World Business

Statistics show that small-business hiring is at a standstill, but some companies are finding creative strategies to keep in pay workers for the nearest upturn

By Stacy Perman

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When it comes to hiring, the news has been bearish. In early December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 533,000 jobs were shed in November. It was the 11th straight month of job losses, pushing the unemployment worth to 6.7%. Adding to the dismal determine of numbers, November besides marked the largest one-month job loss since December 1974.

As 2008 rolls to a close, headlines continue to trumpet almost daily layoffs, with a great quantity of the coverage focused on large corporations. But what is the upshot for small businesses, long considered one of the driving forces of job generation in this country, and its own hiring and retention practices?

According to economists and industry observers, small businesses, which tend not to directly follow the slash-and-burn layoff pattern of larger firms, are hardly insulated from the ongoing economic squeeze. The most recent ADP National Employment give an account of, which tracks about 500,000 of its client companies, shows that small businesses dropped 79,000 jobs in November. It was the second continuous month of job losses for small businesses in six years.

Looking ahead, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), a Washington trade group, reported a similarly bleak economic outlook. In its most recent quarterly trends survey of 1,992 members, released in November, the percentage of small business owners who expected to hire not beyond the next three months reached any abysmal zero. William Dunkelberg, NFIB’sitting chief economist and co-author of the survey, says it was the first epoch since the organizing began conducting the prospect 35 years past that hiring numbers had such a negative lection. "This method that [businesses] are not looking to expand the atomic business sector," says Dunkelberg. "And that is bad news because we are a labor-intensive part of the family economy."

Still, contempt the overall gloomy forecasts, the downturn also presents hiring opportunities for small businesses. For starters, there is a huge wealth of of brilliant parts applicants in search of drudge at the moment. "If you want to hire someone today, it is like buying a car or house," says Dunkelberg. "Employees are paltry, good, and promptly available. Nobody is complaining almost the quality of applicants. The choices you have after this are much improved." For instance, the NFIB’s survey furthermore found that 14% of business owners reported that they had positions they were unable to fill, down from 24% in January. "If you are a buyer of labor, this is a buyer’s market."

The major job cuts at large corporations also translates into a boon for small duty owners who have the supplies to employ workers who were peradventure unattainable previously. In November, the Computing Technology Industry Assn., an information technology trade assemblage based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., published a survey that showed that 85% of the 772 small- and medium-size businesses in the U.S., Canada, and Britain that it questioned planned to let new employees within the next 12 months. And in a slight shift away from the cataclysm of cheerless numbers, SurePayroll, the Glenview (Ill.) payroll administrator that tracks small-business hiring trends, reported in November that 214 small businesses that participated in its survey increased their hiring by 0.26% to 3.3%, year-to-date.

In part, that growth reflects how small businesses, diverse huge outfits that must contend with in the same state factors as shareholder pressure, can and vouchsafe deploy a host of strategies when it comes to hiring and retaining employees, especially during tough times. "Most small businesses are owned by a proprietor and they tend not to divide quite so abundant or so soon in a downturn," says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, the author of Talent on Demand, an inquiry of management talent during uncertain times.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb20081211_960716.htm?campaign_id=rss_smlbz

S&P likes the outsourcing and consulting giant’sitting broad range of offerings and its indelicate geographic diversification, and ranks the shares "strong pervert with money"

By Dylan Cathers From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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Accenture (ACN; recent estimation, 29) is the largest unconventional information-technology outsourcing and consulting company in the world, through operations in 52 countries and reported net revenues of $23.4 billion in fiscal year 2008 (ended August). It is organized into five major operating groups: Communications & High Tech, Financial Services, Products, Public Service, and Resources.

We view Accenture as a one-stop-shop IT services copartnership. It is as adept, in our opinion, in providing infrastructure outsourcing or business process outsourcing as it is in management consulting for improving a client’s customer-relationship management (CRM) processes or its overall business strategy. It also offers systems integration and technology consulting services.

Given Accenture’s breadth of offerings and its broad geographic diversification, we think it is well-positioned to weather the current U.S. recession and global economic slowdown. We be turned for revenue growth of relating to 8% in fiscal 2009, although we expect the company to incur a headwind from the recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar. We think that management is doing a skilful job of maintaining margins in a difficult market, and we look for proceeds per share of $2.87.

We also own a favorable view of the company’s balance sheet and specie flows. At the extreme point of August 2008, Accenture had in addition $3.6 billion in coin, with a debt-to-total first-class ratio of under 0.5%. At the similar time, it repurchased 60.8 million shares last fiscal year and paid a 50¢-a-share dividend in November. Cash flow in fiscal 2008 was nearly $2.5 billion. The company’s substantial balance sheet gives it the financial flexibility to persist to repurchase shares and potentially make acquisitions, despite the economic downturn, by our algebra.

We view the shares as compellingly valued, recently trading at around 10 times our calendar 2009 earnings per share calculation of $2.94, roughly in line by traditional IT outsourcing peers. We believe that a premium to peers is warranted, given our view of the wealthy revenue development that the company has shown in its higher-margin consulting business, rising levels of bookings, and its solid balance sheet. We believe Accenture is one of the few IT services providers that has the expertise, weak glue, and scope to compete head to principal with industry heavyweight International Business Machines (IBM), though holding along challenges from lower-cost India-based providers.

The stock carries Standard & Poor’s highest investing. recommendation of 5 STARS, or "strong buy."

The company was established in 1989 and was initially known as Andersen Consulting. It began transaction focused on consulting and technology services, still it grew to offer a full range of consulting, outsourcing, and related technology services. On Jan. 1, 2001, the society severed ties between it and Andersen Worldwide Societe Cooperative and changed its name to Accenture.

Since its beginning, Accenture operated as a collective of locally owned independent partnerships, but in July 2001, the company went public. At that opportunity, partners and owners were given Accenture shares of various classes, which have become freely tradable over note the rate of, and more are eligible over the coming years. However, we expect the number of shares to hit the open market to be low.

The house’s organizational structure is centered on five operating groups. Products was the largest in fiscal 2008 (25.9% of net revenues), which includes the automotive, consumer goods & services, health & life sciences, industrial equipment, retail, and forced exile & ramble service verticals. Next in size was Communications & High Tech (23.3%), which serves the communications, electronics & high tech, and media & entertainment industries.

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The Fed is expected to cut rates by 50 basis points Tuesday. Data reports showed a sharp decline in housing starts and a globule in the consumer price index

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U.S. stocks were drifting at higher levels Tuesday morning being of the kind which traders awaited the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’sitting two-day policy meeting. The Fed is expected to cut rates at least 50 basis points at 2:15 p.m. EST due to financial and housekeeping confusion, but economists are not some what the central bank’sitting address mention will say. The market is looking for indications of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’session thinking on buying Treasury and agency debt in order to combat the pecuniary and economic crisis, says S&P MarketScope.

Traders weighed reports issued Tuesday that showed U.S. trappings starts plunging 18.9% in November, while the consumer reward index fell 1.7%, and the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, was unchanged.

Also, shares of Goldman Sachs Group (GS) were higher despite the firm’s announcment of its first quarterly loss since going public.

Bonds were higher, and the dollar lower, following the data. Gold futures were flat. Oil futures were disrespectfully lower before OPEC meets to discuss output cuts.

On Tuesday at 11:10 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones pertaining average was higher by 94.06 points at 8,658.59. The broad S&P 500 table of contents added 13.03 points to 881.60. The tech-heavy Nasdaq complex fore-finger gained 30.49 points to 1,538.83.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 21 stocks were higher in price for every seven that declined. The ratio without interruption the Nasdaq was 18-7 unequivocal. Trading was slow in advance of the Fed’s settlement. Some traders positioning themselves for Quadruple Witching Thursday, Friday.

According to a Reuters report, the Bush Administration could act as early of the same kind with Wednesday to approve a bailout of U.S. automakers from its bank rescue fund, with provisions well-adapted to reflect at least those approved by the agency of the House of Representatives last week, key lawmakers and other sources said. A Treasury Dept. official said the management and auto company executives continued to criticism financial and other information, and that no decision had been made. The White House is actively involved in the good sense.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the conduct would have to be satisfied the industry could survive and compete in order to receive prevent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the the cabinet will likely application part of the $700 billion fund established in October to stabilize the financial services sector, rather than pushing the companies into bankruptcy, as some lawmakers have urged.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who helped spearhead a $14 billion rescue suggestion that failed in the Senate highest week, told reporters in Detroit that he expects help for both GM and Chrysler to come from the bank rescue fund and suggested GM could receive in each opposite direction $8 billion.

In economic news Tuesday, the U.S. consumer price pointer (CPI) fell 1.7% in November, while the core rate, which excludes food and energy prices, was flat, following respective declines of 1.0% and 0.1% in October. On a year-over-year basis, the headline go at an ambling gait slowed to 1.1% versus 3.7% previously. The core rate is running at a 2.0% year-over-year pace now, vs. 2.2% previously. Energy prices declined another 17.0% after an 8.6% drop in October, and are at present down 13.3% year-over-year compared to an 11.5% pace of increase previously. Transportation costs fell 9.8%. Commodity prices were down 4.1%. Apparel prices edged up 0.3%. Food and beverage prices rose 0.2%. Medical costs rose 0.2%, as did education.

“The data are bond friendly, but may not have abundant further impact as a bulky headline decline was anticipated,” says Action Economics.

U.S. housing starts plunged 18.9% to a 0.625 the multitude one annual pace in November, compared to a downwardly revised 0.771 million rate in October (from 0.791 million). Starts are down 47.0% year-over-year compared to a -38.0% clip initially reported for October. Permits fell 15.6%. Single family starts were down 16.9%, while multi-family starts dropped 23.3%.

The data were worse than expected, notes Action Economics.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081216_987242.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

The U.S. central bank’s Dec. 15-16 meeting comes at a crucial juncture for economies and markets worldwide. Action Economics tells what to expect

By Michael Wallace

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If David Bowie were disposed to write concerning the aeronautical adventures of someone other than Major Tom, perhaps "Helicopter Ben" Bernanke could fit the bill. Maybe he could call the new account "Rate Oddity."

With apologies to Mr. Bowie, the countdown is without ceasing for Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and the other members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed’s policy-setting arm, as they seek to stabilize the financial system and insulate the dispensation from an even deeper and more protracted downturn into yearend. It’s time to constrain our helmets on as the string of global data is unlikely to get the grade this week, with relating to housekeeping reports from the U.S. (housing starts), Japan (Tankan business survey), Germany (Ifo concern sentiment), and the euro zone (purchasing managers’ index) all set to accentuate that peculiar and uncommon economic feeling.

Policy meetings will likewise embody the Bank of Japan, which is floating in limbo, and the Norges Bank, which is expected to divide base rates by dint of. the agency of a full percentage particular aspect.

But the main focus this week will be on the two-day FOMC gathering on Dec. 15-16, marking the last meeting of the abysmal and historic year of 2008. Note: The Fed has tacked an extra day onto Monday, Dec. 15, for "discussions" as it probes the "zero bound" and historically gentle mark impost. The Fed is justified in deliberating carefully considered in the state of it seeks to head off Japanese-style deflation, while at the same time cognizant of the stratagem trap of creating the nearest small matter.

As the confide in and monetary crisis finally descended with a thud forward the real economy this fall, and the downfall in animal spirits and commodity prices sent inflation into remission, the Fed is well-suited to err on the side of economic provocative. Little could "Helicopter Ben" imagine at the time of the last deflation scare that the Fed would one day be forced to shore up piece-by-piece the fractured financial system under his leadership.

Accordingly, at in the smallest degree a half-point reduction in the benchmark target rate to 0.50% is nearly universally expected. However, that rate has become largely irrelevant in the current quantitative-easing environment in which the Fed is paying interest upon the body reserves, and the effective rate has been consistently tracking in the low 0.10% to 15% area. With only marginal downside room left for benchmark profit rates, traders will subsist anxious to see if the Fed elaborates on other potential military science.

In this context, the Fed’s connection strategy in the policy statement will take on greater importance than ever for its signaling effect. Chairman Bernanke has already stated the Fed will "do what it takes" to free up the disconnected financial markets. At a minimum, we suspect the Fed will intimate through its verbal guidance that the effective rate is likely to last low and the economy weak for more time. This would have being similar to the stance controversially adopted by his predecessor Alan Greenspan "for a not little period" in semiannual corroboration on July 15, 2003. Yet we would seriously advise the FOMC not to box itself in by dint of. suggesting a precise on a level or a unoccupied time frame.

There has also been talk the Fed will issue its own Treasury bills or notes, granting there is not any legalized authority for them to do so without a lengthy approval projection by a skeptical Congress. That consent is unlikely to have being forthcoming, given further risk of blurring the lines between monetary and fiscal policy after abdicating authority over the Troubled Assets Relief Program. More realistically, buying of longer-dated Treasuries remains a possibility and has already been broached by Bernanke, though he may hold that extreme option in reticence.

In the meantime, considered in the state of the Fed considers expanding its even now broad and growing portfolio of exceptional monetary actions and its $2 trillion comparison sheet, other near-term options could have existence pursued. The FT.com reported on Dec. 12 that a varied assortment of additional measures could include stepped up purchases of asset-backed securities, arising from traffic paper, and potentially even longer-term corporate misdoing, which is not currently covered by FDIC guarantees past time three years.

Purchases of municipal bonds might not exist out of the question either, given roll strains in that sector and a financial crisis in California that’s just the tip of the muni iceberg. A 4.5% 30-year fixed-rate pledge by means of fiat, backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could in like manner be considered as a last-ditch solution.

We remain in uncharted territory, and policymakers may only decide to map out a broad strategy for unconventional mediation at this point, even as the incoming Obama Administration readies some historic infrastructure measures of its own for next year.

Ground control to Helicopter Ben, there’s something wrong. Can you hear us, Helicopter Ben?

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Spectacular investing frauds like the single in kind allegedly created by dint of. means of the New York financier typically come for the time of investing bubbles—and only get exposed once they pop

By Ben Levisohn

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The popping of an asset bubble has a way of bringing investment fraud out of the shadows and into the light. It looks to be no different with the case of Bernard Madoff— respected financier, in-demand money manager, framer NASDAQ chairman, and circulating poster boy in favor of investing. trickery. Madoff stands accused of operating an elaborate Ponzi scheme, using cash from new investors to pay off older ones, to the tune of $50 billion. The alleged offenses only came to light inasmuch as he could no longer levy the circulating medium to stand by his plan going, according to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

Sadly however, Madoff’s alleged scam is not single.

Need proof? There’s Richard Whitney—respected financier, in-demand money conductor, and former head of the New York Stock Exchange (sound affable?)— whose own investment company, circa 1938, turned out to be as empty as Madoff’sitting 70 years later. Just as in the 2008 version, investors were wiped out by Whitney’sitting devise, which began while he started borrowing standard of value to cover investment losses in penny stocks. His victims included the New York Yacht Club, the New York Stock Exchange, and his father-in-law.

To experts, one thing is clear: "It happens each vacant time there’s an asset bubble," says Robert Wright, a fiscal historian at New York University.

Bubbles provide the cover the crooked neediness to perpetrate their scams. When the mart’sitting heading up, any investing. seems possible. Go back to 1720 and England’s South Sea Bubble. Shares became so trivial, investors snatched up stock in a company whose business was so secret it could not be revealed in a prospectus.

Banking stocks were the investment of choice in 1792, when William Duer, a respected investor close to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, rapidly drove up shares of the Bank of New York, only to be unable to meet his obligations. "The greediness of a bubble is a breeding ground for bad actors," says Jeff Marwil, a partner with law firm Winston & Strawn’s Restructuring and Insolvency Group.

Complacent investors may enable the fraud. When the market’s going up, they usurp everyone else is making money and want to also. They have the election of investigating who they invest by, but many get seduced by the combination of stable returns and a stellar reputation. After the fact, many claim they simply trusted their advisers.

But trust is a funny something when it comes to standard of value. "The financial connected view is not based on trust," NYU’s Wright says. "Banks don’t trust you—that’s why they take collateral. You don’t confide in the bank—that’s why we have the FDIC."

Still, no person knows what may have caused Madoff to turn his happy trading firm into an ripen scam, as he is accused of doing. Here was a person who had money and veneration and it being so that is charged with bilking investors, from hedge funds to individuals to banks, of billions of dollars.

Madoff has company. Recent frauds take in the $3 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by Tom Petters in Minneapolis—he is accused of using the money to fund a jet-setting lifestyle—or Samuel Israel’s Bayou Hedge Fund Group, which created a dummy accounting firm to cover up trading losses.

But while bubbles furnish opportunity, it’s ultimately the financial wizards themselves that constitute and perpetrate these schemes. "Sometimes the people at the wheel have recourse to the easy way out," says Gregory Hold, chief executive of brokerage concern Hold Brothers.

Others are less forgiving. Says Marwil, who has worked on recovery at Bayou: "I don’t think you be able to reach a conclusion other than they are bad guys." The investors—ranging from charities, universities, and individuals salting away money in 401(k) funds—who are left through massive losses as these schemes stroke up might agree, albeit in harsher language.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081215_232943.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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The drop in world coffee prices considering May isn’t deterring Luis Sanabria. He is in the midst of his first harvest viewed like a plantation owner, picking the red berries that will become Colombia’s mountain-grown coffee.

Sanabria and his 23 partners are the vanguard of a plan to boost Colombian coffee production one-third by 2014. Growth of the country’s principal agricultural export is threatened by aging farmers and fields, as well being of the kind which increased costs and the plunge of commodity prices in a global recession.

The National Federation of Coffee Growers is trying to find in the same manner with many as 50,000 people in subordination to age 35 to reinspirit the business athwart the nearest decade with the abet of government-subsidized bank loans.

“This is a dream advance true,” said Sanabria, 34, of his new work at jobs at Las Flores, a 309-acre farm perched in the lush mountains of Santander province, 186 miles northeast of Bogotá. “I am a coffee man, and that’s all I ever wanted to be.”

Coffee in Colombia generates $1.9 billion in yearly record revenue and employs 4 million people, 10 percent of the rustic’s population.

Sanabria is business of a repaired generation of farmers whose symbol is Juan Valdez, the worker with sombrero and mule that made coffee as fully known an export being of the class who cocaine.

Their “Young Growers” brand is sold in the Bogotá-based group’s Juan Valdez stores in Colombia, the U.S., Spain and Chile.

Even though coffee prices dropped 16 percent betwixt May 1 and Dec. 10, the lower prices were offset by a 24 percent slump in Colombia’s currency in the sort period. That means more pesos for each dollar of export revenue, and most of the country’s coffee is exported, about one-third of it to the U.S.

Even so, a weakening world economy has hurt demand considered in the state of consumers cut back onward expensive drinks.

Starbucks, the creation’s largest coffee chain, before-mentioned in July it would shut 600 stores in the U.S. and cut 12,000 jobs. The Seattle-based circle, which uses Colombian beans in its products, said Nov. 10 that quarterly profit fell 96 percent.

The global slowdown adds urgency to the growers’ recruiting program. More than half of the nation’sitting 560,000 group of genera farms may prostration without refurbishment, according to Gabriel Silva, 51, head of the growers federation.

Half of the coffee bushes are older than the six-year optimum age for producing beans, he said. “For coffee to have a future in Colombia, we need to renovate aging plants and aging farmers,” he said.

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Puget Sound Energy is teaming up with wind-power engineering firm RES Americas to build new wind farms in southeastern Washington — part of the utility’s plan to assemble a strong portfolio of renewable manliness.

The companies said Monday they have begun looking at Columbia and Garfield counties, and bring forth asked the federal Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to provide transmission lines to carry power generated in that place to Puget Sound Energy’s Western Washington market.

“It’s just a elevated location for wind,” declared Kimberly Harris, master resource official for Puget Sound Energy.

Local utilities are increasing their renewables portfolio partly because a state mandate — Initiative 937, passed in 2006 — says that in 2020, 15 percent of the electricity generated by each Washington use must come from renewable sources, not including hydroelectric influence.

Harris said Puget Sound Energy is “ahead of target” towardly that goal and gets again than 5 percent of its current electricity generation from renewables.

Puget, Washington’s largest utility, already operates two wind farms, united near Dayton in Columbia County, the other near Ellensburg. Both were built by Denver-based RES. Puget said last month that it would lay out $100 million to expand its Ellensburg draw, called Wild Horse.

The new projects would be in unspecified locations near Dayton and near the Garfield County town of Pomeroy.

Many analysts consider wind technology mature. “Wind generation has be suitable to more effective and viable over the past 15, 20 years,” reported Paul Latta, an algebraist with brokerage dense McAdams Wright Ragen.

Now the main hurdle is the lack of transmission capacity. Northwest lawmakers are pushing according to the federal government to invest in the BPA’s $1.5 billion plan to be distended transmission lines to better unite Washington and Oregon’sitting windier parts to the most populated areas — the Puget Sound area and the Willamette Valley.

Making of the like kind connections here would be easier than in the take rest of the country because there’s already an ample infrastructure built around the Columbia River’s hydro projects, said Puget Sound Energy spokesman Andy Wappler.

While not saying how much wind power they expect to propagate, Puget and RES asked the BPA for up to 1,250 megawatts of transmission capacity in the place of their venture. That would allow Puget, which will own half the power generated by means of any new facilities, to greater amount of than double its zephyr generation volume, currently 386 megawatts.

At the end of 2007, the company generated or bought some 4,700 megawatts of electric power capacity.

Ángel González: 206-515-5644 or agonzalez@seattletimes.com

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WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve is widely expected to ratchet downward a key interest rate — perhaps to an all-time low — to intercept the sinking management from falling deeper into the doldrums.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues opened a two-day meeting Monday afternoon to take a fresh beating on the ailing economy, which has been mired in a recession since after all the rest December, and to come to a conclusion their next move on interest rates.

Fighting the worst monetary crisis because that the 1930s, the Fed already has pushed down its strength lever beneficial to influencing the economy — the federal funds rate — to 1 percent, a point seen only once before in the ultimate half-century.

Many economists predict the Fed will cut its rate in half — to just 0.50 percent when the sitting wraps up today. A few think the Fed could opt for the sake of an even again forceful action — lowering rates by a whopping three-quarters percentage point or more.

If that larger cut occurs, it would exist the lowest on records that track the monthly average of the funds rate going away from the thicker settlements to 1954. The funds defame is the interest banks charge each other on overnight loans.

“Another rate cut is like afflictive to provide a safety net for an established order that is in a free fall,” declared Richard Yamarone, any economist at Argus Research.

However deeply the Fed decides to cut rates, the prime rate — now at 4 percent — for many consumer and small-business loans would drop by a corresponding amount. The prime lending rate is used to peg rates on home-equity loans, certain credit cards and other consumer loans. Cheaper rates could give pinched borrowers a dose of relief.

The goal of lower borrowing costs is to entice people and businesses to spend more, which would revive the economy. So far, though, the Fed’s aggressive rate reductions have failed to turn the economy on all sides.

Walloped by dint of. the financial crisis, worried banks receive hoarded their cash and been extremely loath to lend cash to customers. Fearful consumers, watching jobs vanish and their investments tank, have violently cut back their expenditure, including big-ticket purchases similar homes and cars that typically involve financing.

The negative forces fed off each other, creating a contrary cycle that Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson be in possession of been desperately trying to break.

The Fed be possible to lower the supply rate only such far — to zero, and is getting closer to exhausting its rate-reduction ammunition. However, Bernanke has made clear the Fed has other tools available to stimulate the economy.

For example, the Fed could buy longer-term Treasury or agency securities on the open market in real quantities. This might lower rates on these securities and help whip buying appetites.

A Fed program announced late last month to buy $600 billion in debt and mortgage-backed securities from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already has helped shoot forth mortgage rates down.

By boosting the quantity of money in the fiscal system, the Fed has engaged in so-called “quantitative easing” to agree economic relief. The Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned to $2.2 trillion, from close to $900 billion in September, reflecting efforts to mend the financial system.

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The Port of Seattle is teaming up with a port in China to develop a global model for might efficiency and environmental sustainability.

The “eco-partnership” announced Monday between Seattle and Dalian, in northeast China, calls for two of the world’sitting largest and busiest seaports to collaborate on projects to help both countries.

The program focuses on exchanging information attached port practices, including the application of clean energy to ability ultimate equipment, infrastructure and logistics, and emergency response to oil spills in the harbor.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who made the announcement on the 30th anniversary of the couple countries establishing diplomatic relations, said the cooperative come is the best way to make progress through China onward environmental issues.

The connection could be the first few steps of an international effort to save energy and reduce pollution end clean technology, she said.

Together the U.S. and China account for about 40 percent of the creation’s carbon-dioxide emissions. Two-way trade was worth not far from $300 billion last year.

China is Washington state’s largest trading partner, and Washington is the second-largest export star on account of Chinese wares after California.

Becoming greener will give the Port a competitive advantage, said Charlie Sheldon, frugal director of the seaport category.

Sheldon said he hopes to “procure to the point where if you want to come end the Northwest gateway, you’re going to come through the cleanest, most sustainable gateway anywhere, and that could be a good model for the future.”

The Seattle-Dalian partnership grew out of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, the cabinet-level meetings between the U.S. and China.

The two governments signed a “Framework for Ten Year Cooperation on Energy and Environment” in June and met this month for the fifth time, establishing the eco-partnerships.

The partnerships are intended as a kind of “sub-national” layer of relations, bringing in local governments, businesses, universities and nonprofits, “where ideas be possible to be tested in targeted areas before broad introduction,” according to the agreement.

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