The long-awaited recovery is now under way, but it’s a slow, painful slog that’s short on animal spirits and long on a drumbeat of numbers that mostly shift from dreadful to less depressing. Twenty-seven months after the recession began, unemployment is stuck at 9.7%. Housing starts are dragging near half-century lows. Consumers are finally spending again, but they’re still too fearful about their jobs and homes to crowd malls and auto lots with the buoyant abandon that heralds a full-rigged revival, the kind Americans are used to. Amazingly, as consumers struggle, U.S. corporations are staging a nearly unprecedented comeback that’s largely escaping notice. The gargantuan, dispiriting job cuts that seem to dominate the news have also been the spur for an epic resurgence in profits. For 2009, the Fortune 500 lifted earnings 335%, to $391 billion, a $301 billion jump that’s the second largest in the list’s 56-year history, approaching the increase in the robust recovery of 2003. For last year the 500 raised their return on sales from less than 1% to 4%. That’s close to the list’s 4.7% historical average. Hence, the 500’s profits virtually returned to normal after years of extremes — bubbles in […]
RALEIGH, N.C. — The former president of Blackwater Worldwide was charged Friday with using straw purchases to stockpile automatic weapons at the security firm and filing false documents to cover up gifts given to the King of Jordan. The federal indictment charges Gary Jackson, 52, who left the company last year in a management shakeup, along with four other former workers. The charges against Jackson include a conspiracy to violate firearms laws, false statements and possession of an unregistered firearm. Also indicted were former general counsel Andrew Howell, 44; former executive vice president Bill Mathews, 44; former procurement vice president Ana Bundy, 45; and, 65-year-old Ronald Slezak, a former weapons manager. The charges open a new front of the government’s oversight of the sullied security company. Several of the company’s contractors have previously been charged with federal crimes for their actions in war zones, but the company’s executives have so far weathered a range of investigations. The company has been trying to rehabilitate its image since a 2007 shooting in Baghdad left 17 people dead, outraged the Iraqi government and led to a federal charges against several Blackwater guards – accusations later thrown out of court […]
NEW YORK — General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0. How’d it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money. GE had plenty of earnings last year — just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company’s U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit. That left GE (GE, Fortune 500) with no U.S. profit left for Uncle Sam to tax. Corporations typically face a 35% federal income tax on their earnings. Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a ‘tax benefit’ of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings. ‘This is the first time in at least decades that GE has reported negative U.S. pretax income and it reflects the worst economy since the Great Depression,’ Anne Eisele, GE’s director of financial communications, said via e-mail. But what about the $10.8 billion profit overseas? GE is ‘indefinitely’ deferring income tax payments on those profits, […]
President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients’ choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans. The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night while he was at a fundraiser in Miami. Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation’s health-care institutions. Obama’s order will start a rule-making process at HHS that could take several months, officials said. Hospitals often bar visitors who are not related to an incapacitated patient by blood or marriage, and gay rights activists say many do not respect same-sex couples’ efforts to designate a partner to make medical decisions for them if they are seriously ill or injured. ‘Discrimination touches every facet of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and […]
WASHINGTON — Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday. Andrew Councill for The New York Times Porter J. Goss, shown in May 2006, joked with Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, after the latter offered to ‘take the heat’ for destroying tapes that documented brutal interrogation of detainees, agency documents show. Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he ‘agreed’ with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to ‘take the heat’ for destroying the tapes. ‘PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat,’ according to one document, an internal C.I.A. e-mail message. According to current and former intelligence officials, Mr. Goss did not approve the destruction before it happened, and was displeased that Mr. Rodriguez did not consult […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
