News Stories

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

That's probably my biggest annoyance with Steve Jobs is his revisionist fantasy of history. Almost everything about Apple directly descends from XEROX or Unix/X-windows and other historical precursors.

Given how popular his products are, he probably had a god complex.

[sa547]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

Wouldn't it be better if they not announced it? This way Fox News wouldn't see it coming till they strike. Announcing it now is just giving them time to strengthen their security system.

Being at the other side of the ideology fence, RT loves trolling Fox... and I'm not surprised at all.

*switches to Al-Jazeera*

[GundamFan0083]

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan condemns killing of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,5790121.story

[Ithekro]

Is the Nation of Islam still relevant to anything in America?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Is the Nation of Islam still relevant to anything in America?

Frankly, he's one of the guys I wasn't aware was still even alive

Did Louis also condemn all the murders Gaddafi's people committed during his regime? Didn't think so... I vote Louis go to Tripoli and proclaim that out loud... seriously, the guy was always a crappy shadow of Malcolm.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

Wouldn't it be better if they not announced it? This way Fox News wouldn't see it coming till they strike. Announcing it now is just giving them time to strengthen their security system.

The point isn't to "beat" Fox News, whatever that means. The point is to be seen to beat them.

[ganbaru]

National Security Agency helps banks battle hackers
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...79P5E020111026
Someone else is getting bad vibes from this ?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

National Security Agency helps banks battle hackers
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...79P5E020111026
Someone else is getting bad vibes from this ?

Well.. it tells me the NSA is tripping across its jurisdiction again...
Don't see any FBI investigations of bankster malfeasance and the Justice Department seems to be only picking a few scapegoats (what... two so far?)

In utterly unrelated news - Bangkok takes a "five day holiday" to emergency evac the city due to the huge floods:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15471849

[SaintessHeart]

Bank of Japan to buy more government debt

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — The Bank of Japan said Thursday it would increase its asset-purchase program by about 5 trillion yen ($65.8 billion), while keeping its policy interest-rate target unchanged.

The central bank said its policy board voted 8 to 1 to add the funds, with the money earmarked for buying government bonds.

“For the purpose of further enhancing the spread of monetary easing effect throughout financial markets, the bank judged it appropriate to designate [the funds] ... for the purchase of Japanese government bonds” since lending to corporations was currently “generally smooth.”

The vote to keep the interest-rate target at 0 to 0.1% was unanimous.

Despite the easing, the Bank of Japan remained relatively upbeat on the economy, saying “economic activity has continued picking up while the supply-side constraints have been gradually resolved.”

The Japanese yen saw limited reaction to the policy decisions, as the increase in the asset purchases had been leaked in a report in the Nikkei business daily Wednesday. Read more on Nikkei report of Bank of Japan easing.

The U.S. dollar traded at ¥76.00, down slightly from ¥76.06 ahead of the announcement.

EDIT :

Our financial smarts erode quickly after age 60

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — It must be someone’s idea of a joke. If so, it’s a cruel one. Consider: We ask older Americans to make complicated financial decisions about Social Security, Medicare, retirement distributions and more — just when they are losing their fast ball.

Regardless of gender or education level, Americans become considerably less literate about all things money after age 60, according to a new study.

MarketWatch's Robert Powell hosts a panel discussion on the future of retirement, including financial risks, lifestyle choices and working in retirement, with benefit experts Joseph Coughlin, Kathryn McCabe Votava and Rick Miller.

The scores on a test measuring knowledge of investments, insurance, credit and money basics fell about 2% each year starting after age 60, falling from about 59% correct — hardly a passing grade — for those in their 60s to a dismal 30% for those 80 and older, according to Michael Finke, an associate professor at Texas Tech University and a co-author of the study.

Here’s what’s even worse: Our confidence in our financial decision-making abilities rises with age. We are not older and wiser. Rather, we are older, less smart and overconfident.

This notion of confidence rising while financial literacy is falling spells trouble for that group of Americans that now represents more than 12% of the population and controls half of all the financial wealth in America, according to Finke, who is also head of Texas Tech University’s Ph.D. in financial-planning program. Read the study, “Old Age and the Decline in Financial Literacy,” at this site.
Test your knowledge

In their study, Finke and his co-authors created a test of the money, insurance, investment and credit knowledge Americans need to make basic financial decisions.

MarketWatch created a money quiz using the 10 questions from Finke’s study that respondents found most difficult to answer correctly. Take the test, and see how you stack up against others in your age group.

Here’s what Finke and his colleagues found. First, Americans, regardless of age, are on average financially illiterate.

In fact, for the 10 questions we replicate in our quiz, the respondents in Finke’s study answered on average just five of those 10 correctly. (Finke used 16 questions related to financial literacy in his study.)

“If you look at the questions, these are things that you need to know to navigate financial markets,” Finke said. “A lot of people are not able to effectively do that, even when they are at full capacity… It’s amazing what people don’t know.”

Second, Finke and his team noticed that financial literacy peaks in the late 40s — those aged 45 to 49 answered on average 6.4 of the 10 questions correctly — and that there was a statistically strong and consistent decline in financial literacy among older respondents.

Those in their early 80s answered on average just 3.3 of the 10 questions correctly.
What others have found

There’s been other research about crystallized intelligence (financial decision-making is a form of crystallized intelligence that requires both memory and problem-solving skills) and fluid intelligence (the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge) and how it changes over time.

It’s not news that cognitive performance improves from youth to middle age, at which point it peaks before beginning a steady decline, and that middle-age adults may be at a decision-making sweet spot. That’s what a group of researchers including David Laibson, a Harvard University professor, discovered in their research published in 2009.

Laibson and his team found that older Americans are inclined to make more financial mistakes with credit than middle-aged Americans. Older Americans didn’t use credit-card balance-transfer offers correctly, they incorrectly estimated the value of their house, and they paid higher interest rates on loans than middle-age Americans, according to Laibson’s study.

In effect, they found, as did Finke, that cognition peaks in middle age. Read the 2009 study co-authored by Laibson at this site. Read more: Why geezers give the best investment advice.

The difference between Laibson’s study and Finke’s? “Our study is able to say that the decline in cognition is attributable to a decline in financial literacy,” said Finke. “The reason why we see these kinds of results is that people's ability to make relatively straightforward, objective, age-neutral type decisions declines with age.”
Implications for Americans

For middle-aged and older Americans, the to-do list just got a bit longer. “One of the great dangers is that when you reach retirement age, your ability to make financial decisions is pretty strong,” said Finke. “You are near your peak of financial decision-making, and it can be often difficult to acknowledge that after this age, your ability to make decisions is going to decline.”

Task No. 1: Acknowledge that your ability to make financial decisions will decline after age 60. Don’t think this won’t happen to you; it will.

“We already know from other research unrelated to financial decision-making that there are predictable declines in complex decision-making,” Finke said. “It's not unsurprising to see these same declines in financial decision-making.”

Of course, you won’t know that it’s happening when it does. In fact, you’re likely to develop a false sense of security about your ability to make financial decisions given that your confidence — if you’re like most older Americans — will rise over time.

“To me, that's the biggest danger,” Finke said. “That as you age, as you get into [your] 70s and 80s, you don't sense that your ability to make these decisions is declining.”

Task No. 2: Set up a retirement-income plan where you don’t have to make complex decisions as you age. You could delegate those decisions to an expert whom you trust. Or, better yet, a financial-services firm where you are not delegating to a single financial adviser, but to a firm that will take care of your finances as you reach advanced ages.

Task No. 3: Consider annuitizing your income, preferably in a straightforward annuity-type product or a mix of annuity and investment products, Finke said. Consider also passive investments that automatically rebalance.

Bottom line: Don’t delegate your financial decision-making to the 85-year-old version of yourself, who may not be as capable as the 65-year-old version.

Yes, it’s a tall order to look that far in advance. “It's human nature to procrastinate about making important financial decisions and it's also human nature to be somewhat over-optimistic about our own abilities,” said Finke, who noted the similarities between driving and making financial decisions.

“Studies of driving show that older people don't sense the decline,” he said. But when you show older drivers objective evidence that their abilities have diminished, they start to accept the truth and change their driving behavior. “We can do the same thing in financial services. We can make people aware that this decline is going to happen and that by planning on it and by accepting it, they can achieve a much better outcome,” Finke said.

It might be hard to provide — as we do with older drivers — objective evidence that your ability to make financial decisions is on the decline. The only near-equivalent of the older-driver’s test for financial decisions is the test Finke and his researchers created.

“Our test is really the only objective measure that we have that can show people whether or not their ability to make financial decisions is greater than or lower than average,” said Finke. “The best thing to do, and it doesn't matter how knowledgeable you are about finance, is to start thinking about ways of making your retirement decision-making more passive.”

Another idea: Consider an annual financial-literacy checkup. Have an adviser review the decisions you've made over the past year, Finke said. One idea: Find a fee-based adviser to meet once a year for two to three hours, to “go over your finances so that you are on the right track.”

Finke’s research also points to increased demand for professional services such as financial planning, accounting and legal assistance — services that substitute for one’s own decision-making ability.
Implications for policy makers

Plus, Finke’s research has implications for national retirement policy. The trend toward making people more responsible for their retirement security might not be in the best of interest older Americans.

“How much we should be taking decision-making away from older households in order to make them better off?” Finke said. “As much as we like people to be able to make their own decisions and their own mistakes, it can be cruel to force households that are not necessarily well equipped to make complex financial decisions to make them.”

Finke also said it’s time to put teeth into the laws governing the delivery of financial advice. “Many older consumers are sitting ducks,” he said. “They are sitting on a lot of money and their financial decision- making ability may be diminished. The idea that we could expect them to make rational choices about increasingly complex financial products may be unreasonable.”

The National Council on Aging recently noted that older adults represent 12% of the U.S. population, but make up 35% of all fraud victims.

“There is a lot of debate right now about whether or not financial advisers should be legally looking out for the best interest of their client,” said Finke. “And if we are going to suggest that older households begin delegating some of their financial decision-making to an expert then it's even more important that we make sure that those experts are considered fiduciaries.”

The road ahead is long. But with hope you’ll make the right money moves now that you really are older and wiser.

Technically speaking, the older we grow, the less we sleep and dream. This should shorten the bedtimes of our older forum members.

Nightmare much?

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

EDIT :

Our financial smarts erode quickly after age 60

Technically speaking, the older we grow, the less we sleep and dream. This should shorten the bedtimes of our older forum members.
Nightmare much?

But if you take the quiz, you will see that for example question 1 is very tricky:

Q.1 Savings accounts and money-market accounts are most appropriate for:

Long-term investments like retirement

Emergency funds and short-term goals

Earning a high rate of return

What the quiz claims is that the right answer is "Emergency funds and short-term goals". But in reality, many of those who realy have money, have it at large in foreign bank accounts (switzerland, luxembourg, cayman islands...). I suppose all those 'tax refugees' have absolutely no financial smarts.

I suppose there must be a different questionaire for rich people.

(Sarcasm warning. Actually I despise the act of leeching from society by means of tax fraud.)

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Jinto

What the quiz claims is that the right answer is "Emergency funds and short-term goals". But in reality, many of those who realy have money, have it at large in foreign bank accounts (switzerland, luxembourg, cayman islands...). I suppose all those 'tax refugees' have absolutely no financial smarts.

I suppose there must be a different questionaire for rich people.

(Sarcasm warning. Actually I despise the act of leeching from society by means of tax fraud.)

Absolutely.

For us poor people, the volatility of money markets is only for short-term goals and funds and not to be held in long term. Then again, that could be a reason why the tax refugees desire more money is because those currencies continue to depreciate over time....thus making them worth less and making them less rich.

And where do they get the money to "top up" those bank accounts? From us people, of course.

EDIT :

Factbox: Thailand's flood crisis and its economy

I just went down to my local "Akiba" to buy an external hard drive, and I have been told that prices for HDDs have been rising thanks to the flood in Thailand.

To dampen spirits even further, the land of smiles have been producing much of the computer hardware for SEA, thus the prices for electronic goods and components might rise along with it.

Try not to spoil your computers for the next six months. Or else you are going to pay a hefty price for that. Meanwhile, start buying the laptops if you really need them, I am seeing i5s with 2GB GPUs going for less than S$1500. And with a 24mth warranty too.

[ganbaru]

Sony buys Ericsson out of mobile phone venture
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...79Q19J20111027

[andyjay729]

http://news.yahoo.com/mcdonalds-bans...203246253.html

Think twice before turning your kid loose in a McDonald's PlayPlace. Or any other ball pen (does Chuck E. Cheese have those? It's been a long time for me).

I wonder what the lady did to get banned from McD's. For the sake of her posterity, I hope it was just handing out leaflets and posting fliers at the entrances.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by andyjay729

http://news.yahoo.com/mcdonalds-bans...203246253.html

Think twice before turning your kid loose in a McDonald's PlayPlace. Or any other ball pen (does Chuck E. Cheese have those? It's been a long time for me).

I wonder what the lady did to get banned from McD's. For the sake of her posterity, I hope it was just handing out leaflets and posting fliers at the entrances.

Originally Posted by Commentary Section

Parents and society as a whole have become so damned paranoid! When we were kids, we played in the dirt, rode bikes, scooters and skateboards WITHOUT helmets or knee pads. The WHOLE IDEA was to get dirty!!!!!
Parents today are creating a generation of of over-weight, lazy, x-box playing slugs!

*looks at faint scar from thigh to ankle caused by falling into the school pond 15 years ago*

Thank goodness I am not a girl. Or I'll never be able to wear zettai ryouiki for the rest of my life.

[ganbaru]

Some might be interested to watch this:
Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side?
http://video.pbs.org/video/2160792049

[hinakatbklyn]

Originally Posted by andyjay729

http://news.yahoo.com/mcdonalds-bans...203246253.html

Think twice before turning your kid loose in a McDonald's PlayPlace. Or any other ball pen (does Chuck E. Cheese have those? It's been a long time for me).

I wonder what the lady did to get banned from McD's. For the sake of her posterity, I hope it was just handing out leaflets and posting fliers at the entrances.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/phoenixk...-27068678.html

(More detailed in video format)
More like record what she found at the McDonalds Playground and showed it online.

[andyjay729]

If you feel like the world's been going to hell in a shopping cart recently, you might be pleased to see this story.

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/...torically.html

[MeoTwister5]

Nicolas Sarkozy: Greece should have been denied euro

Let the blame game begin.

Population control: the rich controlling the poor?

While I agree that the global population is rising too fast to be sustained adequately, I also agree that unequal distribution of resources (gap between rich and poor) has a big effect on this. A huge chunk of the world's poor could survive under decently humane conditions if majority of our resources weren't controlled by the top 5%.

[Decagon]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Population control: the rich controlling the poor?

While I agree that the global population is rising too fast to be sustained adequately, I also agree that unequal distribution of resources (gap between rich and poor) has a big effect on this. A huge chunk of the world's poor could survive under decently humane conditions if majority of our resources weren't controlled by the top 5%.

Yeah. It boggles the mind why the people legislating those ideas never gave consideration to ask someone why they have several children when that impoverished farmer or migrant villager in decrepit corner of a city can't expect most of their children to reach adulthood.

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Nicolas Sarkozy: Greece should have been denied euro

Let the blame game begin.

Probably true but anyway, now the important fact is to correct/addapt to the situation, not to say what they should hade done.