about green Army trucks or weapons systems or night-vision capabilities." Under the surge that President Obama outlined last week, commanders in Afghanistan -- a theater long eclipsed by Iraq -- soon will need to accommodate 30,000 additional troops. The Pentagon had already begun moving gear and personnel from Iraq to Afghanistan, reflecting a shift that has made Afghanistan the new administration's top foreign policy priority.
Senior military officials have said that getting new equipment into Afghanistan presents a major logistical challenge. "To the extent we can leverage equipment that's being retrograded out of Iraq, we're going to do that to make that a little easier," Brig. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the director of the Pentagon's Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, said last week in an online discussion with bloggers. "But a significant amount of this equipment will need to be brought in from elsewhere."
Under federal law, government agencies must demonstrate that equipment they wish to donate is not needed by other U.S. agencies. If that criterion is met, equipment can be donated in exchange for "substantial benefits" to the United States.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
GetAFreelancer Hits 1 Million Users, Switches Name To Freelancer.com
GetAFreelancer Hits 1 Million Users, Switches Name To Freelancer.com
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by Robin Wauters on October 7, 2009
If the Internet has made one thing crystal clear, it’s that physical borders and geographical distance are no longer necessarily an absolute barrier for conducting business.
More and more companies are getting accustomed to the idea of being able to do business with companies on the other side of the world using nothing but digital communication means, or to have entire business units or projects led by teams made up of people located all over the globe.
Hence the popularity of services such as oDesk and Elance, websites where you can outsource given projects to registered programmers, designers, writers, legal experts and whatnot. Another player in this market is GetAFreelancer, an Australian company that’s been offering freelance jobs online since it was founded back in 2004.
Today, the company is announcing that it has changed its name to the far better-sounding and undoubtedly more memorable Freelancer.com. They bought the domain name from a private individual who used to run a magazine called Computer Freelancer over 15 years ago, for a ’six figure sum’. All in an effort to increase its visibility and profile.
GetAFreelancer CEO Matt Barrie tells us that the site recently hit a big milestone and now boasts over 1,000,000 registered professionals and businesses from 234 countries and territories worldwide. Over 475,000 jobs have been posted on the website to date, for a sum of over $43 million.
Not too shabby for a bootstrapped venture.
"GetAFreelancer Hits 1 Million Users, Switches Name To Freelancer.com
29 Comments
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by
Robin Wauters
on
October 7, 2009
If the Internet has made one thing crystal clear, it’s that physical borders and geographical distance are no longer necessarily an absolute barrier for conducting business.
More and more companies are getting accustomed to the idea of being able to do business with companies on the other side of the world using nothing but digital communication means, or to have entire business units or projects led by teams made up of people located all over the globe.
Hence the popularity of services such as oDesk and Elance, websites where you can outsource given projects to registered programmers, designers, writers, legal experts and whatnot. Another player in this market is GetAFreelancer, an Australian company that’s been offering freelance jobs online since it was founded back in 2004.
Today, the company is announcing that it has changed its name to the far better-sounding and undoubtedly more memorable Freelancer.com. They bought the domain name from a private individual who used to run a magazine called Computer Freelancer over 15 years ago, for a ’six figure sum’. All in an effort to increase its visibility and profile.
GetAFreelancer CEO Matt Barrie tells us that the site recently hit a big milestone and now boasts over 1,000,000 registered professionals and businesses from 234 countries and territories worldwide. Over 475,000 jobs have been posted on the website to date, for a sum of over $43 million.
Not too shabby for a bootstrapped venture."
- GetAFreelancer Hits 1 Million Users, Switches Name To Freelancer.com (view on Google Sidewiki)
Friday, July 24, 2009
America the Illiterate
We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.
The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information. American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap slogans and reassuring personal narratives. Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology. Political campaigns have become an experience. They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills. They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation. Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal. They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness. They thrust us into an eternal present. They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia. It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates. We confuse how we feel with knowledge.
The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless. They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies. They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. They watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed. They are hostages to brands. Brands come with images and slogans. Images and slogans are all they understand. Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus. And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures. This is our brave new world.
Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative. The reality of the narrative is irrelevant. It can be completely at odds with the facts. The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount. The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice. Those who are best at artifice succeed. Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail. In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both.
The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth. We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror. It feels good not to think. All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires. Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Bondholder Group Reaches Deal for Up to 25% G.M. Stake
In a regulatory filing, G.M. also filled out many of the details of the reorganization plan, crafted under the eye of the Treasury Department.
G.M. confirmed that the government would provide more than $50 billion in bankruptcy financing to see the company through its Chapter 11 filing. What will emerge, through an asset sale known as a 363 transaction, is a newer, slimmer G.M. with about $17 billion in debt.
Under the terms of the deal, G.M. would sell itself in Chapter 11 and bondholders would receive a 10 percent stake in the newly reorganized company in exchange for about $27 billion in bonds. They would also receive warrants to buy an additional 15 percent of a new G.M., exercisable if G.M.’s value rises to certain levels.
G.M. said in the regulatory filing that the proposal depends on the government getting enough bondholders to make statements of support backing the terms of the swap. Without those statements, which are due by Saturday, the amount of stock and warrants for bondholders would be “substantially reduced or eliminated.”
The bondholder committee, which represents holders of about 20 percent of the bonds’ value, had already said they support the proposal, G.M. said.
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“The ad hoc committee of G.M. bondholders supports the revised offer from G.M. and believes that when contrasted with the alternative — uncertain and costly bankruptcy court litigation — that it represents the best alternative for bondholders in the current difficult and dire situation,” the group said Thursday in a statement.
Earlier this week, bondholders overwhelmingly rejected a debt exchange offer that would have swapped their bonds for 10 percent of the company’s equity. It is believed that G.M.’s bonds are held by tens of thousands of investors, ranging from institutions to individuals.
Thursday’s announcement came after German and American negotiators in Britain failed to agree on a crucial bridge loan to sustain Opel and the rest of the European operations of General Motors in the event of a bankruptcy filing, following a marathon negotiating session that stretched till nearly 5 a.m. Thursday.
But officials did manage to narrow the field of potential suitors for Opel to two companies — Fiat, the Italian automaker, and Magna, a Canadian auto parts giant. A Belgian private equity firm as well as a Chinese automaker were knocked out of contention.
Nationwide sales tax under consideration. Will dramatically increase the price of everything, but everyone can finally see a doctor for “free”.
Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax — called a value-added tax, or VAT — has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.
At a White House conference earlier this year on the government’s budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama’s policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.
“There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. “I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.”
A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American — a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.
Liberals dispute that notion. “You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off — maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they’d come out a lot better off,” said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.
A White House official said a VAT is “unlikely to be in the mix” as a means to pay for health-care reform. “While we do not want to rule any credible idea in or out as we discuss the way forward with Congress, the VAT tax, in particular, is popular with academics but highly controversial with policymakers,” said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.
Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book “Health Care, Guaranteed.” Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.
“Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we’re going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate,” said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. “It’s common to the rest of the world, and we don’t have it.”
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Seeking New Revenue
The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation’s money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it’s all about the money.
The federal budget deficit is projected to approach $1.3 trillion next year, the highest ever except for this year, when the deficit is forecast to exceed $1.8 trillion. The Treasury is borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, largely from China and other foreign creditors, who are growing increasingly uneasy about the security of their investments. Unless Congress comes up with some serious cash, expanding the nation’s health-care system will only add to the problem.
Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been fully embraced by Congress. Obama’s plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.
Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform, including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money — nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget documents. But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.
Enter the VAT, one of the world’s most popular taxes, in use in more than 130 countries. Among industrialized nations, rates range from 5 percent in Japan to 25 percent in Hungary and in parts of Scandinavia. A 21 percent VAT has permitted Ireland to attract investment by lowering its corporate tax rate.
The VAT has advantages: Because producers, wholesalers and retailers are each required to record their transactions and pay a portion of the VAT, the tax is hard to dodge. It punishes spending rather than savings, which the administration hopes to encourage. And the threat of a VAT could pull the country out of recession, some economists argue, by hurrying consumers to the mall before the tax hits.
A VAT’s Bottom Line
What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008 book, “100 Million Unnecessary Returns,” Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to exempt families earning less than $100,000 — about 90 percent of households — from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.
And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation’s debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.
Sales Tax Gains Momentum
Burman, who helped House Democrats craft an unsuccessful 2007 plan to repeal the alternative minimum tax, said he’s received a number of phone calls from lawmakers interested in his idea, though “they can’t quite imagine how to make it happen politically.” Burman said the 25 percent rate has caused some sticker shock, and he’s trying to figure out how to bring it down.
Graetz’s proposal drew an endorsement from Volcker, who last year called it “a sensible plan for reform.” (Volcker did not respond to a request for comment.) It also has piqued the interest of Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman who argues that it could be modified to accommodate Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on families who make less than $200,000 a year.
“I think interest is quietly picking up,” Graetz said. “People are beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the table if you want to do something big and serious.”
Still, the Senate Finance Committee declined to include a VAT among the options it is considering to pay for health reform. And even VAT supporters doubt the tax will find a place among the tax-reform proposals the Volcker panel has been asked to produce by Dec. 4.
Though the nation’s fiscal outlook is grim, Burman said “the situation will have to get more desperate” before lawmakers are likely to consider a new levy aimed directly at the pocketbooks of every one of their constituents.
Most lawmakers are still looking for “a painless source of revenue” to overhaul the health-care system and dig the nation out of debt, Burman said. “Who knows?” he added. “Maybe the tooth fairy will bring that to them.”
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Opposites attract — how genetics influences humans to choose their mates
Females’ preference for MHC dissimilar mates has been shown in many vertebrate species, including humans, and it is also known that MHC influences mating selection by preferences for particular body odours. The Brazilian team has been working in this field since 1998, and decided to investigate mate selection in the Brazilian population, while trying to uncover the biological significance of MHC diversity.
The scientists studied MHC data from 90 married couples, and compared them with 152 randomly-generated control couples. They counted the number of MHC dissimilarities among those who were real couples, and compared them with those in the randomly-generated ‘virtual couples’. “If MHC genes did not influence mate selection”, says Professor Bicalho, “we would have expected to see similar results from both sets of couples. But we found that the real partners had significantly more MHC dissimilarities than we could have expected to find simply by chance.”
Within MHC-dissimilar couples the partners will be genetically different, and such a pattern of mate choice decreases the danger of endogamy (mating among relatives) and increases the genetic variability of offspring. Genetic variability is known to be an advantage for offspring, and the MHC effect could be an evolutionary strategy underlying incest avoidance in humans and also improving the efficiency of the immune system, the scientists say.
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The MHC is a large genetic region situated on chromosome 6, and found in most vertebrates. It plays an important role in the immune system and also in reproductive success. Apart from being a large region, it is also an extraordinarily diverse one.
“Although it may be tempting to think that humans choose their partners because of their similarities”, says Professor Bicalho, “our research has shown clearly that it is differences that make for successful reproduction, and that the subconscious drive to have healthy children is important when choosing a mate.”
The scientists believe that their findings will help understanding of conception, fertility, and gestational failures. Research has already shown that couples with similar MHC genes had longer intervals between births, which could imply early, unperceived miscarriages. “We intend to follow up this work by looking at social and cultural influences as well as biological ones in mate choice, and relating these to the genetic diversity of the extended MHC region”, says Professor Bicalho.
“We expect to find that cultural aspects play an important role in mate choice, and certainly do not subscribe to the theory that if a person bears a particular genetic variant it will determine his or her behaviour. But we also think that the unconscious evolutionary aspect of partner choice should not be overlooked. We believe our research shows that this has an important role to play in ensuring healthy reproduction, by helping to ensure that children are born with a strong immune system better able to cope with infection.”
This is Not a Bull Market: Stocks Are Not Up, and They’re Headed Even Lower
How do you measure wealth generation?
1) Average annual gains?
2) Gains relative to an underlying index (the S&P 500)?
3) Gains relative to inflation?
Of these three, the last is the only real means of gauging wealth creation or destruction. Commentators have been going bananas over the fact that stocks are up 20%+ since their bottom of 666. No one mentions that this rally may actually be induced by the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system.
Similarly, no one mentions that adjusted for inflation, stocks are still WAY down from their peak during the Tech bubble.
As you can see, stocks entered a bear market in earnest following the Tech Crash. Yes, in number or nominal terms, the Dow has risen. But you have to remember the dollar lost roughly a third of its value from 2001 to today. Measuring stocks or anything in dollars between now and then was like measuring with a ruler that was continually shrinking.
Also, bear in mind that the above chart is using the Government’s phony measure of inflation: the Consumer Price Index [CPI] which DOESN’T include food or energy prices. Using accurate inflationary data, stocks are down even more in real terms.
My main point is this: inflation is an ever-present reality in the post WWII era. Investors need to be protecting themselves from this beast at all costs. You can do this by:
- Buying gold
- Buying commodities or real assets
- Buying companies that can offset inflationary costs by raising the price of their products
I suggest having some money in all three. It’s the only certain way to protect your wealth from inflation. The Feds are cooking up an inflationary storm of epic proportions, pumping TRILLIONS of dollars into the financial system. Stocks may rally like a rocket-ship from here. But in real terms they’re still tanking.
After all, if the Dow hits 30,000, but you’re celebrating by drinking a $150.00 coke… are you really any richer?
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