Too young to retire

Reuters: "When Joe Burklund of Des Moines, Iowa, lost his job at the depths of recession in 2009 after 30 years in the advertising and marketing industry, he never imagined another career.

He was almost 60 and optimistic he would land another job in his field, where he was earning $65,000 a year.

After collecting unemployment checks for a year, Burklund took a part-time job at grocery chain Trader Joe's. As he watched his retirement savings bleed almost dry, he realized his situation would not turn around anytime soon.

An acquaintance suggested he train for call center work, servicing banks and insurance companies. "I said, 'Well, I may as well try that because nothing else seems to be working,'" Burklund told Reuters.

Thousands of Americans aged 55 and older are going back to school and reinventing themselves to get an edge in a difficult labor market, hoping to rebuild retirement nest eggs that were almost destroyed by the recession.

"I went into it thinking 'I am not too sure I am cut out for call center work,' and I never really wanted to sell insurance. But I was willing to try anything to gain full employment," said Burklund, who has set aside hopes to retire at 65.

Within two weeks of completing the program, he had three interviews and two job offers. In March, he started working at Marsh Insurance.

A similar tale is recounted by Tom Halseth, about 380 miles east in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Halseth, 60, lost his job in May 2010 after 30 years as store manager with retail chain JC Penny. He spent 16 months unemployed.

Today, Halseth is a quality assurance technician with dried fruit packer Mariani Packing Company in Wisconsin Rapids. He landed the job after a rigorous five-month program that included biology, chemistry and math classes and a two-week internship.

According to the Federal Reserve, household financial assets, which exclude homes, dropped from a peak of $57 trillion in the third quarter of 2007 to just over $49 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, the latest period for which data is available.

A survey to be released this summer by the Public Policy Institute of AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans, found a quarter of Americans 50 years and older used up all their savings during the 2007-09 recession. About 43 percent of the 5,000 respondents who took part in the survey said their savings had not recovered.

TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE

Many older workers who lost jobs during the downturn are too young to retire and usually would not be considered ideal for retraining.

Independent groups like the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which is working with local communities and businesses to build skills and careers for workers and job seekers, are working to debunk that myth.

In the last four years, the Fund has helped about 1,860 Americans 55 years and older retrain for new jobs.

According to data from the Labor Department, 2.65 million people participated in its Workforce Investment Act programs in 2011. Those programs, which are also designed to help people find jobs, are separate from those run by independent groups like the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.

About 345,000, or 13 percent of participants in the Workforce Investment Act programs, were 55 years and older."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/31/us-usa-economy-employment-idUSBRE84U09J20120531?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

"New energy leapfrogs the old"

ECAMI wins Ashden Award
"New energy leapfrogs the old"

	Max Lacayo recieves the 2009 Ashden Award from Prince Charles in London, UK.

"ECAMI's family-owned business has installed thousands of renewable energy systems in rural communities across Nicaragua since it began in 1982. A company with strong social commitment, it provides PV light and communications for schools; vaccine refrigeration for clinics; pumps to supply village water; entertainment and battery-charging for tourist facilities; and power for mobile phone masts. It also installs micro hydro and solar water heating. Now ECAMI is growing fast, setting up regional branches to meet the growing demand for renewable energy." from Ashden Awards website.

from: http://www.ecamisa.com/English.htm

Can the telecom industry solve Africa’s power problems?

Copied from: http://wecanchange.co.za/Editors/Articles/tabid/55/itemid/338/amid/376/can-the-telecom-industry-solve-africas-power-problems.aspx

Africa is plagued by unreliable, intermittent and often non-existent access to electricity, especially in rural areas. This is a huge inconvenience and a big obstacle to economic development. Can mobile operators be the unlikely saviours, bringing power to the people in rural Africa, asks Peter Karaszi*?

Lack of power, inhospitable terrain, electricity thefts, shoddy and neglected infrastructure, mismanaged power companies, dirty coal fired stations, expensive power and frequent power cuts at best… the list of Africa’s power problems is long. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the overall electrification rate in Africa is less than 42%. In rural sub-Saharan Africa, it is a shocking 14%.

To quote the IEA: “Energy alone is not sufficient for creating the conditions for economic growth, but it is certainly necessary. It is impossible to operate a factory, run a shop, grow crops or deliver goods to consumers without using some form of energy. Access to electricity is particularly crucial to human development as electricity is, in practice, indispensable for certain basic activities, such as lighting, refrigeration and the running of household appliances.”

Some countries are actually moving backwards

 Government-run electrification projects are painstakingly slow, for a variety of reasons. Some countries are actually moving backwards. In South Africa, as an example, Eskom lacks capacity and has been forced to introduce “load-shedding” (a nicer word for planned blackouts). However, there are some very promising new developments in power production coming from an unlikely source: the mobile operators.

Mobile operators are used to operate in rural Africa. They have base stations off-grid that need a lot of power, which has so far been provided by diesel-fuelled generators. However, this is a very expensive (and dirty) way to power base stations. So mobile operators have started to introduce “green” power solutions for base stations, based on renewable energy sources (sun and wind)

In just the last two years, there has been impressive technological progress in the efficiency of green power management solutions for the telecom industry. Better batteries for storage of energy and more sophisticated control systems for e.g. more energy efficient battery charging and usage of the various energy sources are two examples.

A flexible, green solution

One clear indication that these solutions are taking off, is the recent announcement from Airtel in Nigeria that it will upgrade an initial batch of 250 diesel-powered base stations in Nigeria with E-site, a “green” energy solution from Sweden’s Flexenclosure.

Taking the E-site solution as an example, it has proven to be able to power base stations by more than 90% using renewable energy sources, over an entire year and considering all weather factors. Over long periods, there is actually more green power produced than is needed to power the base stations.

So power management companies, network suppliers and mobile operators are now contemplating what to do with the excess power produced, and whether more power can be generated for a small additional cost. The most obvious answer is to share it with the surrounding local communities.

Free excess power used to keep vaccines and medicines fresh

From a government point of view, there should also be considerable interest in alternative ways of providing power for rural areas. It would be much cheaper to sponsor additional infrastructure, e.g. solar panels, at a telecom site for community applications like streetlights and water pumps, than to expand the grid to remote locations.

At the longest running test site, in Dertu in Kenya, the excess power produced by E-site has powered for two years a cold-storage room for vaccines and other medicines that to date has helped more than 5,000 people in the area with snake anti-venom and vaccines for newborn babies.

A new initiative by Flexenclosure and Ericsson, the world’s largest mobile telecommunications equipment vendor, is called Community Power. As a system it provides the possibility to share the power produced by E-site with the surrounding local communities to power e.g. mobile and battery chargers street lights, clinics etc – in effect turning the site solution into a power station as well.

No more walking to do the talking

The Community Power solution in itself strengthens the business case for off-grid deployments for mobile operators. The handset charging dock eliminates the villagers’ need to walk for hours in order to charge their handsets, while on the other hand the operator benefits due to higher utilisation of the network, which increases revenues.

There are many alternative uses and social benefits for the excess power. Extending mobile communications and power to even more remote areas in developing countries will have a profound impact on the communities giving them the means to get information, communicate with their families, starting and running businesses, and getting access to banking services.

It will be the next step in the empowerment of people, and a mean for providing clean water, lighting, battery charging and power for private or business applications. A tool for self-uplifting is far better than passive handouts.

The blistering African sun and the strong desert and savannah winds are free. Africa is on the threshold of bring finally able to harvest these clean and constantly renewable energy sources, not only for communications but also to bring power to its people.

*Peter Karaszi is a communications expert in intelligent telecom solutions based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Leaks into the Vatican's alleged corruption, mismanagement and internal conflicts

BBC News: " The Pope's butler has been charged in connection with the Vatican's inquiry into a series of media leaks.

Vatican magistrates have named 46-year-old Paolo Gabriele as the suspect in their investigation, saying he illegally took confidential documents.

A series of leaks, dubbed Vatileaks, has revealed alleged corruption, mismanagement and internal conflicts.

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI set up a special commission of cardinals to find the source of the confidential memos.

Mr Gabriele is the pope's personal butler and assistant and one of very few laymen to have access to the Pope's private apartments."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18219390

Surely, the Pope should be rewarding his butler for blowing the whistle!

Apple CEO forgoes $75m dividend

ABC News: "Apple CEO Tim Cook is offering a $2.65 per share stock dividend to all company employees while forgoing his own shares — a move that will likely cost him $75 million, according to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“At Mr. Cook’s request, none of his restricted stock units will participate in dividend equivalents,” says the company’s 8-K form filed with the SEC.

Cook was offered 1 million shares back in January for serving as interim CEO after his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs, was forced by illness to hand over control of the company.

Apple announced in March a plan to spend $45 billion on dividends and share repurchasing.  It was the first time that Apple offered a dividend; Jobs famously refused to offer them when he was CEO.

Cook assumed the role of Apple CEO in August 2011; Jobs died in October."

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/05/apple-ceo-tim-cook-to-forgo-75-million-in-dividends/

If only more CEO's were fair-minded as Tim Cook.

Facebook sued by its small investors

(Reuters) - The fallout from Facebook Inc's messy initial public offering widened on Wednesday as shareholders sued the social network and its bankers while a trading firm revealed a massive loss on the shares and threatened to seek "remedies."

The Nasdaq stock exchange also came under further pressure as a source close to the situation told Reuters that NYSE Euronext had opened discussions with Facebook about a potential stock listing there. Nasdaq also faces litigation from angry investors.

Facebook's listing, envisioned as a crowning moment for an eight-year-old company that has become a business and cultural phenomenon, has instead turned into a legal and public relations fiasco for the company and its lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley.

Serious trading glitches interfered with the stock's opening on Friday, and subsequent revelations by Reuters that analysts had quietly reduced their revenue forecasts prior to the IPO have led to accusations of selective disclosure of material information. The shares closed at $32 on Wednesday, 15 percent below the IPO price.

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday seeking class-action status alleged that defendants -- including Facebook, its Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co -- concealed "a severe and pronounced reduction" in revenue growth forecasts resulting from greater use of Facebook's app or website through mobile devices.

It also accused Facebook of telling its bank underwriters to "materially lower" their forecasts for the company. The lawsuit said the underwriters disclosed the lowered forecasts to "preferred" investors only.

"The main underwriters in the middle of the roadshow reduced their estimates and didn't tell everyone," said Samuel Rudman, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, which brought the lawsuit. The firm is among the leading securities class actions firms in the country.

"I don't think any investor in Facebook wouldn't have wanted to know that information."

From poppies to pips

From http://www.pforp.org/the-story-so-far/

"In 1999 James Brett founded Pomegreat the first commercial pomegranate drink in Europe. In 2004 in a newspaper article James mentions he would like to see things change in Afghanistan and that pomegranates could help. In 2007 James attended a horticulture seminar in Kabul Afghanistan and whilst there ran into a field of opium farmers and convinced a farmer to grow pomegranates. Two months later James returned to Afghanistan and erected a sign on the farmer’s land that read “this land has been acquired as an alternative livelihood from poppies to pomegranates. The next day James appeared on national television in Afghanistan and urged farmers to grow lots of pomegranates. So many farmers came forward that James realised something large scale could be achieved and was introduced to some elders in the tribal system in Afghanistan.

Plant for Peace was born and James organised seven tribal gatherings across Afghanistan. The gatherings known as Jirgas were a great success and over 55,000 elders attended across the country. International support started to grow and the Marquess of Reading organised a charity dinner at Kensington Palace in London for 144 guests including some key Afghans who had helped arrange the Jirgas.

As a pilot scheme James organised the planting of 40,000 pomegranate trees and distributed 25,000 “sign up forms” requesting farmers to sign up to Plant for Peace; 22,000 farmers signed up.

With so much support the Plant for Peace strategy needed developing into a national horticultural initiative."

The key to James' success was that he did some simple sums: Net value of opium leaving the farm was $240 per kg. The price of pomegranates was only $1. But a hectare of poppies yields 44.5 kg, whereas a hectare yields 21,450kg of pomegranates.  So, the value to an Afghan farmer can be double if he turned his poppy fields into pomegranate crop!

Not only is he helping Afghan farmers, he is also reducing the supply of opium. And, the added bonus is that pomegranates are credited with 11 health benefits - http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/11-health-benefits-of-pomegranate-juice.html.  It's a win-win-win situation.

Anger over executive pay explodes

from the Observer: "Discontent over corporate salaries and bonuses has been growing for some time. Last week, at annual general meetings across the country, it escalated into a full-scale rebellion

For Catherine Howarth, "it's been a totally fabulous week". The chief executive of campaign group Fair Pensions, which has long toiled to persuade City investors to rein in the worst excesses of British listed companies, the unprecedented wave of investor rebellions over recent days represents nothing less than a revolution.

"There's this really long history of shareholders being unwilling to use the powers they have. The fact that this is changing at the moment is really something to celebrate," she says. Paul Hewitt of investor lobby group Manifest describes it as a "shareholder spring".

Just weeks after the Occupy protesters were chucked out of the City, the sharp-suited fund managers who picked their way through the tents to get to their desks each morning have staged their own protest against fat-cat capitalism.

On Thursday alone, five companies felt the wrath of investors and suffered revolts over their pay policies. For Aviva, the insurance company, the rebuke was so strong that more than half its investors rejected its remuneration report in protest at pay for underperformance, particularly in respect of chief executive Andrew Moss.

The revolts followed a string of protests at companies as diverse as Barclays and mining company Xstrata. Shareholders' fury has not just been directed against remuneration reports, but also against individuals. Sly Bailey has fallen on her sword at Trinity Mirror, and even a boardroom veteran such as Alison Carnwath has not been immune.

More than one in five investors voted against Carnwath's re-election to the board of Barclays as chair of the remuneration committee that nodded through Bob Diamond's pay; and she also faced a revolt at hedge fund Man Group, where investors feel she has been involved for too long to be truly independent. Advertising giant WPP and bookie William Hill also face protests.

Several factors have come together to make 2012 the most stormy annual meeting season in living memory. One is the government's vocal determination to tackle "rewards for failure". Business secretary Vince Cable has proposed radical reforms, including giving shareholders a binding vote on pay, rather than the advisory vote introduced by Labour, and forcing companies to disclose pay deals for departing directors.

Some of the measures have been fiercely criticised by business groups, including the CBI; but he is expected to stick to his guns when he publishes final proposals next month.

The grim economic backdrop and the pessimistic public mood has also thrown some of the lavish rewards for top executives into sharp relief. George Dallas, director of corporate governance at fund manager F&C, says bumper pay packets have come under increased public pressure because many families are facing declining living standards. "There is a lot of austerity going round and the taxpayer is still feeling that the crisis hasn't gone away," he says.

A third factor driving the "shareholder spring" has been a concerted campaign by groups such as Fair Pensions, trades unions and green groups. They have worked to persuade small shareholders, including retail investors and workers with pensions or insurance funds – who between them hold billions of pounds' worth of shares – to ask how their money is being invested and demand a more active approach."

Free food, sharing and caring

From The Observer: " There is an extraordinary sign on the outside of a well-tended West Yorkshire vegetable garden: "Help yourself.

In the same town this summer, people will be helping themselves to sweetcorn growing around the police station. Compost and watering cans seized in drug farm raids find use in the local gardens. And come the autumn a trip to see a local doctor will be a pick-your-own free-for-all as the health centre's grounds have been turned into orchards.

Grieving families who want a rose bush at the graveyard are encouraged to think productive – in one case leading to a remembrance garden of broccoli.

Meanwhile, commuters can snip fresh herbs from the beds and pots outside the railway station. It's all kept weeded by an army of local people who give up an hour or so on the occasional Sunday.

With 40 volunteer beekeepers just trained up, there will soon be honey for all. Anyone inspired to start their own vegetable patch can borrow a community tool library at the community-run allotments.

In the next village, things have been taken even further. The local community are attempting to take over a pub and have already taken over the cinema, the theatre and even the town hall.

In a fold of the wet hills of Yorkshire, the communities of Hebden Bridge and Todmorden are at the vanguard of a movement that is picking up momentum across a UK disillusioned with corporate business, government and cuts. It is neither hippy nor New Age, but is made up of ordinary people, old and young, from both affluent homes and social housing.

Call it a sharing revolution. "Community empowerment, social enterprise, co-operative, it has various titles, but it's quietly getting huge," said Mike Perry of the Plunkett Foundation, a thriving national organisation supporting such enterprises nationwide. "I don't think it's about the recession as such in financial terms; it's more that it's made people think about what's important to them.

"It starts with food, then it's taking over a shop that's closing. Then it's getting fired up about broadband and renewable energy, taking over infrastructure of their community. We're at the start of what could be a significant movement."

There are nine community-run pubs and 300 such shops in the UK, but those numbers look set to grow dramatically, not least because they show staggering resilience in tough times, but also as people power reacts against closures that fundamentally affect their lives. It may not create many jobs, but it does glue communities together and keeps money circulating locally.

And it's not just in the countryside; there are many web schemes across the UK where people can arrange to swap or give away items to others in their area. Tool libraries and bike sharing are growing. In London, Streetbank.com has begun organising people to share everything from a lawnmower to a DVD with others within a mile's radius. Some 3,000 people have signed up in its first few months. DIY retailer B&Q has a pilot scheme in Reading on tool sharing, to ease the environmental damage caused by millions of people buying power tools they may use only once or twice."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/06/lifestyle-communities-hebden-bridge-todmorden

You and I are not blameless

In earlier blogs, I blamed the state of the world economy on governments, banks and big business. Sadly, you and I are not blameless.

I did an inventory recently. I have 5 watches, 
innumerable clocks apart from those embedded on PCs, phones, TV sets etc; although retired I still have 6 serviceable suits and who knows how many shirts and ties; I have a dozen pairs of shoes, including trainers and golf shoes; 
and I could go on. I am sure if you did an inventory you too may find yourself surprised at how much you possess that are surplus to requirements. I am told women accumulate even more than men and I can believe it given the number of newspaper/magazine articles, Webpages and TV programmes on it - shelves full of handbags 
and shoes, racks and racks of clothes, some which have never been worn.

Similar excess applies to food. We are now more careful. but even so each week we are throwing away food that has gone past the due date. At least, a minor consolation is that the waste food no longer goes into the general rubbish bin but into a food recycling bin for the council to re-compost.

My point is that if you and I wasted less, then the retailers would sell less and the manufacturers would produce less, and the earth's resources would deplete slower.

Banks at fault

A large part of the problem with the world economy lies with major banks. I don't mean domestic banks offering current and savings accounts for consumers; but commercial and investment banks who lend money to businesses and governments and - at the same time - buy and sell shares and offer all manner of so-called financial instruments.

When they first formed, banks were there to lend money to those who needed it - such as farmers with a poor harvest, parents needing funds for a good wedding, or a merchant who needed to buy stock to sell - and charged a fee or interest. In Europe, many bankers were Jews as due to religious prejudice they often not allowed any other 'respectable' trade. And lending was associated with usury and deemed below the dignity of the upper classes who could have afforded to operate them. Soon banks were lending to kings to fight expensive wars, such as the crusades. Where possible, banks demanded security in the form of assets: a cow, a house or future tax revenues. Initially, the flow of money was largely the initial capital supplemented by the interest charged or the defaulted security.

Later, bankers wanted to lend more than they had, so 'financial instruments' were invented. The recent (2008) financial disaster was laid in the 80s when domestic mortgages were 'securitised'. That meant banks could bundle mortgages and trade them with each other. Initially, it increased the amount banks could lend.  But, as with the US Fannie Mae, many bundles of mortgages included large percentages of so-called sub-prime, high risk mortgages. But as the bundles were re-bundled and sold on, nobody had the time to read all the documentation (which presumably spelt out the risks) much less take them seriously  The net result was: 
1. A large number of Western banks ended up owning a lot of high risk 'assets'
2. The total value of these so-called assets were n times the face value, never mind the risk-discounted real value.
3. When some mortgage holders started to default; the whole 'pyramid' scheme was exposed for what it was and the whole house of cards (pun intended) collapsed.

Roll forward to the Euro crisis. Many countries borrow up to a high % of their GDP. But some countries borrowed well above a single year's GDP, including Greece, Spain and so-forth. How did this happen?  The same investment banks were involved. They encouraged the finance ministers by offering what looked like cheap money with long life cycles. Once again, it took one country to look like it couldn't meet the interest payments and, once again, the pyramid started to collapse - though for the short term it is being propped up.

So, my bottom line is that whereas banks were and are a valuable institution, they have been allowed through various national and international deregulation to become gambling houses, where the stakes, risks and rewards are high. Not only are they now endangering world economy but also subverting things like - in the US and UK - causing the best and brightest from universities to go into banking disproportionate to the value add, instead of into engineering and manufacturing.

Marks & Spencer with longer lasting fruits

from: http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2135806/-lasting-strawberries-reduce-food-waste

"Marks and Spencer will today unveil new packaging that promises to keep food fresh for up to two days longer and as a result reduce food waste.

A small strip inserted into punnets of strawberries uses a patented mixture of high-tech minerals and clay to remove ethylene, a hormone that causes fruit to ripen and turn mouldy, a hundred times more effectively than current material.

The retailer said that during in-store trials the strips "showed a minimum wastage saving of four per cent", which in effect means that 40,000 punnets a week could be saved during the peak summer season, equating to roughly 800,000 strawberries."

Marks & Spencer clothes swap

from: http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2170547/-introduces-swap-shop-tackle-waste-clothing

"Retailer Marks & Spencer is aiming to prevent over 350 million pieces of clothing going to landfill by encouraging customers to hand in an unwanted item when buying new clothes.

The new "Shwopping" initiative was launched in London this morning in a street made from almost 10,000 items of clothing – the amount Marks & Spencer estimates is thrown away every five minutes in the UK alone.

Overall, that comes to over two billion clothes a year – one in every four purchased – which adds around 500,000 tonnes to the UK's landfill sites.

Over 1,200 cardboard boxes – dubbed Shwop Drops – are expected to be rolled out across the UK alongside till points. ..."