| Shootings show need for sensible gun control laws
Now I do think some heavy weapons should be outlawed for instance men should not be able to ever get weapons like ak47's or a 50 cal sniper. Honestly we don't need these weapons in the hands of civilians and i'm not saying they are. just as an example weapons of that caliber don't need to be in our control. " .
Chartered to protect the henhouse, has the FTC turned into a fox?
I rarely get e-mail from the USA Today's Byron Acohido (who from time to time interviews me for my opinions on tech). But today, Acohido drew my attention to a story that he has co-authored with Jon Swartz under the headline FTC under fire as credit bureaus sell consumers' data. The story draws attention to a complex Web of potentially conflicting interests involving Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, the law firm she used to work for, her husband who still works for it, how that law firm represents one of the big three credit reporting bureaus, and whether or not the FTC has morphed into an agent of the credit reporting bureaus' success from the consumer guardian that The People have entrusted it to be. While the targets of this follow-the-money like inquest deny any impropriety, I can certainly understand the position of Robert Kuttner, author of The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity who, who in response to the USA Today inquiry, said: Federal agencies that are supposed to be looking out for the consumer are really protecting the companies that do bad things the agencies were set up to prevent.
Issues 2008
The world's banks issued a record amount of equity in the second half of the year as they sought funds for large deals and rebuilt their balance sheets in the wake of the global credit squeeze. According to data from Dealogic, commercial and investment banks raised equity worth $83bn in the final six months of 2007... an increase of more than 20% on the same period last year, and more than was issued by the banking sector in all of 2005... The figures underline a growing shift in the banking sector towards issuing equity as lenders grapple with turmoil in the credit markets and the need to consolidate assets previously stored in off-balance sheet vehicles." January 2 - Telegraph (Ben Harrington): "The amount of bonds issued by companies fell by 8% last year as the fallout from credit crunch wreaked havoc in debt markets.
Shootings show need for sensible gun control laws
Now I do think some heavy weapons should be outlawed for instance men should not be able to ever get weapons like ak47's or a 50 cal sniper. Honestly we don't need these weapons in the hands of civilians and i'm not saying they are. just as an example weapons of that caliber don't need to be in our control. " .
The New Focus Groups: Online Networks
The sites often bear some resemblance to other social-networking sites, where members create profile pages and post to discussion boards. Companies use them to administer polls, chat in real time with consumers and even ask members to go to the store to try out specific products. The rapid back-and-forth between the company and the online community can help substantially shorten the product-development cycle. It can typically take a year or more from the time a company comes up with a product idea until the item arrives in stores. For Snausages Breakfast Bites, that process took six months. During that time, Del Monte contacted "I Love My Dog" members dozens of times, both as a group and individually. The company has also tapped members for prelaunch insights into other products, including a 50-calorie pack of its Pup-Peroni treat that recently landed on store shelves.
Federal deficit possible, study says
We get that. There is no point in coming on and using your usual Rhetoric 101 trick of discrediting the source, the reporter, the paper, and anyone else in the partisan drivel supply chain. The source does that. Posted 14/01/08 at 10:02 AM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment .
Bureaus adopt new formulas
Credit bureaus are expected to adopt a new version of the widely used FICO credit score this year that will no longer benefit so-called ''authorized users'' on another person's credit card account. It's common for parents to add a child as an authorized user on their credit card to boost the child's credit score. That benefit will no longer exist under a new scoring model by Fair Isaac Corp., the company that developed the FICO score. You can still be an authorized user, but Fair Isaac will no longer factor authorized-user accounts into its credit-scoring formulas. The move is in response to the controversial practice of ''piggybacking'' in which some Web sites allow consumers with poor credit scores to hitch on to someone else's good credit record.
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