Temperatures Have Exploded
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/temperatures-have-exploded-2012-7
From Citi:
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Friday, July 20, 2012
TransUnion Mixed Up A Colorado Grandmother With A Colombian Narcoterrorist
A Colorado grandma was detained at a car dealership after her credit report mistakenly flagged her as a suspected Colombian narcoterrorist, reports Lyneka Little with ABC News.
Sandra Cortez's name was mixed up with Sandra Cortez Quintera, a woman listed on the nation's Specially Designated Nationals list, which includes terrorists, traffickers, and other people involved in highly illegal activities.
According to the Treasury department, every credit report is run through special software to see if the person is on this list.
Cortez's lawyer, James Francis, told ABC the government isn't doing enough to prevent people like Cortez with common names from being flagged incorrectly,
“The credit reporting agencies are making horrible matching mistakes because they’re not using identifying criteria to make sure it’s the right person," Francis said.
The only advice the Treasury department offers to those mistakenly flagged is to contact the credit agency the same way you would for any other error. Getting a response is easier said than done.
The Dispatch investigated 30,000 complaints filed with several credit reporting agencies and found that more than half were unable to get the agency to correct the mistake. In her case, Cortez was forced to sue TransUnion after several failed attempts to get the alert removed. It took her seven years to reach a settlement.
Stories like hers are the reason the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has decided to start policing credit reporting agencies.
DON'T MISS: The 12 dumbest insurance scams of the decade >
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The Evidence Of A Coming Recession Is Overwhelming
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-evidence-of-a-coming-recession-is-overwhelming-2012-7
We first noticed the first signs that the economy was beginning to soften about three months ago. Now the evidence of a slowdown has become so overwhelming that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we are headed for a recession. We cite the following as evidence.
Retail sales (both total and non-auto) have dropped for three consecutive months. This has happened only five times since 1967----four times in 2008, and one now. Vehicle sales have tapered off with May and June being the two weakest months of the year. Consumer confidence for both the Conference Board index and the University of Michigan Survey are at their lowest levels of 2012.
On the labor front, June payroll numbers were weak once again and averaged only 75,000 in the second quarter. The latest weekly new claims for unemployment insurance jumped back up to 386,000 and the last two months have been well above the numbers seen earlier in the year.
The ISM manufacturing index for June fell 3.8 points to 49.7, its first sub-50 reading in the economic recovery. The ISM non-manufacturing index for June dropped to its lowest level since January 2010. Most recently the Philadelphia Fed Survey for July was negative (below zero) for the third consecutive month.
The small business confidence index declined in June to its lowest level since October and has now dropped in three of the last four months. Plans for capital spending and new hiring have dropped sharply.
Despite all of the talk about a housing bottom, June existing home sales fell 5.4% to its lowest level since the fall of last year. In addition mortgage applications for home purchases have been range-bound since October.
Core factory orders, while volatile on a month-to-month basis, have declined 2.6% since year-end, and the ISM numbers cited above indicate the weakness is likely to continue.
The Conference Board Index of leading indicators has declined for two of the last three months and is now up only 1.4% over a year earlier, the lowest since November of 2009, when it was climbing from recessionary numbers. The ECRI Weekly Leading Index is indicating a recession is either here now or will begin in the next few months.
The breadth and depth of the slowdown are greater than the growth pauses experienced in mid-2010 and mid-2011, and indicate a strong likelihood of recession ahead. In addition the foreign economies will be a drag as well. A number of European nations are already in recession and others are on the cusp. The debt, deficit and balance sheet problems of the EU's southern tier are a long way from any solution, and will not remain out of the news for long. China is coming down from a major real estate and credit boom, and is not likely to avoid a hard landing. The Shanghai Composite is in a major downtrend, declining 28% since April 2011. The view that China is immune because of their unique economic system reminds us of what people were saying about Japan in 1989.
The stock market is ignoring these fundamentals as it did in early 2000 and late 2007 in the belief that the Fed can pull another rabbit out its hat. It couldn't do it in 2000 or 2007 when it had plenty of weapons at its disposal. Now there is little that the Fed can do, although it will try since it will not get any help, as Senator Schumer so aptly pointed out at Bernanke's Senate testimony. In sum, we believe that the stock market is in store for a huge disappointment.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
This Is the True Color of the Black Sea [Earth]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5927226/this-is-the-true-color-of-the-black-sea
It's an impressive feat for such a tiny organism, as the Black Sea has a surface a 168,500 square miles (436,400 square kilometers). The Black Sea—which should be called Cyan Sea—is located between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, and it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.
Hollywood-Backed iOS App Vyclone Pioneers Social Filmmaking [Video]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5927274/hollywood+backed-ios-app-vyclone-pioneers-social-filmmaking
The video featured above was created with Vyclone, the filmmaking app for iPhone and iPad that launches publicly today.
Vyclone is the brainchild of the British musician Joe Sumner, whose inspiration came from the hundreds of iPhones he'd notice waving in the audience, recording his performance while he played on stage. The problem with this, he thought, was that each phone only has the benefit of its own vantage point, while all around, scores of other audience members are doing the same thing, and getting a slightly different view.
WIth help from the deep pockets ($2.7million deep) of Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary (Madonna's manager), LiveNation, ThriveCapital, and Dreamworks, Sumner rounded up a team of 13 (9 of whom are engineers) and together they've come up with Vyclone: an app that allows up to four users standing within a 100-foot radius of one another to record 60 seconds of video.
With the finished clips, the app creates a sort of "mashup" movie, taking advantage of the various camera angles to come up with something a little more... dynamic, say, than the typical YouTube sigle-camera shot. The finished product is delivered to each of the users within just a few minutes and can be shared on both Twitter and Facebook and within Vyclone's own community. (Users can edit the mashup video themselves, afterwards, as well.)
I'm genuinely looking forward to try this app out... just as soon as I find three friends who've download it, too. [BusinessInsider]
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