Saturday, March 1st, 2014
COTTEN TIMBERLAKE, - Bloomberg
Stephan: Here is the latest data point on the decline of the middle class. You would think it was obvious that it was in the interest of society through government policy to see a healthy affluent middle class. But the truth is quite otherwise, and this is the result.
U.S. retailers last quarter suffered their darkest days since the recession.
With results in from 62 of 122 retail chains, the industry has posted its first profit quarterly drop since the economic contraction that ended in 2009, according to Retail Metrics Inc. Revenue also rose at the lowest rate since that year, the research firm found.
The results paint a grim picture of an industry hit hard by the sluggish job recovery and slow wage growth, which have turned U.S. consumers into a nation of penny pinchers. Earnings are expected to drop 6.1 percent on average during the holiday quarter, according to Retail Metrics data. The broader pool of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies, meanwhile, are estimated to see profit rise 8.5 percent.
‘It was a very tough season for the retailers, no question about it,” Ken Perkins, president of Swampscott, Massachusetts-based Retail Metrics, said in a phone interview. ‘They were facing pressure on multiple fronts.”
Still, some chains are predicting a rebound this year. Target Corp. (TGT) — which saw profit and revenue tumble last quarter, in part because of a hacker attack — said yesterday that sales have shown signs of improvement this month. Macy’s Inc. also predicted that spring would […]
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Saturday, March 1st, 2014
SPENCER ACKERMAN and JAMES BALL, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The British government following the U.S. model ihas turned the U.K. into a surveillance state. Here is the evidence.
Click through to see photocopies of some relevant documents
Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• Yahoo: ‘A whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy’
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images
Yahoo webcam image.
The GCHQ program saved one image every five minutes from the users’ feeds.
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
BTF MPU
Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy”.
GCHQ does not have the technical means […]
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