Things Should Be Aware Of With Regards To Debt Consolidation Reduction Lending Options

At this time, most of us inhabit a good fast-paced, high-technology environment where all sorts of things comes and goes when rapid as being a blink of total eye. Right from e-mails that will messengers that will cards, these items realestatehomesbcseem to be whatever you call now when necessities. Even now, we quite often lose [...]

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Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/07/02/things-should-be-aware-of-with-regards-to-debt-consolidation-reduction-lending-options/

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How Technical Analysis Has Given Great Trading Cues All Year Long

Over the last 12 months, we have seen five technical patterns that you could have used to, at the very least, protect yourself, and, at best, generate cash flow around your core long-term positions.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/09/10/how-technical-analysis-has-given-great-trading-cues-all-year-long/

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Is This 9/11 Casino Promotion A Nice Tribute, Or Just Tacky?

heroesReader Bearcat44 spotted this ad in the Spokane, Wash. Spokesman-Review. It's from an Idaho casino running a promotion tomorrow, September 11th. To honor the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, they're offering special rates to law enforcement, medical personnel, and other first responders in order to honor "heroes who [...]

Source: http://consumerist.com/2012/09/is-this-911-casino-promotion-a-nice-tribute-or-just-tacky.html

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Benefits of Credit Card Debt Consolidation

Consolidation Loans with Bad Credit Is debt consolidation a good solution for my credit card debts? Debtors, upon realizing that in a few years their credit cards would have accumulated thousands of dollars through interests ask the same question. Credit card purchases, in many instances are actually more expensive because of high interest rates. Someone [...]

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Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/06/29/benefits-of-credit-card-debt-consolidation/

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Why Robert Griffin III Dominated Yesterday While All The Other Rookie QBs Stunk

robert griffin iii washington redskins qb against new orleans saints 2012

Robert Griffin III is the talk of the football world today after beating the Saints 40-32 in a fantastic career debut.

He was 19/26 for 320 yards, 2 TDs, and 42 yards rushing on 10 carries.

On the other end of the rookie QB spectrum, Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill, Brandon Weeden, and Russell Wilson all struggled and lost yesterday.

So how did RG3 succeed where all of his peers failed?

It's all about the learning curve. Chris Brown is the editor of Smart Football, and is fantastic at making indecipherable X'o and O's of NFL football understandable. Here's what he had to say about RG3:

Basically, the Redskins helped RG3 transition into the NFL game by running plays and schemes that he's familiar with.

The reason so many rookie QBs struggle is because competence in the NFL requires an intimate understanding of complicated offensive and defensive systems.

If you read any of the preseason stories about Luck, Tannehill, Weeden, and Wilson, you saw a lot about "learning a new offense" and "growing pains" associated with a new NFL system. Traditionally, that's how you break in a new QB — have him forget everything he learned in college, make him run a system he's unfamiliar with, struggle for a few years, and then hope he eventually succeeds.

What the Redskins did with RG3 is different, more creative, and ultimately better in the short-term.

Yes, the NFL defenses will eventually catch up to the college-level read-option stuff that the Redskins are running. But by that time, RG3 will already have some experience under his belt, and will be more prepared to run a true NFL offense than his rookie counterparts.

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Chicago Teachers Strike Symbolizes One Of The Biggest Problems This Country Faces

Aaron Task and I discussed the Chicago teachers strike on DailyTicker this morning. It's a depressing situation that highlights one of the most contentious and important economic issues of our time...

YAHOO'S STACY CURTIN:

Teachers in the Chicago Public School District went on strike for the first time in 25 years Monday after 10 months of contract negotiations came to an impasse over health benefits and teacher evaluations.

"We are concerned that too much of the evaluations will be based on students' standardized test scores. This is no way to measure teacher effectiveness at all," said Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis Sunday night.

The teacher walk-off in the nation's third largest school district has left families scrambling to find alternative childcare for the roughly 350,000 students who are affected by the strike. The school district plans to keep 144 of the city's 675 schools open on a limited basis with non-union workers.

Lewis acknowledges that some progress has been made in the negotiations, including putting more than 500 teachers back to work, restoring some liberal arts classes to the curriculum and guaranteeing new textbooks on the first day of school versus having to wait six weeks for instructional materials.

Moreover, the Chicago school board offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise over the next four years, slightly more than previous offers.

While teachers and education are an important part of our society, "I don't know anybody in this country that is guaranteed a raise of any kind," says The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task in the accompanying video.

According to reports, the average teacher in Chicago currently earns $76,000 a year, well above the national average income of roughly $30,000 a year.

"This is one of the most important issues the country faces right now," says Henry Blodget of the backlash many government workers are facing over their wages and pensions. "The private sector has changed [and] the middle class has been gutted. You now have 1 percent of Americas who work at Wal-Mart, most of them on the floor making $12 dollars an hour."

While Chicago teachers make much more than the average private sector employee, Blodget is shocked to hear that the labor union is stalling negotiations over performance evaluations based on the outcomes of standardized test results. He does, however, acknowledge the union's argument that teachers do not have complete control over a student's performance.

The Chicago school system faces a $667 million deficit this year, which will balloon to nearly $1 billion by next year. Chicago is not alone in its fiscal crisis. Many cities and states around the country are grappling with how to maintain the education status quo and keep teacher pension funds solvent.

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GM Is Losing Up To $49,000 Per Volt Sold

chevy volt

* GM losing as much as $49,000 per Volt sold

* Cheap leases likely only exacerbate the losses

* GM still years away from break even on the car

* New plug-in competitors soon from Ford, Honda

Sept 10 (Reuters) - General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August - but that probably isn't a good thing for the automaker's bottom line.

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.

And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.

GM's basic problem is that "the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced," said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group.

And in a sign that there may be a wider market problem, Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi have been struggling to sell their electric and hybrid vehicles, though Toyota's Prius range has been in increasing demand.

GM's quandary is how to increase sales volume so that it can spread its estimated $1.2-billion investment in the Volt over more vehicles while reducing manufacturing and component costs - which will be difficult to bring down until sales increase.

But the Volt's steep $39,995 base price and its complex technology - the car uses expensive lithium-polymer batteries, sophisticated electronics and an electric motor combined with a gasoline engine - have kept many prospective buyers away from Chevy showrooms.

Some are put off by the technical challenges of ownership, mainly related to charging the battery. Plug-in hybrids such as the Volt still take hours to fully charge the batteries - a process that can been speeded up a bit with the installation of a $2,000 commercial-grade charger in the garage.

PLANT SHUTDOWN

The lack of interest in the car has prevented GM from coming close to its early, optimistic sales projections. Discounted leases as low as $199 a month helped propel Volt sales in August to 2,831, pushing year-to-date sales to 13,500, well below the 40,000 cars that GM originally had hoped to sell in 2012.

Out in the trenches, even the cheap leases haven't always been effective.

A Chevrolet dealership that is part of an auto dealer group in Toms River, New Jersey, has sold only one Volt in the last year, said its president Adam Kraushaar. The dealership sells 90 to 100 Chevrolets a month.

The weak sales are forcing GM to idle the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant that makes the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks from September 17, according to plant suppliers and union sources. It is the second time GM has had to call a Volt production halt this year.

GM acknowledges the Volt continues to lose money, and suggests it might not reach break even until the next-generation model is launched in about three years.

"It's true, we're not making money yet" on the Volt, said Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product programs and the former Volt development chief, in an interview. The car "eventually will make money. As the volume comes up and we get into the Gen 2 car, we're going to turn (the losses) around," Parks said.

"I don't see how General Motors will ever get its money back on that vehicle," countered Sandy Munro, president of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which performs detailed tear-down analyses of vehicles and components for global manufacturers and the U.S. government.

It currently costs GM "at least" $75,000 to build the Volt, including development costs, Munro said. That's nearly twice the base price of the Volt before a $7,500 federal tax credit provided as part of President Barack Obama's green energy policy.

Other estimates range from $76,000 to $88,000, according to four industry consultants contacted by Reuters. The consultants' companies all have performed work for GM and are familiar with the Volt's development and production. They requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their auto industry ties. [Factbox on estimates -- nL2E8K7HPC]

Parks declined to comment on specific costs related to the Volt.

The independent cost estimates obtained by Reuters factor in GM's initial investment in development of the Volt and its key components, as well as new tooling for battery, stamping, assembly and supplier plants - a price tag that totals "a little over" $1 billion, Parks said. Independent estimates put it at $1.2 billion, a figure that does not include sales, marketing and related corporate costs.

Spread out over the 21,500 Volts that GM has sold since the car's introduction in December 2010, the development and tooling costs average just under $56,000 per car. That figure will, of course, come down as more Volts are sold.

The actual cost to build the Volt is estimated to be an additional $20,000 to $32,000 per vehicle, according to Munro and the other industry consultants.

The production cost estimates are considerably higher than those for the Chevrolet Cruze, the Volt's conventional gasoline-engine sister car, which Munro estimates at $12,000 to $15,000 per vehicle.

Production costs typically include such items as parts, material, labor and the cost to run the factory, according to manufacturing expert Ron Harbour, who heads the North American Automotive Practice at Michigan-based consultant Oliver Wyman.

COST PENALTIES

The Volt costs more to build for several reasons, mostly related to the car's richer content, complex technology and still-low sales and production volumes.

The basic model has a higher level of equipment and features than the Cruze, which is assembled in Lordstown, Ohio, and has a starting sales price of $17,925. The Volt also has a number of unique parts, including the battery pack, the electric motor and the power electronics.

Some of GM's suppliers also impose cost penalties on the automaker because the Volt's production volume remains well below projections.

Still, as the company wrestles with how to drive down costs and increase showroom traffic, Parks said the Volt is an important car for GM in other respects.

"It wasn't conceived as a way to make tons of money," he said. "It was a big dip in the technology pool for GM. We've learned a boatload of stuff that we're deploying on other models," Parks said. Those include the Cruze and such future cars as the 2014 Cadillac ELR hybrid.

The same risky strategy - gambling on relatively untested technology - drove massive investments by Toyota Motor Corp in the Prius hybrid and Nissan Motor Co in the Leaf electric car.

Toyota said it now makes a profit on the Prius, which was introduced in the United States in 2000 and is now in its third generation. Sales of the Prius hybrid, which comes in four different versions priced as low as $19,745, have almost doubled so far this year to 164,408.

Other such vehicles haven't done nearly as well. Nissan's pure-electric Leaf, which debuted at the same time as the Volt and retails for $36,050, has sold just 4,228 this year, while the Honda Insight, which has the lowest starting price of any hybrid in the U.S. at $19,290, has sales this year of only 4,801. The Mitsubishi i, an even smaller electric car priced from $29,975, is in even worse shape, with only 403 sales.

Toyota's unveiling of the original Prius caught U.S. automakers off guard. GM, then under the leadership of Rick Wagoner and Bob Lutz, decided it needed a "leapfrog" product to tackle Toyota and unveiled the Volt concept to considerable fanfare at the 2007 Detroit auto show.

The car entered production in the fall of 2010 as the first U.S. gasoline-electric hybrid that could be recharged by plugging the car into any electrical outlet. The Obama administration, which engineered a $50-billion taxpayer rescue of GM from bankruptcy in 2009 and has provided more than $5 billion in subsidies for green-car development, praised the Volt as an example of the country's commitment to building more fuel-efficient cars.

NEXT-GENERATION CAR

GM's investment in the Volt has so far been a fraction of the $5 billion that Nissan said it is spending to develop and tool global production of the Leaf and its associated technologies and the reported $10 billion or more that Toyota has plowed into the Prius and various derivatives over the past decade.

But there will inevitably be more development costs for future generations of GM plug-ins and it could still could be years before GM sells enough Volts to bring the cost down to break even.

The average per-car costs for development and tooling will drop as sales volume rises. But GM will need to sell 120,000 Volts before the per-vehicle cost reaches $10,000 - and that may not occur during the projected five-year life cycle of the first-generation Volt.

Parks said the company also is continuously reducing production costs on the current Volt and its successor. "There is a strong push on the cost of the Gen 2 to get the car to make money and to be more affordable . . . Virtually every component in the next-gen car is going to be cheaper," he said.

One obvious way to pull down costs is to push up volume - but GM is paying a hefty price to do so.

The automaker just ended a special Volt lease program that offered customers a low monthly payment of $279 a month for two years, with some high-volume dealers dropping the payment to $199 a month after receiving incentive money from GM, with down payments as low as $250. The company said about two-thirds of Volt customers in July and August leased their vehicles, compared with about 40 percent earlier this year.

Before GM resorted to discounting Volt leases, sales were averaging just over 1,500 cars a month. A huge part of that reason was consumer push back over the price, according to Virag of Automotive Consulting.

Volt's nearest competitor, the Prius, is priced at $24,795, with a newer version, the Prius Plug-In, starting at $32,795.

Parks said the sales pitch for the Volt was "difficult" because of the sticker price and the car's technical complexity. But the discounted leases have helped lure more non-GM buyers into Chevy showrooms. Their number-one trade-in: Toyota Prius.

Raymond Chevrolet, in suburban Chicago, sells an average 1,000 Chevys a month, including three to seven Volts. Dealership president Mark Scarpelli said that "some people who like the concept of an electric vehicle find it cost-prohibitive."

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Turns Out It Was An Angry (Now Arrested) Ex-Girlfriend Who Called In Security Threat To U.S. Airways

usairwaysexI do have to say that while there is no direct evidence that it was an angry ex-girlfriend who was responsible for calling in a security threat and naming her former boyfriend as a bad guy smuggling bad things on a flight to Dallas-Fort Worth this week, someone who isn't upset doesn't do that to another [...]

Source: http://consumerist.com/2012/09/turns-out-it-was-an-angry-now-arrested-ex-girlfriend-who-called-in-security-threat-to-u-s-airways.html

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NEW YORK FASHION WEEK: The Hottest Looks From The Nautica Men's And Rebecca Minkoff Shows

rebecca minkoff, fashion week 2012, fw2012, bi, dng

It may only be early fall, but the fashion world is already gearing up for Spring 2013 at New York Fashion Week. Once the warm weather rolls around, floral patterns, pastels, and lots of funky accessories will be in for women.

This year at Lincoln Center, Olympians are stealing the stage. We spotted Ryan Lochte next to the former reality TV star Lauren Conrad at the Rebecca Minkoff show.

Dive in and check out what else is happening this week at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.

The Nautica men's line showed on the roof of the Empire Hotel, just steps away from busy Lincoln Center.

For guys, the spring looks were a combination of light suits and beachwear.

No worries about post-Labor Day white here.. This model is playing it cool in the sun.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The Truth About The ECB's Plans To 'Sterilize' Its Purchases Of Government Debt

Mario Draghi ECB press conference

When the ECB announced its new plan to buy peripheral government debt in Europe (for the purpose of reducing yields) there was some concern over the fact that the purchases were going to be "sterilized."

In theory what this means is that if, say, the ECB goes out and buys 50 billion EUR worth of sovereign debt, then somewhere else it will remove 50 billion EUR from the system so as to avoid inflation (and placate the Germans).

Some people wondered: What assets will the ECB sell in order to finance these purchases.

But the market was clearly not worried about this sterilization news, as evidenced by the big market surge on Thursday and Friday, as investors realized that "sterilization" is mostly for show, with little real impact on the amount of money in the system.

In a note from last December, JPM's Greg Fuzesi explained how the ECB engaged in bond sterilization (this was in reference to the old SMP program, but the gist is the same.

When the ECB purchases peripheral government bonds through its Securities Markets Programme (SMP), it pays for these by creating new bank reserves (i.e., through the modern form of printing money). In terms of its balance sheet, both assets and liabilities increase. The purchased peripheral bonds are held as assets in the SMP category and are matched on the liability side by a larger amount of bank reserves. In the first instance, the new reserves are added to the current accounts that commercial banks hold at the ECB. In this form, the reserves are fully liquid as they count towards meeting banks’ reserve requirements and they can be used to settle interbank payments.

The way the ECB has chosen to sterilize these reserves balances is to encourage banks to shift them from the fully liquid current accounts into fixed term deposits, which are just another form of reserves. The ECB could offer these at any maturity but has chosen a short maturity of just one week (likely for operational reasons). The deposits are auc- tioned through a tender procedure, which requires banks put in bids, stating the amount they are willing to tie down for the one week period and the interest rate at which they are willing to do so. The maximum interest rate that the ECB is willing to pay is the main policy interest rate, and it be- gins by picking the cheapest bids until it has met its target level.

So basically, the "sterilization" just means that banks commit to keep some cash at the ECB for a fixed period of time, so it doesn't technically enter the system. And since that money at the ECB is liquid and guaranteed it's not a problem.

As for whether the sterilization really matters, the answer is: Not really.

First, it does not shrink the ECB’s balance sheet back to its original size, as would be the case if the ECB sold other assets to finance its SMP purchases. It is of course debatable whether a larger central bank balance sheet is a source of concern per se (e.g., of the inflationary sort). But, even if it is, the sterilization method used by the ECB clearly does not address this concern.

Second, viewed from the perspective of the banking system, purchases of peripheral government bonds by the central bank remove a risky asset and replace it permanently with highly liquid reserves (whether these are subsequently sterilized or not). In addition, the sterilization operation ties the funds down for only a very short one-week period and these can still be used as collateral at other ECB refi- nancing operations. Hence, the sterilization itself does not neutralize the impact on the banking system’s balance sheet, which has become permanently more liquid. Whether this, in itself, encourages banks to lever up in other ways (e.g., by making other risky investments or aggressively growing their loan books) is debatable. But, in any case, the sterilization does not fully reverse the changes.

So it's just technical accounting stuff. The ECB can buy unlimited volumes of sovereign debt, provided the country whose debt its buying remains in good compliance with reforms.

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