Bad mortgage - whose fault?

Sounds like she was mortgage-free in '97, when she was 78 years old. At this time she had lived in the same house for 26 years.

Then, for some reason she took out a mortgage . Who gives a 30 year mortgage to a 78 year old??? Obviously she was not working. Was she going to pay it back with her social security?

Why would she take it out in the first place? Was she hoodwinked into taking it by an unscrupulous mortgage broker? This might be the real story. What bank or mortgage company gave the loan?

Why would she refinance 'several times' since then ? Again, perhaps a high pressure mortgage salesperson was involved?

And what did she do with the tens of thousands of dollars she received?

She may be worthy of sympathy if she was badgered into these loans by unscrupulous salespeople. Then again perhaps she was a somewhat willing participant in the scam.

Widow puts face on home crisis

Shoots herself in foreclosure

Thomas J. Sheeran ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, October 13, 2008

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Buzz up!

AKRON, Ohio | By the time deputies came to escort Addie Polk out of her home of 38 years, the 90-year-old had taken out her life insurance policy and placed it next to her pocketbook and keys in the neatly kept house.

She shot herself in the chest Oct. 1 before she could be taken away from the foreclosed house, which was worth less than its mortgage from the day she took out the loan.

A congressman called her the face of a national tragedy, the housing crisis that has affected millions of Americans. Neighbors were stunned and said they had no idea the widow had been about to lose her two-story home.

As she recovered, Mrs. Polk sounded a bit regretful. "She said that was a crazy thing to do," said neighbor Robert Dillon, 62, who visited her at the hospital.

Mrs. Polk's cause was taken up by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat, and fueled blogs on reckless lending practices rampant during the housing boom. Mortgage finance company Fannie Mae dropped the foreclosure, forgave her mortgage and said she could remain in the home.

"You have to shoot yourself to get help," said a neighbor, Hannah Garrett, 76.

The Summit County Sheriff's Department concluded that Mrs. Polk shot herself over the foreclosure, Lt. Kandy Fatheree said. A revolver was inches from her, and the house was locked.

Mr. Dillon heard the gunfire Oct. 1, climbed through Mrs. Polk's upstairs bathroom window and found her lying in bed bleeding.

Mrs. Polk was recovering at Akron General Medical Center, and did not respond to a mailed Associated Press request for an interview. The hospital would not release information about her condition.

Mr. Dillon hadn't been aware of Mrs. Polk's financial situation but said she had indicated she couldn't afford roof or porch repairs.

Mrs. Polk's blue-collar neighborhood, overlooking a duck pond and a noisy highway near Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s world headquarters, is a mix of renovated and worn-out houses. Unlike some hard-hit areas, no for-sale signs were dotted along the brick street on a recent day.

Neighbors said Mrs. Polk, who has no children, drives herself to church services and goes out to dinner with friends on Sundays.

"She didn't act like she was under stress," Mrs. Garrett said.

Mrs. Polk took out a mortgage in 1997 and refinanced several times after that, court and property records showed. She took out a 30-year, 6.375 percent mortgage for $45,620 four years ago when the house was appraised at $31,230. That move put her in a position that, according to Deutsche Bank, up to 40 percent of borrowers, or 20 million households nationwide, could face within 12 to 18 months: Suddenly Mrs. Polk owed more on her house than it was worth.

While many households ran into that problem when once-soaring house prices declined, there was no bubble on LaCroix Avenue, located in a city whose population dropped 4 percent since 2000 amid declining manufacturing.

Fannie Mae, which had assumed the Countrywide Home Loan mortgage on Mrs. Polk's home, thinks a reversal of the foreclosure was appropriate given the circumstances, a Fannie Mae spokesman said. Fannie Mae filed the foreclosure on Sept. 6, 2007.

Offshoring Airline maintnenance

Look like there may be melamine in the jet fuel?

FAA Faulted for Lax Tracking of Airline Maintenance, Too Much Outsourcing

Saturday , October 04, 2008

WASHINGTON —

Nine U.S. airlines outsourced more than 70 percent of their major aircraft maintenance last year, and federal aviation officials' oversight of repair facilities is lagging, according to a government report.

One-fourth of the outsourced maintenance is being handled by contractors overseas.

The Transportation Department's inspector general said the outsourcing, which has more than doubled in four years, was of concern because the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is farmed out and where it is performed.

Although the FAA has taken steps to improve, "the agency still faces challenges in determining where the most critical maintenance occurs and ensuring sufficient oversight," investigators said in the report issued this week.

In their effort to lower costs, the report said, airlines continue to shift their heavy airframe maintenance from their own in-house mechanics and engineers to hundreds of repair companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico and countries in Central America and Asia.

Nine major airlines examined by the inspector general outsourced 71 percent of their heavy air frame maintenance — repairs and servicing to an aircraft's body, wings and tail — in 2007, up from 34 percent in 2003. More than a quarter of that maintenance — 27 percent — was performed at foreign repair facilities.

The airlines examined in the report were AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, America West Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. American Airlines, the nation's largest domestic carrier, was not included, the inspector general said, because it handles most maintenance in-house.

The FAA relies heavily on the airlines — and the repair facilities themselves — to make sure outsourced repairs meet the air safety standards and requirements of the individual airlines.

FAA requires each repair station to undergo a government inspection at least once a year, FAA spokesman Les Dorr said. The report says those inspections often are not being conducted by agency inspectors most familiar with standards and requirements of the airline whose planes are being repaired.

As much as five years lapsed between visits to some major maintenance facilities by inspectors assigned to individual airlines. Inspectors not assigned to a specific airline may not be familiar with the special maintenance requirements of that airline's planes, which are often customized.

The report cited a foreign facility, which repairs engines for an unidentified airline, that had not been inspected by an FAA inspector assigned to that airline in five years, a period in which the facility had repaired 39 of the air carrier's engines.

The report recommends FAA require airlines to provide more complete information on the extent and location of outsourced repairs, ensure air carriers and repair stations are better able to spot and correct problems, and improve the documentation of inspection results.

The FAA agreed it needs to do more. "We actually concur with all the inspector general's recommendations," Dorr said. "We have procedures in place that already address some of the recommendations, and we have some projects in progress that address others."

One safety expert, however, said the report underscores that FAA still has a long way to go toward resolving the outsourcing issue, which has been source of controversy for the agency for several years.

"What this report tells me is there is still a big problem with oversight — the FAA is not verifying that the oversight being provided by the air carriers is doing the job it's supposed to," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Doctor - another job Americans won't do

OK... some questions any journalist can ask, but none seem to do, when such articles are put together :

• Why are so many foreign doctors interning in the U.S. ?
  
• Do U.S. Med schools produce too few graduates to meet the yearly needs for interns/residents in U.S. hospitals?
• Are a lot less U.S. students applying to Med school? How easy is it to get into a U.S. Med School?
  
• Why are there too few doctors in the country ? If there are too many in desired areas such as NYC then it stands to reason that costs may go down or many would not be able to make a living.
• If there are too few home-grown doctors why don't existing Med schools ramp up enrollment?
• If there are too few home-grown doctors why don't States create more public Med Schools to fill the need?
• How about creating Med schools in rural areas, drawing from local people who would be interested in working either locally or in other rural areas?
  

October 1, 2008
Towns Need Doctors, and the Doctors Need Visas
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Glossy chamber of commerce brochures from small towns and rural areas along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River and in the Adirondack Mountains beckoned on tables in the Sheraton New York Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. But it was not the allure of hiking, fishing or wineries — or even the free cookies and coffee — that attracted scores of novice doctors to a job fair on Sunday.

It was the possibility of a green card.

Many of the doctors, residents at New York City hospitals, had come from abroad on visas, including the restrictive J-1 “exchange visa,” which requires them to return home for two years once they finish their studies unless they can get a waiver to work in a medically underserved area. New York State recommends about 30 doctors for J-1 visa waivers annually; typically half of the visas go to doctors working in neighborhoods like Washington Heights or the South Bronx and half to upstate communities that do not have enough physicians.

Getting such a waiver is akin to winning the lottery, and to apply for a ticket, doctors must have a signed employment contract, said Caleb C. Wistar, a State Health Department planner who was at the job fair to give advice. “This is the shining prize of working in underserved areas for people who are not citizens,” he said.

Visa politics helped turn the job fair into a matchmaking exercise. The 30 upstate hospitals that sent representatives, whose expenses were covered by the Greater New York Hospital Association, promoted their towns’ friendly neighbors and good schools. The immigrant doctors, willing to relocate for economic and professional opportunities, listened politely, then worked up the courage to ask what for many of them was the most pressing question: “Do you sponsor visas?”

Dr. Ranka Bulajic, a Serb, analyzed the job market by ethnicity: Eastern Europeans, she explained, were willing to work in colder climates like northern New York State or Oregon, while those from Africa or the Caribbean tended to prefer Alabama or Virginia. Dr. Jiwu Sun, who graduated from China’s prestigious Third Military Medical University, said that, at the age of 40 — and with a wife, two children and limited English — he was in no position to make demands of potential employers. Dr. Nadia Ferder, 34, who was born in the United States but grew up in Buenos Aires, said she did not want to return to Argentina because the economy was so bad that “lawyers, economists, doctors, architects, they are all driving cabs.”

Many studies show that newly trained American doctors, burdened with student loans and seeking status and challenges, gravitate toward urban centers. A 2007 study of physician recruitment by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the State University of New York at Albany found that physicians practicing upstate were more likely to have come from outside New York than their downstate counterparts.

The study said that when doctors had trouble finding jobs, the main reason was their reluctance to look outside the most desirable locations, like New York City. While many American doctors aspire to work on Park Avenue, experts say, foreign-born doctors are willing to take more modest jobs as a way of establishing a toehold in the United States.

Dr. Romina Tollerutti, 31, who graduated from medical school at the University of Buenos Aires, said she learned English six years ago when she decided to come to the United States for her residency, and had struggled with the unfamiliar multiple-choice format of the medical-licensing exam. She and her husband, also a doctor, hope that fluency of Spanish will help make them more attractive to employers.

Dr. Tollerutti said that even as a third-year pediatric resident at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, she was doing better financially than she would as a fully trained doctor in Argentina. “We are not saving money,” Dr. Tollerutti said. “But we have a cellphone, we have cable, I pay rent, and we have money to go out.”

Like other foreign-born physicians, Dr. Tollerutti said that having gone to a government-run medical school, where her tuition was free, made her more flexible in her job possibilities than many of her American colleagues who had to pay off staggering student loans.

Dr. Bulajic, 35, who earned her medical degree from the University of Kragujevac in Serbia and has Canadian citizenship, is doing her residency at St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway.

She said New York City hospitals have their pick among residents and would rather hire a doctor with a green card than sponsor someone for a visa waiver. To work in Canada, she said, she would need another year of training. Her husband is an electrician, and they would prefer to live in an area where construction jobs are plentiful. But Dr. Bulajic is pregnant and her mother lives in Toronto, so a job in upstate New York sounded appealing, she said.

One of her competitors for a waiver was Dr. André Phillips, 27, from Barbados, who said he had earned his medical degree at the University of the West Indies campus in Jamaica, tuition-free, before landing a residency in internal medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. Dr. Phillips is scheduled to finish his residency in 2010, on a J-1 visa.

Dr. Phillips said he had been solicited by hospitals in the Dakotas, but would rather stay on the East Coast, closer to his family in Barbados. His goal, he said, was not to be rich but to be comfortable. “Money is not the reason I went into medicine,” he said, adding that he would be satisfied with “a nice three-bedroom house and a sedan.”

A recruiter from the Finger Lakes region said her hospital could sponsor visas.

“How about the lawyer’s fee?” Dr. Phillips asked.

“We reimburse that,” the recruiter replied.

Nearby, Rich Duvall, a human resources administrator for Carthage Area Hospital in Carthage, N.Y., gave the hard sell to a doctor from India and his family. Carthage, a medically underserved area that calls itself “the gateway to the Adirondacks,” had it all, he said: snow sports, river sports, hiking and, thanks to the soldiers at nearby Fort Drum, diversity.

When is a cartel legal?

Looks like the EU can fine companies headquarted outside Europe for cartel activities.

What about OPEC then ?

EU Fines Wax Producers EUR676 Million For Price Fixing

October 01, 2008: 05:45 AM EST

BRUSSELS -(Dow Jones)- The European Commission Wednesday fined nine wax producers a total of EUR676 million for participating in a paraffin wax cartel.

The nine producers are Sasol Ltd. (SOL.JO), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), ENI S.P.A (ENI.MI), Hansen & Rosenthal, Tudapetrol, MOL, Repsol, RWE and Total S.A. ( 12027.FR).

Sasol, a South African energy company, was the leader of the cartel and will have to pay EUR318 million, the commission said. Total will have to pay the second largest part of the fine at EUR128 million.

"There is probably not a household or company in Europe that hasn't bought products affected by this 'paraffin mafia' cartel," said Neelie Kroes, the commission's antitrust chief, in a statement.

The NYTimes - Belated Talk like a Pirate day

A little late for this important holiday, but this is from the NYTimes today ....

Only a 'journalist' from the NYTimes, being sensitive to multiculturalism and diversity would call piracy a 'business' and an 'industry' ... just like terrorists are 'freedom fighters' or 'militants' ...

Words count, but at the NYTimes only with a spellchecker .

Perhaps the US Gov't has the fiscal and moral responsibility to bailout the pirates from their bad positions in Credit Default Swaps also ? After all the real pirates are on Wall Street.

Piracy in Somalia is a highly-organized, lucrative, ransom-driven business. Just this year, pirates have hijacked more than 25 ships, and in many cases, they were paid million dollar ransoms to release them. The juicy payoffs have attracted gunmen from across Somalia and the pirates are thought to now number in the thousands.

The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somalia’s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somalia’s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

October 1, 2008

Somali Pirates Tell All: They’re in It for the Money

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition said in an interview Tuesday that they had no idea that the ship was carrying arms when they seized it on the high seas.

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, told The New York Times. “So we stopped it.”

The pirates quickly learned, though, that their booty was an estimated $30 million worth of heavy weaponry, heading for Kenya or Sudan, depending on who you ask.

In a 45-minute-long interview, Mr. Sugule expounded on everything from what the pirates want — “just money” — to why they were doing this — “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters” — to what they eat — rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human being food.”

He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

The pirates who answered the phone call on Tuesday morning from The New York Times said they were speaking by satellite phone from the bridge of the Faina, the Ukrainian cargo ship that was hijacked about 200 miles off the coast of Somalia on Thursday. Several pirates talked, but they said that only Mr. Sugule was authorized to be quoted. Mr. Sugule acknowledged that they were now surrounded by American warships bristling with firepower but he did not sound afraid. “You only die once,” Mr. Sugule said.

He said that all was peaceful on the ship, despite unconfirmed reports from a maritime organization in Kenya that three pirates had been killed in a shoot-out among themselves on Monday night.

He insisted that the pirates were not interested in the weapons and had no plans to sell them to Islamist insurgents battling Somalia’s weak transitional government. “Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons,” he said. “We don’t want that suffering and chaos to continue. We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money.”

He said that they were asking for $20 million in cash — “we don’t use any other system than cash.” But he added that they were willing to bargain. “That’s deal making,” he explained.

Piracy in Somalia is a highly-organized, lucrative, ransom-driven business. Just this year, pirates have hijacked more than 25 ships, and in many cases, they were paid million dollar ransoms to release them. The juicy payoffs have attracted gunmen from across Somalia and the pirates are thought to now number in the thousands.

The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somalia’s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somalia’s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

“From there, they got greedy” explained Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “They starting attacking everyone.”

By the early 2000s, many of the fishermen had traded in their nets for machine guns and were hijacking any vessel — sailboat, oil tanker, United Nations-chartered food ship — that they could catch.

“It’s true that the pirates started to defend the fishing business,” Mr. Mohamed said. “And illegal fishing is a real problem for us. But this does not justify these boys to now act like guardians. They are criminals. The world must help us crack down on them.”

The United States and several European countries, in particular France, have been talking about ways to patrol the waters together. The United Nations is even considering creating something like a maritime peacekeeping force. Because of all the hijackings, the waters off of Somalia’s 1,880-mile-long coast are now considered the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world.

On Tuesday, several American warships had the hijacked freighter cornered along the craggy Somali coastline. The American ships were allowing the pirates to bring food and water on board but not to take any weapons off. A Russian frigate is also on its way to the area.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Navy spokesman, said on Tuesday that he had heard the unconfirmed reports about the inter-pirate shootout but that the Navy had no more information. “To be honest, we’re not seeing a whole lot of activity” on the ship, he said.

Kenyan officials continued to maintain that the weapons aboard were part of a legitimate arms deal for the Kenyan military, even though several Western diplomats, Somali officials and the pirates themselves said the arms were part of a secret deal to funnel the weapons to southern Sudan.

Somali officials are urging the Western navies to storm the ship and arrest the pirates because they say that paying ransoms only fuels the problem. Western diplomats, however, have said that it would be a very difficult commando operation because the ship is full of explosives and the pirates could use the 20 crew members as human shields.

Mr. Sugule said that his men are treating the crew members well (the pirates would not let the crew members speak on the phone, saying it was against their rules). “Killing is not in our plans,” he said. “We only want money, so we can protect ourselves from hunger.”

When asked why the pirates needed $20 million to protect themselves from hunger, Mr. Sugule laughed over the phone and said: “Because we have a lot of men.”

$1 trillion bailout

This would be a 'funny' story if it wasn't so $$painful$$ ...

Not only are we taxpayers and our progeny stuck with a humongous $1 trillion debt to clean up the Wall Street excess , but this 'bailout plan' is causing the oil market to 'stabilize' (interesting use of language - makes this sound like a positive thing!!) , thereby causing higher heating oil and gas prices for us lucky taxpayers ...

I say, fire all the politicians!

And they claim that 'speculation' is not the cause of high oil prices , that it is based strictly on supply and demand ... 'supply and demand' changed so rapidly in just 5 business days? .... causing oil to go from $92 to $130 a barrel, i.e. demand increased >50% !!

Or maybe it's the dollar going down 1 penny (<1%) that causes a 50% increase in oil?

I say, fire all the economists!

Oil prices had been trending lower on worries that demand was faltering but those concerns seem to be abating, according to one analyst.

"The fear has waned as far as the demand destruction" in the wake of the bailout news, said Neal Dingmann, senior energy analyst at Dahlman Rose. "The bailout has really stabilized this market."

Oil skyrockets, hits $130

Futures spike as much as $25 on the bailout plan, the falling dollar and as the October front-month contract expires.

By Catherine Clifford, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: September 22, 2008: 3:02 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices jumped more than $25 a barrel Monday in biggest dollar jump ever as the dollar was punished by the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan and big investors scrambled to fill obligations as the October contract expired.
Oil surged in afternoon trading, reaching as high as $130.00 - a $25 gain - but dropped back down to settle at $120.92 a barrel up $16.37 from Friday's close.

The rally reached a fevered pitch as the session neared its close, partly due to the fact that Monday is the last day of trading in the October oil futures contract, which typically results in volatile trading.

"A lot of the bullish factors that had been in this market that had been ignored are now coming home to roost," said Peter Beutel, oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

Oil prices had been rallying throughout the day, but the late-day spike was due to investors covering their short positions as the October contract expired according to Ray Carbone, a broker and trader at Paramount Options.

"It goes to show that we need to have our arms around the speculation," said Beutel. The investors who pushed up the price of oil Monday were the same "people who pushed us from $79 to over $147."

"It is all big investors," added Buetel. "When stocks, dollar go under pressure, they jump into oil and they don't care who it hurts."

As of Tuesday, the front-month contract will be November, which settled up $6.62 to $109.37.
"The biggest news is that people are looking at the $700 billion plan as supportive of demand, supportive of the economy," said Beutel. "Everything we are looking at right now says demand has a chance to come back if the economy starts to strengthen."

In addition, a handful of supply disruptions jolted the oil market's late-afternoon rally. Refinery capacity in the Gulf Coast was still limited post- Hurricane Ike, violence in oil-rich Nigeria, and chatter of Saudi Arabia trimming production added fire to the rally, according to Andrew Lebow, a broker at MF Global.

As the price of oil is whipsawed by demand worries, Wall Street's flailing crisis, investors are having a hard time grasping oil's next move. "Traders are trying to catch knives people are throwing from the top of buildings," said Lebow.

Electronic trading of oil was halted for five minutes on Globex this afternoon following the $10 spike in oil, but trading has now resumed.

Fed bailout: On Saturday, President Bush asked Congress for the permission to spend as much as $700 billion to purchase bad mortgage assets from already struggling financial institutions in an effort to shore up further losses as the credit crisis works its way through Wall Street.
The details of the government's attempt to prop up the financial sector were still being negotiated, but the plan aims to stem any further losses on Wall Street and resume a flow of credit that has become frozen.

Oil prices had been trending lower on worries that demand was faltering but those concerns seem to be abating, according to one analyst.

"The fear has waned as far as the demand destruction" in the wake of the bailout news, said Neal Dingmann, senior energy analyst at Dahlman Rose. "The bailout has really stabilized this market."

The government plan "has put in some support levels in there," at least temporarily, said Dingmann. If the economy has a chance to recover, then the oil market hopes demand for energy would recover as well.

Weaker dollar: The Fed bailout "comes at a cost, the weaker dollar," said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading. Investors "will look to other currencies to park their money until this entire situation is defined."

The money that the government was planning on spending as part of the proposal "is very debasing to the value of the currency," said James Cordier, portfolio manager of OptionSellers.com.

Crude oil prices were rising as the value of the dollar fell, according to both Flynn and Cordier.Crude oil is traded in U.S. currency around the globe, so as the dollar weakens, oil becomes more expensive in dollar terms.

The plan "sounds very inflationary at first blush," said Cordier, and "it will be detrimental to the dollar while people sift through the intricacies of the bailout."

However, while the surge of liquidity would devalue the dollar in the short-term, if the money for the bailout were "approved and spent, then we think the dollar would firm up," said Cordier, as the bailout money helped restore confidence to the U.S. economy.

Demand: As the nation's economy softened and demand for energy fell off, oil prices have retreated from a record high of $147.27 a barrel, set on July 11. Oil prices have tended to decrease on signs of continued weakness for the economy and rally on signs of economic recovery.

The promise of increased liquidity in the nation's economy was supporting oil prices. "When the market was concerned that the economy was going to collapse, if nobody is lending anybody any money and there is no credit, there is not going to be a lot of energy demand," explained Flynn.
While the promise of the Fed's lifeline to the financial sector may prop up oil prices in the short term, Flynn and Cordier said oil prices were on a downward trend in the longer term.
"We have seen that these high prices are unsustainable," said Flynn. "People are going to be a lot more judicious with their energy use."

Analysts said the bailout plan provided much-needed confidence at a critical moment, preventing crude oil prices from sliding even further. However, "this knee-jerk reaction in commodities due to the U.S. dollar is short termed," said Cordier.

"Demand for energy in the U.S. continues to be weak; globally, demand is weak, too," said Cordier.

Wild week, big moves: As Wall Street was heaved around last week in a series of unprecedented shifts, so were oil prices. After Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) announced bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) agreed to be purchased by Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) was resuscitated by a $85 billion loan from the government, oil prices decreased by more than $10.

However, by Friday, oil prices gained back all of those losses and then some on speculation that the government's proposed bailout plan for Wall Street would support the economy and bring demand for energy back to healthy levels.

On Sunday, federal regulators changed the status of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) to bank holding companies, a move that opens the banks up to greater involvement in retail banking and more funding from the Federal Reserve. The re-classification also means the investment firms will be under the Federal Reserve's supervision.

Hurricanes: The Gulf Coast was still working to get back to full operation after hurricanes Gustav and Ike slammed the production and refinery-rich region.

According to the most recent situation report from the Department of Energy, 89.2% of production in the region remained shut in and 75.4% of natural gas production was still shuttered. With 9 refineries in Texas still shut down, nearly 2.3 million barrels per day less oil have been processed in the region, according to the DOE.

As of Friday, personnel were still evacuated from 262 of 717 - or 36.5% - of manned production platforms, according to a report from the Minerals Management Service.

Both sides of the mouth

In the same article no less ... actually the same sentence... so which is it , good news or bad?

While the industry trumpets IT opportunities for women, an outside job recruiter laments:

The industry needs more role models such as Carr, according to Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association of Technology Staffing Companies. She says: "Female representation among IT staff across the UK is only 18 per cent because the industry simply does not sell itself well enough.
"The good news is that there is no glass ceiling in IT. The bad news is that there are fewer entry-level jobs as many have been moved off-shore."


And maybe that is one more reason for women NOT to pursue an IT career, i.e. job opportunities are actually shrinking .

So instead of lamenting that women aren't pursuing IT careers, they should be trumpeting how smart women are, to not go into this field !



Women web wizards wooed by IT industry;Top 100 Companies for Graduates

Stephen Hoare
613 words
17 September 2008
The Times
Focus report - Top 100 Companies for Graduates 11
English
(c) 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved

You do not have to be a geek to make it to the top in the world of technology, reports Stephen Hoare

The information technology industry is shedding its geeky image in an attempt to attract more female graduates.

A report published this year by Crac, the career development organisation, indicated that only 7 per cent of women would choose a job in IT compared with 18 per cent of male graduates. The perception was that the sector was too technical.

However, IT companies value the skills that women bring, most notably team working, problem solving and communication, and they are making a big effort to attract them, according to the report. Job prospects are good and salaries high, it adds.

Web companies, IT services and specialist software houses offer plenty of non technical roles.
IBM, at number 23 in the top 100 list, prides itself on being an equal opportunities employer. Jenny Taylor, head of graduate recruitment, says: "We recruit equal numbers of male and female graduates with all degrees and from all backgrounds for roles in sales, business, finance, consulting and project management. We are looking for business and personal skills and a passion to want to come and work for us."

Taylor is less interested in an IT degree than in an enthusiasm for technology. She says: "Most university students, regardless of their degree subjects, surf the internet for their dissertations and network on Facebook.

"We try to capture this interest by holding recruitment fairs in second life - a virtual alternative world peopled by avatars. We get hundreds of students flying into our island in second life."
IBM fast-tracks graduates through a programme of mentoring and training. Taylor points to Hollie Carr, who was nominated for the BlackBerry Women & Technology Awards.

"Hollie works in our press office and has invented an e-mail management tool that translates messages written in different languages by IT consultants working in virtual teams across Europe. It's a brilliant invention," she says.

The industry needs more role models such as Carr, according to Ann Swain, chief executive of the Association of Technology Staffing Companies. She says: "Female representation among IT staff across the UK is only 18 per cent because the industry simply does not sell itself well enough.

"The good news is that there is no glass ceiling in IT. The bad news is that there are fewer entry-level jobs as many have been moved off-shore."

Maggie Berry, director of Women in Technology, a jobs and networking website, says: "There are a lot of openings in sales and marketing. The most popular vacancies on our site are for project managers for Java and business analysts and testers. We have 3,500 women in our network, including students and some geeky technocrats."

Companies wanting to attract and retain women graduates pay great attention to career planning.

Philippa Snare, 34, Windows employment commercial director, mentors 12 women graduates within Microsoft. She encourages them to aim high. "The younger generation of women graduates is scary, bright and going places," she says.

Victoria Yates, 25, who has a business degree, joined Microsoft, 31st on the list, three years ago as a technical sales specialist and is being encouraged to become a manager.

She predicts a rosy future for women in the industry: "When I see my 13-year old sister building her own website and chatting online while updating her Facebook profile, I think there's no stopping us. There is a pool of young people who are going to revolutionise this industry."