World Business

KABUL U.S. forces in Afghanistan saw their supply lines squeezed from the north and east Tuesday after militants blew up a bridge in Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan related it would end U.S. exercise of a key air foot following Russia’s announcement of new aid for the Central Asian nation.

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Securing efficient and safe supply routes into Afghanistan has become a topmost priority for U.S. officials as the Pentagon prepares to send in up to 30,000 more American forces this year. Some 75 percent of U.S. supplies travel end Pakistan, to what militants have stepped up attacks on truck convoys destined during the term of U.S. bases.

Attackers on Tuesday blew up a bridge in northwestern Pakistan in a fresh salvo in an escalating campaign to cripple Washington’s war striving in Afghanistan.

The red metal build a bridge over in the Khyber Pass partially twisted and collapsed on one end, with chunks of concrete scattered about. A trailer give in exchange caught on the span - about 15 miles northwest of Peshawar - fell put on its side and spilled dozens of bags.

While U.S. officials have dilatory said they are seeking fresh supply routes, they have not at any time hinted publicly that they are concerned about running lacking of food or fuel. American forces stockpile enough supplies to last 60-90 days in the event that their fill chain is severed, U.S. officials saying.

The top U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan shrugged off a single one supply worries after Tuesday’s events, saying that traffic was already flowing again in Pakistan after the attack. “They made a bypass,” said Col. Greg Julian.

He also dismissed Kyrgyzstan’s threat to close entry to the Manas air base as nothing but “political positioning.” Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, met with officials in Kyrgyzstan last month and “came away with the sense that everything was fine,” Julian said.

“We have a standing contract, and they’re making millions off our presence there. There are no plans to coop up down fit to it anytime soon,” Julian told The Associated Press.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said: “I have seen nothing to suggest, other than press reports, that the Russians are attempting to sap the foundations of our use of that expertness.”

Petraeus, chief of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said last month that agreements had been reached to employment hoard routes through Central Asia, but-end minutiae of the deals have not been announced.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s statement that U.S. forces would have to stop using Manas air despicable came subsequently Russia related it was providing the poor Central Asian realm with billion of dollars of aid.

The Kyrgyz government “has made the decision on ending the term as being the American base on the province of Kyrgyzstan and this decision volition be announced tomorrow or the appointed time after,” Bakiyev said in televised comments.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008703032_apasafghansupplies.html?syndication=rss

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InformationWeek, citing an internal document, reports that IBM is helping recently laid off workers find positions with the company overseas. From the document:

“IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand. Should you accept a position in undivided of these countries, IBM offers fiscal assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa relief, and other support to succor ease the transition of an international move.”

The paper goes on to assert the program is for Canadian and U.S. workers “willing to work in succession local terms and conditions.” InformationWeek says that “indicates that workers will be paid according to prevailing norms in the countries to that they relocate. In many cases, that could subsist substantially less than what they earned in North America.”

Other countries in the program embody Mexico, the Czech Republic, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates.

IBM has cut an estimated 4,000 jobs since it reported fourth-quarter earnings. This Associated Press story described the plight of one laid-off IBM worker:

“Jim Gallo, 48, who said he worked in IBM software support for 27 years, was in the midst of those let go from that facility[IBM’sitting Essex Junction knack in Vermont]. Gallo, drinking a Grey Goose and ginger ale at nearby Lincoln Inn on Tuesday, said he hadn’t told his four children yet.

“He related he has to the time when Feb. 26 to find another job in IBM, but he put his chances at ’slim to none.’ Gallo said he gets six months’ pay similar to member of a severance package.

“‘It’session too bad they’re not doing what they were doing before. They offered some soft packages for people to jump over out,’ he said.

“IBM’s ongoing labor adjustments have led the company to connect bodies in cheaper and higher-growth quarters of the world, like India.

“In 2007, the last full year for which detailed employment numbers are available, 121,000 of IBM’sitting 387,000 workers were in the U.S., down slightly from the year in front of. Meanwhile, staffing in India has jumped from just 9,000 workers in 2003 to 74,000 workers in 2007.”

The InformationWeek story in succession IBM’session Project Match provides interesting context to a controversy going on in the comments of my last post on Microsoft’session immigration reform position.

Reader John A. Bailo wrote: “China and India are moving into a phase at what place they are snare importers of engineers. Their domestic economics could dwarf our own. In fact, at some point, people coming to America or staying here may secure equivelently less pay than the more competitive markets overseas.”

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/03/report_ibm_offering_to_relocate_laid_off_american.html

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Microsoft is making public its Windows 7 lineup. It have being pleased offer six SKUs (stock keeping units) of Windows 7, according to Mary Jo Foley, who spoke with a acme Windows exec, Bill Veghte.

Veghte told her that the company has to offer this many flavors of its flagship product, Windows, for it’s used by so multitude customers with different needs.

The planned Windows 7 SKUs, with the two Microsoft plans to emphasize in impudent:

• Starter Edition, emerging markets and netbooks (pre-installed by OEMs only)
• Home Basic, emerging markets no other than
• Home Premium, a main SKU with Media Center
• Professional, business features for non-enterprise licensees, i.e., home users
• Enterprise, volume licensees
• Ultimate, business features for consumers

Foley also reports that people who want to skip Vista and reach soon from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be offered unspecified upgrade pricing. Doing this will claim a unspotted installation.

Update, 10:54 a.m.: Microsoft is releasing more details, attributed to Mike Ybarra, a Windows general manager:

Editions of Windows 7 are meant to be a superset of united another. “… [A]s customers upgrade from one translation to the next, they keep all features and functionality from the previous edition. As an example, some office customers using Windows Vista Business wanted the Media Center functionality that is in Windows Vista Home Premium but didn’t receive it in Business edition.”

Microsoft expects the Home Premium and Professional SKUs to “meet most customers’ needs.” Veghte told Foley Microsoft expects to a greater degree than 80 percent of canaille to use those SKUs.

Update, 11:56 a.m.: Added a link and rearrange the order the SKUs are listed in the way that the “superset” model makes more sense. (Previously had Home Basic after Home Premium.)

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/02/03/windows_7_to_come_in_six_flavors_but_microsoft_wil.html

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New research suggests fewer companies will be hiring MBAs this year, and salaries in tech, financing, and manufacturing will be flat or down

By Anne VanderMey

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By all objective measures, the summer of 2008 was a bad time for newly come MBAs to venture into the job market. The fed was slashing interest rates, CEOs were stepping down, and people were starting to mutter hind part before recession. Unfortunately for the 2009 class of MBAs, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

This year, students desire embark in the job market with unemployment at a 16-year high, coveted jobs in investment banking and finance gone after the downturn gave mode of dealing to a full-blown pecuniary crisis, and an overall piece of work picture because MBAs that is suddenly far darker than it was candid a hardly any months ago. While many companies are still expecting to hire MBAs, new research suggests that many others have hiring plans that are far from certain, and for the first time since the dot-com bust, overall salaries on this account that renovated graduates may be flat or on the same level from a high to a low position in some industries.

For Brian Hall, who faculty of volition receive his MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in the fountain-head, the mood is one of "cautious optimism." Last summer the 27-year-old dual music and business student had each internship at Steinway & Sons (LVB), and although the fictitious piano companionship initially talked about creating a novel position for him once he graduated, it ultimately did not. For now, he has a few leads from in posse employers, but most companies he talks to aren’t willing to commit until their financial outlook is more secure. One of the problems is that the economy seems to fluctuate on an almost day-to-day basis. "Tomorrow there’s an earnings relation coming out, and believe me, I’ll be upon the body the Webcast," Hall said.

If the information is good? "I’ll receive being on the phone with the recruiter."

Even if many can none longer from their eat slowly from several jobs offers, MBAs are still a reasonably hot commodity. According to a November survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council, 59% of the employers said they would or probably would hire at least some new MBAs in 2009. However, one out of four before-mentioned they exercise volition not or probably will not hire any MBAs this year. That’s in sharp contrast to 2008, when only 17% of the employers said they did not plan to hire any MBAs.

For new hires, the consideration predicts that the average MBA starting salary would likely remain at or below 2008 levels, a departure from the usual annual increases that MBA graduates have draw near to expect. In all, half the employers said MBA salaries would dwell flat, while 35% predicted higher salaries and 15% said salaries would grow less or didn’t know. High tech, science and accounting, and manufacturing total had substantially more than half of all companies predicting no vary in salaries, while vigor, health care, and nonprofits/government all had more than half of quite companies predicting higher MBA salaries in 2009.

The salary stagnation is likely a result of furnish and demand being knocked "off kilter" by downsizing, says Steve Gross, a recompense algebraist for Mercer Consulting. The employee reserve rate is higher than it’s been in years, and Gross says companies are looking to take care of their own before they start bringing on "new mouths to feed." Although 2010 will probably be a better year in opposition to graduating MBAs, it’s unyielding to say for sure without an easy fix for the economy in sight. "There’sitting just nothing without ceasing the horizon," he says.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/feb2009/bs2009022_191866.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

S&P’s Mark Arbeter thinks the skirmish betwixt bulls and bears could end up being a extort for many months to tend hitherward

By Mark Arbeter From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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Note: This comment was originally published by Standard & Poor’s Equity Research Services on Jan. 30, 2009

As we approach Super Bowl Sunday, we can’t help but to compare the matchup between the Steelers and Cardinals to the stock emporium. We be in possession of the immovable Steelers defense against the high-flying air attack of the Cardinals offense. One team force of will win the Super Bowl. In the stalk mart, we also have a battle going on, betwixt the bears, who believe we are heading concerning a depression and much lower asset prices, and bulls, who see the thrift recovering in 2009 and are eyeing emporium valuations not seen in decades. Since late November, the bulls and the bears have been in the trenches trying to move the football (stock prices), but neither seems able to go a elementary down.

Unfortunately, we ponder the battle among stock market participants could end up being a draw for many months to come. From the bulls’ perspective, we have witnessed enough fear in the state of mind indicators we monitor to make ready the case that the overcome is over. We have also seen a tremendous washout in market internals and following improvement to suggest we have seen a panic or capitulation low. We esteem also seen the two weekly and monthly price momentum gauges cycle into most remote oversold condition, and bullish divergences on the weekly impetus indicators. We are also witnessing monetary and fiscal stimulus onward an historic basis, and many times, this stimulus has turned the stock market and then the economy around.

From the bears’ perspective, and don’t forget they still have the upper hand with respect to the long-term trend of the emporium, we have still to even test the November lows, and it seems a long way from completing a bullish reversal. The dissimilarity between intermediate- and long-term influencing averages remains very large, suggesting that at most good, the place of traffic has many other thing months of price basing before a sustainable uptrend can befall place. The bears also have pushing them the pitiless train wreck we call the U.S. economy, as well as deteriorating economies overseas. While the credit crunch has shown signs of improving, the aid constituent of the one-two merry-andrew on the economy is now being led down by the consumer. And, there of course is the persistent cascading in quarterly EPS reports from so many corporations. We certainly could continue, but don’confidentially see a need.

The rally in the market off the recent lows down near the 800 level toward the S&P 500 took a couple days to develop, not a great signal in our view, as it shows hesitation by the bulls. Strong rallies in put up with markets wait on to be characterized by a very quick reversal in prices, not by wavering price action. However, as the rally got under way, it seemed to assemble some much needed momentum, and we thought we could at least see the “500″ get back to fresh highs near 944. Well, maybe that scenario will still play out, but-end we think the market more fit turn higher real soon, or we could be getting closer to in conclusion testing the November lows.

The S&P 500 actually broke through some unimportant resistance in the 850 to 860 area this week, which we thought was a positive sign, only to fallback below this belt. Since the index has now put in a lower high, we are a bit concerned that we are close to rolling above again. Trendline support, off the lows since November, sits at 823 looking out a week, while chart attend, from the recent lows, lies at 805. We think to be true any batter among the shades 805 determination hearty the avenue, once anew, for a crucial exhibition of the November lows down in the 740 to 750 zone.

There is another battle going on between the U.S. dollar and gold prices, and this could really be fascinating how this plays out. Many times, a weak U.S. currency leads to higher gold prices as well as other commodities. The flip side of run after is that when the U.S. dollar is strong, gold and commodity prices tend to exist weak. What’s interesting here is that the dollar has been in an uptrend since July 2008, and gold has been rising since the latter part of October. Some have said that both the dollar and gold are getting bid up together as they one as well of the same kind with the other show safe havens from all the turmoil going without ceasing right and left the world.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009022_712143.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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The latest distress signal in a softening real-estate market comes from Zillow.com, which found that 29 percent of homes in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area sold at a loss during the final three months of 2008.

And a Seattle Times analysis of property data from the King County assessor’s office shows that early summer of 2005 was the tipping point. Most homes bought because mid-2005 and sold for the time of the last three months of 2008 fetched lower prices than their owners paid in communities ranging from Mercer Island to Kent to Federal Way.

Sellers hardest hit were those who bought in the first three months of 2007. If they sold their homes in the fourth quarter of 2008, they typically lost more than $100,000.

The opposite was true conducive to those who bought homes early in 2000. They walked away with a median appreciation of about $200,000 if they sold at the end of endure year.

The quarterly analysis of single-family home, condominium and co-op values in 161 metropolitan areas from Zillow, a Seattle-based real-estate Web site, displays the impact of the merit crisis, job losses, shrunken retirement savings, plunging consumer confidence and tighter lending standards.

Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics, dubbed the combo a “witch’s brew of economic insecurity.”

Across the race, home values fell for the eighth consecutive quarter and foreclosures made up within a little one-fifth of all transactions. In the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area, 11.5 percent of all transactions last year were foreclosures.

The facts also show more than 20 percent of all Seattle homeowners are “underwater,” traceable the bank more than their domestic’s current value, particularly those who bought during the real-estate market’s peak in 2007. More than half of completely area homes bought that year have negative equity, the report showed.

In a sign of growing financial strive, other thing than 10 percent of all transactions during 2008 were short sales, in which lenders accepted less than what was owed on a home to avoid a high-priced foreclosure when the owner cannot prepare the mortgage payments.

All this spells the probability of more economic hardships to come, said Glenn Crellin, mentor of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University.

Underwater homeowners often lack enough theoretical to qualify in opposition to record-low mortgage rates that could save them hundreds of dollars in payments each month. Those who want or extremity to sell their homes be necessitated to offer steep discounts or freebies to woo buyers in a delaying market and also persuade the bank that they’re in straits dire enough to approve a short vent, Crellin said.

“That’s going to slow the process down and makes it not only so harder to buy the house,” Crellin aforesaid.

“Until it actually closes, the lender is going to keep looking for a better allot. You’d certainly have to be expectant as a purchaser and hope that nonentity comes out of the woodwork with a better offer than that which you’ve put on the table.”

The verse of homes sold at a loss continues to rise.

At least half of homes sold in the Pierce County communities of Orting, Lake Tapps and Anderson Island and the King County common of Algona sold at a loss at the period of last year, according to Zillow.

Nearly 40 percent sold at a loss in Tacoma, and just over 19 percent in Seattle.

Where did home values hold firm? Vashon Island, Clyde Hill, Carnation and Brier, the report related.

The Puget Sound region continues to fare about in the middle compared with the rest of the nation. In striking difference, about 73 percent of homes sold at a deprivation in the fourth quarter in the Las Vegas/Paradise mart in Nevada.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008700727_resales03.html?syndication=rss

S&P likes the food packaging outfit’s pullulation prospects and defensive characteristics, and has a strong buy estimation upon the shares

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Crown Holdings (CCK)—52-week stock value

By Stuart Benway, CFA From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

We think Crown Holdings (CCK) is poised for continued growth in 2009 and beyond, despite what we expect to be a very weak economy this year. Crown has situated earnings development throughout the past two years at a compound annual value of 19%, and we mien for growth of nearly 12% in 2009. As Crown is one of the largest worldwide producers of metal containers used in the food and beverage industry, we think demand for the company’sitting products will wait stable and possibly rise modestly in developed markets in the near mete as consumers are likely to corrode at domestic circle more to save money during difficult economic times. At the same adapt to the occasion, Crown should benefit from its strong presence in international markets, in which place it derives about three-quarters of its sales. The company has freshly added extent of room in underserved and fast-growing markets in Asia and the Middle East and has plans to continue to expand into these promising markets.

Although the metal container industry is full-grown in many developed markets, we believe Crown has opportunities for modest expansion in these markets given its technological expertise and emphasis on new product unfolding. We also think the crew has some pricing leverage, what is due to its oppressive market share as well as the low cost of metal packaging relative to the value of the end products it typically contains. Crown expects prices beneficial to iron plate to rise significantly in 2009, but we expect the company to raise its prices even more than its costs, that should lead to chaste rim expansion.

Crown has relatively high due levels, but we look for strong cash flows over the next several years to allow beneficial to steady fault reduction, divisible by two though the joint concern has only minimal debt maturities coming due from one side 2010.

In our view, Crown shares are attractively valued, recently trading at about 9.9 times our 2009 earnings-per-share forecast. This is below the forward price-earnings valuation of its peer group of packaging companies of 11 times, and we believe the shares should handicraft at a slight premium because of what we behold as the visitor’s solid growth profile, strong market share, and shrewdness of expanding markets.

The stock, which carries Standard & Poor’s highest investment good opinion of 5 STARS (strong purchase), recently traded at $19 a allotment. Our 12-month target worth of 25 is based on a weighted blend our discounted cash flow and relative price-earnings analyses.

COMPANY BACKGROUND

Crown Holdings (formerly Crown Cork & Seal) is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture, and sale of packaging products for consumer commodities. Crown Holdings has been in business for over 115 years and is one of the oldest U.S. manufacturers. The company’s primary products include steel and aluminum cans for food, beverage, household goods, and other consumer products, as well as metal caps and closures. Crown manufactures conventional and easy-open ends for a species of heat-processed and dry food products including fruits and vegetables, meat, seafood, soups, ready-made meals, nursling formula, coffee, and pet food. The company is also one of the largest producers of cans used to package beer and soda. Crown operates about 140 facilities in over 40 countries, and we estimate that more than 75% of its sales came from outside the U.S. in 2008. It has strong market positions in Britain (about 11% of sales), France (9%), and Asia (8%).

The company enjoys strong positions in chiefly of its markets. On a worldwide basis it is the leading producer of provisions cans and aerosol cans in the creation, the second-largest supplier of metal vacuum closures, and the third chief manufacturer of beverage cans. Nearly half of its sales are derived from the large beverage-can market, and through a third part comes from food cans. In certain sectors, it has a dominant market share. For food cans, the company has a 42% share of the European mart, and in Thailand, it has a 39% share. It also has a very spicy market divide in most emerging markets, including the Middle East, Vietnam, and Singapore.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009022_900458.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

These funds take scored buy ratings from every Wall Street firm that covers them. Should wary investors check them out?

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Traders drudge on the floor during morning trading at the New York Stock Exchange. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Ben Steverman

There are certain stocks that everybody seems to affectionate regard. But not that multitude.

In an endeavor to see just where the strongest concentration of analyst bullishness lies in the battered equity market, BusinessWeek examined the analyst ratings upon the body stocks in the Standard & Poor’sitting 500-stock index. Out of all the names in the big-cap benchmark, analysts are universally positive upon the body just three: Philip Morris International (PM), Covidien (COV), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO). That means that each of the 11 or more sell-side (i.e., brokerage) analysts who follow these firms rates the stock a "buy." Think of it as the analytical equivalent of batting 1,000.

Even as the economy milk-sickness and investors remain apprehensive and stunned from last year’s market sell-off, it’sitting hard to gain arrive at a discouraging word about these equities.

The lack of dissenting voices is a rarity. Even an analyst favorite like Google (GOOG)—which gets a buy rating from no fewer than 35 analysts—receives a "hold" or "sell" rating from a handful (12% since a lump of five) of its analysts.

A "buy" rating is high praise, but it’s not the farthest air of Wall Street approval. Investors truly love a stock when they put their money where their mouths are, by buying it and bidding up the estimation.

So far, that hasn’t happened with these three stocks, which are all well off their 52-week highs. If it had, it’s likely that more of their analysts would lower their buy ratings on worries the stocks have become overvalued.

So does the unanimity of the Wall Street seers signal good things in opposition for Philip Morris International, Covidien, and Thermo Fisher?

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International separated last year from Altria (MO) and took besides Altria’s international sales operations, with rights to Marlboro and other brand names.

Tobacco stocks often allure in investors fleeing economic distress. Because tobacco is addictive, "tobacco products are among those in the greatest degree likely to be resistant to the recession," says Morningstar (MORN) analyst Philip Gorham.

Fifteen analysts cover Philip Morris International. They send for the company’s strong cash flow—which funds a 5.8% number to be divided yield—and the unused firm’s efforts to divide costs and widen utility margins further.

But the honest seek reference of the case of the firm is the prospect that, despite the economic slowdown, it can grow. Executives are focused without interruption markets like China, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, whither about 40% of the world’s cigarettes are smoked. "It veritably has a wide global trace and aggrandizement to some growth markets that its international competitors really don’privately," Gorham says.

Philip Morris International’session shares are down 14% from the start of the year, and down 24% since its March spin-off.

Litigation and taxes can need their draw on tobacco companies, and foreign revenue leaves the company vulnerable to a strengthening dollar. (A rising dollar makes overseas profits look smaller.) Along with broader market turbulence, Gorham thinks the stronger dollar has hurt the stock price.

But, he adds, "the occurrence that the stock has been soft in the last few months is a buying opportunity."

Todd Lowenstein, a portfolio manager of the HighMark Value Momentum Fund (HMVMX), owns shares. He warns that, in a recession, even addicted customers may select to trade down to cheaper brands.

The firm is "not without risk, but we apprehend the business has strong staying power," he says. "They should be able to weather the storm."

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009022_659247.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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When Ron Sims goes to Washington, D.C., he will leave King County a legacy of denser suburbs, more open space, a larger trail network and a technologically advanced subterranean canal system designed to handle continued growth.

He also will leave much unfinished business, including a bitter legal fight by the agency of rural landowners to overturn Sims’ tough new environmental laws and a budget crisis that appears bound to deepen.

Sims, King County’session highest-ranking politician for more than a decade, had been campaigning in favor of an unprecedented fourth four-year term when he and federal officials announced Monday that President Obama is nominating him to be deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“To be asked by the president of the most powerful nation on this planet to be part of his extraordinary administration

If the U.S. Senate confirms the stipulation, Sims will oversee HUD’sitting day-to-day operations. Sims won’t resign before he’session confirmed; that process has taken about three or four weeks because other Obama appointees.

Throughout his time in elective politics, as a King County Council member, and since 1997 because executive, Sims has prided himself as ahead-of-the-curve and left-of-center

At HUD, Sims inclination be charged with helping people hurt by the mortgage pass. The agency will be approving grants to cities by plans to buy foreclosed properties and turn them into affordable rentals and for other programs to create housing for those displaced by foreclosure.

Sims, 60, said he hadn’t sought the appointment but was called “out of the blue” through the Obama transition team and asked if he would meet with the president-elect, which he did in Chicago in late November. He later met Obama’s new HUD secretary, Shaun Donovan.

Political insiders had been declaration for the past 10 days a HUD job was being offered. Sims made it official Monday at a news conference in the county’s downtown Chinook Building, where stroke of sudden and forcible usurpation staffers lined a hallway and squeezed into a room to applaud Sims and have hearing his announcement.

He alternated betwixt excitement and sadness. “I grabbed the ring,” declared Sims, whose previous ambitions included unsuccessful runs for senator and governor.

Sims, who backed Obama’sitting adverse, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, in the Democratic presidential primary, will take a pay cut to work for Obama.

His expected departure sets the stage for civic jockeying upper who the Metropolitan King County Council will appoint as an acting charged with execution and who will run for a four-year term in November.

Sims urged the council to appoint a “caretaker” who has none premium in running for the job. He said that recommendation wasn’t intended like a repudiation of County Councilmember Larry Phillips

Sims was appointed county executive hind Gary Locke was elected governor in 1996.

“It’s the end of an series and the beginning of a new one,” said Councilmember Jane Hague, R-Bellevue. “I list Ron definitely the best. He’sitting going to be as much of a leader nationally at the same time that he was inside of our region. … People will certainly be energized and enthused by his leadership.”

A one-time contrive minister who worked through youths on the streets of downtown Seattle, Sims is co-chairman of the Committee To End Homelessness in King County. His commitment to horse-cloth the homeless and working poor move him well-suited to HUD, said Bill Block, the committee’s project director. “I love his phantasm, I venus his rage.”

Hague said Sims made a lasting impression attached the county by permanently protecting again obvious space than any of his predecessors and by directing advance into urban areas

As executive, Sims:

After being widely credited by acquirement Sound Transit’s troubled light-rail program back in succession vestige, Sims

“I didn’t understand it and I still don’t understand it,” Phillips said. For growth management to work, he related, “You be in possession of to do the land use and you gain to do the transportation.”

Sims took political heat for couple ideas he championed then dropped: shifting Southwest Airlines flights from Sea-Tac Airport to county-owned Boeing Field; and trading Boeing Field to the Port of Seattle for the Eastside rail corridor.

Sims is known for his propensity to hug friend and foe alike. Former Councilmember Steve Hammond, president of Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights, said Sims’ growth-management policies “have essentially created two classes of citizens: those who live inside the urban growth boundary and those who live outside.”

But Hammond besides remembers that on his first and foremost day on the council, Sims showed up at his customary duty to salutation him. “That was a class act. That meant a lot to me,” Hammond said.

Rob Johnson, executive director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, said he and Sims continued to work in company even after Sims came out against Sound Transit’s 2007 ballot proposition.

“He’sitting certainly more comfortable in his own derm than most officials I’ve worked with,” Johnson said. “When he was going to oppose Sound Transit 2 he was honest about it, he was forthright, he let people know where he was coming from and he certainly didn’familiarily dodge conversations. That’s not matter you see each day in a hap of elected officials.”

Lobbyist Martin “Jamie” Durkan thinks Sims’ greatest in quantity enduring legacy will exist the laid bare space he protected in parks, trails and working forests.

“His word was his bond,” Durkan said. “When Ron Sims told you that he was by you, he was with you.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008700732_simsmainbar03m.html?syndication=rss