California asking voters to get on board the $45B bullet train
Obama outpacing McCain ads 4-to-1
PHILADELPHIA
With advertisements running repeatedly day and night, forward local stations and in continuance the major broadcast networks, on niche cable networks and even on video games and his dedicated satellite channels, Obama now is out-advertising John McCain nationwide by at smallest a 4-to-1 ratio, according to CMAG, a service that monitors political advertising. That difference is even larger in several closely contested states.
The huge gap has been made possible by Obama’s decision to opt out of the federal campaign-finance system, which gives presidential nominees a dollar for every dollar they raise but limits to $84 million the amount they can spend betwixt their party convention and Election Day. McCain is participating in the system.
Obama, who at one point promised to participate in it as well, is expected to announce in the next few days that he raised in greater numbers than $100 million in September, a figure that would shatter previous monthly fundraising records.
“This is uncharted territory,” uttered Kenneth Goldstein, director of the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. “We’ve certainly seen hard advertising battles before. But we’ve never seen in a presidential mill-race single side having such a lopsided advantage.”
While Obama’s decision to forgo matching funds
Obama’s advertisements come as Republicans began a blitz of so-called “robo” calls
The message, part of a $70 million get-out-the-vote operation, is among what one Republican campaign worker described as “a couple of hundred” different calls that the GOP plans to employ, tailored to individual states and areas and paid for by state parties, the Republican National Committee or the McCain campaign.
The Obama campaign’s advertising approach
“What Obama is doing is being his own good cop and bad cop,” said Evan Tracey, chief operating official of CMAG, who calls the ad warfare “a blowout” in Obama’s perform easier.
The unlikeness has come to the frustration of McCain, who traded accusations by Obama over the advertising battle during this week’s debate, with Obama telling McCain, “your ads, 100 percent of them acquire been negative,” and McCain sententious precept that “Senator Obama has spent more money on negative ads than any political campaign in history.”
The most recent analysis of presidential advertisements by the University of Wisconsin available before the debate
That finding reflected the McCain campaign’session strategetics of trying to make Obama an displeasing choice in the eyes of undecided voters and Obama’sitting goal of making undecided voters comfortable with him.
In general, the Wisconsin Advertising Project says, 54 percent of McCain’s advertisements because Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination have been completely focused on attacking him; roughly one-quarter have mixed criticism of Obama with a positive notice about McCain, and 20 percent were devoted solely to promoting McCain.
During the same period, the consideration erect that 41 percent of Obama’s advertisements had been loving solely to attacking McCain; one-fifth have mixed critical remarks of McCain with a positive message about Obama, and 38 percent were assiduous solely to promoting Obama.
McCain is receiving help from the Republican Party’s self-directing advertising unit, end it cannot coordinate through the party leadership or McCain’sitting campaign, purpose it is not always in line with McCain’s campaign message.
A smattering of outside groups is running hard-charging ads against Obama in closely contested states, but he has the money to immediately meet those attacks with defensive spots directly addressing their charges.
Now spending almost as a great quantity as he can in local television markets, Obama has increased his advertising on the broadcast television networks
“They’re doing the networks because they’ve saturated these markets and they’re looking for the sake of more epoch,” said Tracey, on CMAG.
Obama bought in this way heavily on NFL games and “60 Minutes” onward CBS last Sunday that, according to CMAG, he exhausted $6.5 the multitude on a day at what time McCain worn out less than $1 the great body of the people.
Based adhering current spending, CMAG predicts that by early next week Obama’sitting general-election advertising campaign will surpass the $188 million Bush worn out on his 2004 campaign. McCain has spent $91 million without ceasing advertising.
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The Financial Crisis Blame Game
Think of the current market and economic turmoil since a disaster by committee, with blunders by government officials, Wall Street pros, and regular Americans alike
By Ben Steverman and David Bogoslaw
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox, and Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency James Lockhart III. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Tune in to Anderson Cooper on CNN and watch as he counts down the "10 Most Wanted Culprits of the Collapse." Pick up the New York Post and read nearly FBI investigations of top financial firms under the headline "Fraud Street." With a bewildering and frightening financial crisis in full swing, the newly come national pastime is finding someone to blame.
As markets crash and retirement dreams fade away, media and the public are full of outrage at everyone from mortgage brokers and Wall Street CEOs to substantive interest investors to experts who failed to predict the push was coming. Congress hauls the most distinguished executives before tough committee hearings, at the same time that political candidates blame each other. Pundits proffer lists of the mustache-twirling villains who caused the healthy thing.
An Epic WhodunitInvestigators will undoubtedly uncover fraud, cheating, and other criminal demeanor. But by reason of now, in that place is no shortage of players who rest accused of having a hand in the crisis. It just depends on where you think the landslide began or who gave it the biggest press forward.
If you blame loosened fiscal regulations, maybe former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) or Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox are your men.
Think that a political push to boost homeownership handed too multitude the many the crowd mortgages they couldn’t afford? Why not ingenuous out Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae?
Maybe you think the whole housing false show could hold been avoided through an interest rate increase (Alan Greenspan, degree right up). Or, that folks should not ever have signed up for no-doc, interest-only loans, none matter how many silhouettes danced across their computer screen in a Web ad. In that example, the villain may be no further than your bathroom mirror.
(For a walk through some of those the public who are blamed for having a hand in the meltdown, go to our slide show.)
"Whole System" at FaultOf course, all of these people had something else in mind other than wrecking the U.S. economy. Some of them were making lots and lots of money—for themselves, of course, but besides for their investors. Others truly believed in the virtue of freeing the marketplace’s animal spirits from the cold hand of government regulation. And how many people were arguing against the virtues of homeownership?
Just the fact that one can assemble such a long list of feasible villains gives a hint in the manner that to how divers institutions, officials, and regular Americans made mistakes. "It’sitting so difficult to pinpoint some person or two people," says Georgetown University monetary theory professor Reena Aggarwal. "It really was the whole body."
Even Presidential candidates eager beneficial to votes have acknowledged there’s none easy scapegoat. "Part of the reason this crisis occurred is that everyone was living superior to their means—from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street," Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) aforesaid on Oct. 13.
Indeed, it was a series of abominable ideas, remarkable linkages, and all-too-predictable blunders that came together to send the U.S. pecuniary system, and then the entire world economy, into a serious credit crunch and global stock panic. That’sitting not to say that it couldn’t have been prevented.
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Federal prosecutors from three jurisdictions have stepped up their investigations into the collapse of the investment mound Lehman Brothers, issuing at least a dozen subpoenas including one to the grand executive, Richard Fuld, people close to the matter said Friday.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan and New Jersey are all examining events leading to Lehman’sitting collapse and its subsequent bankruptcy filing, these people said.
One area of focus for New Jersey prosecutors is whether Fuld or other Lehman executives made misleading statements almost the bank’s condition to investors who took part in a $6 billion infusion of capital announced by Lehman on June 9, one person end to the matter said. The new capital came as Lehman disclosed a $2.8 billion third-quarter loss that sent its shares plunging.
The New Jersey Division of Investment, which put money into the capital raising, has received a subpoena, the person said. William Clark, director of the state’s Division of Investment, did not go a call for remark.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan are looking, among other things, at comments Lehman executives made during a Sept. 10 parley call, five days before the company filed for bankruptcy.
They are also investigating whether Lehman simpleton proper values on its large arising from traffic real-estate holdings, people clog to the matter said.
Persons familiar by the inquiries requested their names not be published because the investigations are at an early fact-finding stage and not one conclusions receive been drawn.
Press officers with respect to all three prosecutors’ offices declined to annotate. A spokesman for Fuld said he would not comment. Fuld has said publicly that all his statements about Lehman Brothers’ condition were based on the best information he had available at the time.
The continuance of the federal investigations and subpoenas was disclosed at a founded steady bankruptcy hearing on Thursday by Harvey Miller, a advocate at the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges who represents Lehman Brothers.
Other current and prior Lehman executives who have been subpoenaed comprehend Joseph Gregory, the bank’s former president, and Erin Callan, former especial financial functionary, a person familiar with the matter reported.
Both executives were removed from their jobs shortly after Lehman reported the third-quarter loss. Gregory did not go calls as being comment. Callan declined to comment through a spokeswoman for her employer, Credit Suisse.
Legal experts said prosecutors would probably attempt to build likely fraud cases in preparation for Lehman executives through attempting to find internal documents that contradict general body of mankind statements made about the bank’s financial health.
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Venture-capital investment slows in 3Q
The venture-capital industry in Washington state is battling the first chilly department winds of what appears to be a fast cooling economy.
The amount invested in the state fell 22 percent to more $226 the masses in the third quarter from the identical period last year, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).
Washington, usually among the top five recipients of venture capital ranked by state, also didn’t complete the list this year, as investment in information-technology services and medical devices dropped significantly. But sectors of that kind like biotechnology remained “robust,” said Stephen Sommerville, a partner by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“It’s subtile to diocese that at least a couple of the areas locally are continuing to attract investment,” he said.
In the rest of the country, investment in startups also slowed down, albeit at a slower pace. Venture-capital firms invested some $7.1 billion, in a descending course 7 percent from the same epoch last year. The number of deals decreased by 12 percent to 907, said the report, which is based steady data on these terms by Thomson Reuters.
The figures invested remain within “historical norms,” but they are expected to dip over the next several quarters, the report’s sponsors said.
The third-quarter poetry dress in’t reflect the impact of the past few dizzying weeks of financial turmoil. But venture capitalists are even now battening down the hatches as the revenues of the companies they enclose in are threatened by recession, and money becomes harder to come by.
Earlier this month, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture-capital firms, Sequoia Capital, summoned entrepreneurs to its headquarters for a dose of gloom and ruin. A PowerPoint presentation used in the event, titled “R.I.P. Good Times,” warned that the current pass is global and recovery will detect a lengthy time. Companies must cut jobs, save cash and look forward to smaller capital raises, the presentation related.
Already some Sequoia-backed companies have acted on the forethought. SearchMe, a search-engine group, cut 20 percent of its work force, according to VentureBeat. AdBrite, another Sequoia-backed firm based in San Francisco, laid off 40 percent of its staff.
In Seattle, some startups are also cutting end. On Monday, Seattle-based online real-estate brokerage Redfin related it would quiet off 20 percent of its workers. Zillow.com, another local real-estate Web site, is keen 25 percent of its staff.
“I’salmagundi a short bit more optimistic” than Sequoia, Sommervile said. “I don’privately think things are going to get that bad.” He added that a relatively strong local economy could help forestall some of the worst effects of a recession, at least compared with other, hard-hit places, including the Los Angeles area, Arizona and Florida.
Belt-tightening begins
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Alignment might be at core of burning-disk dilemma
Q: My brace different DVD players enjoin each play JPEG pictures from processing at the drugstore, but when I copy JPEG files from my hard drive to a CD or DVD on the computer, neither player will accept the disks. (I possess the appearance to remember that this was not a problem when I was on Windows XP.) I know in that place is a limit on number of files, on the contrary I’ve also tried it with only a few. Any suggestions?
Dick Wilson, Everett
A: First a minute background upon CD and DVD burners. There are two ways of creating readable disks — physically etching the disk, as with old-fashioned vinyl records, or using light to create patterns in dyes on the disk. Commercial disks are etched while “burned” disks employ the dye method. In either contingency, the disk is read by a read laser detecting the differences in the external part of the disk.
Etching disks is a more costly process, but it is also greater amount of reliable. You’ll virtually never find a commercial disk that can’t be read by a trifler unless it is physically — and deeply — scratched. Burned disks, however, are besides sentient. Some lasers used to read work better with the dyes in some brands of disks than with others.
Also, bear in incline that CD and DVD burners use different lasers for writing than for reading disks. Fact is, it takes a added powerful laser to act upon the dyes in burnable CDs than to simply comprehend burned or etched CDs. If the write laser’s alignment is a crumb over relative to the read laser you won’t be able to read the disk.
So first endeavor a different brand of disk to burn. If that’sitting doesn’t solve your problem, my guess is that the write laser in your CD burner is fully of alignment. And, as through much of today’s electronic equipment, you’re going to find it less expensive to reinstate the scud than to get it fixed.
Q: I travel a lot and always stay at hotels/motels that have wireless service. I have good anti-virus and spyware protection, but I am for ever concerned end for end my Internet activity inmost nature intercepted by some unscrupulous entity looking for ways to collect physical accusation. Some of the wireless provided is secure (requiring passwords) and some are not secure (no secret parole required).
So highest of all; can my Internet activity exist intercepted?
Second, if I use browser favorites, Google bookmarks with Identity Safe logins (Norton 360), by that means not typing most URLs and login information, can this knowledge tranquillize be intercepted?
What should I not carry into effect when using public wireless service, secure or nonsecure?
Mike Haucke
A: Yes, your wireless activity can be intercepted — all of it.
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Bloomberg had a revealing interview with GM’s Ralph Szygenda when he was in town for OutsourceWorld this week. He says he’s concerned about the fact that the merger of EDS with HP has lay a fate of his outsourcing work in one set of hands. And he’s worried about it. What one inspired use of the media to state a supplier on attention about how you expect them to demean one’s self.
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Competition for startup cash is tougher than ever, and companies that might have sought venture capital in the above are turning to angels
By Amy Barrett
Software provider TowerCare Technologies’ Donna Myers. David Schrott, Jr.
Meet the just discovered breed of angel-backed entrepreneur. Donna Myers, president of software provider TowerCare Technologies, is in the process of securing $2 million in angel funding. But she’s no newbie: Her 22-person Wexford (Pa.) company has 160 customers and last year generated $500,000 in sales.
In years bygone time, a firm of Myers’ size main have sought jeopardy capital. But during the time that hazard one’s self capital funds have moved upstream, doing larger deals, angel investors are being pitched by much greater degree of established companies. Now it’s not just first-time entrepreneurs or those whose companies are in their infancy who are winning cash from angels, notwithstanding those entrepreneurs are appease pitching. Increasingly, successful candidates, like Myers, brag of impressive experience and a significant customer base.
"The bar has been raised," says Catherine Mott, who runs Pittsburgh’s BlueTree Allied Angels, which expects to put $2.8 million to work in touching a dozen transactions this year, up from $1.8 million in eight deals extreme year. Her group plans to public funds three more deals by yearend and has the enviable problem of picking among a half-dozen encouraging companies. "We are seeing such great quality deals," Mott says. "Those six are going to be difficult to choose from."
More PitchesMott’s isn’confidentially the and nothing else group being courted more fiercely. The Atlanta Technology Angels are seeing about 50% more pitches than they did a year ago, says Knox Massey, the group’s managing director. James Geshwiler, managing director of CommonAngels in Lexington, Mass., says the reach the compute of of proposals making it through his first cut jumped 36% in the first half of this year. Other groups are seeing smaller jumps: 10% at Wisconsin Investment Partners in Madison, 7% at Seattle’session Alliance of Angels.
Angel groups are linking up to vouchsafe bigger deals. According to Jeffrey Sohl, director of the University of New Hampshire’session Center despite Venture Research, the average angel deal in the first half of 2008 was about $540,000, up 8% from the sort period in 2007. At the same time, some angels, rather than investing just in new companies, are also continuing to make big bets attached companies they invested in earlier, says Sohl. That makes steady startup dollars even harder to arrive by.
With the number of active angels jumping 10% in 2007, to 258,200, you might think relief is on the way. But the amount invested last year rose just 1.8%, to $26 billion, Sohl’s exploration shows. And he expects the dollars invested to hold steady this year. So the pursuit of angel dollars be inclined only get tougher.
To hear what angel investors athwart the country say they are looking to enclose in now, flip through this slide show.
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Learning from the Great Depression
Here is a sampler of companies that shunned debt, diversified, and innovated for the period of hard times and are still here today
By Stacy Perman
At 179 years old, Yuengling remains the geographical division’session oldest beer maker. Dick Yuengling, the fifth-generation CEO, says the parents and children kept the business afloat by diversifying into dairy farming, Broadway shows, and toss up and down halls during the Great Depression instead of shutting down or selling out.
Founded in 1833, Martin Guitars is the oldest surviving guitar maker in the world. Sixth-generation CEO Chris Martin credits his company’s resiliency for the time of the 1930s to its pricing and founding principle of remaining fair and equitable while maintaining its strong relationships by dealers—some of which stretch back generations. "Our billing has always been routine," he says. "No shenanigans. We don’t offer discounts to high-volume retailers."
A.E. Schmidt, the oldest family-owned billiard manufacturer in America, was established in 1850. During the Great Depression, the company kept its credit lines open to customers, many of whom had bought on installment plans financed by the company. According to Kurt Schmidt, the company’session fifth-generation CEO, his grandfather told customers: "If you can stick it out through these tough times, we will allow you to make payment to blameless the monthly private interest on your debt to us; when business picks up, viewed like it will, you can make payments on principle."
Remembering Bread LinesWhat does it take to survive severe household turbulence? With the federal government working to unveil a slew of household proposals to stave off a recession and return liquidness to the credit markets—and confidence to investors and consumers, manifold small businesses are looking for answers that command take part by keep them solvent.
Some say the current terror and alarm eerily echoes the chaos and financial disaster that erupted some 60 years ago during the Great Depression. Newscasts talk of gloom and doom, listing grim statistics while displaying images of 1930s food lines. The recent failure of established financial institutions such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and the foreclosure of scores of homes have left crowd asking, are we in continuance the verge of a supporter Depression?
Back then, there were numerous tiny businesses deploying a number of tactics in method to stay afloat. Some retrenched, some diversified, more simply hung on by a thread. Many of those that did survive continue operating to this set time with hard success.
If the spent is prologue, than who more useful to turn to since some transaction deliberation than those firms that weathered the worst economic crisis in American history—to date. With that in mind, BusinessWeek looked at nine companies that predated the Depression (often by several decades), lived through it, and remain in operation today. They are furniture stores, journal companies, and craftsmen. How did they survive? What did they do?
Some eschewed debt, others laid off significant numbers of employees, others diversified their operations, while others came up with a line of innovations that would allow them to keep their core businesses intact. While each operated under a different set of transaction philosophies, all of them found that the lessons gleaned from the Depression remain a significant gift by will to the way they do business today.
Flip through this slide pretence to hear from each of the nine companies.
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Man gets life in killing of Vt. college student
BURLINGTON, Vt. Berated as “evil” and “the lowest of the low,” a man convicted of killing a guild higher after a fortune onset was sentenced Friday to lifetime without parole, despite proclaiming his innocence to the end. Brian L. Rooney, a 38-year-old construction worker and father of three, fought in the rear tears as he expressed condolences to the spring and father of Michelle Gardner-Quinn but said he wasn’t her killer.
“I am so sorry for what you are going through, but I am not the man responsible during the term of this sorrowful event. And it saddens me to have to tell you that,” he said.
Gardner-Quinn was 21 and had just transferred to the University of Vermont when she happened upon Rooney forward a downtown Burlington highway Oct. 7, 2006. Her cell phone had gone dead and she asked to borrow his. They were seen onward surveillance camera images walking past a trinkets store, but she vanished after that.
Six days later, her half-dressed body was found covered with leaves and stuffed into a rock crevice at theatrical Huntington Gorge.
The environmental studies major had been sexually assaulted, hackneyed and strangled after a night not at home with friends while her parents were in town for homecoming weekend.
Rooney was convicted largely on the strength of DNA evidence taken from semen found inside her body in an autopsy.
The trial was moved from Burlington to Rutland - about 70 miles - amid concerns that publicity had tainted the jury pool in a case that sent a shudder through Vermont, where there is no demise penalty.
Rooney’s barrister argued for the period of his trial that the state’s case lacked witnesses to the abduction and killing, and hinged on “two nanograms of sperm” handled by a forensic lab with a history of sloppy toil.
Under Vermont law, the only available sentence for aggravated mar is life without parole. Before Judge Michael Kupersmith sentenced Rooney without ceasing Friday, Gardner-Quinn’s mother - sitting by her husband at her side - calmly described going to the morgue to identify her daughter’s battered dead body.
“There are more people that are so bourn in evil, so choked by misfortune, that they cannot change. And for these commonalty, I feel the death penalty is appropriate,” said Diane Gardner Quinn of Arlington, Va.
Rooney, who fired his advocate after the trial and tried to boycott his sentencing, said this week in a letter to the court that he had been the gudgeon of a “the world and judicial lynching.”
But Kupersmith berated him Friday: “You are the lowest of the low.”
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