Financial thoughts

Sale, schmale.

Used to be, customers would come running when stores cut prices. But these days, more Americans are becoming blase about bargains.

Jennifer Beasley recently left a Toys R Us in Cary, N.C., unimpressed by the retailer’s offers that day of 50 percent discounts on things like a $150 Sylvania tablet computer and a $45 My Baby Alive Doll.

“The sales just aren’t as good this year,” says Beasley, 30, who has three children. “It’s almost not worth getting up.”

People have been shopping more than ever this holiday season, largely because of a flood of sales. But Americans have become so used to deep discounts that they expect each sale to be bigger and better than the last. That means retailers will likely have to keep slashing prices, which could hurt their bottom line.

“I think they’re going to have to continue to do the kind of `come on’ pricing that you saw on Black Friday,” or the day after Thanksgiving, says Alison Paul, head of consulting firm Deloitte’s U.S. retail practice.

Merchants already are rolling out big holiday sales. The Body Shop is letting customers spin a wheel of chance to win different discounts, including offers of “buy three, get three.” The Gap is selling many of its pajamas, kids’ hoodies and men’s cardigans for 50 percent off. And Target has Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine and many of its other toy brands for “buy one, get one half off.”

But shoppers are yawning at deals that once excited them.

“The ads and the sales _ I think it’s all hype,” says Karen Finch of Gresham, Ore., who is waiting to buy a tablet for her son until closer to Christmas Day because she thinks the discounts on Amazon.com _ 48 percent off a $500 Blackberry version, for instance _ aren’t good enough. “There’s no substance.”

To be sure, consumers’ perceptions of deals don’t always jibe with reality. Most retailers decline to discuss their pricing strategy because of competitive reasons, but research by analysts at Jefferies & Co. and other firms found that many deals this year are as good as _ if not better than _ last year’s.

For instance, American Eagle offered 40 percent off everything all day on Black Friday _ better than the 20 percent off until noon that it offered for the past two years, according to Jefferies analysts. The average discount at Best Buy on Black Friday was almost 45 percent, up from about 34 percent last year. The average discount at Wal-Mart was about 47 percent, better than last year’s average of 43 percent.

And anyway, what shoppers say and do often are two different things. Consumers told Deloitte in September that they planned to spend about 5 percent less on Christmas this year. But the reality so far is different: Americans spent $52.4 billion over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the highest total ever recorded for that period and 16 percent greater than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

“You can’t always listen to what they say,” says Allen Adamson, managing director at the branding company Landor Associates. “What counts is what they do at checkout.”

Indeed, Atty Zschau of Portland, Ore., has been disappointed with the holiday sales she’s seen so far this year. But instead of going home empty-handed on Black Friday, she shelled out $800 _ full price _ for a Dell laptop that will be shared among her family.

“We’re normally `deal’ people,” says Zschau, an acupuncturist. But, “All the stuff that was on sale was not what we wanted.”

The discontent with discounts comes at a time when many Americans are struggling with job losses and stagnant wages. Many shoppers simply have less money to spend this holiday season: The median U.S. household income was $49,445 last year, down from $50,303 two years before.

And deals just don’t seem as good if the iPad tablet computer you want is still outside of your budget. A $1,000 TV marked down 20 percent might seem like a good deal for a shopper who has $800 to spend. But it’s not such a fab find for someone with only $700 in his pocket.

“Discounts are supposed to mean, `I can get it,’” says Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School professor specializing in consumer psychology. “So if you can’t get it, it doesn’t feel like a very good discount.”

Cost-conscious shoppers also have a long memory about the better sales they’ve seen in the last few years, says Alison Jatlow Levy, retail strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon. For instance, teen retailer Aeropostale offered discounts on Black Friday of 50 percent off everything and another 20 percent off until mid-afternoon. But that may not have been enough for Aeropostale shoppers who remember that the chain slashed prices up to 70 percent all day in previous years.

“Customers probably remember that last year things were 60 percent off, and this year maybe they’re only 25 or 40 percent off,” Levy says of some store discounts. “But those things probably weren’t 60 percent off until closer to Christmas.”

Rebecca Walden of Birmingham, Ala., learned that lesson the hard way. Last year, she and her husband stayed up late on Thanksgiving night buying Christmas gifts online for their daughter, who was then one-years-old. They were patting themselves on the back about the discounts of 10 to 20 percent off they got on toys like a rocking horse, a play kitchen and a set of 150 building blocks. That is, until they found many of those same items on sale for half off later in the season.

Walden, 33, decided not to repeat that mistake. So she’s done virtually none of her Christmas shopping yet. She’s waiting it out for a deal on a few items, like a sale on a Wiggles guitar, which generally runs at least $65.

“I’m not convinced they’ve hit rock-bottom prices yet and Christmas is still several weeks away,” Walden says. “I think the phrase is `playing chicken.’”

____

Sarah Skidmore reported from Portland, Ore. Christina Rexrode reported from New York.

Follow AP retail coverage at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Retail.

Source

Will the new voice of economic development in St. Louis be coming from a few hours’s drive east?

Louisville media are reporting this morning that Joe Reagan, chief executive of Greater Louisville, Inc., is telling people that he’s one of two finalists for the top job at the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. Spokespeople for RCGA and GLI did not immediately return calls Monday morning, but Insider Louisville.com reports that Reagan recently e-mailed supporters about the news, and GLI confirmed it to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

News about RCGA’s search has been held close since longtime CEO Richard Fleming announced in January that he is retiring. Fleming is due to leave at year’s end, and presumably the RCGA board hopes to make a hire before then. Last week, people familiar with the search told the Post-Dispatch that the search committee was down to three finalists - one local and two from elsewhere - and that an announcement was expected soon.

Also last week, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay stirred the pot with a blog post calling for the RCGA’s economic development role to be joined in with the economic development agencies of St. Louis City and County and said he’d discuss such a move with whoever the new CEO is. The idea was met with a rebuke by RCGA’s two top board members and skepticism by other in the regional economic development world.

In Reagan, RCGA would be getting a new boss with experience running the same type of organization. Greater Louisville Inc. is both an economic development group and a Chamber of Commerce, funded mostly by private businesses with some public support. He has run GLI since 2005 and makes about $400,000 a year, according to Insider Louisville.

To get a sense of what he might earn running the $9 million-a-year RCGA: Fleming made $467,000 in base pay and bonuses in 2009, plus another $136,000 in benefits and retirement compensation and a $196,000 payout on a multiple-year retirement package, according to RCGA’s tax return. The website reports that some GLI companies are raising money to keep Reagan in Louisville.

Source

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, emerging as the biggest winner in the first round of parliamentary elections, sought Saturday to reassure Egyptians that it would not sacrifice personal freedoms in promoting Islamic law.

The deputy head of the Brotherhood’s new political party, Essam el-Erian, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the group is not interested in imposing Islamic values on Egypt, home to a sizable Christian minority and others who object to being subject to strict Islamic codes.

“We represent a moderate and fair party,” el-Erian said of his Freedom and Justice Party. “We want to apply the basics of Shariah law in a fair way that respects human rights and personal rights,” he said, referring to Islamic law.

The comments were the clearest indication that the Brotherhood was distancing itself from the ultraconservative Islamist Nour Party, which appears to have won the second-largest share of votes in the election’s first phase.

The Nour Party espouses a strict interpretation of Islam similar to that of Saudi Arabia, where the sexes are segregated and women must be veiled and are barred from driving.

Egypt’s election commission has released few official results from the voting on Monday and Tuesday. But preliminary counts have been leaked by judges and individual political groups showing both parties could together control a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament if they did form an alliance.

The Brotherhood recently denied in a statement that it seeks to form an alliance with the Nour Party in parliament, calling it “premature and mere media speculation.”

On Saturday, el-Erian made it clear that the Brotherhood does not share Nour’s more hard-line aspirations to strictly enforce Islamic codes in Egyptians’ daily lives.

“We respect all people in their choice of religion and life,” he said.

Another major check on such an agenda is the council of generals who have run the country since President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February. The military council, accused by Egypt’s protest movement of stalling a transition to civilian and democratic rule, is seeking to limit the powers of the next parliament and maintain close oversight over the drafting of a new constitution.

Egypt already uses Shariah law as the basis for legislation, however Egyptian laws remain largely secular as Shariah does not cover all aspects of modern life.

On its English-language Twitter account, the Brotherhood said that its priorities were to fix Egypt’s economy and improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians, “not to change (the) face of Egypt into (an) Islamic state.”

El-Erian urged the Brotherhood’s political rivals to accept the election results.

“We all believe that our success as Egyptians toward democracy is a real success and we want everyone to accept this democratic system. This is the guarantee for stability,” he said.

For decades, Mubarak’s regime suppressed the Brotherhood, which was politically banned but managed to establish a vast network of activists and charities offering free food and medical services throughout the country’s impoverished neighborhoods and villages.

It is the best organized of Egypt’s post-Mubarak political forces.

The vote for parliament’s lower house is taking place over three stages, with 18 provinces in Egypt yet to vote.

Meanwhile, the swearing-in of a new temporary Cabinet was delayed on Saturday due to disagreements over key posts, including over who will lead the ministry in charge of internal security.

An official in the Interior Ministry said several high-ranking security officials have been named as possible replacements but that some have turned down the offer.

Protesters have also strongly objected to the nominations put forward by newly appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri, who served in the same position under ousted President Hosni Mubarak from 1996 to 1999.

The country’s ruling military general, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, appointed el-Ganzouri as a new interim prime minister last month after the previous premier’s government resigned in the wake of a police crackdown on protesters that killed over 40 people.

The interim Cabinet will serve until after the parliamentary elections finish in March. A new government is to be formed after the legislature is seated.

Activist Hussein Hammouda, a retired police brigadier, is among those opposed to the names being considered for the Interior Minister post and says someone from outside the police force should be chosen instead.

Protesters in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s protests, released a statement saying they would continue their sit-in while allowing traffic to resume normally in the area.

There were tens of thousands of protesters in the square in the days leading up to the elections, but numbers have dwindled to several hundred since then. Protesters demanding el-Ganzouri be replaced as prime minister said they will keep up another sit-in outside the Cabinet headquarters.

Source

For more than two months, they were open-air communes where people came to rebuild society and start a nationwide discussion on how to close the wide gap between the rich and the poor. But as Occupy Wall Street tent cities fade away, a growing number of protesters are pushing to put a clear message ahead of the movement.

Alan Collinge has his list ready _ return bankruptcy protection to student loans. Bring back regulations that were removed from the Glass-Steagall Act. End corporate personhood.

“They should come up with a short term list of no brainer agenda items,” said Collinge, wearing a huge sign in the rain at New York’s Zuccotti Park calling for student loan reforms.

More than a dozen other protesters interviewed by The Associated Press also came up with a wish list of specifics to address what they say is corporate greed and economic inequality. The list of demands ranged from the simple _ get corporate money out of politics _ to the ethereal (make sure Washington politicians act with a moral conscience).

Asking Occupy protesters what, exactly, they would do to reform government and the financial system is a loaded question and a source of internal conflict. Collinge, 41, of Tacoma, Wash., said he has unsuccessfully lobbied Occupy’s general assembly meetings in New York to develop a strong platform, but has been rebuffed.

“A lot of people, they think that this should be sort of a catchall” for every issue, he said, the goal being to expose the economic problems in the country, not solve them.

Other cities’ movements have held meetings of committees with titles like “cohesive messaging” to discuss strategy, but haven’t agreed on listing specifics as a movement. The greater purpose isn’t to influence the government or the financial system through classic demands, but to foster broad cultural changes that will gradually empower people to stop depending on big corporations and Wall Street money.

“All the energy has gone into an outcry over economic conditions, with the hope that others will join us and pick up issues they care about,” says Bill Dobbs, press liaison for Occupy Wall Street in New York. “Our best hope is inspiring other people to take action to bring economic justice.”

Some observers and experts predict that Occupy groups may spend the next few months focusing on smaller actions while waiting for the summer when the Republican and Democratic conventions would give Occupiers a world-wide audience.

But ask around, and protesters who spent weeks living in encampments and talking about the country’s woes have a clear idea of what they want.

A number have called for limiting campaign donations and getting big money out of politics. Some Occupy members want to limit the amount of money a person is allowed to give a politician. Others want to ban corporate donations specifically, or the number of campaign ads.

“How did Abraham Lincoln ever become president without a television set?” asked Ryan Peterson, an entertainment company worker from Chicago who lived for weeks in Zuccotti Park. Paul Lemaire, a 20-year-old visual arts student from Brooklyn, wants the two-party system eliminated.

The influence of money in politics is one of the greatest factors behind the gap between the superrich and the poor, said James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, which published a report last year on economic disparity. It shows “that they’re very focused in understanding the root causes” of the country’s economic issues, he said.

The call for tighter regulation of campaign contributions won’t gain traction anytime soon. The Supreme Court, in its landmark Citizens United decision in January 2010, cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited funds to influence elections, often using money from anonymous donors paperless payday loans. The court struck down most of the so-called McCain-Feingold law that had set tight restrictions on such donations, arguing that government did not have the right to regulate political speech.

Campaign regulation, stopping wars that strain resources, halting corporate personhood _ the spending power given to corporations in the 2010 Supreme Court ruling _ and addressing higher education costs have emerged as key goals of the Occupy movement in Los Angeles. Organizers say they are now focusing on sharpening their objectives, as police moved in to shut down the two-month-old encampment this week.

“We’ve been collecting ideas, seeing what the priorities are, vetting and researching them,” said activist Suzanne O’Keeffe, a member of Occupy LA’s Demands & Objectives Committee.

Los Angeles member Mario Brito said the movement plans to pressure elected and bank officials for a moratorium on foreclosures, and said members would “occupy” bank lobbies, boardrooms and executives’ homes to force the action.

In Minneapolis, five members of the Occupy MN “Cohesive Messaging Committee” gathered to talk strategy this week at a downtown coffee shop, asking that people attending recent General Assembly meetings fill out cards expressing broad themes that were important to them. The group entered the cards into a spreadsheet and found economic justice, democracy, education and campaign finance reform as the common themes.

Collinge, an aerospace engineer who later founded a website about problems with student loans, lists the congressional bill he wants passed to return bankruptcy protections to student loans. The Depression-Era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking, is another named law cited at the top of protesters’ demands in cities across the country. Most of the restrictions that regulated the two forms of banking were repealed in 1999, and are blamed by many economists for contributing to the financial crisis in 2007.

Kalle Lasn, the co-founder of Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that helped ignite the Occupy movement, supports a 1 percent global “Robin Hood” tax on big financial transactions. Similar taxes and increases have been proposed for years, including the Obama administration’s “financial crisis responsibility fee” tax proposal of last year, intended to raise $90 billion over the next decade.

As individual protesters and movements fashion a platform, experts and organizers warned that defining the movement more broadly keeps everyone in and keeps responsibility in the hands of the power brokers.

“They’ve achieved a lot by having the open ended process that they’ve had so far,” said Parrott, the Fiscal Policy Institute’s chief economist. “They should be selective in that there are some people who are trying to glom onto the stage that they’ve created” with ideas that aren’t part of the main movement.

Will Birney, who left his job as a waiter in Westport, Ct., to join Occupy’s New York movement, has one wish, although it can’t be passed into law or regulated by the Treasury Department.

“I would instill a fair conscience, if people could look to morality,” said Birney, 26.

He knows he’s reaching, but says that’s the point of the movement.

“I’m not even thinking we’re going to get concrete solutions out of this,” he said. “All I want is a change.”

Source

Fresh clashes between security forces and Egyptian protesters demanding the military step down broke out Saturday in front of the Cabinet building, leaving one man dead, as violence threatened to overshadow next week’s parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling military council that took power after Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February, met separately with opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and presidential hopeful Amr Moussa, who was the former head of the Arab League. Egyptian state TV reported the meetings but gave no details.

The new prime minister, whose appointment by the military on Friday touched off a wave of anger among protesters accusing the army of trying to perpetuate the old regime, also held a series of meetings trying to sway youth groups to his side.

State TV said Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri, who is unpopular in part because he served under Mubarak, offered Cabinet positions and is pondering the formation of an advisory council to be composed of leading democracy advocates and presidential hopefuls.

The suggestion however failed to disperse the protesters, with nearly 10,000 packing into Cairo’s central Tahrir Square as organizers called for another mass rally on Sunday.

Twenty-four protest groups, including two political parties, have announced they are creating their own “national salvation” government to be headed by ElBaradei with deputies from across the political spectrum to which they demanded the military hand over power.

ElBaradei said in a statement that he would be willing to form a such a government to manage the country’s transition, and that if he were officially asked to put a government together, he would give up the idea of running for president in order to focus on the current phase of transition.

Outside the Cabinet building, hundreds of protesters set up camp, spending the night in blankets and tents to prevent the 78-year-old el-Ganzouri from entering to take up his new post. Early Saturday, they clashed with security forces who allegedly tried to disperse them.

An Associated Press cameraman saw three police troop carriers and an armored vehicle firing tear gas as they were being chased from the site by rock-throwing protesters.

The man who was killed was run over by one of the vehicles, but there were conflicting accounts about the circumstances surrounding the death.

The Interior Ministry expressed regret for the death of the protester, identified as Ahmed Serour, and said it was an accident. Police didn’t intend to storm the sit-in but were merely heading to the Interior Ministry headquarters, located behind the Cabinet building, when they came under attack by angry protesters throwing firebombs, it said in a statement. The ministry claimed security forces were injured and the driver of one of the vehicles panicked and ran over the protester.

One of the demonstrators, Mohammed Zaghloul, 21, said he saw six security vehicles heading to their site.

“It became very tense, rock throwing started and the police cars were driving like crazy,” he said. “Police threw one tear gas canister and all of a sudden we saw our people carrying the body of a man who was bleeding really badly.”

Officials say more than 40 people have been killed across the country since Nov. 19, when the unrest began after a small sit-in by protesters injured during the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak was violently broken up by security forces. That sparked days of clashes, which ended with a truce on Thursday. It wasn’t clear whether the melee on Saturday was an isolated incident or part of fresh violence by security forces trying to clear the way for the new prime minister, and protesters frustrated by what they believe are the military’s efforts to perpetuate the old regime.

“El-Ganzouri was pulled out of his grave. He was a dead man,” said a 39-year-old employee Ahmad Anas as chants against the head of the military council filled the air outside the Cabinet building: “Tantawi and el-Ganzouri are choking me.” A banner hanging over the building gates read: “closed until execution of field marshal.”

El-Ganzouri served as prime minister under Mubarak between 1996 and 1999. His name has been associated with failed mega projects including Toshka, an ambitious and expensive scheme to divert Nile water at the southern tip of Egypt to create a second Nile Valley. The project has cost billions and barely gotten off the ground.

The military’s appointment of el-Ganzouri, along with its apology for the death of protesters and a series of partial concessions in the past two days suggest that the generals are struggling to overcome the most serious challenge to their nine-month rule, with fewer options now available to them.

Hala al-Kousy, a 37-year-protester, vowed that protesters will not leave the square until the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the formal name of the military’s ruling council, gives up power.

“They are willing to wait and so are we,” al-Kousy said.

Egypt’s first parliamentary elections since Mubarak was replaced by the military council are slated to begin Monday. The vote, which the generals say will be held on schedule despite the unrest, is now seen by many activists and protesters to be serving the military’s efforts to project an image of itself as the nation’s saviors and true democrats.

However, boycotting elections is a hard choice for many youth groups who rose up against Mubarak’s autocratic regime in hopes of ushering in democracy, fair and free elections. Others have been engaged in awareness campaigns or are fielding candidates. Many said that even if they vote, they will continue their sit-in.

Mohammed el-Qassas, one of the founders of The Egyptian Current party, which was born out of the revolution, described the general atmosphere, as “saddening,” but said he will vote just to “put my voice in the ballot.”

A member of another youth group, Injy Hamdi, 27, said “we will all go to the ballot boxes, vote and then come back to the square.”

Mohammed Abdel-Moneim, 38, said the protesters would not allow any election tampering, allegedly widespread during the past regime.

“We protect the ballot boxes with our bodies and lives if we have to. We fought hard for this right to vote,” he said.

The next parliament is expected to be dominated by the country’s most organized political force, the Muslim Brotherhood. The group decided to boycott the ongoing protests to keep from doing anything that could derail the election. However, the outcome of the vote is likely to be seen as flawed given the growing unrest and the suspension by many candidates of their campaigns in solidarity with the protesters.

Source

The parents of Madeleine McCann, whose 2007 disappearance sparked a media frenzy, told a London courtroom Wednesday how they were left distraught by the relentless U.K. press and its insinuations they were responsible for their daughter’s death.

Kate and Gerry McCann told Britain’s media ethics inquiry that the coverage had hurt their efforts to find their daughter after she vanished during a family vacation in Portugal, shortly before her fourth birthday.

“We were trying to find our daughter and you (the media) are stopping our chances of doing that,” Kate McCann said.

“These were desperate times,” she said, adding that the couple felt powerless. “When it’s your voice against a powerful media, it just doesn’t hold weight.”

Madeleine’s disappearance sparked an international manhunt and intense press coverage. The McCanns said the press was initially sympathetic but soon changed, with some articles implying the couple was hiding something.

The couple successfully sued several British newspapers over suggestions that they had caused their daughter’s death and then covered it up.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the public inquiry into media ethics and practices in response to a still-evolving scandal over phone hacking by tabloid journalists. This week it has taken evidence from celebrities including actor Hugh Grant and comedian Steve Coogan, and from ordinary people left bruised by unwanted media attention.

Gerry McCann said he and his wife did not think their phones had been hacked, but he volunteered to testify at the inquiry “for one simple reason _ we feel a system has to be put in place to protect ordinary people from the damage the media can cause.”

Inquiry lawyer Robert Jay said the couple had experienced “the good, the bad and the particularly ugly side of the press.”

It is still not clear what happened to Madeleine, despite her parents’ far-reaching international campaign and numerous reported sightings from around the world.

Earlier, a lawyer for several phone hacking victims said that illegal eavesdropping was widely practiced by Britain’s tabloid journalists, producing stories that were both intrusive and untrue.

Mark Lewis said phone hacking was not limited to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, which the media mogul shut down earlier this year as outrage grew over the scandal.

“It was a much more widespread practice than just one newspaper,” he said.

Lewis claimed that listening in on voice mails was so easy that many journalists regarded it as no more serious than “driving at 35 mph in a 30 mph zone.”

He said the News of the World got caught because it hired a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who kept detailed records of his snooping assignments. Mulcaire and News of the World reporter Clive Goodman were jailed in 2007 for hacking into the voice mails of royal aides.

“The fact that evidence doesn’t exist in written form doesn’t mean to say that the crime didn’t happen,” Lewis said.

Lewis said when a News of the World reporter was arrested for phone hacking in 2006, he had a “eureka moment” about the source of a false story on two of his clients.

The story alleged a romantic relationship between soccer players’ association chief Gordon Taylor and lawyer Joanne Armstrong. Taylor said he believed the story was based on a voice mail message from Armstrong thanking Taylor for speaking at her father’s funeral.

The message said: “Thank you for yesterday. You were wonderful.”

Lewis said a tabloid journalist “added two and two and made 84. … If it hadn’t been so sad, it would have been funny.”

In 2008, Murdoch’s News International agreed to pay Taylor hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) in compensation for the hacking of his phone in return for keeping quiet about the deal _ one of several attempts by the company to hush up the scale of its illegal activity.

Murdoch shut down the News of the World in July after evidence emerged that it had routinely eavesdropped on the voice mails of public figures, celebrities and even crime victims in its search for scoops.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested and several senior Murdoch executives have resigned in the still-evolving scandal. Two top London police officers also lost their jobs, along with Cameron’s media adviser.

Lewis has represented many prominent hacking victims, including the family of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose voice mails were accessed by the News of the World after she disappeared in 2002. The girl’s parents spoke Monday before the U.K. inquiry, saying the hacking gave them false hope their daughter was still alive during the investigation into her disappearance.

The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to media regulation in Britain.

Source

Ninety-three percent of Italians believe cutting the country’s hobbling public debt is a top priority, but few are willing to make personal sacrifices to do so, according to an AP-GfK poll released Tuesday.

Only about a quarter of Italians favor reforming labor laws to make it easier to fire workers, or raising the retirement age from 65 (and sometimes lower) to 67 _ two of the reforms considered critical to curb Italy’s public spending and boost economic growth.

But while the European Union is demanding such reforms, 52 percent of Italians still have a favorable view of the EU, and a full 76 percent think Italy should stay in the 17-nation eurozone, according to the survey, conducted last week.

Italy has been engulfed in financial turmoil for weeks as markets woke up to the enormous size of its debt _ euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), a eurozone high coming in at 120 percent of gross domestic product. The market turmoil and a loss of confidence in Italy’s ability to repay forced Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign Nov. 12, ending his 17-year domination of Italian politics.

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Nov. 16-20, during the first days of economist Mario Monti’s new government, made up of bankers, academics and corporate executives instead of politicians. Monti is under enormous pressure to quickly rein in the debt and get the economy growing again.

Italy’s economy is hampered by high labor costs, low productivity, fat government payrolls, excessive taxes, choking bureaucracy, and low numbers of college graduates. Yet as the third-largest economy in the eurozone, Italy is too big for Europe to bail out like it did Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

Monti got high marks from the Italians surveyed after he was tapped to lead the country, garnering a 67 percent favorability rating. Only 10 percent had a negative view and 16 percent were neutral.

“Let’s say there’s hope,” said Fortunato Porcheddu, 63, as he strolled Tuesday with a friend through a piazza in Rome. “If I close my eyes and look back over the past 15 years and everything that has happened, I cringe.”

Monti has pledged to reform Italy’s pension system, re-impose a property tax annulled by Berlusconi’s government, fight tax evasion, streamline civil court proceedings, get more women and young people into the workforce and cut political costs.

But, critically, only 32 percent of Italians surveyed are strongly confident that his technocratic government can fix the country’s economic ills. Forty-two percent say they’re “moderately confident” and 22 percent say they have little or no confidence he can turn Italy’s finances around.

While there is some hopefulness about the future of the economy _ 55 percent anticipate a better situation five years from now _ the longer-term picture is gloomier. Only 35 percent of Italians think people will be better off in 20 years than they are today, while 43 percent anticipate a harder life for the next generation.

“Our generation always looked forward with the possibility of improvement,” said Alfonso Marozzi, 72, as he strolled in Rome. “Now, young people are resigned to wonder if they’ll be able to hold onto what their parents were able to build. There’s a lack of hope in the future.”

The survey found that Italians are especially concerned about corruption: 87 percent called it an “extremely” or “very serious” problem. Unemployment, the debt and organized crime followed.

A full 93 percent of Italians said reducing the public debt was either an “extremely” or “very important” goal for the government to tackle over the next decade cash advance flexible payments. Only 2 percent said it was “not too important” or “not at all important.”

Yet only 26 percent of those surveyed favored raising the retirement age to 67 to help cut spending, while 67 percent were opposed. Parliament recently passed legislation raising the retirement age to 67 starting in 2026 and to 70 by 2050, but critics say the reforms are meaningless because any savings they produce are too far in the future.

Monti is expected to seek more reforms to the pension system and to try to make the contribution system more equitable.

Italian politicians have made few efforts to reform the labor market, and the AP-Gfk poll shows why. Seventy percent of respondents opposed deregulating the labor market to make it easier to fire workers, with only 22 percent favoring it. Of the 70 percent opposed, a full 56 percent were “strongly opposed.”

Ultimately, labor market reforms are likely to be much broader than just changes involving firing. Monti’s government is expected to open up “closed professions,” such as lawyers, notaries and taxi drivers, which in some cases restrict entry to people with connections or set standard prices that deprive the market of competition.

Monti also plans to loosen Italy’s system of collective bargaining, in which unions negotiate with entire industries rather than individual companies. Italy’s biggest carmaker, Fiat, told unions Monday that it is tossing out the old model as of Jan. 1 and will seek to negotiate new contracts plant by plant _ something it has already done in four locations.

Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Global Insight in London, said Fiat “is probably the forerunner of what we need to see.” But he cautioned: “Trade union opposition to that will be immense.”

Unions have balked at any labor market reforms, and so far the austerity measures that have been passed by Parliament haven’t touched the thorny issue.

Still, the AP-GfK survey found that labor unions in general get broadly negative ratings from Italians, with 53 percent of respondents saying they “only sometimes” or “never” trust unions to do the right thing.

Only 20 percent of Italians surveyed had a favorable opinion of Berlusconi, with 67 percent having an unfavorable view and 56 having a “strongly unfavorable” impression of the billionaire media mogul.

After Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the leader with the most favorable ratings? President Barack Obama, with a 78 percent favorability rating.

Armando Manni, a 50-year-old who tends olive groves in Tuscany, said young Italians have to become more like their Anglo-Saxon colleagues and leave home to pursue their dreams rather than stay where their mothers cook, clean and wash their clothes until they’re well past age 40.

“A country that doesn’t have dreams is a country that is almost dead,” he said as he shopped for tomatoes.

The AP-GfK poll of 1,025 Italian adults across the country was conducted Nov. 16-20 using landlines and cell phones by GfK Eurisko Italy under direction of the global GfK Group. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

___

AP Poll is at http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

Source

Employees are more focused on pay and less on whether their occupation is rewarding, according to a recent survey by compensation specialists Mercer. In previous studies, Mercer found most Canadian respondents said job fulfillment was the key issue.

Yet 47 per cent of survey participants say they are not satisfied with base pay and 42 per cent do not feel they are paid fairly, given their performance and contribution to the organization. At the same time, fewer employees than five years ago understand how their pay is determined, which may contribute to their overall sense of dissatisfaction.

Mercer partner Iain Morrison thinks base pay is a primary concern because  of anxiety about job security and being able to pay for the most basic things. “Since 2008 employees have seen layoffs, pay freezes and reduced availability of training and development,” he says.

The large number of Canadian employees considering leaving their job within six months (36 percent) or who are not looking for work but open to new offers (22 per cent) further underscores high levels of employee disengagement. In fact, employees “sitting on the fence” are more negative about their employment situation than people who are actively seeking new employment.

“You can’t just throw money at these people. You have to find ways to motivate them,” Morrison continues. “If they cannot be re-engaged, it may make sense to try and manage some of them out, because they are the least productive employees and they are not saying anything good about the business.”

After base pay, survey results reveal that Canadian respondents view a good retirement savings or pension plan as the second most important element of the employee value proposition. And somewhat unexpectedly, having a company-provided retirement plan rivals or is more important to younger respondents than having a flexible work schedule.

“Retirement savings have not been on the radar for 25-40 year olds before. But the media has created awareness and employees in their 20s hear their parents close to retirement worrying about pension savings,” says Mercer principal Madeline Avedon.

Overall benefits programs were rated as good or very good by the majority of survey respondents and more than half said they are satisfied with their health benefits. However, 43 per cent want more choice and control to reduce the value of some benefits in order to increase the value of others to meet their needs. About the same number also said they would be willing to contribute towards the cost of new or improved benefits that are important to them.

Also read: Your 2012 raise may be less than inflation and How to improve your odds of getting a raise .

Source

President Barack Obama said Friday the U.S. economy is growing “way too slow” but that leaders at a world summit have made progress at getting their countries on a firmer footing.

“Put simply, the world faces challenges that put our economic recovery at risk,” Obama said in a news conference at the meeting of the 20 major developed and emerging economies as he promoted a jobs theme central to his re-election campaign.

He said Europe has rallied around a plan to address a debt crisis from spiraling beyond the financial emergency in Greece and potentially dealing another blow to the U.S. economy.

As for a new jobs report back at home that showed only modest employment growth, Obama said the economy was expanding too slowly.

The president said the United States had acted aggressively to manage its economic crisis a couple years ago, and he prodded his partners in Europe to do the same.

“They’re going to have a strong partner in us,” Obama said, “but European leaders understand that ultimately what the markets are looking for is a strong signal from Europe that they’re standing behind the euro.”

About one year from the 2012 presidential election, Obama brushed off the political implications of his economic agenda. Republicans have him hammered over the pace of the economic rebound.

“I have to tell you, the least of my concerns at the moment is the politics of a year from now,” Obama said. “I’m worried about putting people back to work right now because those folks are hurting and the U.S. economy is underperforming.”

The gridlock of domestic politics followed Obama to France. He urged House and Senate Republicans to join him in passing a jobs bill now moving in pieces.

The U.S. unemployment rate slipped one-tenth of a percent in October to 9 percent as the economy generated 80,000 jobs. The nation’s unemployment rate had held at 9.1 percent for three straight months.

Stalled joblessness poses significant problems for Obama, who has been unable to get Republican support for a $447 billion jobs plan. The Senate on Thursday defeated Obama’s proposal to spend $50 billion to modernize roads and bridges and put idled construction workers back on the job.

Obama spent much of the day in private meetings with world leaders. He met separately with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, telling reporters beforehand that they would discuss “how we can set an agenda that focuses on increasing prosperity and employment and opportunity for people throughout the Americas.”

After the news conference, Obama joined French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a ceremony honoring the U.S.-French alliance and service members from both countries who helped the successful allied campaign in Libya. He and Sarkozy then taped a joint interview to be aired on French television, before Obama boarded Air Force One for the trip back to Washington after a quick two days in France.

At his news conference, Obama gave a vote of confidence to European leaders and warned of the domino effect if the debt crisis wasn’t solved.

“If Europe isn’t growing, it’s harder for us to do what we need to do for the American people: creating jobs, lifting up the middle class and putting our fiscal house in order,” he said.

He added: “There’s no excuse for inaction. That’s true globally. It’s certainly true back home. And I’m going to keep pushing it.”

Obama arrived at the summit on Wednesday as leaders worried about the Greek prime minister’s call for a public vote on the bailout plan. While the referendum was scrapped, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou still faced a difficult confidence vote Friday.

Qantas Airways was expected to resume flying Monday after an Australian court intervened in a labor dispute that led the airline to ground its entire fleet over the weekend.

By the time the labor-relations court acted, several hundred flights had been canceled and tens of thousands of passengers stranded around the world.

Some airline industry experts say Qantas’ surprise grounding of its entire fleet Saturday could cause many travelers to book future trips on other airlines.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said he had no choice but to order the lockout of union workers and end months of rolling strikes that led to canceled flights, $70 million in losses and a collapse in future bookings.

Joyce told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he expected some flights to resume by mid-afternoon Monday. It was unclear how long it would take for the airline to resume a full schedule. The airline had estimated that it would lose $20 million a day during the lockout.

The Australian labor-relations court issued its ruling ending the standoff early Monday morning _ midday Sunday in the United States _ after holding an emergency hearing that included testimony from company, labor union and government officials.

The president of the labor-arbitration panel, Geoffrey Giudice, said the group acted to protect Australia’s tourism and aviation industry.

The airline said 447 flights had been canceled in the first 24 hours of the lockout. Qantas did not immediately update that figure.

Qantas is the largest of Australia’s four national domestic airlines, carrying about 70,000 passengers a day on a fleet of 108 planes that operate in 22 countries. In 2010, it was the 16th largest airline in the world by passenger miles flown, according to the trade publication Air Transport World.

Its major international destinations include Singapore, Hong Kong and London. In the United States, Qantas flies to Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Honolulu.

Travelers reported being ordered to leave planes that were already on the tarmac when the lockout began Saturday. More than 60 planes in mid-flight flew to their destinations, then were parked.

Qantas said it paid to rebook passengers on other airlines, including compensating those who had to pay higher last-minute fares to get home.

For several weeks, workers have carried out rolling strikes and refused to work overtime to demand higher pay and protest the airline’s plans to cut about 1,000 jobs. Qantas, which has about 32,500 employees, wants to reduce costs by creating new Asia-based airlines for international flying. International flights were a roughly $200 million drain on the company last year.

The company reported in August that annual profit had doubled. But it said the business climate was too turbulent _ partly because of labor turmoil _ to forecast future earnings.

Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst in San Francisco, predicts the shutdown will do long-term damage to the Qantas name by hurting its reputation for reliability.

“A lot of travelers won’t take a chance and will book away to Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and other airlines,” Harteveldt said. “Brand loyalty in the airline business is very low, and there is so much competition.”

Before the court ruling, Virgin Australia said it was scheduling extra flights and offering 20 percent fare discounts to help stranded Qantas passengers through Thursday.

If Qantas loses customers, that could also hurt partners in its alliance of global airlines, including American Airlines. A rival alliance that includes Air New Zealand and is led by United Continental Holdings Inc. could benefit. So could a third group of airlines that includes several major Asian carriers and is led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM.

Other industry veterans said the lockout was a daring move that will pay off for Qantas, which wants to expand the low-cost, low-fare model that it uses at its Jetstar Airways subsidiary.

Jetstar has extensive routes to Southeast Asia and Japan, and lower costs than Qantas. But Qantas unions fear that expansion of low-cost airlines will result in Australian jobs being sent overseas. CEO Joyce hopes to bend the unions closer to the company’s vision for growth by tapping into Asian markets.

“It was a very shrewd move by their CEO to force the issue and stop the potential deterioration of the brand,” said Mo Garfinkle, an airline consultant who has worked for Qantas rival Virgin Australia. “In the end, it will benefit Qantas financially.”

Garfinkle said the short duration of the fleet grounding will help Qantas get back up to full speed quickly, cutting its losses.

Source