The middle class has been caught in an economic vise, trying to pay 2012 prices with paychecks that haven’t grown since the good times went bust ”” or even earlier.
Across the nation, family income was down 8 percent last year from what it was in 2000. And in South Carolina, the median income last year was just over $40,000.
That’s the lowest wages have been in the Palmetto State since 1985, according inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. census.
Writing is hard. All by itself with no bells and whistles, when it’s just your thoughts pulsing through your mind, filtered through your heart, and fighting to get out of your fingers as articulately as possible ”“ it’s hard.
But we, we are living in the age of bells and whistles. In a day and time when being published, being read, is easier than ever ”“ the task itself has become harder.
The responsibilities of writing have been weighed down with drudgery. Writers aren’t simply creatives anymore. We are publicists, agents, assistants, marketers, back-scratchers, promoters, tech gurus, networkers, platform-builders .
State officials say someone hacked into the Department of Revenue, exposing about 3.6 million South Carolina tax returns.
Gov. Nikki Haley said Friday about 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were also exposed, and 16,000 of those were unencrypted. State officials are urging anyone who has filed a state tax return since 1998 to call a toll-free number to determine whether their information is affected.
Europe’s economic woes are washing over U.S. multinational companies, contributing to a season of weak corporate earnings.
Domestic sales are growing, as the U.S. housing market and consumer confidence recover. But China’s economy has slowed, robbing U.S. companies of their most reliable growth engine of recent years.
Almost uniformly, however, U.S. companies reporting third-quarter results identify Europe as the weakest link in the global economic chain.
For the first time since the Great Recession hit, American households are taking on more debt than they are shedding, an epochal shift that might augur a more resilient recovery.
For two of the last three quarters, American households’ total outstanding borrowing on things like credit cards, mortgages and auto loans has increased after falling for 14 consecutive quarters before then. Some economists even see an end to the long, hard process of deleveraging ”” as they refer to the cutting of debt relative to income or the nation’s economic output. That process, they say, has been a central reason for the extraordinary sluggishness of the recovery.
“We’re at an inflection point,” said Kevin Logan, the chief United States economist for HSBC. “Debt is less of a burden” for households, he said.
Deficit-reduction principles backed by more than 80 U.S. chief executive officers are so broad that anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and an ally of President Barack Obama both claim their plans could satisfy the standards.
The Campaign to Fix the Debt, with more than $30 million in backing, announced an expanded list of supporters yesterday, including the leaders of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) On the most vexing issue — whether tax increases should be part of a deal — the principles refer to lower tax rates and higher revenue, not higher taxes.
Read it all. You can also find the CEO Debt Concerns Press Release here.
“What we’re trying to do right now is to have a set of standards, a set of criteria, and have a decision-making process that will govern our counterterrorism actions ”” we’re talking about direct action, lethal action ”” so that irrespective of the venue where they’re taking place, we have a high confidence that they’re being done for the right reasons in the right way,” [John] Brennan said in a lengthy interview at the end of August.
A burly 25-year CIA veteran with a stern public demeanor, Brennan is the principal architect of a policy that has transformed counterterrorism from a conventional fight centered in Afghanistan to a high-tech global effort to track down and eliminate perceived enemies one by one.
It is with sadness that the Anglican Church of Canada and Augsburg Fortress Canada announce that the Anglican Book Centre at 80 Hayden Street will close on Jan. 18, 2013. Canadian Anglicans will still be able to order resources online and by phone through Augsburg Fortress Canada.
“Religious book and gift stores across Canada have faced significant challenges resulting in the closure of over 120 stores in the past 10 years,” said Andy Seal, Director of Augsburg Fortress Canada/Anglican Book Centre.
“Sales at our Hayden St. store have decreased each year since 2009. By 2011 Toronto sales were 28% below the break-even level. In spite of hard work and innovation, the trend has continued in 2012.”
“Potentially, the government may amend its complaint to include individuals, present or former employees of Bank of America,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Pierre Armand told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff.
Some Orthodox Christians in Russia have taken issue with Apple’s logo recently, seeing an anti-Christian symbol for humanity’s original sin in the image of a bitten fruit….
…[We now, however, that many] people have offered many explanations for what they see as the obvious significance of Apple’s logo. This is to be expected, since any symbol””or “signifier” for you semantics aficionados””has a fluid link to the meaning signified. But if these interpretations are all up for debate, then why bother discussing such niche exegeses as the one put forward by conservative Russian Orthodox?
Because their interpretation is scheduled to collide with public policy….
At 4.06pm, less than 30 minutes before Synod rose for the year, the first count of this year’s meeting was held on a proposed amendment during a debate on church planting (the establishment of new congregations across Melbourne and Geelong). This time, the amendment was carried.
Synod called on the Diocesan Council to review how the living requirements of clergy in the Melbourne Diocese were met, including the setting of stipends, recompense for travel costs, housing, superannuation, benefits, stipend continuance insurance and retrenchment.
A senior clergyman, the Revd Dr David Powys of St John’s Cranbourne, said in his mover’s speech that the fundamental way in which clergy remuneration and provisions were conceived had not changed very much in 30 years but “very many other things” about ordained ministry had changed very substantially. These included the dwindling proportion of clergy who were vicars, a reduction in ministry households where the stipend was the main source of income, the decline in clergy living in vicarages and church-owned accommodation, the increasing number of clergy in part-time appointments and the fact that women now made up a significant proportion of clergy ranks.
The Ontario Medical Association’s call to slap hot fudge and French fries with a so-called fat tax is a regressive measure that will hurt consumers without any provable benefit. The association is also off-base with its proposal to put graphic photos of diseased organs and limbs on junk food packaging. While the association’s aim of raising awareness is laudable, food is not tobacco and shouldn’t be treated as an inherently harmful substance….
The financial markets have been notably calm of late. Stock indexes have ticked upwards and interest rates on sovereign bonds have drifted downwards. The euro has also remained relatively stable against the dollar. And investor panic seems to have dissipated.
But appearances can be deceiving, said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday. “I’m not so sure that the worst of the crisis is behind us,” he said at a mechanical engineering conference in Berlin, warning that reform efforts needed to be re-doubled to ensure that trust in the euro returns.
His comments were echoed by Yves Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council who was also present at the event. He warned that even if calm had returned to the markets, it could be deceptive. “The bleeding has been stopped, but the patient is not yet in the clear,” he said.
The federal government has filed another mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Bank of America, contending that defective loans generated by the bank’s Countrywide Financial Corp. subsidiary caused mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lose more than $1 billion.
A statement Wednesday from the office of U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara in New York said that after the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, Calabasas-based Countrywide devised a loan-processing system called “Hustle” to “process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints.”
Taxes and government spending. Health care. Immigration. Financial regulation.
They are the issues that have dominated the political debate in recent years and have played a prominent role in this presidential campaign. But in many ways they have obscured what is arguably the nation’s biggest challenge: breaking out of a decade of income stagnation that has afflicted the middle class and the poor and exacerbated inequality.
Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture ”” about work, progress, fairness and optimism ”” are being shaken as successive generations worry about the prospect of declining living standards. No question, perhaps, is more central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform better on that score in the future than it has in the recent past.
“Companies are having to retool their thinking, saying, ”˜What is it that our customers are doing through the mobile channel that is quite distinct from what we are delivering them through our traditional Web channel?’ ” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, the technology research firm.
He added, “It’s hilarious to talk about traditional Web business like it’s been going on for centuries, but it’s last century.”
Americans in their late 30s are now the group most likely to doubt they will be financially secure after retirement, a major shift from three years ago when baby boomers nearing retirement age expressed the greatest worry.
The survey findings by the Pew Research Center, released Monday, reflect the impact of a weak economic recovery beginning in 2009 that has shown stock market gains while housing values remain decimated….
“My biggest fear is not being able to retire,” [37 year old Nicole] Gilliard said as she came out of the courthouse on Meeting Street after work Monday. “I have a 5-year-old, and my biggest fear is that I’m going to have to keep working to put her through school.”
Baby Boomers were the first generation to enjoy the concept of being a teenager, and also the first of the last century to enjoy a prolonged period of national prosperity in which they were encouraged to “have it all”, with widespread home ownership, increasing numbers taking holidays abroad and enjoying the burgeoning consumer economy.
That group of post-war babies are now approaching older age, relinquishing the habits of working life and finding themselves with decades still to live in which they might stay fit and healthy or become increasingly dependent on ”¨help and care from those around them. They ”“ and all of us ”“ are mostly in the dark about when we might crumble physically or mentally.
For many who are retired or ”¨who are facing retirement soon, the huge questions of how long their health will last, who will care from them and how they finance their care are a colossal and persistent worry….
For 33 years, Sánchez Gordillo has been mayor of Marinaleda, pop. 2,700, another farming settlement about 100 miles west of Jódar. Like Jódar, Marinaleda is mostly inhabited by jornaleros. Over the decades, Sánchez Gordillo has transformed the poor village into an islet of social justice and relative prosperity, with almost full employment through communal farming, low taxes, a salary of €1,200 ($1,572), food and housing considered as rights, and “direct democracy” exercised through frequent general assemblies. Sánchez Gordillo and his townsmen launched their movement to build what he calls “a communist utopia” after the death of general and dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, occupying land owned by a member of the royal family and distributing it for communal ownership as well as taking over local airports.
His efforts in Marinaleda long ago earned him a regional following, but Sánchez Gordillo and his lieutenant, the 57-year-old Diego Cañamero, the SAT union’s national spokesman, have gained renown in recent months with a series of controversial protests against the austerity measures embraced by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the Spanish government. On Aug. 7, the two led union members on raids on Carrefour (CA) and Mercadona supermarkets, leaving the stores with shopping carts full of “expropriated” food they gave away to the hungry poor.
The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.
The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.
If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.
Talk about courting the youth vote. French President François Hollande has proposed banning homework as part of a series of policies designed to reform the French educational system.
“Education is priority,” Hollande said in a speech at Paris’s Sorbonne University. “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.”
The justification for this proposed ban? Inequality….
DE SAM LAZARO: Over the years, Father Cullens’s People’s Recovery, Empowerment and Development””or PREDA Foundation””has sheltered and rehabilitated thousands of young women rescued from the sex trade.
[FATHER SHAY] CULLEN: Many of the girls are underage and young and available. On these clubs and bars, this is only the outer, the more legitimate looking trafficking of human beings, no, but the trafficking of minors, younger girls is secret, and it operates on a different system. It’s all done by cell phone, without any direct contact between the supplier, the trafficker, and the customer. They have go-betweens.
DE SAM LAZARO: Their stories have common threads: physical or sexual abuse in childhood and families in various forms of dysfunction and separation. In all cases, abject poverty underlies their child labor and prostitution….
An exit poll showed Mr. Rajoy’s conservative party winning 39 or 40 of the parliament’s 75 seats in his native Galicia, a gain of at least one seat over the Spanish Socialist Party and two smaller rivals. He had touted Galicia as a regional model for the economic-austerity program his government has pursued amid rising popular protest in the rest of Spain.
In the Basque Country, another exit poll showed a surprisingly strong second-place finish by a new radical separatist coalition, apparently enough to help a more-moderate nationalist party oust the ruling coalition between Mr. Rajoy’s party and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party.
The exit polls, taken by the regional government-owned television networks in Galicia and Basque Country, are widely regarded as reliable.
Struggling with shrinking attendance, some churches are shortening their traditional Sunday service, promising to get a generation with limited attention spans out the door in as little as 30 minutes.
These abbreviated ceremonies are aimed at luring back the enormous numbers of young people who avoid Sundays at church. With distractions such as the Internet and a weak connection to the faith of their childhoods, many are steering clear, to the dismay of religious leaders who desperately want them back.
“We are increasingly aware of the time pressures on families, and they have been telling us that the traditional service is too long,” said the Rev. Chip Stokes of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, Fla. “We recognize that things are changing, and we have to be more adaptive without losing our core.”
A resolution from the convention, meeting at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel, reads, in part:
“Resolved, that we will undertake efforts to educate our members and our communities about the negative impact casinos will have …
“Resolved, that we will take action to minimize that negative impact, in particular by opposing a casino in Springfield because of the large number of our fellow citizens made especially vulnerable because of the effects of age, poverty, and addiction in the city; and we will be prepared to help those people who will suffer as a result of this legislation.
Indeed, the impact of this latest round of unconventional monetary policy is already fading. Analysts at Morgan Stanley this week decided that returns in the high-yield market were no longer attractive in the face of deteriorating fundamentals. The stock market is struggling to make further headway, while yields on mortgage-backed securities have started to turn up after an initial drop. A drop in third-quarter capital expenditure suggests the Fed policy hasn’t been a catalyst for corporate investment at all.
One major reason for the lack of effectiveness of this latest round of quantitative easing may well be a growing concern with the “fiscal cliff”, automatic US tax rises and spending cuts due to kick in on January 1. Uncertainty over “cliff risk” ”“ and the prospects of a deal in Congress on deficit reduction ”“ seems to be offsetting any positive impact of Fed policies.
…even though survey accuracy is difficult to achieve and experts are by no means unanimous, it would appear that women are, indeed, catching up. In my own work as a psychologist and in my social circle, I see more women not only having affairs but actively seeking them out. Their reasons are familiar: validation of their attractiveness, emotional connection, appreciation, ego””not to mention the thrill of a shiny new relationship, unburdened by the long slog through the realities of coupledom.
Researchers also point to other factors that might be leading women to stray more. One is what might be called “infidelity overload.” Scan the plots on any given week in television, and there seems to be more extramarital sex than marital sex. (Few spouses stay put in “Mad Men.”) With women portrayed as eager participants and aggressive instigators, there may be a feeling that infidelity has become more acceptable.
And then there is the opportunity factor””more travel, more late nights on the job and more interaction with men mean that the chances and temptations to stray have multiplied for the new generation of working women….
The Adelaide diocese of the Anglican Church must change radically as it faces the tough choice of closing at least a third of its parishes within the next five years.
This was the blunt message from Archbishop Jeffrey Driver to the church last night as he opened its senior decision-making forum, the diocesan synod.
Resources had been drained and the church had endured nine years of turmoil from dealing with the hurt caused by abuse perpetuated by its own ranks.
Newsweek, the 80-year-old US current affairs magazine, is to become an online-only publication.
The last print edition will be on 31 December, reflecting the trend for newspapers and magazines to move online as traditional advertising declines.
Newsweek merged with the internet news group the Daily Beast two years ago.
The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Bangladeshi man in a sting operation on charges he attempted to blow up the New York Federal Reserve Bank with what he believed was a 1,000-pound (450-kg) bomb, federal authorities said.
Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, faces charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. If convicted, he faces life in prison.