Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Atlantic International Partnership Review: Is Japan Heading for Yet another ‘Lost Decade’?

http://www.your-story.org/atlantic-international-partnership-review-is-japan-heading-for-yet-another-%E2%80%98lost-decade%E2%80%99-245296/

It absolutely was supposed to become just an additional earthquake, only it registered a scale of 9.0 – and triggered a devastating tsunami.
March 11, 2011 would unquestionably not be forgotten at any time soon by the Japanese men and women since the northern piece on the technologically-advanced nation was thrown into distress. Tsunami waves as higher as ten meters hit the coast and washed absent anything it passed inside of a frightening pace. Aftershocks of smaller sized scales would keep on shaking them for the following number of days.

Obviously, the entire globe was left dumbstruck.
And as in case the earthquake/tsunami combo wasn’t plenty of, a further dilemma sets in: a nuclear plant’s received an issue. Like an overnight sensation, Fukushima grew to become a family name, albeit for every one of the wrong motives.
Now, just after weeks of hanging on the harmony, lots of are worried what would turn out to be of Japan afterwards. Particularly of curiosity would be the foreseeable future state of their economic climate.
Shareholders of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), in addition to from getting affiliated which has a technology-gone-bad label, just might be drained through the great clean-up fees and liabilities the Fukushima power plant brought (with claims amounting to eleven trillion yen when the crisis dragged on for two a long time).
Definitely lots of firms are already hit difficult by the catastrophe, and all of them are struggling to help keep afloat. The issue is, Japanese organizations look to possess this debt-rejection syndrome – no one would like to borrow income. But when they’re going to stay in the market, they are going to have to get started on throughout again and get funding somewhere. With Japanese firms wary of borrowing income, the financial state could possibly make a turn for the grim state; willingness to borrow funds is important to help propel progress.
Government agencies are already offering out proposals to begin the reconstruction ball rolling. According to lawmakers, 20 trillion yen reconstruction package is required, whilst the harm is twice as what the 1995 Kobe earthquake introduced. Some suggested boosting tax so they can fund all of the rebuilding. Division in the government system (also going through vital response with regards to the nuclear ability plant circumstances) may possibly make this an even complicated move for Japan.
The Financial institution of Japan offered a stimulus to improve the marketplace but with Japan’s history littered with stimulus package failure, it can be uncertain if they’ll welcome this.
Industry experts approximated it is going to consider a number of many years for Japan to rebuild all that harm – but arguably lengthier to make folks forget all the horror it introduced. And with an approximated 16-25 trillion yen in harm, it is no shock that investors are avoiding the Japanese market place. And rightly so – harm of this scale was under no circumstances noticed given that WWII.
Results may well stretch much more than a national scale for Japan can be a big know-how manufacturing hub. Parts of preferred gadgets are created in Japan, and all those firms, if not halting productions, are cutting back on operating hrs because of the energy shortage. Carmakers also pushed back again their strategies and delayed creation.
A further blow for the Japanese financial system is inside export market place. Now, just about everyone’s wary with the ‘Made in Japan’ label as radiation paranoia gripped the globe. Some nations refused entry of food items from Japan but people are even now worried that devices will also be tainted with radiation.
Atlantic International Partnership Review – For your past two decades, Japan’s financial system seemed to be stuck inside a deadlock. Public credit card debt grew to twice the quantity of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Politics is on an impasse also; where by the prime minister’s seat adjusted quite a few instances just final 12 months. Add to people the longtime issue of an aging population so you get the image of how complete their fingers will need to be.
The specific situation while in the nuclear strength plant appears to be to get handled appropriately, and hopefully will prevent churning out radiation while in the days and months to arrive. But right up until then, practically everything that may be coming from Japan (even persons!) will be beneath scrutiny.
The worst-case situation for Japan is once the troubles while in the nuclear strength plant drag on, resulting to another ‘lost decade’.
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Atlantic International Partnership Headlines: Robotics morphs into more-mainstream investment

http://altlantic-internationalpartnership.com/2011/05/atlantic-international-partnership-headlines-robotics-morphs-into-more-mainstream-investment/

 BEDFORD, Mass. — Top scientists around the world are trying to improve upon robots, which can already detect bombs, perform surgery and even go into battle.
At iRobot Corp., they’re trying to make a better vacuum.
Of course, iRobot’s scientists do other things too. The company, best known for its Roomba floor vacuum, recently sent machines to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster to help detect radiation, to the war zone in Afghanistan to find bombs, and to the Gulf of Mexico to locate spilled oil in the water.
But home robots — dominated by vacuums — make up 55 percent of the company’s revenue and are part of the reason iRobot is on a tear. Shares are up 43 percent since the start of the year, and the company earned a profit of $26 million on sales of $401 million last year, up from $3 million on $299 million in revenue the year before.
The company recently announced it had won a contract to make bomb disposal robots for the Navy.
That iRobot, the only public company that focuses purely on robotics, is getting attention from investors indicates that this young industry is becoming more mainstream. As analysts and consumers get more comfortable with robots, more companies might succeed in the space.
“It’s almost like buying Internet companies in the 1990s,” said Alex Hamilton, an analyst with Early Bird Capital who covers iRobot. “The sky’s the limit.”
Not everyone is a fan. A 2008 Consumer Reports review of vacuums found that the Roomba 560 “was among the worst performers at cleaning edges and corners.” On consumer tech site CNET, comments ranged from “always broken, warranty poor” to “It’s awesome! Great for what it costs.”
The company is now trying to boost sales of secondary items, such as pool and gutter cleaners, to go along with its bestselling Roomba and Scooba robots.
Next up: a device on wheels that can follow you around the house like Rosie from “The Jetsons” and someday maybe even bring you a beer. The company predicts an expanding market in robots that assist the country’s aging population.
“No one has ever made money with robots before,” said Chief Executive Colin Angle, a freckle-faced 43-year-old who happens to be married to Erika Ebbel, Miss Massachusetts 2004. “But ours create more value than they cost to build.”
The growth is evident at the company’s headquarters in a Bedford, Mass., office park, where young men in ties and white shirts follow a tour on their first day of orientation. Awards from the last decade sit along the walls: gold-plated and silver Roombas, a crystal Entrepreneur of the Year award for Angle. IRobot now employs about 650 people.
The success is new for a company that teetered on the edge of survival for its first decade and a half. Founded in 1990 by Angle, MIT professor Rodney Brooks and graduate student Helen Greiner, the company’s mission was initially vague: to make practical robots that could be useful in everyday lives.
At the time, few investors believed this was a profitable venture, so the three put company expenses on their credit cards, and struggled.
“We were unfundable,” said Angle, walking through an exhibit in the company’s headquarters of experiments from iRobot’s past — a baby doll robot, a Zamboni-like vacuum, a furry creature that runs away from humans when it senses anger.
IRobot didn’t receive its first venture funding until 1998. Even then, its endeavors were disjointed, spread across eight divisions: robots that could vacuum floors, entertain children and work on oil wells, to name just a few. It sent robots to work in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the government contracts weren’t profitable enough to support the flailing consumer side.
The company nearly went under in 2002 as it tried to find retailers that would stock the newly completed Roomba. Just when its founders had given up hope, the Brookstone retailing chain called, saying that a test run of the machines had gone well and that consumer demand was increasing.
“We went from the lowest of the low to the most exciting time,” Angle said. “Suddenly, things started to work.”
Even after the company went public in 2005, its financial problems continued. Its stock slid, precipitously at times, to a low of $7 in 2009 as the company burned through cash because of manufacturing issues and the high price of nickel, which is used to make batteries.
A new chief financial officer, John Leahy, has helped the company better manage its finances, analysts say, as has a focus on what it does best: robotic vacuums. Demand is growing overseas as the company expands into Latin America and Europe. International sales grew 70 percent in 2010, and international home robot revenue made up two-thirds of the company’s home robot sales.
The military machines have been a success too: IRobot is one of only two companies that provided robots to the military that have actually ended up on the ground, said Barbara Coffey, managing director at Brigantine Advisors, an investment research company. And the contracts keep coming in. Aside from the Navy deal, the Army said in March that it had ordered 76 small unmanned ground vehicles from iRobot.
“The company during that period really did grow from focused on the next flashy thing to the nuts and bolts of running a business,” Coffey said. “Things like quality assurance and all the heavy lifting stuff came to bear.”
IRobot hopes next to enter the health care field with Ava, essentially a device on wheels that works with existing tablet computers and can follow people around, sensing walls and other obstacles. If someone is trying to reach a senior citizen who isn’t answering the phone, for example, Ava can go find the person, Angle said.
The company is inviting iPad developers to get into the game, designing apps for Ava.
It’s just one way the company is expanding outside of cleaning products to make robots a more common presence in our lives.
“Nearly 100 percent of robots are going to help us do more and more and be part of a better life,” Angle said. “It’s the stuff of dreams.”

Atlantic International Partnership Funding Group Builder Stocks Fall as Home Price Decline Persists

http://www.blochure.com/atlantic-international-partnership-funding-group-builder-stocks-fall-as-home-price-decline-persists-3542/

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Analysts expect further price declines heading into the summer season, which could further slow the recovery for an industry which is coming off the worst two years for home construction dating to 1959.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday shows that home prices dropped in 19 cities from December to January, the sixth consecutive month that the index fell. A majority of the metro areas tracked by the index now have home prices at levels dating back to 2003, just as the housing boom began. In four cities -- Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit and Cleveland -- home values are at their lowest point in 11 years.
The report followed a Commerce Department announcement on Friday that new-home sales plunged in February for the third month in a row.
However, an analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets found some positive news in the S&P/Case-Shiller report. With seasonal adjustments factored in, just 12 of the 20 cities in the index experienced month-over-month price declines, compared with 19 of 20 cities three months earlier, analyst Kenneth Zener said in a research note.
Zener said that statistic suggests that a partial recovery is under way. However, he expects home prices to continue declining on a month-to-month basis into June, "as sellers court tepid buyers amid a still-large supply of inventory."
The housing market has recently been slower to recover than other areas of the economy, in part due to the expiration of government programs to spur more homebuying. Zener said he doesn't expect further government moves to encourage buying through tax credits. However, he expects indirect government support to continue through lending agencies, loan modification programs, and government purchases of mortgage-backed securities.
Shares of Lennar Corp. saw the steepest decline among major homebuilder stocks, dropping 68 cents, or 3.4 percent, to close at $19.07. Lennar on Tuesday posted a surprise fiscal first-quarter profit, but also reported that it delivered fewer homes and saw a decline in new home orders.

Atlantic International Partnership Headlines:Former Nasdaq Executive Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading

http://atlanticinternationalpartnership-headlines.com/2011/06/atlantic-international-partnership-headlinesformer-nasdaq-executive-pleads-guilty-to-insider-trading/

When companies that trade on Nasdaq wanted to understand how impending news would affect their share prices, they would consult with Mr. Johnson, who was a senior executive on the exchange’s so-called market intelligence desk.
Over a three-year period, Mr. Johnson took that secret corporate information and, from his work computer, traded in an online brokerage account in his wife’s name, reaping illegal profits of about $750,000.
On Thursday, Mr. Johnson pleaded guilty to the brazen insider-trading scheme in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va. He was also sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 56-year-old Mr. Johnson, who lives in Ashburn, Va., faces up to 20 years in prison.
“He was a gatekeeper,“ Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said at a news conference. “This was a particularly shocking abuse of trust.“

Nasdaq’s failure to protect its corporate clients’ secret information is an embarrassment for the exchange, which competes fiercely with the New York Stock Exchange and foreign exchanges for public company listings.
“We’re cooperating with authorities,“ said a Nasdaq spokesman, who declined to comment further on the case.
The Nasdaq has an insider trading policy that prohibits employees from trading on confidential information about its listed companies, and requires that they disclose all brokerage accounts and holdings that they control. The government says that Mr. Johnson did not disclose his wife’s brokerage account to Nasdaq.
Jonathan Simms, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
Mr. Johnson’s case is the latest in the government’s far-reaching investigation into insider trading, which has not only rattled Wall Street but reached beyond its canyons to ensnare doctors, management consultants and railroad workers. Last month, the Justice Department brought criminal charges against a longtime Food and Drug Administration chemist and his son for using sensitive information about drug approvals to earn millions of dollars in profits. Another case was brought against a corporate lawyer, who was accused of feeding confidential data about merger deals to traders over a 17-year period.
Earlier this month, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan won the highest-level conviction to date in its recent efforts when a jury found Raj Rajaratnam, a billionaire hedge fund manager, guilty of earning more than $50 million in illegal trading profits.
“The Department of Justice is watching you, and we will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law,” said Neil H. MacBride, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Such tough talk from federal prosecutors has been backed up with aggressive tactics being used to prosecute white-collar crime, including wiretapping traders’ phones.
In Mr. Johnson’s case, federal prosecutors worked with the S.E.C. and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s own regulatory authority, to catch him. The agencies pursued the case after observing suspicious trading activity in Mr. Johnson’s wife’s account surrounding market-moving news about several publicly traded companies.
Mr. Johnson traded on confidential information in nine separate cases from 2006 to 2009, according to the S.E.C.
In one instance, on Oct. 30, 2007, Mr. Johnson had a phone conversation with the chief financial officer and general counsel of United Therapeutics about the successful completion of a drug trial. The next day, Mr. Johnson bought 10,000 shares of United Therapeutics stock in his wife’s brokerage account. After the company issued a statement on Nov. 1 announcing the news, Mr. Johnson began selling the stock from his office computer, booking $175,000 in profit.

Atlantic International Partnership asks Where should I save for retirement?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110523004227AA88ugH

Tax-favored retirement accounts such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k)s are the best places to save for your retirement. The different types of plans have different features, but most of them allow you to defer taxes on the money you save and the returns you earn within the account.

Atlantic International Partnership Headlines:Spain’s region urged to stick to dificit limits

http://atlanticinternationalpartnershipnews.com/2011/05/atlantic-international-partnership-headlinesspains-region-urged-to-stick-to-dificit-limits/

By Victor Mallet in Madrid Published: April 27 2011 21:33
Spain’s finance minister has insisted that all 17 autonomous regions cut their budget deficits to agreed levels amid revived concerns among sovereign bond market investors at the nation’s finances.  Elena Salgado, together with Carlos Ocaña, the budget secretary, and other senior officials, met regional finance ministers in Madrid on Wednesday evening to implore them to comply with a deficit limit of 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2011 and to map out austerity policies for the following three years.
Spain has regained credibility in the bond markets but was able to meet its overall 2010 public sector deficit target of 9.3 per cent of GDP only because the central government performed better than planned.
Nine of the 17 regions, by contrast, exceeded their deficit limits last year.
In 2011, the overall Spanish deficit is supposed to fall further to 6 per cent of GDP as Spain attempts to differentiate itself from weaker “peripheral” eurozone economies such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal, which have accepted financial rescue packages from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
But the newly elected Catalan nationalist government in the Catalonia region of eastern Spain – with an economy the size of Portugal’s – has already said it cannot meet its 2011 target, even after drastic cuts in public spending. Other regions are struggling.
Accumulated regional debt in Spain is a relatively small part of the national total, but it has doubled to more than €115bn ($169bn) in the past five years.
“The starting levels of debt are pretty low, but the deficits are worrying,” says Luis Garicano, professor of economics and strategy at the London School of Economics. “It is hard to change the path of spending on the welfare state, on education and health.”
Regional and municipal elections due across Spain next month have made politicians reluctant to cut spending.
Businesses have campaigned for drastic reform of Spain’s highly devolved system of government. In a report this week the Círculo de Empresarios, a business association, called for a correction of the “budgetary laxity” of some regional and local governments, an end to the overlapping responsibilities of the various levels of Spanish administration and a simplification of costly regulations.
Claudio Boada, the group’s chairman, also said the country’s 8,114 municipalities were “absolutely excessive” and should be reduced in number.
Spanish government figures show that regions and municipalities account for half of public spending, with the centre taking 20 per cent and social security the remaining 30 per cent. Regional spending as a share of the total has risen tenfold since 1982, while the central government share has fallen to less than half what it was then.
?Spain’s bonds show that the euro area’s fourth largest economy has set itself apart from the bloc’s most indebted countries, according to Olli Rehn, the EU’s commissioner for economic affairs. “Spain didn’t fall prey to the markets, its yields didn’t rise even after Portugal sought aid from the European Union,” he said in a speech at the University of Helsinki.
“What’s been decisive for Spain are the measures it has taken to stabilise its finances and reorganise its banking sector.”