What’s dragging down U.S. economic vigor?

According to Harvard Business School graduates, political gridlock, faltering schools, and a convoluted tax code are making American companies less competitive in the global marketplace.

A new survey of the business school’s alumni found that nearly three-quarters of respondents expect the U.S. to be less competitive over the next three years. They said the U.S. is losing ground to emerging economies, where low wages, increasingly skilled workers, growing markets and proximity to customers frequently trump traditional American strengths such as sophisticated infrastructure, a reliable legal system and effective macroeconomic policy.

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The founder of Wikipedia is leading calls for search engines and social media sites including Google, Facebook and Twitter to take themselves offline for an entire day in protest against a controversial bill winding its way through the US Senate that could have profound implications for the internet.

Jimmy Wales has called for a “public uprising” against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which critics say will have a “chilling effect on innovation” by forcing websites to keep a much closer tab on what is posted by users on their pages….

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A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy.

With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE), has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year and Exelon Corp. (EXC) called off plans to expand two nuclear plants. Michigan utility CMS Energy Corp. (CMS) canceled a $2 billion coal plant after deciding it wasn’t financially viable in a time of “low natural-gas prices linked to expanded shale-gas supplies,” according to a company statement.

Mirroring the gas market, wholesale electricity prices have dropped more than 50 percent on average since 2008, and about 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a Jan. 11 research report by Aneesh Prabhu, a New York-based credit analyst with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC.

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Against these downward [price] pressures stand three powerful counter-forces: a reviving economy that eases people’s anxieties about elective spending; an aging society that raises the need for health care; and the start of Obamacare’s insurance mandates in 2014 that expand coverage by 30 million people or more. Those with insurance routinely use more health care than do the uncovered.

Health care poses a dilemma. On the one hand, we all want ”” for our families and ourselves ”” the best care available without artificial limits imposed by government regulations or private insurers. On the other, we don’t want soaring health spending to crowd out other government programs or depress take-home pay. The latest spending figures delude if they suggest we’ve overcome that dilemma. The Neanderthal Cure is an ugly stop-gap, nothing more…

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On Jan. 11, nearly three weeks after the Great Christmas Eve Stratfor Hack, the Texas-based strategic analysis website came back online with limited service. And none too soon ”“ some of us were starting to show signs of withdrawal.

If you haven’t been following, Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, probably the most reputable privately owned open-source intelligence firm in the world, suffered a massive hacker attack on Dec. 24. The hackers proceeded to publish the credit-card information and passwords of many of Stratfor’s subscribers (4,000 alone beginning with the letter “A”) and proceeded to use said information to make unauthorized donations to every major charity in sight….

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“The court hasn’t spoken this clearly on a church-state matter in almost 20 years,” said Rob Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who wrote an amicus brief on the case in support of the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School.

“This is bedrock,” Garnett continued. “All the justices came together to say if religious freedom means anything, it means governments can’t interfere with religious institutions’ decisions on who is going to be their minister or teacher.”

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Rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating of the European Financial Stability Facility, the euro zone’s rescue fund, by one notch to AA+ on Monday, three days after it cut the ratings of France and Austria by the same margin….

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Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: It does nothing! It creates chaos! It’s a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry! (Or something to that effect.) But these are distortions of a fundamentally beneficial business. The country’s largest investment banks, commercial banks and a few big insurance companies (what we generally refer to as Wall Street) play the crucial role of intermediation ”” matching borrowers with lenders. Most of the time, the industry does this extremely well (though in the case of matching homeowners’ debt to the global financial system, too enthusiastically). Perhaps the best way to really appreciate what Wall Street does is to imagine life without it….

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Ms. [Cheryl] Perich spent most of her time teaching nonreligious subjects with about a sixth of her time on religion classes, so the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concluded that she was not a ministerial worker and that she could sue. In overturning that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the question could not be “resolved by a stopwatch” and that Ms. Perich’s limited teaching about religion helped qualify her as a minister.

The court’s conception of the ministerial role is more encompassing than it has been defined by state and federal appellate courts. Its sweeping deference to churches does not serve them or society wisely.

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Both firms realised that digital photography itself would not be very profitable. “Wise businesspeople concluded that it was best not to hurry to switch from making 70 cents on the dollar on film to maybe five cents at most in digital,” says Mr Matteson. But both firms had to adapt; Kodak was slower.

Its culture did not help. Despite its strengths””hefty investment in research, a rigorous approach to manufacturing and good relations with its local community””Kodak had become a complacent monopolist. Fujifilm exposed this weakness by bagging the sponsorship of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles while Kodak dithered. The publicity helped Fujifilm’s far cheaper film invade Kodak’s home market….

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Among the more or less predictable reactions from legal adversaries to the Supreme Court’s finding that ministers may not bring employment discrimination suits against their churches, there is a pious sentiment to be found here and there ”” an appeal to an even higher law.

Even those who agreed with the unanimous court ”” and who have argued all along that the First Amendment provides an exception that lets churches, synagogues and other religious institutions hire and fire ministers and other religious leaders without government interference ”” can be heard cautioning the churches not to abuse that right.

Writing on the Web site of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which had filed a brief urging the court to affirm the ministerial exception, Don Byrd, a blogger who teaches at a Christian university, said, “This particular case though can be a difficult one to think about for those of us who stand firmly against employment discrimination.”

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Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of France, Italy and seven other European countries on Friday, a move that may have more symbolic than fundamental financial impact but served as a reminder that Europe’s economic woes were far from over.

Another memory jog came Friday from Greece, the original source of Europe’s debt troubles. Talks hit a snag between the new Greek government and the banks and other private investors that Athens hopes will agree to take losses on their debt so that Greece can avoid a default.

Together, those developments underscore that even as Europe’s debt turmoil enters its third year, no clear solutions are yet in sight ”” despite recent signs that a new lending program by the European Central Bank might be easing financial market pressures.

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In his second meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve in May 2006, Ben Bernanke heard a Fed governor warn about the nation’s mortgage market. But Mr. Bernanke described the cooling of the housing boom as a “healthy thing.”

“So far we are seeing, at worst, an orderly decline in the housing market,” he said.

Mr. Bernanke’s words were contained in 1,197 pages of transcripts released Thursday of closed-door Fed meetings from that year. The transcripts paint the most detailed picture yet of how top officials at the central bank didn’t anticipate the storm about to hit the U.S. economy and the global financial system.

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R.J. Williams, host and founder of Young Hollywood…is betting most of his personal savings and free time that two things will make him a next-generation media titan: hard work and YouTube.

That bet goes both ways. Beginning this month, YouTube is gambling $100 million that by seeding professional production firms such as Young Hollywood — whose slate of YouTube-only programming premieres Monday — it will draw more eyeballs for longer viewing sessions.

Williams calls the online video giant’s move a “game-changer” and argues that the growing number of stars who sit on his white sofa — Cruz came to see Williams straight from Jay Leno’s Tonight Show couch — spotlights the emerging clout of Web-only shows.

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Enraged Chinese shoppers pelted Apple Inc’s flagship Beijing store with eggs and shoving matches broke out with police on Friday when customers were told the store would not begin sales of the iPhone 4S as scheduled.

Apple said later after the fracas at its store in Beijing’s trendy Sanlitun district that it would halt all retail sales of the latest iPhone in China for the time being, but said the phones would be available online, through its partner China Unicom or at official Apple resellers.

Sales at Apple’s other store in Beijing and three in Shanghai went more smoothly, with stocks quickly selling out.

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(“US election race baffles the punters” is the title SMH gives it)….

Assuming no imminent foreign policy crisis, the election will depend on two things: whether undecided voters blame the congressional Republicans more than the President for the state of the economy, and how many potential supporters the candidates can motivate to vote….

Voting for a president is also voting for a certain image of America, which explains the jubilation felt by so many when a young African-American with a radical past broke through conventional assumptions. Rekindling that excitement is difficult for Obama, but no one has claimed Romney is a charismatic candidate.

He will, however, be seen as safe, prepared for the job, and able to re-energise American business. Expect a Republican campaign that promises a more aggressive and dominant United States, and remember that American campaigns do not revolve around policy details in the way to which …[Australians] are accustomed.

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Pakistan’s civilian government fired its Defense Secretary Wednesday in a rare show of defiance against the country’s powerful Army, which had earlier publicly rebuked Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and ignited speculation the government may fall.

Retired Lt. Gen. Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a senior bureaucrat seen as close to the Army, was dismissed by the government for “gross misconduct and illegal action.” He was replaced by a bureaucrat close to the prime minister.

It’s not yet clear whether Pakistan’s powerful Army will be sufficiently moved to launch a coup and directly rule the country as it has done for approximately half of Pakistan’s 65 year history. But if Mr. Gilani’s defiance pays off, that could indicate a boost for the country’s democratic institutions.

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Just 1% of Americans accounted for 22% of health care costs in 2009, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

That’s about $90,000 per person, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. U.S. residents spent $1.26 trillion that year on health care.

Five percent accounted for 50% of health care costs, about $36,000 each, the report said.

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Twitter has complained about changes made by Google to integrate its social network Google+ into search results.

The new feature, called Search plus Your World, will automatically push results from Google+ up the search rankings.

Tweeting on the news, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Macgillivray described it as a “bad day for the internet”.

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In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in two decades, the Supreme Court on Wednesday for the first time recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference.

“The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a decision that was surprising in both its sweep and its unanimity. “But so, too, is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith and carry out their mission.”

The decision gave only limited guidance about how courts should decide who counts as a minister, saying the court was “reluctant to adopt a rigid formula.” Two concurring opinions offered contrasting proposals.

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A Republican Party whose more energetic precincts have been gripped throughout the Obama presidency by a desire to expel moderates and upend the establishment will have put itself in the hands of a candidate who, more than anyone in the race, comes out of a moderate, establishment Republican tradition.

But to get there ”” or get there without a protracted battle ”” he will have to fend off efforts by his rivals in South Carolina to emerge as the singular anti-Romney candidate.

With little left to lose, Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas are already assailing him as a heartless job killer in South Carolina, a state hit far harder by the economic downturn than Iowa and New Hampshire were.

But just fending off that attack may not be enough. He is also heading smack into an issue that has followed him through his national political career: his Mormon faith and the suspicion many evangelical Christians have of it.

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PC support company iYogi today released these survey results showing consumers spend more on staying connected to the Internet than on staying warm.

Not surprisingly, mobile phones chew up a large and growing chunk of the average household’s disposable income. Some 63% of American households spend 35% more on technology bills than utility bills, according to an in-depth survey of 1,100 adults.

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Investors in Europe are so worried about the euro crisis and so desperate to find a safe haven for their cash that they decided to forego an interest rate, and even paid a premium, for the privilege of lending Germany money on Monday.

The auction of six-month German government bills on Monday produced a negative interest rate. Even the Federal Finance Agency, which manages Germany’s debt, was astonished. “That has never happened before,” said a spokesman.

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Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country’s biggest “bank” and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.

Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a “national emergency”, said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa.

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The U.S. job market is showing signs of a sustained recovery. But the country’s prolonged struggle with unemployment will leave scars that are likely to remain for years, if not generations.

The latest labor-market snapshot, out Friday, gave cause for continued, if tepid, optimism. U.S. employers added 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 8.5%, its lowest level since early 2009.

But economists gathered here [in Chicago] for the American Economic Association’s annual convention took a longer and generally dimmer view. Even if recent progress continues, the recession already has had a lasting effect on a generation of workers. Worse, the crisis has laid bare problems in the U.S. labor market that won’t quickly recover when the economy eventually rebounds. And the longer that unemployment remains high, the greater the risk that it will create structural problems that will endure.

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Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.

— Dave Barry

Facebook users will enjoy tighter privacy controls after the social networking giant was ordered by the Republic of Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner to change how it handles personal data.

The company was issued with a raft of recommendations including deleting personal information sooner and allowing users better control on the use of data.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner yesterday published the outcome of its audit of Facebook Ireland, which was carried out over the last three months.

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Congressional leaders reached an agreement Thursday to temporarily extend a payroll-tax cut by two months and begin negotiations on a yearlong extension, aides said.

he agreement could end a political stalemate over the payroll-tax cut, which lowered Social Security taxes for 160 million Americans in 2011. Under the tentative agreement, the House will vote again on a two-month extension and the Senate will prepare to negotiate for an extension that will run through 2012.

Aides said House Speaker John Boehner (R, Ohio) has agreed to hold a new vote Friday on extending the tax cut, bowing to increasing pressure to end an impasse that threatened to leave workers with a tax increase next year.

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