Governor Schwarzenegger has once again furloughed workers, declaring California is in a fiscal emergency. Excuse me for asking but when has California ever not been in a state of fiscal emergency?

Bloomberg reports Schwarzenegger Orders Furloughs Amid California Budget Impasse

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered more than 150,000 state workers to take three days of mandatory unpaid time off to conserve cash.

The executive order, effective Aug. 1, stipulates that the furloughs will end when a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 is enacted, the governor’s press secretary, Aaron McLear, said in an e-mail. It comes after government workers endured furloughs over almost 12 months that ended June 30.

California began its fiscal year without a spending plan after Schwarzenegger and Democrats remained deadlocked over how to fill a $19.1 billion deficit. Controller John Chiang has warned he may again need to issue IOUs to pay bills if the impasse continues into September.

“Every day of delay brings California closer to a fiscal meltdown,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement today. “Our cash situation leaves me no choice but to once again furlough state workers until the Legislature produces a budget I can sign.”

Fiscal Emergency California Style

The Business Spectator reports California state of fiscal emergency: Schwarzenegger

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency over the state's finances yesterday, raising pressure on lawmakers to negotiate a state budget that is more than a month overdue and will need to close a $US19 billion ($A21.3 billion) shortfall.

The deficit is 22 per cent of the $US85 billion general fund budget the governor signed last July for the fiscal year that ended in June, highlighting how the steep drop in California's revenue due to recession, the housing slump, financial market turmoil and high unemployment have slashed its all-important personal income tax collection.

In the declaration, Schwarzenegger ordered three days off without pay per month beginning in August for tens of thousands of state employees to preserve the state's cash to pay its debt, and for essential services.

California's budget is five weeks overdue, joining New York among big states with spending plans yet to be approved, and Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers are at an impasse over how to balance the state's books.

Analysts say it could be several more weeks before the Republican governor and leaders of the Democrat-led legislature reach an agreement, a delay that threatens to lower the state's already weak credit rating, now hovering just a few notches above “junk” status.

Schwarzenegger's new furlough order was instantly condemned by labor officials as a political ploy.

“To once again force state employees to take unpaid furloughs is just another punitive measure by Governor Schwarzenegger because he couldn't impose minimum wage,” said Patty Velez, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists.

Political Ploy or Act of Sanity?

The unions accuse Schwarzenegger of playing politics. Here's the real story: He had 8 years to get rid of unions and failed to do so. He is not playing politics now, he played them before, being too spineless to take on the unions until recently.

Now he is a lame duck. Let's hope the next governor has more common sense. Don't count on it. After all we are talking about California where pandering to unions is the best way of getting elected.

By the way, can someone even tell me why California has an “Association of Professional Scientists”? Is there anything in California that is not unionized?

The solution is privatize everything, putting people like Patty Velez out on her ass where she has to do some real work instead of preying on taxpayers for more unjustified union benefits. The same applies to the prison guards and every other California union as well.

Common Sense in Fort Worth

Please consider Fort Worth council considers eliminating guaranteed pension for newer workers

City Council members are considering doing away with a guaranteed pension for newer employees as the council struggles to bring Fort Worth's spending in line with the drop in taxes.

No decisions have been made. And Assistant City Manager Karen Montgomery said the city would still have to deal with a big backlog in pension costs even if the council decides to cut benefits. But pensions have been a sacred cow among state and local governments, and few others have even discussed cutting them.

By law, the city can't change the benefits that it's already paying retirees or those that it has promised to employees who have worked long enough to be vested in the pension system. Also, police and firefighter pensions are guaranteed under labor contracts.

The city could be forced to pour tens of millions of dollars into the pension system over the next few years, and pension costs are a major contributor to Fort Worth's projected $73 million budget gap.

“This is the elephant in the room for not only this budget but all future budgets,” Mayor Mike Moncrief said.

Montgomery suggested moving new employees and perhaps even unvested employees to a “defined contribution” plan. The specifics of the plan haven't been determined, but Montgomery suggested a range of options, including annuities or accounts similar to a private-sector 401(k).
That would be a game-changer for municipal employees, who often stay in their jobs because of the pension and other benefits.

“In our current pension, employees cannot outlive their benefit,” Montgomery said. “In a defined contribution, that risk is on the employee to manage their money until they die.”

Employees, including the police and firefighters associations, have argued to keep the pension system as it is. A committee made up mostly of employees recommended that the city contribute an additional 6 percent of payroll to the pension, which would fix the shortfall in a few years.

Finally!

At long last a major city in the US (Fort Worth has a population in excess of 600,000) is considering doing what desperately needs to be done: killing defined benefit pension plans for public workers.

Instead, the union suggests “an additional 6 percent of payroll to the pension, which would fix the shortfall in a few years”. Where would that contribution come from? Taxpayers of course. Will it fix the system? No, it will not fix the shortfall because of insane pension plan assumptions.

The only solution is to kill these plans right here, right now. Unfortunately, such action will not fix the problem of unfunded plans for current vested employees, but it is a major step in preventing further buildup of a fiscally insane proposition.

If unions had any common sense they would embrace, not fight these decisions. The reason of course is the only other solution for cities would be to resolve these difficulties by declaring bankruptcy, putting accrued benefits at risk.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Governor Schwarzenegger has once again furloughed workers, declaring California is in a fiscal emergency. Excuse me for asking but when has California ever not been in a state of fiscal emergency?

Bloomberg reports Schwarzenegger Orders Furloughs Amid California Budget Impasse

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered more than 150,000 state workers to take three days of mandatory unpaid time off to conserve cash.

The executive order, effective Aug. 1, stipulates that the furloughs will end when a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 is enacted, the governor’s press secretary, Aaron McLear, said in an e-mail. It comes after government workers endured furloughs over almost 12 months that ended June 30.

California began its fiscal year without a spending plan after Schwarzenegger and Democrats remained deadlocked over how to fill a $19.1 billion deficit. Controller John Chiang has warned he may again need to issue IOUs to pay bills if the impasse continues into September.

“Every day of delay brings California closer to a fiscal meltdown,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement today. “Our cash situation leaves me no choice but to once again furlough state workers until the Legislature produces a budget I can sign.”

Fiscal Emergency California Style

The Business Spectator reports California state of fiscal emergency: Schwarzenegger

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency over the state's finances yesterday, raising pressure on lawmakers to negotiate a state budget that is more than a month overdue and will need to close a $US19 billion ($A21.3 billion) shortfall.

The deficit is 22 per cent of the $US85 billion general fund budget the governor signed last July for the fiscal year that ended in June, highlighting how the steep drop in California's revenue due to recession, the housing slump, financial market turmoil and high unemployment have slashed its all-important personal income tax collection.

In the declaration, Schwarzenegger ordered three days off without pay per month beginning in August for tens of thousands of state employees to preserve the state's cash to pay its debt, and for essential services.

California's budget is five weeks overdue, joining New York among big states with spending plans yet to be approved, and Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers are at an impasse over how to balance the state's books.

Analysts say it could be several more weeks before the Republican governor and leaders of the Democrat-led legislature reach an agreement, a delay that threatens to lower the state's already weak credit rating, now hovering just a few notches above “junk” status.

Schwarzenegger's new furlough order was instantly condemned by labor officials as a political ploy.

“To once again force state employees to take unpaid furloughs is just another punitive measure by Governor Schwarzenegger because he couldn't impose minimum wage,” said Patty Velez, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists.

Political Ploy or Act of Sanity?

The unions accuse Schwarzenegger of playing politics. Here's the real story: He had 8 years to get rid of unions and failed to do so. He is not playing politics now, he played them before, being too spineless to take on the unions until recently.

Now he is a lame duck. Let's hope the next governor has more common sense. Don't count on it. After all we are talking about California where pandering to unions is the best way of getting elected.

By the way, can someone even tell me why California has an “Association of Professional Scientists”? Is there anything in California that is not unionized?

The solution is privatize everything, putting people like Patty Velez out on her ass where she has to do some real work instead of preying on taxpayers for more unjustified union benefits. The same applies to the prison guards and every other California union as well.

Common Sense in Fort Worth

Please consider Fort Worth council considers eliminating guaranteed pension for newer workers

City Council members are considering doing away with a guaranteed pension for newer employees as the council struggles to bring Fort Worth's spending in line with the drop in taxes.

No decisions have been made. And Assistant City Manager Karen Montgomery said the city would still have to deal with a big backlog in pension costs even if the council decides to cut benefits. But pensions have been a sacred cow among state and local governments, and few others have even discussed cutting them.

By law, the city can't change the benefits that it's already paying retirees or those that it has promised to employees who have worked long enough to be vested in the pension system. Also, police and firefighter pensions are guaranteed under labor contracts.

The city could be forced to pour tens of millions of dollars into the pension system over the next few years, and pension costs are a major contributor to Fort Worth's projected $73 million budget gap.

“This is the elephant in the room for not only this budget but all future budgets,” Mayor Mike Moncrief said.

Montgomery suggested moving new employees and perhaps even unvested employees to a “defined contribution” plan. The specifics of the plan haven't been determined, but Montgomery suggested a range of options, including annuities or accounts similar to a private-sector 401(k).
That would be a game-changer for municipal employees, who often stay in their jobs because of the pension and other benefits.

“In our current pension, employees cannot outlive their benefit,” Montgomery said. “In a defined contribution, that risk is on the employee to manage their money until they die.”

Employees, including the police and firefighters associations, have argued to keep the pension system as it is. A committee made up mostly of employees recommended that the city contribute an additional 6 percent of payroll to the pension, which would fix the shortfall in a few years.

Finally!

At long last a major city in the US (Fort Worth has a population in excess of 600,000) is considering doing what desperately needs to be done: killing defined benefit pension plans for public workers.

Instead, the union suggests “an additional 6 percent of payroll to the pension, which would fix the shortfall in a few years”. Where would that contribution come from? Taxpayers of course. Will it fix the system? No, it will not fix the shortfall because of insane pension plan assumptions.

The only solution is to kill these plans right here, right now. Unfortunately, such action will not fix the problem of unfunded plans for current vested employees, but it is a major step in preventing further buildup of a fiscally insane proposition.

If unions had any common sense they would embrace, not fight these decisions. The reason of course is the only other solution for cities would be to resolve these difficulties by declaring bankruptcy, putting accrued benefits at risk.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

canadian penis extender

Android Developers Blog: Licensing Server <b>News</b>

Licensing Server News. Posted by Tim Bray on 24 August 2010 at 10:57 AM. It's been reported that someone has figured out, and published, a way to hack some Android apps to bypass our new Android Market licensing server. …

Social <b>news</b>-reader Summify raises funds to solve information <b>…</b>

The two founders, former Google and Microsoft engineering interns, developed an algorithm that aggregates all the news from your Google Reader and Twitter accounts, eliminates the duplicates, and filters the most important news using …

<b>News</b> Chopper Catches Paris Hilton in Her Towel | TMZ.com

With a live KTLA news chopper hovering over her home after a man allegedly tried to break inside, Paris Hilton decided to step out on to her balcony — in…

Consumer spending and personal incomes were both unchanged in June after rising 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively, in May, the Commerce Department said today in a statement.

“Consumers are still hunkered down,” Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Economy.com told Bloomberg News before the report. “The second half of this year we're going to see slower spending.” Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast a median 0.1% gain in spending and a 0.2% advance in incomes. Personal saving rose to 6.4% of disposable personal income in June, from 6.3% in May.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday that consumer spending may “pick up” as wages rise, Bloomberg News reported.

A Frugal Fact: The 6 Most Valuable Grocery Store Products Known to Man [Len Penzo] “Here is my official list of the six most valuable grocery store products - along with a partial list of their many uses.”

How to Save Money While Traveling [Get Rich Slowly] “Here are some easy ways to save while traveling.”

Shopper's guide to used-car bargains [MSN Money] “Good deals are harder to find now, but the right strategies can help you get the most for your money.”

Secrets of extreme savers [CNN Money] “You can put away a lot more than the average American without living a deprived life.”

To retire comfortably, under-40 workers need to seriously bulk up savings [Washington Post] “I am going to try to scare some sense into you with three words about life in retirement: The paychecks stop.”

— FREE MONEY FINANCE

penis extender

penis enlargement

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 29, 2010 (Audio)

a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=324031097"> TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.

'King of Crystal' Sinaloa Cartel Leader Ignacio Nacho Coronel <b>…</b>

(July 30) — Mexican troops have killed Ignacio Nacho Coronel, a top drug kingpin known as the King of Crystal, in a shootout as he tried to escape from a wealthy suburban hideout. His death is a rare victory for President Felipe …

Transfer <b>news</b> England goalkeeper David James agrees to sign for <b>…</b>

England keeper goes from World Cup finals to the Championship.

internet marketing course

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 29, 2010 (Audio)

a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=324031097"> TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.

'King of Crystal' Sinaloa Cartel Leader Ignacio Nacho Coronel <b>…</b>

(July 30) — Mexican troops have killed Ignacio Nacho Coronel, a top drug kingpin known as the King of Crystal, in a shootout as he tried to escape from a wealthy suburban hideout. His death is a rare victory for President Felipe …

Transfer <b>news</b> England goalkeeper David James agrees to sign for <b>…</b>

England keeper goes from World Cup finals to the Championship.

big white booty

« Previous |

Main

| Next »

Will President Obama Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

July 20, 2010 12:18 PM

President Obama will soon appoint a director to run the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, White House officials said Tuesday morning, but it’s unclear if he’s interviewed any candidates for the job, which will be officially created tomorrow when the president signs the Wall Street reform bill.

“He’ll turn this in fairly short order,” deputy Treasury Secretary Neil Wolin told reporters this morning.

Behind the scenes of the Obama administration there some is something of a storm brewing as liberals, progressives, and labor unions push President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the new agency – against the wishes of others in the administration.

Warren chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Assets Relief Program and has been seen by many on the Left as a force for greater accountability and transparency, and a check against the forces in the Obama administration that are closely allied with the financial sector, most notably Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Geithner, sources say, has concerns about her appointment given some of the pointed criticisms Warren has made about the Obama administration’s policies.

• In Warren’s April 13 report on Treasury’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program, she wrote that “Treasury’s programs are not keeping pace with the foreclosure crisis. Treasury is still struggling to get its foreclosure programs off the ground as the crisis continues unabated.”
• In her May 13 report on Treasury’s attempts to help small businesses, she wrote that “Because small businesses play such a critical role in the American economy, there is little doubt that they must be a part of any sustainable recovery. It remains unclear, however, whether Treasury’s programs can or will play a major role in putting small businesses on the path to growth.”
• In her June 10 report on Treasury’s AIG bailout, she wrote, “The government argues that AIG’s failure would have resulted in chaos, so that a wholesale rescue was the only viable choice. The Panel rejects this all-or-nothing reasoning. There is no doubt that orchestrating a private rescue in whole or in part would have been a difficult – perhaps impossible – task, and the effort might have met great resistance from other financial institutions that would have been called on to participate. But if the effort had succeeded, the impact on market confidence would have been extraordinary and the savings to taxpayers would have been immense.”

Warren has been an aggressive watchdog over the Treasury Department and, more personally, a tough questioner of his in oversight hearings, for instance asking why shareholders and officials with US automakers had to make severe sacrifices to continue while recipients of TARP funds have made millions; or pushing Geithner to explain why AIG counterparties such as Goldman Sachs were paid 100 cents on the dollar.

On a conference call with reporters last week, Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod said that Warren was “obviously a candidate to lead this effort, but there are other candidates as well.”

One administration source said that it would be a "bloody battle" in the Senate to get her confirmed, since she would be opposed so strongly by Republicans and conservative Democrats, so the question is whether the president wants a big political battle over her. Warren has good relationships with many administration officials and has intellectual firepower, if not much managerial experience.

Two other candidates, sources say, include deputy Attorney General Eugene Kimmelman, who has worked at Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and Public Citizen; and Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr.

Today Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, wrote the president urging him to appoint Warren to the post, noting that Warren “was the first to broach the idea of such a commission in an article published in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas in 2007… Professor Warren has a proven track-record as a smart and tough consumer advocate. As head of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel she is seen, across the breadth of America, as a champion of open, honest and responsive government.”

You can read Warren’s 2007 story HERE.

Sanders notes that he has “no doubt that some in the Senate will oppose her confirmation. Good! It will allow for a serious debate as to the role that government should play in protecting the American people against the outrageous behavior we have seen on Wall Street.” 

As first reported by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, today AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released a statement saying “In our view, there is only one candidate who is uniquely qualified and equipped to head this new agency. Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren originated the idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and has proven as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to be a strong and fearless advocate for the American public. We therefore strongly urge President Obama to appoint Professor Warren as Director of the new consumer protection bureau. Professor Warren's appointment would make clear that under President Obama's leadership, there truly will be accountability for Wall Street and fair treatment for the American public in the financial marketplace.”

The SEIU issued a statement offering similar support.

-Jake Tapper and Matthew Jaffe

July 20, 2010

| Permalink
| Share
| User Comments (26)

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

It's a TARP! Inspector Blasts Obama Administration Abuses   [Daniel Foster]

Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General appointed to oversee the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), has today released a quarterly report blasting the Obama administration and the Treasury Department for using the program to implement an “anemic” mortgage modification plan “that does no more than subsidize activity that would have occurred in its absence” and which is “not an efficient or effective use of taxpayer dollars.”

I have only seen excerpts of the report passed along by House GOP sources, but there is plenty of bite here.

The Obama Administration's mortgage modification program, HAMP, “continues to struggle to achieve its original stated objective. . . and . . . has not put an appreciable dent in foreclosure filings.” Meanwhile “Treasury has rejected calls to announce publicly any goals or performance benchmarks for HAMP or its related initiatives concerning how many homeowners it actually expects to help stay in their homes, despite repeated recommendations that it do so” from government overseers.

The program's own standards are, by contrast, “essentially meaningless” and reflect a “fundamental failure of transparency and accountability that makes it far more difficult for the American people and their representatives in Congress to assess whether the program’s benefits are worth its very substantial cost.”

“The American people are essentially being asked to shoulder an additional $50 billion of national debt without being told, more than 16 months after the program’s announcement, how many people Treasury hopes to actually help stay in their homes as a result of these expenditures, how many people are intended to be helped through other subprograms, and how the program is performing against those expectations and goals. Without such clearly defined standards, positive comments regarding the progress or success of HAMP are simply not credible, and the growing public suspicion that the program is an outright failure will continue to spread.”

Worse still, the report concludes, the HAMP program is unlikely to keep defaulted homeowners in their houses for good, and “re-defaults will indeed be a problem.”

More broadly, the report accuses the administration of jumping “into the deep end of the moral hazard pool through TARP,” leveraging the program's authority to its farthest limits by deploying a whopping $3.7 trillion in overall support of the financial system —  “largely without Congressional action – even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases.”

The full report is here. Meanwhile, Kevin and Stephen — who have been saying 'I told you so' on TARP and the HAMP program in particular for so long that they need throat lozenges — have at it.

07/21 12:06 AMShare

penis enlargement

Analyst: Nintendo 3DS to revolutionize industry | The Digital Home <b>…</b>

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter predicts in an investor note that the 3D portable-gaming device will justify game price tags of $29, vs. today's blended average of $25. Read this blog post by Don Reisinger on The Digital Home.

Fwix Aggregates Hyper-Local <b>News</b> for Nearby and Relevant Stories

Fwix is a news aggregation service focused on dishing the dirt on hyper-local news stories to help you stay on top of what's happening right in your backyard. Fwix is available both in the US and select countries abroad.

Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image - Flying car gets closer to <b>…</b>

View Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image in CNET News' 'Flying car gets closer to takeoff (photos)' slideshow - CNET News.

internet marketing course

Analyst: Nintendo 3DS to revolutionize industry | The Digital Home <b>…</b>

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter predicts in an investor note that the 3D portable-gaming device will justify game price tags of $29, vs. today's blended average of $25. Read this blog post by Don Reisinger on The Digital Home.

Fwix Aggregates Hyper-Local <b>News</b> for Nearby and Relevant Stories

Fwix is a news aggregation service focused on dishing the dirt on hyper-local news stories to help you stay on top of what's happening right in your backyard. Fwix is available both in the US and select countries abroad.

Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image - Flying car gets closer to <b>…</b>

View Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image in CNET News' 'Flying car gets closer to takeoff (photos)' slideshow - CNET News.

big white booty

Viacom v Internet: round one to Internet

Cory Doctorow at 10:02 PM Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010

Google's won the first round of the enormous lawsuit Viacom brought against it. Viacom is suing Google for $1 billion for not having copyright lawyers inspect all the videos that get uploaded to YouTube before they're made live (they're also asking that Google eliminate private videos because these movies — often of personal moments in YouTubers' lives — can't be inspected by Viacom's copyright enforcers).

The lawsuit has been a circus. Filings in the case reveal that Viacom paid dozens of marketing companies to clandestinely upload its videos to YouTube (sometimes “roughing them up” to make them look like pirate-chic leaks). Viacom uploaded so much of its content to YouTube that it actually lost track of which videos were “really” pirated, and which ones it had put there, and sent legal threats to Google over videos it had placed itself.

Other filings reveal profanity-laced email exchanges between different Viacom execs debating who will get to run YouTube when Viacom destroys it with lawsuits, and execs who express their desire to sue YouTube because they can't afford to buy the company and can't replicate its success on their own.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that YouTube was protected from liability for copyright infringement by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA has a “safe harbor” provision that exempts service providers from copyright liability if they expeditiously remove material on notice that it is infringing. Viacom's unique interpretation of this statute held that online service providers should review all material before it went live. If they're right, you can kiss every message-board, Twitter-feed, photo-hosting service, and blogging platform goodbye — even if it was worth someone's time to pay a lawyer $500/hour to look at Twitter and approve tweets before they went live, there just aren't enough lawyers in the universe to scratch the surface of these surfaces. For example, YouTube alone gets over 29 hours' worth of video per minute.

Viacom has vowed to appeal.

In dismissing the lawsuit before a trial, Stanton noted that Viacom had spent several months accumulating about 100,000 videos violating its copyright and then sent a mass takedown notice on Feb. 2, 2007. By the next business day, Stanton said, YouTube had removed virtually all of them.

Stanton said there's no dispute that “when YouTube was given the (takedown) notices, it removed the material.”

Calling Stanton's reasoning “fundamentally flawed,” Viacom said it was looking forward to challenging the decision in appeals court.

Judge sides with Google in $1B Viacom lawsuit
(Thanks, Mike P!)

(Image: Viacom, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from mag3737's photostream — used with permission)

The SmartScreen team just informed me that we’ve reached an amazing milestone – Internet Explorer 8 has blocked 1 billion attempts to download malware!

Socially engineering attacks like malware are a growing threat on the internet and are one of the most common risks to people’s safety online. We introduced malware protection in Internet Explorer 8 as part of the SmartScreen Filter and have talked about it on the Windows Experience Blog a couple of times over the last year.

Here are a couple of quick facts about Internet Explorer and malware as we hit this 1 billion blocks milestone:

• NSS Labs have recognized the Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter as a leader in protection against Socially Engineered Malware in their August 2009 and March 2010 reports which compared Internet Explorer 8 to Chrome, Firefox and others.
• Our malware block rates continue to improve because we continue to improve the SmartScreen service back-end. For example, in August 2009 we had blocked about 70 million attempts to download malware or about 18 million blocks per month. At the time, according to Net Applications, about 15% of the internet population used Internet Explorer 8. In the last two months, we’ve blocked 100 million attempts to download malware. Last month, according to Net Applications, nearly 26% of the internet population uses Internet Explorer 8. There are 1.7 times more users on Internet Explorer 8 than August 2009 but we’re blocking 5 times more malware month on month.

1 billion malware blocks is an amazing milestone and an example of two things. First socially engineered attacks like malware continue to be a real threat for users on the web. Second, to help keep you safe online your browser needs to continually enhance and improve its service. We have got better and better at blocking malware through the SmartScreen Filter because we have continued to invest in our back end service since we released IE8 in March 2009. It’s this investment that has kept us at the top of the socially engineering malware charts according to NSS Labs and has helped our customers stay safe online.

If you haven’t already upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, now would be a great time to do so at www.microsoft.com/ie . If you’ve already upgraded, you can check that SmartScreen Filter is enabled by going to the Safety Menu and clicking on SmartScreen Filter. If the menu gives you the option to “Turn Off SmartScreen Filter”, the SmartScreen Filter is switched on.

James Pratt, Senior Product Manager

Internet Explorer Business and Marketing Team

how to lose weight fast

The 'JournoList' Controversy, Fox <b>News</b> and the 'Helen Thomas Seat'

But it turns out that one of the journalists disparaging Fox News in e-mails was Michael Scherer of Time magazine. And unlike the other Fox critics on the JournoList, Scherer may actually be in a position to use his authority to hurt …

Robert Naiman: Defense <b>News</b>: War Supplemental Not Needed to Fund <b>…</b>

If the war supplemental is not approved this week, the troops will still be paid and the troops will still be fully supplied. There is no "emergency" requiring action this week.

Lost Remote | “Dream Team” launches Salt Lake <b>news</b> site

Salt TV (at the awkward URL salttvnet.com) is betting that people will pay to see the folks who used to deliver their news every day. The site, in fact, features its talent not only in a Mount Rushmore-style header, but also along the …

Today's SAG National Board Plenary <b>News</b> – Deadline.com

President Howard said, “This is a positive step toward uniting SAG and AFTRA and good news for our members. The creation of a single performers' union is overdue, and I'm pleased to be working with Roberta Reardon, who's been such a …

<b>News</b> and Announcements | AAVSO

News and Announcements. New Web Site Launch! July 23, 2010 - 12:34am. AAVSO Alert Notice 422 July 16, 2010 - 5:20pm. Observing Campaign on Hubble's First Variable in M31: M31_V1. July 16, 2010: An observing campaign is being carried out …

British <b>news</b> outlet apologizes for 'Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury <b>…</b>

Nearly all major news outlets are a joke in my opinion, U.S., British, or otherwise. They are too influenced by personal politics and religious views among other things. So even if unintended (which I too often give them the benefit of …

how to lose weight fast

Kelley wrote recently with the sort of dilemma I get asked about all of the time: Is it better to invest or to prepay a mortgage? We’ve covered this topic in the distant past, but it’s time to review the debate for current readers. First, let’s look at Kelley’s e-mail:

My husband and I are on the right track. At age 25, our only debt lies in our home mortgage. We have the six-month emergency fund in place, I currently meet the 3% 401(k) match offered by my employer, and I started a Roth IRA for myself and my husband last year. I started each Roth IRA with $4,000.

My financial advisor recommended for us to max out each of our Roth IRAs each year. My husband disagrees. He thinks paying off the house is a bigger priority. Starting this year, we’ve made an extra payment on our house each month. If we continue doing this, we can have our house paid off in nine years rather than 30 years. However, we can’t do both.

Currently we’ve decided to throw $1,000 into each Roth each year until the house is paid off. Is this the wise decision? Or is it better to put more toward the Roth IRA and less toward the house?

I understand either option is good because I’m saving money. I’m just curious of which route would be wiser.

Kelley’s right: Both of these options are good. This is like choosing between an apple and an orange. Both taste good, and they’re good for you &madsh; but is one better for you in the long run?

What the experts say
Three years ago, when we last covered this topic (holy cats! — where has the time gone?), I collected the following roundup of advice from personal-finance books:

• Ric Edleman (Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth): Never own your home outright. Instead, get a big 30-year mortgage and never pay it off — regardless of your age and income. “Every time you send an extra $100 to your mortgage company, you deny yourself the opportunity to invest that $100 somewhere else.”
• Suze Orman (The Laws of Money): Invest in the known before the unknown. Paying off your mortgage offers a guaranteed return on investment. “You cannot live in a tax return. You cannot live in a stock certificate. You live in your home.”
• Elizabeth Warren (All Your Worth): Save 20% of your income. Use 10% for retirement savings, 5% to accelerate your mortgage, and 5% to save for future dreams. “Paying off your home also does something many financial planners neglect to mention: It gives you freedom. Once that mortgage is gone, just imagine all the freedom in your wallet.”
• Dave Ramsey (The Total Money Makeover): Prepay your mortgage if you can, but only after you’ve saved an emergency fund, and only if you’re putting at least 15% of your income toward retirement. Don’t use a program designed by a broker; use your own self-discipline.
• Dominguez and Robin (Your Money or Your Life): “Pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible.” This book, too, was written when interest rates were higher. Also, the authors emphasize frugality over investing.

Financial authors don’t agree on this subject. Maybe the personal finance gurus writing for the web can clear things up?

• Liz Pulliam Weston at MSN Money: Don’t rush to pay off the mortgage. “You’ve got better things to do with your money, like saving for retirement, building an emergency cushion or even living it up a little.”
• Walter Updegrave at CNN Money: If you’ve funded your retirement, and if it will make you happy, then pay down the mortgage. Otherwise, it makes more sense to invest.
• Laura Rowley at Yahoo! Finance: Using very conservative figures, investing instead of prepaying the mortgage yields an extra $400 per year. If you feel compelled to pay down your mortgage, do it. But realize you’re paying a price to do so. (She offers more details at her blog, as well as tips on how to estimate the investment return you need to earn to make it worthwhile.)
• Bankrate: Pay down your mortgage if your investments would be conservative. Invest if you’re planning to do so for the long term.
• USA Today: It depends on your income, your monthly expenses, your risk tolerance, and your desire to own your home free and clear.
• Kiplinger’s: Invest unless you’re near retirement
• The Dollar Stretcher: Mathematically, it makes more sense to invest, but it all depends on your risk tolerance.
• My fellow pfbloggers at Bargaineering and Million Dollar Journey recommend that a person do a little of both: pay down the mortgage some and invest some. Free Money Finance says: “If you have the discipline to save/invest the money you would be using to pay off the mortgage, it’s likely that saving/investing is the better option. But if you’re more the “average” person out there managing your money, I still believe it’s a better option to pre-pay your mortgage.”

The Rowley article offers some interesting background to this debate:

Why do so many people choose to put extra money into a mortgage when other options would likely increase their wealth? “This is really remnant of Depression mentality that has persisted from generation to generation,” says [one expert]. At the time, most mortgages had one- to five-year terms, with a lump sum payment due at the end.

“Any shock to income meant you couldn’t afford your payment — mortgages were much more susceptible to economic uncertainty,” [the expert says], and roughly one-quarter of Americans were unemployed during the Great Depression. “It’s fine to pay down your mortgage if it gives you peace of mind, but you should recognize what that peace of mind costs.”

If you’re facing a similar decision, you may find this calculator useful: prepaying your mortgage vs. investing.

The bottom line
My conclusion in 2007 (and the one I still hold today) is that unless your mortgage rate is very high, it makes more sense mathematically to invest your money. But most gurus agree that psychologically, you should do what works for you. If paying off your mortgage would take a weight off your shoulders, then pay off your mortgage. Sure, you might be losing a bit in the long-term, but you’re still making a smart choice. As I said earlier, it’s like choosing between an apple and an orange. One may be better for you, but they’re both good.

Ultimately, I kind of like the choice that Kelley and her husband have made. They’re prepaying their mortgage and putting some toward retirement. But enough of what I think. Kelley really wants to know what you think.

Which option is better? Should she and her husband be pumping as much as possible into their Roth IRAs? Or should they be paying down their mortgage as quickly as they can? Have you been faced with a similar dilemma in the past? What did you choose to do? And would you make the same choice again?

To hear Sarah Palin tell it, she and her mama grizzlies are people-powered, grassroots examples of how Americans can get involved in politics. But a close look at SarahPAC's campaign finance report shows she spends her donations on the same old, standard consultants as every other politician. And like many others, she still finds ways to keep her inner circle in the money.

She pulled in just shy of $866,000 in donations from people hailing from Kissimmee, Florida to Rancho Palos Verdes, California. But Marylander Laurie Beitman's $35 and the bulk of Palin's small-dollar donations is going to more than Republican candidates the former Alaska governor wants to see win this fall. By our count, Palin spent nearly $400,000 on consultants, lobbying firms and the standard direct mail and fundraising firms politicians frequently use. (The AP had a stricter consulting tally, $210,000.) Just about the only maverick-style item she purchased was $4,000 worth of sausage.

Palin spent $30,000 on “consulting, national and international issues” with Randy Scheunemann's Orion Strategies, a lobbying firm representing foreign governments.

Then there's Rebecca Mansour's Aries Petra Consulting, which Palin paid $22,000 for “internet messaging” to write those infamous Palin Facebook messages. Politico describes Mansour as a “Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin endeared her to Palin's inner circle.”

She paid NorthStar Strategies, the firm owned by her campaign body man and former Bush administration alum Jason Recher $36,000 for “logistics political consulting.”

Former press aide Meg Stapleton's IzzyLene Consulting received $2,500 for media consulting.

Palin paid $35,000 to Grey Strategies, a Columbus firm that helped her with media, logistics and political consulting. It appears to now be a newly merged firm called Grey Shockley, run by lobbyists Doug McMarlin and Leslie Beyer. According to Hotline on Call, McMarlin also travels with Palin.

True North L'Attitudes, a consulting firm created in February by an Anchorage woman named Robyn Engibous, got more than $10,000 for scheduling. Engibous, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), also got almost $1,400 in reimbursements for office supplies and mileage.

Palin has made much of her personal wealth in speaking fees, which reportedly run up to $100,000 per speech. For speechwriting services this past quarter, her PAC paid $3,700 to Lindsay Hayes. Hayes wrote speeches for Palin during the presidential campaign; she also was a speechwriter for Sen. Stevens for several years.

SarahPAC gave another $5,000 for “clerical” work to Ivy Frye, a close confidant of Palin's who has been with her since her campaign for governor and who Palin hired as an aide in the governor's office. In addition to the $5,000, SarahPAC gave Frye almost $1,500 to reimburse her for postage and copies. In the first quarter of 2010, she paid Frye $15,000 for clerical work and more than $3,000 in reimbursement for printing and shipping costs.

The PAC also pays a $10,000 monthly legal retainer, totaling $30,000 for the quarter, to the Palin family lawyer, Thomas Van Flein. Van Flein was Palin's personal lawyer while she was governor, defending her against ethics complaints. He also represented Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, when she tried to get child support from Levi Johnston earlier this year.

Check out our past coverage of Palin's “brain trust” of advisers here.

penis enlargement

Rachel Maddow - Video | Fox <b>News</b> | Shirley Sherrod | Mediaite

While President Obama may be trying to avoid diving into the racial fray right now, Rachel Maddow jumped right in last night. In a fairly devastating segment Maddow tied this week's Shirley Sherrod debacle to previous cases, …

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 22, 2010 (Audio)

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Kansas heat wave kills 2000 cattle; Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazilian coast; Does Egypt own the Nile? water battle brewing; Poo Power: generating electricity from sewage?; …

Google Tells FTC Enforcing “Hot <b>News</b>” Would Create a Hot Mess

The media industry may be in upheaval as a result of the web, but having the government step in isn't the right response, Google has told the Federal Trade Commission. The search company's comments are a response to the FTC's proposed …

internet marketing course

Rachel Maddow - Video | Fox <b>News</b> | Shirley Sherrod | Mediaite

While President Obama may be trying to avoid diving into the racial fray right now, Rachel Maddow jumped right in last night. In a fairly devastating segment Maddow tied this week's Shirley Sherrod debacle to previous cases, …

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: July 22, 2010 (Audio)

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Kansas heat wave kills 2000 cattle; Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazilian coast; Does Egypt own the Nile? water battle brewing; Poo Power: generating electricity from sewage?; …

Google Tells FTC Enforcing “Hot <b>News</b>” Would Create a Hot Mess

The media industry may be in upheaval as a result of the web, but having the government step in isn't the right response, Google has told the Federal Trade Commission. The search company's comments are a response to the FTC's proposed …

big white booty

Old Spice’s marketing gimmick—a macho guy played with a wink by Isaiah Mustafa—has reached a crescendo on TV and the Web. Tricia Romano on the evolution of black male sex symbols.

From the moment the Old Spice commercial featuring Isaiah Mustafa aired in February America swooned. Who, we wanted to know, was this dashing, tall, dark and handsome figure with impossible abs, a gleaming smile, and a twinkle in his eyes? (Oh, yes, and riding on a horse. One mustn't forget the horse).

Mustafa quickly became a household face—if not name—as the original commercial eventually racked up 13 million views on YouTube.

He's hot enough to make celebrity lesbian Ellen DeGeneres giggle like a school girl when he visited her set, causing her to beg him to recite his Old Spice lines.

Old Spice Guy Hangs Up His Towel

And this week, on the heels of its second installment in the series (featuring Mustafa swan diving into a jacuzzi and landing on a motorcycle), the company invited people to ask questions of “Old Spice Man” on Twitter which Mustafa answered in 30-second clips on YouTube. The result was an instant viral success—the Old Spice YouTube channel was ranked No. 1 on the website. (At least one person wasn’t impressed: Sockington the cat—who has resisted using his popularity for commercial purposes—threw up his paw: “HELLO @OLDSPICE much interest at your viral marketing campaign at sockington hq/litterbox I AM A CAT WITH 68 TIMES MORE FOLLOWERS discuss.”

Sockington’s dissent aside, the success of the Old Spice commercials hinges not only on the clever, almost absurdist imagery and writing, but on Mustafa and his inherent sex appeal.

The Root argued this week in an essay called, “Why The Old Spice Guy Is Good For Black America” that “the success of the Old Spice Guy … might actually be a sign that being a black man in America is getting slightly easier.” Cord Jefferson points out that not so long ago, the black man's role in advertising was as a scary figure to contrast against the white so-called gentlemen; or more recently, as a subservient figure.

I'll go one further than Jefferson: The Old Spice Guy isn't just good for Black America, Mustafa's place in the pop culture pantheon is good for all of America.

As Farai Chideya, former NPR journalist and host of forthcoming radio show, Pop and Politics Radio, explained to me, “You have certain black actors who could sell things, but they usually did them in these nonsexual ways, like Bill Cosby and Jello. Then you had people who were sexual like Billy Dee Williams, who pitched a brand for a black audience,” she said. “This is something new where it's for a mainstream, general mixed-race audience.”

Caption: Mustafa filmed video responses to some of his lucky Twitter followers, including actress Alyssa Milano.

The choice of a black man as the desired sex object for a national advertising spot aimed at mainstream America, which is to say white America, is particularly perfect right now. It's hard to say whether Mustafa and Old Spice would have paired up 10 or 20 years ago, unless he was a famous star athlete like O.J. Simpson. One could argue that having a handsome black president has softened a lot of people’s ideas of what’s attractive and sexy—Obama’s shaky polls notwithstanding.

Interestingly, Old Spice had another black spokesman before Mustafa: Terry Crews. The hyperactive ad series featured the ex-NFL linebacker topless and yelling in an intense (and funny) way. Chideya says of Crews: “He's not as handsome as Isaiah, but he's also really funny in a way that's more within the black vernacular.” Of Mustafa, she says, “This guy is no doubt black, but he's someone who is the modern, urbane, living-in-a-post-racial-Fort Greene kind of a guy.”

While Obama braves the fast-moving political tide (we love him, we are irritated and disappointed with him, we loathe him, we love him again), here is this other stunningly handsome, funny black man on our TV, transcending color lines, with—it should be noted—a Muslim name.

Today I was able to catch up with Gary Key who is a Technical Marketing Manager for ASUS to ask him a few questions about Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 3.

James : Thanks for your time Gary. As a Technical Marketing Manager, how have you been involved with the release of Internet Explorer Platform Preview 3?

Gary : It’s really exciting to be involved! ASUS has been providing both mainstream and cutting edge hardware to Microsoft to ensure the best possible user experience with Internet Explorer 9. Not only have we been supplying exciting hardware for testing but we’ve also been providing input and feedback on how to make IE9 perform its absolute best on ASUS products.

James : You said that it’s been exciting being involved with Platform Preview 3. What’s been most exciting for you?

Gary : Here at ASUS we’ve been at the forefront of netbook and notebook innovation by providing the type of CPU and graphical processing power that Internet Explorer 9 thrives on. For example, we shipped the first Intel Atom dual-core with NVIDIA ION powered netbooks, NVIDIA 3D Vision enabled notebooks and one of the first DX11 gaming notebooks powered by ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPU. It’s this type of power that enables IE9 to provide an extremely responsive and interactive user experience on the Web. ASUS’ continued commitment to provide excellent CPU and GPU performance in its mobile products along with Microsoft’s innovative use of hardware acceleration in IE9 will help to create an unlimited possibilities for new Web applications that are both graphically and functionally rich.

James : You mentioned some of your innovative hardware. I’ve had my eye on your U30Jc or UL80Vt notebooks. How will they perform with the latest Platform Preview?

Gary : Thanks to the Intel dual-core processor and discreet graphics performance of the NVIDIA mobile GPU chipset in either notebook the user experience with Internet Explorer 9 will be incredible. In fact, even our AMD based Eee PC 1201T netbook will provide enough graphical and CPU processing power to ensure the user has a terrific web experience with IE9.

James : How about elsewhere in your range? Is there a price point or a particular type of machine I should be looking for?

Gary : We have a vast number of new mobile products launching this summer that are built with Internet Explorer 9 in mind. Everything from our upcoming Eee PC 1215N netbook and slim and light U35Jc notebook to the new 3D capable Republic of Gamers G53 gaming notebook will offer users a rich and interactive internet experience with IE9.

James : So do I need to buy a new notebook or workstation to take advantage of the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9?

Gary : Not at all. We’ve been using discrete graphics and multi-core processors in most of our machines since we started shipping Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines so Internet Explorer 9 will be able to take advantage of that horsepower too. Of course, buying a new shiny notebook with an aluminum body never hurts does it?

James : You’re really trying to talk me into that U30Jc aren’t you? One last thing, what’s your favorite Platform Preview 3 demo on the www.ietestdrive.com site and why?

Gary : That’s a very difficult question to answer. I really do not have a single favorite Internet Explorer Platform Preview 3 demo as they all show how the combination of IE9 and the processing power available in ASUS mobile products will provide a uniquely rich, responsive and interactive Web experience for the user. However, I would have to say during testing that we probably ran the Flickr Explorer demo the most as it truly displayed the power of our current and upcoming mobile products when using IE9.

James : Gary thank you so much for your time.

Gary : It’s been a pleasure.

big white booty

The iPad just got a game changing <b>news</b> reader, it's called Flipboard.

It offers a way to “flip” through news, photos and updates from what your friends on Facebook and Twitter are sharing. Rather than scrolling through posts and links, Flipboard organises everything shared into a magazine like format, …

Just Posted: Panasonic DMC-LX5 sample gallery: Digital Photography <b>…</b>

Just Posted: Panasonic DMC-LX5 sample gallery: Just posted: full sized images from the Panasonic DMC-LX5. We had the chance to shoot with the newly-announced LX5 and have prepared a 24 shot gallery of images. We intentionally shot at a …

CampusProgress.org | <b>news</b> | Immigration <b>News</b> Coming Out of Arizona

In other news, more than 500 National Guard soldiers will be coming to the border in the next few months. Altogether, 1200 soldiers will be deployed to the border. At the announcement earlier this week, an official with the Immigration …

In 2006, recent Harvard grad Alexa von Tobel was headed for a job at Morgan Stanley. But though she would soon be managing the bank’s investments, she realized she didn’t know the first thing about her own finances. Most financial guides seemed to be written for middle-aged readers with millions in assets, rather than recent college grads. “I was reading every book I could find, but none of them spoke to me,” she says. So she came up with the idea for LearnVest, an online personal-finance resource for young women like her, and ended up writing an 80-page business plan.

After two years at Morgan Stanley, von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in 2008. But upon winning a business plan competition held by Astia, a non-profit that supports women entrepreneurs, she took a five-year leave of absence and invested $75,000 of her Wall Street earnings to start LearnVest in November. She quickly enlisted advisors, including Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, and Catherine Levene, the former COO of DailyCandy, to help develop the site’s content and technology. In January 2009, she secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs.

LearnVest’s site launched a year later and has since signed up more than 100,000 members. It offers online budgeting calculators, video chats with certified financial planners on the company’s staff, and free e-mail tutorials on topics such as opening an IRA. The company earns revenue from advertising and by referring its users to companies such as TD Ameritrade. In April, after just four weeks of fundraising, von Tobel closed a $4.5 million investment round led by Accel Partners, which has also invested in Facebook and Etsy. (Incidentally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lived in the same dorm as von Tobel at Harvard.)

Von Tobel likens LearnVest to an online version of The Suze Orman Show, but with the goal of reinforcing positive finance habits early on. “Suze Orman helps 45-year-old women get out of debt,” she says. “Why not reach 20-year-olds to keep them from getting into debt?”

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

internet marketing course

We all goof up. It's a fact of life. However, as has been said many times before, the key is to learn from our mistakes so we don't repeat them over and over again. Here are four personal financial mistakes to avoid and save yourself significant grief and loss of hard-earned dollars.

Not living within your means — Learn to live on less than you take in from your monthly income. You begin to dig yourself into a financial hole when you engage in “deficit spending” and buying on credit. Keep track of where your money goes, and how much you spend . Live on a cash basis for awhile if necessary. One simple, yet effective budgeting technique to help move you from “red” to “black” is to write down everything you spend your money on for a period of at least 30 days. You will be amazed at where your money goes, and just how much of it gets “frittered away” on needless spending. Use your recorded expenses to set up a simple monthly budget. It need not be overly complex, but make it sufficiently detailed so as to show your main expenses — housing, food, utilities, etc — and categories that you can cut back on without too much trouble — meals out, entertainment, luxury items not essential to day-to-day living. If you find you have money left to spend, congratulations! Now put that extra cash into savings!

Not saving, not putting anything back — Develop a savings habit. One of the best and easiest ways to do so is to arrange to have a given amount deducted from your paycheck each month (maybe buy a savings bond through payroll), or have your bank automatically transfer a given amount from your checking account to a simple savings passbook acccount. Consider opening a mutual fund account that will also automatically transfer money from your bank checking account to your mutual fund account. Start small, but by all means, do what you can to build your savings.

Letting your credit cards sabotage your financial well-being — Don't fall into the ever-so-easy debt trap. Eliminate all but one credit card, and make sure to pay off that balance in full every month. If this proves to be too difficult a goal to be met, then learn to get by without any credit cards for a given period of time until you can prove to yourself that you can handle debt responsibly.

Investing or speculating irresponsibly — Don't try to make a “big killing” in the stock, options, or futures markets over the short-term by speculating in high-risk financial products or commodities. Don't try to make quick profits by buying-and-selling over the short-term. Don't try to engage in day-trading if you decide to invest in the stock market. One simple, yet very effective investing strategy, is to invest a given amount on a regular basis each month. Consider investing in an index fund, exchange-traded fund, or diversified growth mutual fund over the long-term.

Good personal finance practices need not be complicated to be successful. Use your common sense, get help when you need it, and you will be well on your way to a positive cash flow and healthy balance sheet!

Source:

Glink, Ilyce R. 2001. Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Your Personal Finances. New York: Three Rivers Press.

penis enlargement

Investors Back China <b>News</b> Outlet - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Many news organizations around the world have been cutting back on staff, resources and coverage. But a new media outfit backed by one of Hong Kong's most prominent businessmen is bucking that trend.

Hyperlocal <b>News</b> Site Fwix Debuts Local Trend Search

Fwix, a news site that offers a stream of hyperlocal, realtime news by location, is launching a new portal today that aims to give anyone a real time view of what's happening in a location. You can access the new search portal here.

EA announces Alice: Madness Returns <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of EA announces Alice: Madness Returns.

how to lose weight fast

internet marketing course

Business owners experience much stress when starting a brand new business. There are multiple things to worry about when running daily operations. Some business tasks consist of satisfying current customers and catering to their needs, finding new customers to increase business profits, and how to balance business funds the right way. Becoming a business owner is not an easy task, but it has major benefits if you succeed. One of your main goals as a business owner is to manage your business credit wisely. There are a few simple steps that will make this entire process easy to accomplish.

Monitor your business credit regularly. Regular consumers are not the only ones that must perform this task frequently, business owners must do the same. Businesses can become victims of fraud and identity theft, just like non business owners. Identity thieves are constantly monitoring the internet for their latest victim. Owning a business and accessing the internet could place your customer's information at risk. You must make the effort to safeguard their information from unwanted visitors. Request a business credit report every few months and subscribe to an up to date alert system. By doing this, you will be able to quickly identify any unfamiliar charges. Not monitoring your business credit report can cause you unnecessary stress and a loss of customers.

Obtain a business credit card for business purposes only. One of the biggest mistakes a business owner can make is to spend business credit on personal items. It can easily become out of control and cause your business to suffer in a major way. A business credit card should only be used for the necessities of your business. There will be many occasions when an unexpected business expense will pop up. In order to keep your business running smoothly, you will need to have access to a business charge account. Business owners should not max out their credit card accounts for personal pleasure. Mismanaging your business funds can cause current and potential customers to look at you in an unprofessional way.

Keep your personal finances intact at all times. Although you are not mixing your business finances with your personal finances, everything should still be in great working order. Business owners that cannot manage their personal finances, may also have issues with organizing business finances as well. Before taking the final leap into owning your very own business, get your personal finances in order first. It will be less stressful for you as a new owner. You will also be able to focus your attention on your business instead of how you are going to pay your electric bill.

Manage your business credit wisely and you will soon discover how profitable your new business has become. Although making endless amounts of cash is not your primary goal for starting your own business, you still need profits to survive. Organization will be a key tool in getting your personal and business finances in order. Take the time to plan everything out and always have a back up plan.

penis enlargement

CNBC and covering the Apple <b>news</b> conference « Talking Biz <b>News</b>

Hal Morris, writing on his Grumpy Editor blog, likes how business news network CNBC covered Friday's news conference by Apple about its iPhone antennas, where no live broadcasts were allowed. Morris writes, “And that was the situation …

BREAKING <b>NEWS</b>: Pettitte out 4-5 weeks; Mitre to start Saturday <b>…</b>

According to Brian Cashman via Chad Jennings, Andy Pettitte will be placed on the DL and could be out for 4-5 weeks. He will be replaced in the starting.

US Economy Recovering Faster Than Europe and Japan, IMF Says

(April 21) — Thanks in part to an injection of government stimulus money, the ailing US economy is rebounding from the financial crisis more strongly than Europe and Japan, according to the International Monetary Fund, …

how to lose weight fast