Random Thoughts

By JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a shower of pink slips, U.S. employers cut jobs last month for the first time in more than four years, the starkest signal yet that the economy is grinding to a halt if it hasn’t already toppled into recession.

Conditions are deteriorating, according to the latest employment snapshot by the Labor Department, which showed nervous employers slicing payrolls by 17,000. The country hadn’t seen such a nationwide job loss since 2003, when employers were still struggling to recover from the last previous recession.

“We are certainly on thin ice,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. And even President Bush, normally a cheerleader for the economy, said there were “serious signs” it was weakening.

Wall Street, however, took the news in stride. The Dow Jones industrials rose 92.83 points to 12,743.19.

Job losses were widespread in January. Factories, construction companies, mortgage brokers and real-estate firms were among those eliminating jobs - casualties of the housing bust and credit crunch. The government cut jobs for the first time since last July.

All those cuts swamped job gains in education, health care, retailing and elsewhere.

The unemployment rate actually dipped slightly to 4.9 percent, from 5 percent in December, as people left the labor force.

“Discouraged by a sluggish job market, many more adults are sitting on the sidelines,” said Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.

Wage growth also slowed, another indication of belt-tightening. Smaller wage gains could make people who still have jobs - already squeezed by high energy prices - reluctant to spend, further hurting the economy.

President Bush prodded Congress anew to quickly pass an economic rescue package.

“There’s serious signs that … the economy is weakening and that we’ve got to do something about it,” Bush said. On Capitol Hill, Democratic and Republican supporters of a stimulus package - including tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses - agreed the gloomy employment report underscored a need for urgency. The package is pending in the Senate, where there are disputes over attempts to expand it.

The Democratic presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, said the job losses were evidence of failed Bush policies. “We are sliding into a second Bush recession,” Clinton said. Obama called the employment figures “troubling news” and urged Congress to extend unemployment benefits “for more time and to more people.”

To help ease the credit crisis, the Federal Reserve announced it would provide cash-strapped banks with an additional $60 billion in short-term loans through auctions later this month. The Fed started the auctions in December and has already provided $100 billion in loans to banks.

With fears of recession growing, the Fed has gotten much more aggressive - ordering two big interest rate reductions in just over a week. A severely depressed housing market, hard-to-get credit, turbulence on Wall Street and “some softening in labor markets” were cited by the Fed when it lowered rates by a bold half-point on Wednesday. The weak employment report would justify additional rate cuts, economists said.

The health of the nation’s job market is a critical factor shaping how the overall economy fares. If companies continue to cut back on hiring and put a lid on wages, that will spell more trouble.

People running companies are concerned.

“They are thinking if there is some capital spending I should postpone for a while, I should do that. If there is some hiring I don’t necessarily need to do right now, I can put that off for a few months to see what happens,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. “The problem with that thinking is that more economic weakness or a recession can become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Average hourly earnings for jobholders rose to $17.75 in January, a 0.2 percent increase from the previous month. It was half the pace logged in December. Over the past 12 months wages went up by 3.7 percent. With high energy and food prices, though, workers may feel like their paychecks aren’t stretching as far.

The unemployment rate had shot up in December to 5 percent, from 4.7 percent in November. The magnitude of that increase - something not seen since right after the September 2001 terror attacks - set off alarms. In the past, such a big increase has signaled the economy was starting a recession or already in one.

With economic growth slowing this year, the unemployment rate will climb again. In fact, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, predicts the jobless rate will rise to near 6.5 percent in early 2009.

The 17,000 drop was in total payrolls - both government and private employers - in January, the first monthly decline since August 2003. The government sliced 18,000 positions, while private employers added just 1,000, the fewest in nearly a year.

The government on Friday also released annual revisions - based on more complete information - that showed job creation was even weaker last year than initially thought.

The economy added an average of just 95,000 jobs per month in 2007, versus an earlier estimate of 111,000 a month. In 2006, payroll employment grew by an average of 175,000 a month.

Construction and factory workers have been especially hard hit by the meltdown in housing, which has catapulted home foreclosures to record highs. Construction companies cut 27,000 jobs last month and have lost 284,000 since employment peaked in September 2006. Spending by private builders on housing projects last year plunged by a record 18.3 percent, the Commerce Department said in a separate report.

Factories eliminated 28,000 positions in January, and have cut 269,000 jobs over the past 12 months. Manufacturing activity gained some ground in January, after contracting in December, the Institute for Supply Management said in still another report Friday.

The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of last year, and some economists believe it may actually be shrinking now.

Under one rough rule, the economy would have to contract for six months for the country to be considered in a recession. The likelihood of a recession has risen sharply over the past year, and analysts increasingly believe the U.S. will be in one during the first half of 2008. The worry is that people and businesses will hunker down and pull back their spending, sending the economy into a tailspin.

Bush said, “We’re just in a rough patch. And, I’m confident we can get through this rough patch.”

—

On the Net:

Employment report: http://www.bls.gov
from the bismark tribune / ap

There are several interesting things to read about online this week. Here’s some links.

Ebay sellers are furious about changes ebay is making, and there is a discussion at digg worth reading. I have a friend who has been working on n anti-ebay web site, it’s still in the making, but will appear online at www.postwhatyouwant.com in due time.

Following the discussion at digg i learned of a web site that hopes to bridge the gap of reputation between various web sites - vbuddy.

Somehow I stumbled upon Ziki.com, from their web site:

What is Ziki.com?

Ziki is a free way to search for comprehensive information about a person based on published information available on the Web.

An estimated 30 percent of Internet research relates to people searches. “To Google someone” has become a part of everyday language for most Americans, and with the explosion of social networks and publication platforms (blogs, photo sharing sites, video sharing sites, etc), Internet users have scattered across the Web a mine of personal information. Since this information is searched on a regular basis , there is a need to organize and present it in a structured way.

Edicionsub is back online after losing it’s domain and web site content. Another lesson in backing up.

Cool diffuser idea for LED - use a  ping pong ball. It kind of looks like retro Christmas lights. (Found at Boing Boing)

Rip a sim card from a cell phone to your computer - cool. And there may be a way to do it for under $20.

using a game to teach people about journalism - cool idea.

Link me up adds an easy way for others to add links to your blog. 

blgads looks a lot like a google adwords type of a thing.

Private eye defends integrity of “honey trapping”By Kate Kelland Wed Feb 13, 1:20 PM ET

From yahoo news / Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - When Richard Martinez goes to a nightclub or bar, he often goes alone.

But the 38-year-old former RAF officer wastes no time in heading for a target — a woman — to flirt with and flatter.

Martinez will not try too hard, but will allow himself to be drawn into conversation and, if asked, will give out his phone number for a potential future date.

Martinez is a “honey trapper” — or as he likes to call himself, an “integrity tester” — one of a growing team of private detectives who are hired by wives, husbands or partners to test the loyalty of their loved ones.

“It’s growing all the time,” he says of his business, the Expedite Detective Agency (www.ex-da.com), which charges 300 pounds ($588) for an integrity test on a potential cheat.

Martinez refutes accusations of marriage-wrecking, arguing that his customers come to him when they are already concerned about their partner’s fidelity or when rumors have led them to suspect an affair. But he admits around 80 percent of targets fail the test and turn out to be ready and willing to cheat on a partner.

Martinez and his colleagues — he has a team of male and female trappers, some more, some less attractive — record the whole “hit” on audio and video, so that the customer can see for themselves how the evening develops.

And Martinez has “rules of engagement”: The target must not be drunk, there must be no touching, and the relative attractiveness of the trapper to the target must be equal.

“It’s got to be a fair test,” he explains. “So we make sure that we don’t set a very attractive honey trapper on a not so attractive target, and vice versa.”

“The customer needs a fair answer to the question of whether their husband or girlfriend is loyal.”

Martinez says that while many of his customers may end their relationships, other use the honey trap to confront unfaithful lovers and appeal to them to change their ways.

“So we can also act as a deterrent,” he says. “The customer can say to their partner: ‘I caught you this time and I want you to change’ and they can warn that they will use the honey trap service in the future to test them again.”

He shrugs off criticism that he is fostering mistrust, and insists he is meeting a real need among British couples. But while Martinez is unashamed about what he does, other such detective agencies are more reticent.

At UK Honey Traps, a service based in Worcestershire in the heart of England and offering trappers across the country, they are not keen to talk.

“We don’t talk to journalists,” a spokesman there told Reuters by telephone. “It wouldn’t help our business.”

They are, however, looking for new recruits.

Under the vacancies section of their Web site, the detective service is on the look-out for “confident, bubbly, outgoing men and women with an ability to think on their feet.”

Becoming a honey trapper demands reliability, honesty and accuracy, it says, and because most of the trapping takes place outside office hours, it can offer “an ideal second career.”

(Editing by Luke Baker)

From the Tennessean Newspaper

Studies say physicians are being influenced drug

By STEVEN G. GABBE, M.D. • February 18, 2008

At 8 a.m. on Aug. 8, 2007, during their very first week of medical school, Vanderbilt medical students heard a lecture from Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, professor of law and pediatrics, about potential conflicts of interest faced by practicing physicians, including those related to pharmaceutical and medical device companies.As the students left the lecture hall, they passed by tables of bagels, juice and coffee set up for another lecture next door where the audience of faculty physicians and residents listened to a noted expert on heart disease review the latest research on a new treatment.
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These types of lectures, commonly known as grand rounds, represent a tradition of how physicians at academic medical centers like Vanderbilt stay up to date on the very latest medical discoveries and their application to patient care.

However, students noticed that, at the end of the breakfast table was a display of pens, notepads and pamphlets all prominently bearing the name of a new and highly effective drug brought to the market by a pharmaceutical company whose representative was sitting behind this table.

During their first week of medical school, these students faced their very first professional dilemma: Does the presence of marketing materials and the offer of a free meal by a pharmaceutical company representative create a potential conflict of interest for physicians in the care of their patients because they may be more likely to prescribe a specific drug as a result of this exposure?
Prescribing behavior is affected

Many physicians believe their level of professionalism and integrity would not allow such a small token to influence their medical judgment. Recent studies, however, have shown that the prescribing behavior of physicians may be more highly influenced by meals and gifts than physicians often realize. These studies are consistent with years of marketing research that show how all of us are affected by product advertising.

That’s why many medical centers, including Vanderbilt, have for years had some level of restriction on the value of gifts and meals that companies could provide physicians and employees.

However, as recently reported in The Tennessean, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has joined a growing number of academic medical centers across the country by establishing a policy that no physician, staff member or trainee shall accept a personal gift or meal from an industry representative regardless of the value of the gift. This new policy is based upon the understanding that physicians and other health-care providers have a special obligation to their patients to make medical decisions based solely upon the best scientific evidence available.

These decisions should not be compromised by even the slightest appearance of any conflict by industry marketing practices. If we are going to teach medical students, beginning in their first week of medical school, about their obligations as a professional, we must make sure their teachers are modeling the behavior we are teaching. It’s the right thing to do for our students and our patients.

Steven G. Gabbe, M.D. is dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

So I was doing a google image search for funny pics of Monica Lewinski and I stumbled upon a new web site - ioffer.com that does the whole online buy sell trade thing. I may have to get Sam to add this site to his new and upcoming post what you want site. I did find a funny parody fake Arkansas quarter with a behind the tree blowjob on it. Funny.