Sometimes the best part of the news is made new HeadlineThe can be a source of endless entertainment. The best thing about them is often the headlines. Most of the time I do not care about the real history. The best part is just the title. What I love are not the big stories of the day top finance training. To be honest, I had nothing to do Mel Gibson and he danced naked on a police car while having sex with the head of Moses or whatever they say he did. Of course, I'm not Jewish. But the Protestants were being insulted, I do not think I care either. If Mel's words can shake my faith and insulting as it then obviously it is time to reconsider my own beliefs.No, I enjoyed the news story I saw yesterday on how the India uses a kind of master-primate hunting monkeys off commuter trains. Apparently, the monkeys were getting on the commuter train and make nasty faces scowling at passengers and causing many problems.So, there is another kind of primate with a name I can not remember which scares monkeys. So they got a manager of one of these creatures to patrol trains. I love a good monkey story. As I told a friend yesterday, all stories containing either a monkey or a Monkee is obviously hilarious. My favorite part was a quote at the end by the manager of primates. "There are too many monkeys," he is quoted as saying. I think that says all of this, is not it? How can we focus on Hezbollah, when there are too many monkeys? Is this a bad thing there are too many monkeys? They throw their shit, but again do some Frat boys and the fans of NASCAR, it is difficult to say that everything should be excluded from the game. My favorite track of other yesterday was "the man on his PANTIES FLYING FUDGE THE HEAD." Man, I have not bothered to read the rest of that.Whatever the story is that it could not possibly match with the greatest pleasure of reading the headlines….

Read full article: Best Part of the News is Those Wacky Headlines

A rare example of humanistic altruism in the now much hated world of banking comes from Germany. Erika Schmidt, the manager of a bank branch in Germany was found to be transferring money from rich clients into the accounts of those who were heavily in debt. Her lawyer said that “she couldn’t bear to see my less-fortunate customers go hungry”.

Her aim was to stop the struggling accounts from being closed due to lack of funds. When these accounts became solvent again she would largely transfer the money back again. She took no money herself but was found to have transferred a total of 7.6 million Euros between December 2003  and February 2005.

Inevitably despite her interventions some clients never managed to become solvent again and so the bank lost 1.1 million euros due to the bad debt.

A court in Bonn was viewed the altruistic fraud leniently by handing out a 22 month suspended jail term.

It is reported that the manager lost her job and now lives off a small pension.Her lawyer said “She did it out of compassion for people and now she is as poor as a church mouse herself”

Photo by marie-ll under this creative commons license

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• ‘Robin Hood’ bank manager accused of stealing to help poor (telegraph.co.uk)

The best chocolates in the western USSome best chocolates in America, Part I … In this first article, I will work with chocolates available, or with stores in the American West. I anticipate many more items – we'll see a day should I take in plenty of chocolate for a year sel employed loans. Umm … uum … well, I'll start in northern California with Mendocino Chocolate Company with two locations, one at Fort Bragg and the original shop in Mendocino. I had a lot of their products and they are just delicious. I know the owners, they were longtime friends of my parents so there is always something new to sample when I visit them. This year, their company is observing its 20th anniversary. The truffles are a delight to watch – dark and rich, and the sauces are wonderful. They even called Fire in the Pacific, which is made with dark chocolate and a little kick of red pepper.All their chocolates are handmade, hand dipped and hand packed. The staff takes great care in their products and it shows. They also gift wrapping, and can create wedding favors and a variety of forms, molds chocolate with your logo on them. Stop the next time you are in the region. Or visit them on the web at Mendocino-chocolate.com. Then we'll go in the "City by the Bay, and my birthplace and favorite city, San Francisco. There is a whole complex is dedicated to shops and restaurants unique to the locality Ghirardelli Square. The origin of chocolate, Domingo Ghirardelli, which actually started in Uruguay and Peru before coming to "Yerba Buena" original name (San Francisco) during the gold rush in California. It has opened stores there and Stockton, but with a turn of luck, the fire burns at both these shops down. After a few more places, he rebuilt a store on Kearny and Washington streets with another partner.Soon his wife joined him a

A AOL cansou da caixa alta e virou Aol. Assim mesmo, com ponto no final. A criação da nova identidade é da Wolff Olins de Nova York, que já prepara uma das pioneiras da internet para sua fase pós-Time Warner.

Além da grafia alterada, a nova marca Aol. é representada por dezenas de fundos diferentes, com objetos e animais como balões, cachorro, peixe, etc.

A Aol., que perdeu muito de sua importância nos últimos anos, estreia a nova identidade e campanha publicitária no dia 9 de dezembro, querendo mostrar que é o “local online com o melhor conteúdo, e ponto”.

Além disso, o novo caminho aponta para combater dois problemas: a vertiginosa queda de receita através de assinantes, e por isso o foco em conteúdo, e a imagem que restou de “a internet que o seu pai usa”, ou melhor, que o pai dos americanos usam, já que a Aol. abandonou o barco no Brasil faz tempo.

Quentinha do Brainstorm 9!

Adsense is regarded as one of the strongest tool in a domain publisher’s arms depot.
It enables an individual to monetize their sites simply. If used correctly, it can generate a particularly enormous and healthy earnings for them.
However if you aren’t using them correctly and just maximizing the earnings you squeeze from it, you are basically leaving plenty of money on the table. How you can start getting paid with Adsense can be done simply and quickly.
You’ll be dazzled at the results you’ll be getting in such a brief period of time. There are a lot of folk given the present of being good with words.
Why not make it work in the kind of way that you’re going to be earning some additional money in the middle. There are really 3 steps to put into mind before you start writing your advertisements and having an efficient Adsense. Take note that search engines are taking pride in the standard of their articles and what you will be writing should keep up with their demands. This is where all that you have done at first will go to and this is also where they’re going to prove their worth to you.

The correct positioning of your advertisements should be done with care. According to analyze, the one place that surfers look first when they visit a certain site is the top left. Perhaps it is perhaps because some of the most helpful search engine results are at the top of all other rankings. So visitors have a tendency to look in that same place when browsing thru other sites. By knowing these strategies and working them to your benefit, you may realize that you are going to be getting 3 times more than others who have been formerly doing what they are doing. You should be aware oft his capacity and make the best of it as it is one tough tool that may help you in finding out which adverts are performing best. This way, you can tune up your Adsense advertisements and focus more about the ones being paid a visit to the most instead of people who are being ignored. The explanation behind this is they are recognized as an advert and advert are rarely of any interest that is why folks ignore them.

I’m becoming a different kind of lesbian and a different kind of femme, and it has all been surprising.
I quit shaving my legs about 2 months ago.
I’m becoming the type of lesbian who gets excited about canning and pickling.
I’m that girl who gets excited about baby making, and sewing cloth diapers and pureeing my own baby food.
I’ve been thinking a lot about capitalism, and its role in my life.
I want to know more about where my clothes and food come from.
I’m feeling less and less concerned about grad school and more and more concerned about becoming a responsible human being who tries do to with less.
My cravings for a more open and poly-leaning relationship are waning dramatically because the One I’ve got keeps on seeming more and more like the One I want. Other People ™ are too hard to manage.
What I’m craving now… there is a long list of things… nature walks, community meals, cooperative parenting, knitting groups, quilting circles, vegetable and fruit gardens and cotton summer dresses…
To think I haven’t worn a high-heeled shoe in months, and only recently purchased clothes at a retail store for the first time in almost a year! My sewing and knitting repertoire keeps growing, and so does my skill at home cooked meals. I know how to make pie crust from scratch!

Life is so different for me lately. Am I still femme if I don’t shave my legs? I think so. Do I still count as lovely, sexy, beautiful? Yeah, I think so. But all these words mean such drastic different things from when I was first beginning to belong to this bright glimmering butch-femme community. It would seem that I’m in the process of refining and redefining my femmeininity all over again. How does it happen that way? Just when we decide that we’ve figured ourselves out, something throws a wrench into the gears. I’m taking apart the cogs and unscrewing the wheels, trying to decide what to change when I put it back together next…

Anyone interested in a holiday card, some of my Grandma’s cookies/recipes, or just a little surprise treat of my choosing, feel free to write to me with your mailing address. If you’re feeling vulnerable, but would still like to remember the art of hand-writing letters, I’ll give you my address first.

I love you all so dearly…

Mexico Peso to Gain Up to 20% After Fitch Downgrade, Pimco Says

via Mexico Peso to Gain Up to 20% After Fitch Downgrade, Pimco Says – Bloomberg.com.

In its heyday, DELL, as now, assembled and sold desktops and laptops, primarily to business and government but also to consumers.  The desktops were utilitarian, the laptops not particularly stylish and a bit heavier than others.  But all DELL’s products were serviceable and they were cheap.

DELL’s advantages…

DELL had several advantages over its competition:

1.  it dealt directly with the end consumer, assembling machines to order.  So it had virtually no finished goods inventory

2.  component manufacturers suffered from chronic overcapacity.  So their prices were generally falling.  DELL took delivery of parts on the day a machine was assembled and sold, rather than having a finished machine sitting on a shelf for three months before purchase.  This gave the company a several percentage point cost of goods advantage over rivals.

3.  competitors were weak.  IBM wasn’t sending its best and brightest to make PCs.   A Jobs-less AAPL was drifting.  Compaq was very inefficient, as was HP.  HP then compounded its problems by hiring Carly Fiorina–a marketer with little manufacturing experience–and acquiring Compaq.

4.  DELL uses a negative working capital business model.  That is, customers pay for their DELL computers at present on average 36 days earlier than DELL pays its suppliers and workers for making the machines.  Also, DELL receives payment for warranty or other service contracts in advance.  When short-term interest rates were higher than now, DELL could earn hundreds of millions of dollars in interest income on these “floating” balances.

..where did they all go?

What happened is this:

1.  component making became more sophisticated and expensive.  Suppliers consolidated or dropped out of the business.  Chronic overcapacity abated.  We now appear to be entering, if anything, a period of component shortage.

2.  IBM sold its PC-making business to Lenovo.  Jobs returned to AAPL.  Fiorina was shown the door at HPQ, which promptly hired a veteran manufacturing manager, Mark Hurd, from NCR.  Acer and ASUS emerged as global players in the PC market with low-cost netbooks.

3.  Consumer tastes shifted from heavy and clunky to smartphones, netboooks and sleeker Macs.  DELL didn’t adjust, although it’s trying to do so now.

4.  Vista arrived, causing consumer disenchantment with MSFT-driven computers and encouraging businesses to stay with Windows XP.

5.  The Great Recession developed.  Not only did this reduce demand, but it lowered short-term interest rates to almost nothing, all but erasing DELL’s once significant interest income.

Not all the issues were external, however.

6.  DELL’s quality control and customer service, at least in its consumer business, slipped badly.

Where to from here?

Michael Dell, the company founder, returned to the helm to right a troubled ship in early 2007.

His initial goals were to reduce manufacturing costs and increase production efficiency, in order to raise margins and reverse a sharp slippage in the effectiveness of the company’s negative working capital model.

DELL has also been trying to rationalize product lines (fewer models) and simplify product design.  To this end, it is increasingly turning away from its own manufacturing plants and using contract manufacturers.

I’ve read that Mr. Dell also at least initially wanted to expand the company’s consumer device offerings.  But I can see no specific evidence of this desire in company documents on the website.  And in any event, it seems to me that this market–which is now iPhone, iTouch, Blackberry, Android, netbook–has pretty much run away from DELL.

(By the way, I’ve found the company website much more open and accessible than it was a few years ago, when it was impossible, even as a professional investor, to arrange to get on the company’s email alert list.  The new reporting format this year is also a big step up in delivering relevant investor data.)

International expansion is another theme.

So to is creation of a much larger service business, so that DELL can have more recurring revenue and be less dependent on the PC replacement cycle with large enterprises and government entities.  Hence, the $4 billion (cash) Perot Systems acquisition, which has just closed.

A tough row to hoe

To sum up:   DELL appears to have decided to  start down the same path that IBM began to tread in the late Nineties and onto which HPQ turned two years or so ago.  This seems to be the natural evolution of the IT business–from hardware to software and services.  Two big issues for DELL:   it’s a little late to the game, and the competition is not only ahead of it in this move, but also much less concentrated than DELL is on enterprise and government PCs and servers (about 80% of the company’s business).

Progress so far is hard to assess

This is partly due to the recession itself, partly to DELL having to try to restructure the corporate house during an economic tornado.   I’m not sure how the reorganization is faring, but then I’m not an expert on DELL.  But I didn’t get the sense from listening to last week’s conference call that professional Wall Street tech analysts have a much better idea than I do.  So maybe lack of communication from DELL also plays a part.

Do we as investors need to know?…probably not.

In a case like this, the relevant investment question is:  do I need to know this information, or can I make a decision about the stock without it?  Here, my guess is it’s unlikely that we’ll get strong earnings acceleration from ongoing cost-cutting.   If anything, we may get further unusual losses.  So restructuring is probably a neutral or a mild negative.

Things probably can’t get any worse in the consumer business, since results are close to zero now and DELL seems determined to protect margins at the expense of incremental sales.  Public will go its own counter-cyclical way.   Half of small and medium business customers have already upgraded to Windows 7.

Therefore, the next big potential lift to earnings, I think, will come as and when enterprise customers start to buy new PCs again.  This is unlikely to happen before yearend–and possibly not before the middle of next year.  So my conclusion on DELL  is the best course of action is to watch and wait.

One more post

I have one more post to do on DELL–an analysis of its negative working capital situation and what constraints it potentially places on the company.  It will be out in the next day or two.

La croissance allemande a bien atteint 0,7% au troisième trimestre

via La croissance allemande a bien atteint 0,7% au troisième trimestre.

Individuals Rushing to Bear-Market Funds From JPMorgan to Pimco

via Individuals Rushing to Bear-Market Funds From JPMorgan to Pimco – Bloomberg.com.

As previously pointed out, the question ‘how’s work at the moment?’ is feared and loathed by flancers worldwide. But it is particularly horrorsome when asked by a parent.

Especially when you have called them to borrow money.

‘How are things?’ blithely asks The Mum.  You mumble ‘ok’ whilst trying not to break down over the truth which is that – only ten minutes ago - you were contemplating laying down in the gas oven due to an all-time workless low. The Mum isn’t fooled. She can hear in your voice that things are a bit rum. She distracts you by twittering pleasantly about the nasty hanging baskets Shelia from across the road has put out and laughs at herself for being a curtain twitcher (hey, you can relate, see post No.15). She asks how your friends with jobs are getting on at work (The Mum needs to show interest in a child’s life. And seeing as her child has been virtually unemployed and single for five years – any child will do. But The Mum knows that asking about your life will only upset or embarrass you further, and so she makes this adjustment without realising that this just makes things worse.  Until of course she asks you about the married friends and their new-born children.)

‘Would you like to speak to your dad?’ she asks. All pretence is over.

The dad pulls no punches* and immediately after asking ‘how you’re keeping’ will ask you how you are for money. His gently hectoring tone suggests that any chance of a loan is off, so you reply, ‘fine’ swiftly followed by thinking, *shit!* as you remember that The cunning Dad probably opens your bank statements, as virtually every flancer has used their parents’ home address as their fixed address since university in order to get loans and credit cards. Which, in retrospect is pretty bad because that’s where the bailiff will go first.  The Dad will ‘hmm’ enigmatically and ask about work. You will fluff somewhat and try and distract him by talking about the flashy book/script/project you are working on. This bluster impresses many, but cuts no cheese with The  Dad; who is all about  mortgage and cold hard cash under the mattress. He asks if you need money. You say no. He will ‘hmm’ again and ask what you’re doing today (seeing as you’ve called them at like, 3pm) The honest answer being ‘nothing’, you throw him off the scent by talking about a proper job you were considering getting. He will demand details. You will not have them.

Then you realise that you have a coffee date you are late for. But telling The Dad that you don’t have time to explain how poor and workless you are because you have to go out and dispose of your non-existant disposable income  will further secure your place in the ‘WRITE THIS OFFSPRING OUT OF THE WILL’ file. The Dad senses that you are ready to go and despite everything sends his love (as does mum from the background.) You can hear the theme tune to Murder She Wrote and the kettle whistling.

‘I’ll pop a bit in your account today,’ says Dad. And as you put the phone down trying not to sob, you swear to yourself that when your book sells its first million – before anything else – you will buy that man a sports car.

TODAYS FOOTNOTES

*Dads hate using the phone and talking to their children – even if their children are millionaire entrepreneurs. They just do. If ever you call home and your dad picks up, within twenty seconds he’ll usually say: ‘I’ll put your mum on’

The TARSHEED program has cost a whopping 35 million dollars.

The Ministry of Energy launched, inAug 2007,  an all-encompassing conservation campaign at the start of the summer season in Kuwait. The campaign is called ‘Tarsheed’ which is the Arabic word for “guidance”.  residents in Kuwait were been bombarded with SMS messages, TV & Radio ads, fliers taped to car windshields and stuffed into mailboxes as well as giant placards scattered all over the roads pleading with residents to conserve energy. The Ministry has even ensured that all the languages in Kuwait, from Urdu to Hindi, are included in the campaign. And there is even a hotline that residents can call to report abuses of energy in the country. This was a perfect example of the famous saying ‘ There is darkness below the lamp that glows”. What nobody saw, noticed or reported, is the blatant abuse of power in the government and bank offices, where you can see for yourself, that the lights for all the rooms in the whole building are on 24 x 7. It does not mean that the staff is working round the clock (to raise the productivity index of Kuwait, which is abysmally low). Let the chairman of the Tarsheed campaign take on this education campaign to educate the staff in those government offices to put of the lights & other electrical equipment, when not needed.

Kuwait is the richest country in the World due to its’ mass oil reserves. So, why would a country like this have a problem with energy? Over consumption is the answer. Electricity is cheap in Kuwait. As a result, the public wastes energy because they are not in dire want of it. They take it for granted.

The Tarsheed campaign has been successful in getting the word out and scaring the public silly. No one wants a power shortage. Life comes to a halt in Kuwait when there is no electricity to turn on the AC or even a fan. All you can do is ‘bake’ and pray for the electric to come back on! The public has been very receptive and so far my electricity has not gone off once this summer. And the campaign rolls on. They even installed a few Tarsheed meters around the country. It shows, in real time, the current amount of electricity being used by the country as a whole. The meter has 3 colors…green, orange and red. Motorists passing by the meters can visualize the rate of consumption and (if the meter is in the red area) when they go home they can take appropriate measures to conserve energy and avoid a debilitating power cut.

The newest installment in the rigorous Tarsheed campaign is, what some are calling, the ‘Tarsheed Police’. The Ministry had hired 100 inspectors to ensure that energy is being conserved in Kuwait.

Unfortunately, only recently has Kuwait explored alternatives to deal with the demand for energy for its’ populous. According to the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), a recent study conducted by German scientific research centers have found that if Kuwait utilizes only 10% of its’ total area to generate solar energy from the sun it would be the equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil per day. The Kuwaiti government is vigorously investing in the renewable energies sector. KISR predicts that Kuwait will be a mass exporter of electricity generated by the Sun by 2050 and will export renewable energy to countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Somebody please remind them that ‘Money can’t buy everything’.

FRANKFURT — The International Monetary Fund has approved a $1.4 billion loan arrangement with Angola to help the African country restore macroeconomic balances and rebuild international reserves. The 27-month program provides space for 30% of total central government expenditures on social issues, the IMF said. “Angola has suffered a significant terms-of-trade shock because of the sharp drop in oil prices,” the IMF said in a statement late Monday. “The subsequent large drop in oil revenues caused a sharp slowdown in the economy, weakening of fiscal and external positions, depreciation of the exchange rate, and a rise in inflation.” The IMF welcomed Angola’s plan to establish a sovereign wealth fund. It also said that the resumption of foreign exchange auctions by the National Bank of Angola has contributed to normalizing conditions in the foreign exchange market. Angola’s real GDP is projected to be broadly flat in 2009, reflecting a big drop in oil production and a sharp slowdown in the pace of non-oil growth, the IMF said.

IMF Approves $1.4 Billion Loan For Angola

The first post might as well be the one where I outline the task at hand.  It’s as much a commitment to maintaining a positive attitude and faith that whatever happens ‘is all good’.  As we journey together I will share the story and together we will venture through the trials and tribulations of overcoming seemingly impossible odds – or at least very challenging circumstances.  Nothing is impossible with gods help and that is exactly what is needed.

Over $1m in debt – behind on all the bills including the house and the car and – a plan to earn money with $10 and $100 products.  It’s a tad daunting when the monthly cashflow is $20k.   Hence -the journey – step one is to make the commitment to succeed – to not let anyone down – most of all myself and my family.  And secondly, to share a journey so that others can be inspired and enouraged to overcome financial challenges too!!

a very good trip, food-filling indeed. objectives of Bird’s Nest, Sharks Fin and Magnum achieved.

added power was the buffet of BBQ meats @ Best Beef (it was an incredible selection of a lot of meats thinly cut, esp from a cow) before the marathon, and the swissotel jappie buffet after the marathon.

the bestest was to see my dear friends waiting at the finishing line smiling and frantically waving at me. it gave me the energy to complete the final 200m in smiles. the emotional support is power.

thanks xinyi, yc and par. that, was priceless.

I’m $1,907 away from the place I truly call home.

So I had to pass this along.  This Black Friday Amazon.com is having a sale on metal albums.  All you have to do is punch in the code.   Go here for more details and get yourself some metal!

Online Investing and the Curse of Currency Conversions
By John W Murphy

Recently I had cause to curse the workings of the great financial giants that astride the currency markets. Now I’m not suggesting that I fell foul of currency crooks for millions but in it’s own way I was frustrated by the money system.

I wanted to make an investment in a particular programme that traded in Euro’s. As my home currency is the British Pound it seemed fairly straightforward. All I had to do was send my GBP to a payment processor, use their services to convert to Euro and make the investment. Unfortunately things didn’t work out quite like that.

There was no problem sending the funds from my own account to the payment processor. Next was the conversion to Euro’s. Cringing at the less than favourable exchange rate I was presented with I nevertheless pressed the submit button and hey presto my original GBP miraculously turned into Euro’s.

Then I made the payment to the online programme. All sounds pretty simple really and there is where things went wrong. When I logged in to the online investment plan I realised that the amount of Euro’s I was expecting wasn’t in the account.

As I’d done a similar transaction in the previous week I wasn’t expecting any problems so this was something of a shock. I submitted a support ticket to the online investment group and asked why the funds I had invested weren’t as I’d expected. I was anticipating a reply to say that a mistake had been made and that my full amount would be credited.

What I got was a reply to say that they had invested the sum they had received from the payment processor. Yet I knew that the sum I’d converted was higher than I was seeing on the screen. Doing a little more research I discovered that the online investment programmes’ account with the payment processor was designated in US$.

So, I’d converted GBP to Euro’s in the belief that when I paid the investment account it would transfer the whole amount of Euro’s. That’s where my assumption went awry. What happened in practice was that when my account had been converted into Euro’s the processor then converted the Euro’s to US$ so that they could be applied to the investment company account. These US$ then had to be re-converted to Euro’s to be placed with the investment programme. The result of all this was a cost I wasn’t expecting!

Moral of the story is to check just what machinations your funds have to go through to get from your account to its final destination.

For more great tips on online investing you can visit my blog at http://www.onlineinvestingguru.com

From John Murphy and Online Investing Guru

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_W_Murphy
http://EzineArticles.com/?Online-Investing-and-the-Curse-of-Currency-Conversions&id=3293306

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While advertising agencies make many thousands of dollars promoting the Perth International Art Festival (PIAF), students from the Fremantle John Curtin College of Arts were expected to donate their time last Sunday, as extras for a TV commercial that was shot around His Majesty’s Theatre.

It seems rather strange that kids are expected to work for ‘fame’ only, while everyone else involved gets paid very well. Of course parents also had to ‘donate’ their time to get the kids to the location. Bad manners PIAF!

To stay with John Curtin. Why is it that the year 11 students finished this semester 4 weeks prior to the start of the official school holidays? What are working parents supposed to do with 16 year old kids roaming the streets and beaches without much supervision all day?

Roel Loopers