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Archive for May, 2008
Thanks to the ever-rising cost of health care and your increasing share of those premiums, you haven't seen a real raise in your paycheck in years. Yet the cost of groceries, gas, heat, electricity, and everything else you need to get from day to day is going up faster than global temperatures. You're sick of explanations, theories, and political excuses about why this is happening. What you really need is an extra $100 or two, and fast.
Not to worry, Personal Finance Analyst has heard your call!
Here are some quick ideas (add to the list if you have more!):
Do Some Freelance Moonlighting.
Lots of websites post various kinds of freelance jobs that allow you to pick up extra work at your own pace. You don't have to be a writer to bid on freelance projects either. Most of the projects posted fall into the category of web programming and/or design and multimedia projects, but there are also lots of writing, clerical, financial, sales, legal, and engineering projects posted as well. The best sites for picking up this kind of work are www.elance.com, www.guru.com, and www.odesk.com, but you can also go to Monster or CareerBuilder and simply type 'freelance' into the search window.
Sell Stuff Online.
When I was a kid, I had a best friend whose dad was injured in a fall from a scaffold. She made these weird little crocheted toilet paper holders and sold them door to door and made a ton of money. Probably most of the money she made was due to the fact that she was skinny, big-eyed, and had a sick dad, but the general idea never goes out of style. If you or your beloved makes something crafty that everyone raves about, consider offering it up to the world for cash. A few good sites to do this at are www.zazzle.com, www/etsy.com, and that old standard www.ebay.com.
Sell Your Ideas Online.
'Crowdsourcing' is a method of funding start-up businesses over the internet. At Cambrian House you can pitch your idea for other members to critique and then vote for or against. If your idea is a winner, it will be funded by other interested parties who then help you get it off the ground. Some people have actually made quite a bit of money on this site. The internet is aways on the lookout for the next new thing, so if you're the kind of person who is always thinking 'what if' kinds of thoughts, this is the place for you. The site also has a feature that allows you to set up your own online store for material goods.
Be a Personal Chef.
Are you a great cook? You can cook for other people without any special training or licenses in their homes, a couple of days a week, for money. All you really need to get started are some good references and a stack of business cards. Most personal chefs spend a couple of afternoons (or mornings) in the client's kitchen preparing meals that are then frozen in microwavable portions, but use your imagination and work with your client on what is actually needed. This niche is growing fast, especially in big cities where workers commute long distances and don't have the time or inclination to make dinner when they get home.
Offer to Plant Other People's Gardens.
You don't have to have a degree in horticulture to spend a couple of months every year planting annuals for individuals and businesses. You just have to be willing to actually do it, and be able to get it done in a timely fashion. Every April landscape firms and garden centers get more calls than they can handle for simple annual planting and/or weeding. Print up some cards, post an ad in your local paper, and you will have more work than you can handle, at least for a couple of months. There's an old saying, "If you can dig a hole, you'll always have a job." It's true.
Become a Freelance CSR.
For awhile, companies were saving money by outsourcing customer service jobs to India and other countries where labor was cheap, but they soon discovered that this honks customers off, a lot. The latest trend is to 'insource' these jobs, that is, hire people to work out of their own homes answering the phones in chunks of freelance work. The standard requirements are a PC with a cable or DSL internet connection, a land line phone, and a headset. The companies provide the software and the work. You often won't get benefits, but you can choose how much or how little you want to work, and you can do it in your own home. Expect to make $8-$15 per hour depending on the skills involved. Some companies to check out include www.alpineaccess.com, www.liveops.com, www.workingsol.com, and www.arise.com.
Become An At-Home Concierge.
Do you have experience in the customer service or travel industry, or do you just love to plan events and set things up? If so, you can do this for other people who are too busy to take care of their own important lives at www.vipdesk.com. You never know who you could end up concierg-ing. I mean, someone has to spray fake sweat on Jennifer Lopez before she starts dancing in her next MTV video. It's not as if that sweat is just going to appear on its own!
Transcribe Audio to Text.
If you are a fast and accurate typist, you can pick up some decent money transcribing speeches, lectures, TV and radio programs, and interviews into text. Usually you have to type accurately at 75 wpm minimum. A few websites set up to farm out work to you if you can do this include www.productiontranscripts.com, www.moderndayscribe.com, and www.tigerfish.com.
Become and Online Tutor.
You can make up to $10 per hour working five to thirty hours per week helping kids with their homework online. A few sites that will set this up for you are www.tutor.com, www.esylvan. com, www.brainfuse.com, and www.kidspan.com and www.universalclass.com.
That ought to get you started. I can think of quite a few others, which I promise to come back and post. In the meantime, if you have any ideas for picking up extra cash quickly that have worked for you (and are legal) please post them in a comment!
Nobody wants to spend every minute making money, (well, maybe some folks do, actually…) but it's good to know that if you have to pick up some extra bucks, you can. The cliche that with crisis comes opportunity has a grain of truth in it. You may even find something you like way better than your day job. Wouldn't that be cool?
Yes, Wall Street has been in a much better mood lately. Stocks have rallied, and amid the doom and gloom some good news has been seized upon and celebrated. Inflation was not as bad in April as expected, though it was in fact pretty bad. The cost of gas is still skyrocketing, but food is pausing ever so slightly to gasp for breath before another steep ascent. Home fuel oil is down a bit, but it is May after all and with diesel at well over $4 a gallon, this cannot last.
More quasi-good news: Mortgage giant Freddie Mac managed to temper its quarterly losses by doing a little accounting magic in order to minimize the effect of huge losses on its bottom line in print. Remarkably, this also cheered Wall Street and sent Freddie Mac stock soaring, even though by all accounts, including its own overly-optimistic ones, Freddie Mac is poised to lose over $7.5 billion due to foreclosures and bad mortgages over the coming two years, and is already in a heap of trouble over its past uses of creative accounting. CEO Richard Syron acknowledges that the lending behemoth needs to raise $5.5 billion in capital ASAP, but sees no real challenge in that and looks forward to future success.
Sure he does.
Toll Brothers, one of the largest homebuilding companies in the US, expects to lose another 30% this year. And foreclosures and personal debts gone bad continue to increase.
Not to be a Killjoy, but a substantial dark cloud is still mushrooming behind the sporadic silver linings Wall Street loves. Yesterday Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, said in a speech that while credit markets had stabilized somewhat thanks to emergency measures by the Fed (such as rate cuts and emergency Federal Reserve loans to prevent credit from freezing up completely) the current market situation is still "far from normal."
Today, Merrill Lynch announced that starting June 1, it will require its financial advisers to rate at least 20% of all stocks as 'sell' as opposed to the 12% rated that way now. That is a huge step for an investment bank whose symbol is a raging bull, but remarkably, 20% is still an overly optimistic number. When Merrill investigated the performance of stocks in the MSCI world index and the US Standard & Poor's index, it found that between the years of 1997 and 2007, somewhere around 37% to 40% of its recommended stocks lost money. Did it advise its own clients of this fact? Well, not exactly. But it decided to do it today.
What Merrill and other investment banks and brokerage houses are now facing is a huge crisis of confidence on the part of consumers. it seems we have 'trust' issues with these guys, and for good reason.
Banks and brokerage houses exert lots of pressure on employees to make big money over short periods of time to pump up their quarterly results. The result has been a delusional pool of salespeople who seem to have no grounding in any kind of reality whatsoever. Why? Are they just insanely happy in an over-medicated way due to their own personal failings and personality quirks? Or is it more the case that, by requiring them to push stocks no one should buy or hold stocks any sane person would sell, the policies of the investment houses themselves have created this mess?
As Michael Douglas shouted in the famous movie Wall Street, "Greed is good!"
I think what we are about to see, slowly but surely, are some splashy announcements of self-regulation by major investment banks and brokerage houses, with Merrill leading the pack as of today. Why? Because if they don't do this, and do it loudly and with expressions of genuine concern (practice it in the mirror guys, you can do it), then sometime after this coming November they know they will be looking at the 'R' word.
I'm not talking about 'recession'. (That 'r' word is so last-week's-news on Wall Street.)
I'm talking about REGULATION.
AAAAARRRRGH! Run for your lives! The Democrats are coming!
Yesterday the leader of the world's largest bond fund, Mohamed El-Erian of the global firm Pimco, announced that US policy makers "do not have good policy tools to deal with the destabilizing combination of asset price deflation and goods inflation." In other words, the Fed can't save us; something Bernanke knows but doesn't want to say out loud. El-Erian continued, "This comes at a time when regulators are trying to play catch-up with a financial system that has morphed into something that does not fit neatly into existing frameworks and mindsets."
No real news there, I mean, of course. You'd have to be in a coma not to notice. But then El-Erian dropped the real bomb,
"The longer the delay out of Washington, D.C., in implementing fiscal measures to stabilize the housing sector, the greater the risk that the higher collateral damage on Main Street will induce a politically driven regulatory over-reaction with unpredictable economic outcomes."
I think this is absolutely on target. And we aren't exactly seeing Congress move with lightening speed on this. The current bill designed to allow FHA to refinance homeowners facing foreclosure is facing a Bush veto, but more problematic is the fact that even if passed it would require lenders to voluntarily eat 30% of the bad debt on homes about to be foreclosed.
So far, mortgage lenders have been loathe to do this on their own, preferring instead to go through with the foreclosure, then buy the house back for pennies on the dollar themselves, thereby making their books look better. In other words, more smoke and mirrors. It is unclear how the new bill in Congress, even if it were passed (which it looks like it won't be) could compel them to do something they've refused to do all along.
The truth is, regulation is almost certainly the right response. Will we see it? That depends on quite a few nebulous 'if's, ands, and buts' that will likely not play out until after the next Presidential election.
Will Democrats get a better majority in Congress? They will need it to pass financial industry regulatory measures. Will the economy collapse so badly by then that we have much bigger problems than banking regulation? That could happen too. Will huge financial firms regulate themselves to head off the kind of sledge hammer approach El-Erian fears? Hard to say.
Stay tuned. You will almost certainly not be bored.
It all started (as so many unpleasant things do) with an unfortunate comment by George W. Bush. In reference to India's growing middle class, Bush remarked after a May 2, 2008 news conference in Missouri that, "When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up."
In other words, formerly third world Indians, now doing much better thanks to the global economy and their own constant hard work and excellent educations, are now buying up lots of decent food and in doing so, practically taking the Godiva chocolates right out of the mouths of rich Beverly Hills matrons and their frightened little Yorkshire terriers. What's a president to do?
Perhaps George didn't mean it quite like that. It's hard to say what President Bush means, so much of the time, that might well be useless to even speculate. The only certainty about it was the swift and bitter reaction from across the globe.
Pradeep Mehta, Secretary General of the Center for International Trade responded tartly that if Americans were to slim down to the size of the average middle class Indian, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates." Mehta further suggested that perhaps the money spent on liposuction in the US could be diverted to third world countries to feed famine victims.
Indian academics and politicians cite overconsumption in the US for the global rise in food prices, noting that the average American consumes or throws away 3,777 calories per day while the average Indian only consumes 2440 calories. India has been growing as an industrial and economic power for the past ten years, but the spike in global food prices has only happened since the beginning of 2008.
By far the US and Europe are the largest consumers of corn and wheat, as the following graphic shows:
In addition, speculation in the commodities markets and the production of ethanol, both of which are largely Western developments and very recent ones at that, have played a part in the spike in food prices. Shortages are likely to continue, especially with recent disasters wiping out rice crops and world population rising rapidly. President Bush's unfortunate remarks come at an equally unfortunate time, when millions are suffering and starving in Asian and African nations, and the US is at its lowest popularity worldwide in recent history, largely thanks to the tactless nature of the current administration.
The US and Canada consume more oil per person than all the other nations of the world combined, and Western trade policies arguably undercut food production in fertile parts of Africa, a point that has long been a sore spot throughout the developing world. For the highest official in the US to then suggest that India, a nation with a long history of abject poverty and suffering, is now responsible for worldwide food shortages just adds insult to injury, and worse, it makes the US look exactly like the pigs many already believe we are.
David C. Mumford, US Ambassador to India, in trying to calm the waters, said, "this is a time for increased cooperation among nations to solve this problem and hostile political commentary is not productive." So true. So maybe our own president could keep his mouth shut for just a little while in the interest of, oh, I don't know, not making us all look like insensitive asses.
The developing world is emerging as a competitor in the 21st century for US trade. This tide has the potential to lift all boats. We should be welcoming this trend, and working hard to find a cooperative, useful place in this new world. Especially on a topic so serious as food and the third world, we cannot afford to make ourselves into Ugly Americans, not just for the sake of decorum, but because the very people we are criticizing this way (through our president) are on the way up while we are on the way down.
There's an old saying about that in the world of 9 to 5 work.
Maybe someone ought to explain it George.
Wouldn't it be great if we had the technology to make cars right now that don't run on gasoline, are affordable, and use already existing infrastructure? If we had that kind of technology, we could wean ourselves from our politically and economically dangerous dependence on foreign oil. We could save tons of money and improve the environment. We could stop, or at least slow down, the financial death spiral the entire US seems to have been in since right around November 2007.
Too bad this technology is decades away. It is decades away, right?
It might surprise you to learn that electric vehicles were invented before cars with internal combustion engines back at the turn of the century. Electricity was fairly new and not everyone had easy access to it. So when the internal combustion engine was combined with the new 'horseless carriage', the modern car automobile as we know it today was born. Everyone except a few moldy historians forgot all about the electric car.
Last year however, Canada remembered. The result is the new Canadian Zenn Car, which is an acronym for Zero Emission No Noise, an electric subcompact you can buy right now for an affordable price. The three-door hatchback Zenn is built on a standard auto chassis and weighs in at a mere 1,200 pounds. Because it is not carrying around a heavy engine or most of the other internal parts of a gas-powered car it is lightweight and remarkably durable.
You can plug the Zenn into any standard electrical outlet and charge it completely in about four hours at a cost of between 1-3 cents per mile, depending on the cost of electricity in your local area. Compare that to the 12 cents per mile (if gas is at $4 per gallon) you will pay on a highly-efficient gasoline-powered vehicle that gets at least 35 MPG.
But electric vehicles are slow and have a short range, right? The Zenn's top speed is 25 miles per hour, and it will go 35 miles on a single charge. Obviously, it's not the car of choice for a long commute. But if you regularly drive 5 to 10 miles to work in city traffic in a gasoline-powered automobile, it won't take you long at all to save money driving a Zenn instead, even if you recharge it right off the grid every night after you come home.
If you install solar panels or a small wind generator to provide your own electricity, fueling the Zenn is free. If you live in an area of the country where you can also sell your self-generated electricity back to the local power company (not all states allow this, but many are working on it as we speak), you can actually drive your Zenn car for free and make money on any leftover power too.
Right now, the Zenn car has a sticker price of between $12,000 and $15,000, but it is being produced in such small quantities that price isn't representative of its actual cost were it to be mass produced the way Fords, Toyotas, and Hondas are. Even at $15,000, its price is definitely at the low end for a new vehicle, and because the innards of an electric car have almost no moving parts, it is not costly to maintain like a gasoline powered car, requires no oil or fluids, and very little in the way of routine maintenance.
Want something with a bit more testosterone? If a 2008 Tesla won't make you happy, nothing will make you happy! With a design guaranteed to make lithe, high-maintenance women fall at your feet, and the capability to go from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds, the Tesla has everything a motor addict needs except the noise. The ride is smooth and completely silent, and the mileage is equivalent to about 135 MPG or a penny a mile. Unlike the timid Zenn, the Tesla has a range of 220 miles per charge and recharges in as little as 3.5 hours. You'll need all those pennies you save on gas: The base sticker price on a new Tesla is currently $109,000 and they are only available by special order.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, but what if I want something less nerdy than a Canuck-mobile and a tad less pricey than an eco-chic car for movie stars? Well, if you're one of those people who feels that "they also serve who only sit and wait," you can sit and wait for Nissan to come out with their electric car line-up, which they promised (just yesterday in fact) to have showroom-ready and available no later than 2010. Nissan announced that the final production vehicle will have a top speed of 75 MPH, a range of about 100 miles, and a recharging time of about 8 hours. Two divisions will build the cars: one will supply electric cars for the Japanese market, and the other (in partnership with Renault) for the European and US market.
If you just can't wait that long, you can check out what three ordinary guys did to three ordinary vehicles to turn them into cars which cost nothing to run. A recent Sierra Club article tells the stories of Darryl Dickey, Stephen Weitz, and Alex Beamer, three ordinary guys sick of paying high gas prices who took matters into their own hands and converted ordinary vehicles into cars that run on solar and/or wind-power. It wasn't difficult, it wasn't expensive, and now each of them own cars that will run for a lifetime for free.
Cars that will run for a lifetime for free? If you are the paranoid type (and who isn't these days?) you may be smelling a bit of a conspiracy here. What would it profit the oil industry or the auto industry to provide people with such cars?
Filmmaker Chris Paine wondered the same thing after GM confiscated his EV1, an experimental electric vehicle they tested with customer volunteers between 1998 and 2003 to show the state of California that electric vehicles were impractical and customers would reject them. When people fell in love with their EV1s and began to beg GM for the right to purchase them outright (they were tested as part of a lease program), GM recalled all the EV1s and destroyed them.
The result is Chris Paine's groundbreaking 2004 film Who Killed The Electric Car which chronicles EV1's popularity, GM's attempts to hush that popularity up, and the resultant destruction of all remaining EV1s at the very same time various states were clamoring for low-carbon-emission vehicles.
Electric cars won't please everybody. But why are American carmakers not producing them? They do have the technology. They produced a wildly popular, easy to run and cheap-to-make electric car as recently as 2004 and then pulled it right off the market when they discovered people would buy it. Electric cars have been in existence for almost 100 years now. In fact, the sexiest car available on the market today is an electric car. So why are Chrysler lots still clogged with vans and SUVs that won't sell, and why is Ford giving up on the US to move overseas and sell cheap, badly-made gasoline powered cars to China?
I'm no conspiracy theorist. But it does make you wonder, does it not?
In the meantime, this blog post should be enough to get you started kicking your own petroleum habit, or at least thinking about it. Now if we could just get our government on board…
Gas prices got you down? You're not alone. You don't have to wait for some panderer to repeal the gas tax to save money on fuel though. Lots of great sites now offer to find the cheapest gasoline prices in your specific neighborhood before you even leave your house.
At www.gasbuddy.com you can plug in your zip code and bring up the current prices at all the gas stations in your specific area anywhere in the US or Canada. The US government has also graciously provided a website for people searching for the best gas prices locally at www.fueleconomy.gov. If you like widgets (and who doesn't!) you can also download gas-related widgets that serve the same purpose at www.lifeclever.com.
Let's talk a bit more seriously about this for a moment though. A May 7, 2008 New York Times article reported that gasoline prices are expected to peak in June at around $3.73 a gallon. Currently, here in West Michigan, gas prices are running right around $3.89 a gallon for regular unleaded, so the idea of gas prices 'peaking' at a price-point 16 cents below what I can find this very minute (with or without widgets) is a bit baffling.
Would the Times lie to us?
Not necessarily. They probably just can't write as fast as gas prices are rising. More seriously and to the point, the NYT was just passing along what the US Department of Energy has to say about gas prices, which, as we all know, is no longer connected to any kind of reality anyone understands, including them. People are upset about gas prices? No problem! We'll just send out a news release telling everybody prices are leveling off! (I guess they didn't get that news release out quite fast enough, but it is the government after all.)
Anybody who has been watching the price of oil lately knows that it seems to be ticking upward to the tune of a dollar a day or so. Goldman Sachs released a report this past Friday stating that $200 a barrel oil is likely just around the corner, and where oil prices go, so go gas prices eventually. Many financial analysts are predicting $7 a gallon gasoline in the not too distant future. With world demand for oil rising at the rate of 1.2 million barrels a day, this is probably a more realistic prediction.
So apart from downloading a cool widget, how are we to cope with this kind of spike in prices?
Actually, you can take some fairly easy steps to reduce consumption and improve your vehicle's performance, and some of them might even improve your longterm quality of life. Here are few gas-saving tips you can implement right now:
- Don't Drive. This may seem like a no-brainer, and it's probably something that is already starting to happen on its own, but seriously, think twice before you hop in the car to shop or do anything. Buy staple items like toilet paper, flour, rice, sugar, and so forth in bulk so you don't have to make frequent trips to the grocery store, and plan out your errands to get as much done in a single trip as possible. Shop online and have items delivered by UPS or mail.
- Carpool or Take Public Transit to Work. In some major US cities, use of public buses and trains has increased by as much as 30% in 2008 alone. In America's not-too-distant past, when shopping was centrally located, most people rode the bus to work and to shop: Commuting by car was the rare exception. Centralization seems to be coming back in many areas of the country. If you live in one of them take advantage of that.
- Move Closer In. If you bought a home in a far-away suburb in order to have more house for less money, now might be a good time to unload that beast if you still can, and look for something closer to your job. One of the few places real estate is actually appreciating right now is in the city. In some areas of the country, foreclosed suburban tract homes are already becoming home to squatters and meth labs, and at least one author predicts that in a very short time suburban communities will become the new US slums, and slum communities in the central cities will become hot commodities. It's all because of gas prices.
- Slow Down. Driving fast burns more gas than driving slow. So does quick start and quick stop driving. Try to maintain a steady speed right around the legal limit, not 10 miles above it, and stay in the right lane. Let people pass you. They may or may not get there first, but you will be the one with money in your pocket.
- Park in the Shade. Gasoline is very volatile and evaporates easily; that is what makes it a good fuel for a combustion engine. It also means that it evaporates while you are not driving. Cars that are kept cool lose less gas to evaporation than cars parked in the sun.
- Walk or Ride a Bike. Think through your routine and ask yourself if you could get where you need to go on foot. Walking not only is good exercise, it makes you feel capable, whereas relying on a car you can't afford to fuel makes you feel vulnerable. Studies have shown that half an hour a day of regular exercise like walking or bike riding not only prolongs your life and improves your health, it reduces stress and releases endorphins into your blood stream that create feelings of well-being.
- Roll Down Your Windows Under 45 MPH. Open windows create drag that wastes gas if you are driving on the highway, but for city driving your air conditioner uses more gas than you lose by opening the windows.
- Don't Top Off Your Tank. Not only is this practice dangerous, it wastes gas every time you fill up. Within two minutes of driving off, all the gas you topped off will be evaporated without ever being burned in your car's engine.
- Get a Cash-Back Debit or Credit Card. Lots of financial institutions offer cards now that give up to 5% back on gas purchases. If you pay off the card each month, you get the savings free. Just make sure you are not liable for annual or hidden fees.
- Maintain Your Vehicle. This is an old one, but still true. Check your tires whenever you fill up and make sure they are properly inflated. Under-inflated tires use up more gas by creating drag. Make sure your air filter is always clean, and keep your engine property tuned and maintained.
- Think Twice Before Replacing Your Car. You may be tempted to trade in your vehicle for a hybrid as soon as possible, but if your vehicle is paid in full, it will take you decades to recoup the cost of financing the new car through your gas savings. A better bet if you own a gas hog is to sell it outright and look for a used subcompact Honda or Toyota with good gas mileage that you can buy with cash. This will save you money immediately, and by the time the used car wears out, hybrids may be more affordable and available.
- Telecommute. Do you have a job that you could do from home? This might be a good time to try that out. If you drive a long way for low pay and working at home isn't an option, research what options you do have if you change your work. A good resource and a place to start your search even if you are not a woman is available at www.womenforhire.com
Gas prices are making for challenging financial times right now, but as Columnist Paul Krugman points out, higher gas prices don't have to signal an apocalyptic change in lifestyle. We may well be facing some big changes: a return to centralized city living, the renewal of mass transit, more telecommuting workers, and more walking and bicycling, less running around, fewer malls. But it doesn't have to be all bad.
It might well have to be different, and soon. So get started now and beat the crowd!
Oh, and don't forget to download those widgets!
The House has approved a plan that will let the Federal Housing Administration take on as much as $300 billion in new mortgages so that people facing foreclosure can refinance. The measure could help as many as 500,000 struggling homeowners by cutting their payments by as much as half. Bush has threatened to veto the bill, which passed in spite of that threat by a majority vote of 266-134, including 39 votes from Republican representatives who come from states with the most severe housing problems.
In a separate bill, the House also approved a plan to send $15 billion to states to buy and fix up foreclosed property.
In spite of the 39 crossover Republican votes, many of the remaining House Republicans are vehemently opposed to the measures. Included in this second bill are two features Bush wants: one feature would overhaul FHA so that the federal mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be much more tightly regulated, and the other would provide first time home-buyer tax credits of up to $7500 that would be paid paid over 15 years. The tax credits (as well as the FHA overhaul) are designed to encourage home ownership in a failing market where credit has become impossibly tight and few homes are being sold.
Several major hurdles face this plan even if the it passes the Senate and Congress then overrides the threatened Bush veto. One is that the individual refinance packages depend on the original lender agreeing to take a loss on the principal owed on the mortgages. While the loss would be a smaller one that the loss the original lender takes in a foreclosure sale, the loss on a refinance would not be backed by reinsurance and would have to be absorbed in total by the original lender. So far, in other independent attempts to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, lending institutions have been notoriously loathe to cooperate, preferring to take the larger loss. As the housing crisis worsens and banks and mortgage companies continue to post huge losses, this may change.
A much bigger problem is the current condition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies suffered combined losses of more than $9 billion last year on bad mortgages, and are expected to post even larger year-end losses for 2008. The two federal mortgage giants currently have $83 billion in required capital to back their loans, but the mortgages, other debt, and financial obligations of the two currently surpass $5 trillion. With major financial institutions dumping billions in subprime loans as fast as they can, the number of these loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is mushrooming even without the new bill.
Insurance companies backing bank mortgages have been going through the same struggles with capital ever since November of 2007. Earlier this year, before the Bear Stearns failure, Wall Street was holding its breath hour by hour to see if any of them would fail or even look like they might fail. If that were to happen, the banking system in the US would have frozen up like inner city plumbing in January, and the country would have had a financial crisis on its hands that made the Great Depression look like the Not Really All That Bad Depression.
What we are witnessing here is essentially a game of musical chairs in which lenders, individual homeowners, and federal and state governments scramble to not be the one left holding the debt as fewer and fewer options for escape remain. A benefit of the house refinance plan is that it would spread the bad debt around a bit while keeping people in their homes: the bank would get stuck with some but not all of it, the government would take over the risky borrowers and write them new more conventional affordable loans, and the borrowers would get to keep their homes, preventing (in theory) any more freefall in housing prices by stabilizing neighborhoods.
On the downside–and it is a really steep slippery downside–in a worst case scenario Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could go the way of Bear Stearns if the program isn't managed well and if they don't raise more capital to back all these risky loans. What does 'tight regulation mean'? Fannie Mae was the target of a major accounting scandal and the smoke from that has not even cleared yet. Former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Franklin D. Raines and two others have been fined $31.4 million for their roles in cooking the books to (appear to) reach earnings targets between 1998 and 2004 and then pocketing millions of dollars in bonuses for (not really) doing so.
Republicans and some moderate Democrats will make a lot of noise about the slippery slope and moral hazard of rescuing people from their own bad decisions and how this is wrong and how those of us who have made good decisions shouldn't have to bail them out. The problem is that the situation has gone so far past this issue that it now threatens to sink us all no matter what we do or don't do.
For one thing, banks, lending institutions, and brokers were often criminally irresponsible in promoting and writing these bad loans during the peak of the housing bubble. Yes, people should make good decisions and not take out horrible loans they can't pay back. The flip side however is that lenders shouldn't make horrible loans to people who can't pay them back. Lenders have a fiduciary responsibility to all their customers to make sound underwriting decisions, and that responsibility has of late flown out the window as pressure on CEOs to make ever-greater profit off of the same tired products grows exponentially year by year.
That is a nice way of saying that during the housing bubble we witnessed an era of unbridled greed which even had realtors shaking their heads at the sheer audacity of it. Laws were broken, money changed hands under tables, people were lied to, widows were bilked: It was ugly. When the bubble burst, all the players started scrambling to find a good safe rock to crawl under, and that is still going on today. What's more, these irresponsible lending practices mutated into irresponsible highly-leveraged investment practices, many with incomprehensible initials–for example, SIVs—which are actually a form of CDO, which is… oh nevermind. The point is, Wall Street went on a Jedi-mind-trick binge in which they chopped up and repackaged bad debt and then speculated on it in a way that 1) made it impossible to trace who actually owned it, and 2) created money out of thin air.
I'm no economist, but even I know what happens when you create money out of thin air.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bush and Congress were busy sniping at each other and accomplishing little, something they are still pretty good at. So there is plenty of blame to go around. The question now is not whether the American tax payer will get stuck with this mess–of course we will. The question is, how much of it will we get stuck with, and when, and how. A workable plan that sticks us with some of it and at the same time keeps people in their homes so prices can stabilize and equity can actually start to increase seems to me a good start. Will Congress be able to sell it to the financial industry in a way that keeps Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat? Stay tuned.
The checks are in the mail! Oh yes? How nice. Soon we will all get some of our own money back in the form of a tax rebate from Uncle Sam. We are told that this rebate is designed to stimulate the sagging US economy. (Now there's an alarming visual!)
Here are a few eensy problems with this 'gift' you may or may not be aware of:
- We had to borrow the money from China to get the check in the mail.
- If you filed your taxes with a third party tax preparer it may be delayed.
- If you are on social security and get your check direct deposited, you won't get your tax rebate that way unless you filled out an additional form in which you provided your routing and account numbers, even though the government already has them. You'll be mailed a check.
- If your total tax liability was less than $600 you won't get $600 back, your rebate will be reduced.
- By the time we all get these rebates all of it will be going directly into our gas tanks.
You can find a table showing when you can expect your rebate check at the IRS website www.irs.gov. You can also use their online calculator to figure out exactly how much you will get. Most people will receive $600. Most married couples will receive $1200. Married couples with dependent children will receive an additional $300 per child.
If you owe money to the IRS, they will keep your rebate, apply it to what you owe, and send you a letter about what they did and why they did it in lieu of a check. You probably already knew that. If you live on your social security check and did not file a 2007 tax return because you have no other income, you will get nothing. You have to file a 2007 tax return, even if you had no income in 2007, to get the rebate. If you live on social security and have not done this, you will not receive a rebate.
The whole mess makes me really cranky.
You may be thinking right about now, "What kind of curmudgeon could possibly be against free money from the IRS?" This kind of curmudgeon, that's what kind. Sure, I will take the money. I'm not going to send it back. But the cost of this stunt is astronomical and the impact on the country's financial problems is sure to be minimal or even negative.
Putting $300-$600 in every taxpayer's pocket in this economy is like leaving a quarter tip in a restaurant and telling the waitress, "Now go out and get yourself something nice with that, honey." Remember all the great stuff you bought with the last tax rebate from the Bush administration?
Me neither.
As usual, no one is calling Pam asking for her opinion on how to solve the current economic mess. I totally understand why not. But if they were calling me, here are a few of the requests I would make:
Help people at the bottom who are losing their homes due to the subprime mortgage crisis. Our judgmental attitude toward homeowners impacted by this mess is hurting the entire economy. Why repossess homes that can't be sold at any price because a) loans are hard to get and b) few people have the money to buy right now? What good are vacant overvalued properties to anyone? Look at the mess Cleveland is in right now with empty foreclosed properties destroying whole neighborhoods, eroding the tax base, and driving home prices down ever lower month to month. Bernanke's 'ain't-gonna-happen' solution involves requiring banks to rework the mortgages on foreclosed properties by reducing the principal until it is in line with real values is the right one here. It ain't gonna happen, but it is the right solution.
Jobs, we need good jobs. Oh, and we also need good jobs. Good jobs would help too. And another thing that would help is good jobs. Yes, we only lost 20,000 jobs in April instead of the anticipated 80,000. Hello? No matter how delirious Wall Street may be about that news, this is not cause for celebration for the little people down here who actually rely on these lost jobs for our livelihood.
Will somebody please slap together a sound energy policy? Because right now, we don't have one. We needed an aggressive, proactive renewable energy policy about, oh, thirty years ago, and now that we are watching oil prices leap off the charts and food prices leap right behind behind them, what do we get? A call to repeal the gas tax for three months and make the oil companies pay it. That will not do much for our falling-down bridges, pot-holed highways, and crumbling infrastructure, but it will save us from having to actually think and make intelligent changes to the way we live. Oh, and after driving up demand and hence, prices, it will save the average driver almost nothing.
No doubt some people will go out and buy new TVs or washing machines with their tax rebates, but my sense is that an awful lot of people will pay last month's mortgage payment, catch up on the overdue utility bills, buy staples in bulk at Costco, pay down unsecured debt, or put the money in savings. It isn't wrong or bad to blow tax rebate money on a flat screen TV. Each one of us getting those rebates has earned that money, so we can certainly use it as we please. What bothers me is that this money is being offered in place of responsible government fiscal policy. "Go out and spend," is not fiscal policy. We can't be the spenders of the free world unless we have good jobs providing real services or products and a government with an eye on the future and our real energy needs.
It's obvious that we don't have anything even close to that right now. That being the case, these checks, welcome as they are, are not designed to stimulate anything, not really. The checks are just a lame attempt to stave off the next major financial crisis until this administration has left Washington for good, and can watch the fall of the American financial empire from one of their many vacation homes.
Seriously, it never was their problem, was it?
At this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 177 points. The dollar is up overseas on news that tech stocks such as Apple, Research In Motion, and IBM are doing well, and Wall Street is thrilled about that, at least for today. Tomorrow, who knows? Lately the Dow jumps anytime any moderately happy news appears, no matter how fleeting or ephemeral. Check back in an hour and it could be DoomsDow again.
Meanwhile, the cost of gas and food rose faster in April than in any other month so far this year, lay-offs are at their highest level in five years, GM sales are down 22% in a single month, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has hinted that the rash of emergency Fed-to-the-Rescue rate cuts may be coming to an end. Good thing too, because yesterday's quarter point cut took the rate banks charge each other on daily loans to only 2%. Right now there isn't a lot of rate left to cut.
Hope does spring eternal though. Wall Street is still looking for the silver lining in that F5 tornado that started forming over the American financial landscape around November of last year. Ordinary people, on the other hand, are getting scared. America is developing a sort of split personality in 2008: One America buys precious metals and puts money on commodities trading and watches for the rainbow. The other America reads up on Victory Gardening, hoards rice, bikes to work, and reads up on the Apocalypse. A personal finance blogger couldn't ask for a stranger or more exciting time to be writing about money.
The most troubling part of this split is that neither group seems to really know what is going to happen next. If ever there was a time to bone up one's financial skills and knowledge about how money and the economy works, this is it, and yet even financial gurus hedge and stammer. As a nation, we survived the Great Depression, the tech stock bubble, the credit union crisis, a raft of major corporate accounting scandals, but now, at this weird juncture, even the experts are looking over their shoulders. We all seem to be dogged by the feeling that something is gaining on us. It's uncomfortable, but it's also a time ripe with the potential for positive change.
My own hope is that these scary times will inspire people in both Americas to talk to one another and reach out for information, ideas, and practical advice about money, politics, and the economy, and that this dialog will help all of us through whatever it is that comes our way. Perhaps those clouds will indeed disperse and we'll all look back and laugh at how panicked the country was over nothing. More likely though, tough times will continue to hammer at us for quite a few years. Most people avoid dealing with money, preferring to just let it deal with itself. It's possible to take that attitude in good times, even though it's not advisable. But to take that approach in hard times is suicidal. When money is scarce, people have to think about it.
That is not all bad.
The fact is that the more you learn about your money and how it works, and how other people use, take, exploit, invest, or increase your money, the better off you are. Personal Finance Analyst provides a wealth of information on just about any money topic you can imagine, and I hope people read, and talk and argue about all of these topics. I'm looking for spirited conversation and radical ideas and rants and queries. Whether I'm driving a Mercedes or a Pee Herman bicycle, that's the America I love and was raised to love.
I'm really excited to be here. I hope you are too. If you're not, by all means, let's talk.
Oh, and welcome!
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Grapevines > White Grapevines > Vignoles Grape Vines
This Gewürztraminer hybrid from the Geneva Breeding Program produces excellent wines of the same character as Gewürztraminer. Fairly winter hardy and produces an excellent spicy wine similar to its parent grape.
Grapevines | How to Plant Grape Vines | How to Grow Grapevine Cuttings | Grapevine Spacing Chart | Grape Growers Forum | Pricing | Ordering | Links | Contact Us | Sitemap | Home

subset: commoncrawl


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Ex-track star makes big play for Texans
Updated 11:53 pm, Thursday, August 30, 2012
HOUSTON — Trindon Holliday did it again.
The former LSU track star had his third kick return for a touchdown of the preseason, and Justin Forsett rushed for 114 yards and two more scores in the Houston Texans' 28-24 win over the Minnesota Vikings in the preseason finale Thursday.
Holliday brought back a punt 76 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter, bolstering his case to make the Texans solely as a special teams threat. Forsett broke a 52-yard run on Houston's second play from scrimmage and set a Texans rushing record for a preseason game on only 13 rushes.
The 5-foot-5 Holliday also returned a kickoff 87 yards in the preseason opener at Carolina and a punt 90 yards for a score against San Francisco before fumbling twice against New Orleans last week. Teams trim their rosters to 53 players today, and Holliday still wasn't sure if he convinced coach Gary Kubiak to keep him.
"You're asking me to say that now? Nobody has made it," Kubiak said. "We're not finished yet. He's made a heck of a case for himself."
A fan was taken to a Houston hospital after falling from an escalator at Reliant Stadium. A statement issued by officials of Reliant Park said nothing about the fan's condition.
Sports Channel
Jordan Todman rushed for 114 yards, including a 76-yard touchdown for Minnesota. Jarius Wright caught six passes for 122 yards, including a touchdown. Devin Aromashodu also caught a TD pass for the Vikings.
Minnesota punted after its first possession of the second half. Holliday made a quick move, broke a tackle and easily outran Minnesota's pack of defenders, slowing down in his final strides. Kubiak said he needed to see something spectacular in training camp from Holliday, and he has gotten it.
In the second half, backup quarterbacks McLeod Bethel-Thompson and Case Keenum got their last chances to impress coaches.
Keenum, an undrafted rookie who set NCAA passing records at the University of Houston, went 5 for 10 for 43 yards for the Texans.


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The Philadelphia Phillies open up the Grapefruit League schedule this week, and that should serve as a nice reminder that baseball is not that far away. Todd Zolecki has posted the pitching schedule for the first week's worth of games on his MLB.com blog. Perhaps most notable is the news that Cole Hamels will take the first official start of the spring on Saturday against the Houston Astros, with Roy Halladay tabbed for the Sunday start against the Detroit Tigers.
Much has been made recently about who should get the Opening Day assignment for the Phillies. Not that we want to judge too much on the first spring training games of the year, but it would seem to suggest that Hamels will be the Opening Day starter for the Phillies for the first time in his career.
Hamels as the Opening Day starter is a move I have long endorsed based off of last season and Hamels' place in the franchise's history. We'll see if that turns out to be the case in due time.
Check out the full pitching schedule reported by Zolecki.


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A New Jersey appeals court has given a group of aggrieved Hindu diners the go-ahead to sue a restaurant that accidentally served them meat samosas two years ago. The group of 16 Hindus, vegetarians for religious reasons, want the meat-serving Moghul Express to pay for a group trip to India so that they can cleanse themselves in the Ganges River according to a purification ritual.
According to one of the religious authorities interviewed by the Star-Ledger, the required ceremony can last up to 30 days, which would mean a pretty hefty payout on the restaurant's part even on top of airfare halfway around the world.
The legal basis for this is something called "breach of express warranty claim," since the restaurant incorrectly told the diners multiple times that the samosas were vegetarian.
Not being legal experts, we aren't sure what the implications of this might be going forward, but hyper-vigilant vegetarians out there might do well to come up with a mandatory purification ritual--we've heard the riviera is lovely this time of year.
[via The Star-Ledger]
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Get an overview of this hotelWaterfront hotel with bar/lounge and coffee shop/café
Popular property highlights
Located in the heart of Rapallo, this hotel is steps from Basilica of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius and Porta delle Saline. Castle-on-the-Sea and Marina di Rapallo are also within 10 minutes.
Hotel Features
A bar/lounge, a coffee shop/café, and a rooftop terrace are available at this hotel. WiFi in public areas is free. Additionally, massage/treatment rooms, 24-hour room service, and a meeting room are onsite.
Room Amenities
All 33 soundproofed rooms feature free WiFi and 24-hour room service. For a bit of entertainment, guests will find TVs with DVD players, and other amenities include minibars and coffee makers.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!Opens in a new window
Best Western Tigullio Royal Hotel
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
The hotel offers a coffee shop/café. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. Wireless Internet access is complimentary. This Rapallo hotel also offers a rooftop terrace, spa services, and a library. Onsite parking is available (surcharge). Guests can use the indoor pool and outdoor pool at a partner property.
- Free WiFi
- Spa services on site
- Number of floors - 7
- 24-hour front desk
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Total number of rooms - 33
- Bar/lounge
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Coffee shop or café
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Concierge services
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Elevator/lift
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Laundry facilities
- Library
- Spa treatment room(s)
- One meeting room
- Multilingual staff
- Rooftop terrace
- Porter/bellhop
- Luggage storage
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Beach umbrellas
- Beach sun loungers
- Offsite parking discounted rates available
- Train station pickup (surcharge)
- Area shuttle (surcharge)
- Self parking (surcharge)
- Shopping on site
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
Family Friendly Amenities
- Family Hotel
- Free Wi-Fi
- Soundproofed rooms
- Laundry facilities
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Cribs/infant beds (complimentary)
- DVD player
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi
Self parking (surcharge), Offsite parking discounted rates available
Room Amenities
- Premium TV channels
- DVD player
- Free newspaper
- Air conditioning
- In-room climate control (air conditioning)
- Soundproofed rooms
- Phone
- Minibar
- Coffee/tea maker
- Daily housekeeping
- Private bathroom
- Free toiletries
- Hair dryer
- Bathtub or shower
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Iron/ironing board
- In-room safe
- Television
- Desk
- Free WiFi
- Room service (24 hours)
- Pillow menu
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Rollaway/extra beds (surcharge)
Where to Eat
Buffet breakfasts are available for a surcharge and are served each morning between 7:30 AM and 10:00 AM.
24-hour room service is available.
Nearby Activities
The recreational activities listed below are available either on site or nearby; fees may apply.
- Golfing nearby
- Snorkeling nearby
- Kayaking nearby
- Sailing nearby
- Scuba diving nearby
- Bicycle rentals nearby
- Scooter/moped rentals nearby
- Hiking/biking trails nearby
- Boat tours nearby
Spa Services
- Body treatments
- Facial treatments
- Manicures and pedicures
- Ayurvedic treatments
- Massages
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 2 PM
Check-in time ends at midnight
Special check-in instructions:
Check-out time is noon
Payment types
Children and extra beds
- Children are welcome.
- Kids stay free! Up to 2 children 2 years old and younger stay free when using existing bedding.
- Rollaway/extra beds are available for EUR 60 per night.
- Free cribs (infant beds)!
- Pets allowed for an extra charge of EUR 20 per pet, per day
- Dogs and cats only
- Specific rooms only, restrictions apply
- Pet-friendly rooms can be requested by contacting the property at the number on the booking confirmation
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on property policy.
Optional extras
- Fee for buffet breakfast: EUR 6.00 for adults and EUR 4.00 for children (approximately)
- Self parking fee: EUR 12 per day
- Pet fee: EUR 20 per pet, per day
- Rollaway bed fee: EUR 60 per night
Hotel Name
- Best Western Hotel Tigullio Royal
- Best Western Tigullio Royal
- Best Western Tigullio Royal Hotel
- Best Western Tigullio Royal Hotel Rapallo
- Best Western Tigullio Royal Rapallo
- Tigullio Royal Hotel Rapallo
- Tigullio Royal Rapallo
We should mention
All guests, including children, must be present at check-in and show their government-issued photo ID card or passport. Cash transactions at this property cannot exceed EUR 2999.99, due to national regulations. For further details, please contact the property using information in the booking confirmation. This property offers transfers from the train station (surcharges may apply). Guests must contact the property with arrival details 24 hours prior to arrival, using the contact information on the booking confirmation. Reservations are required for golf tee times. Reservations can be made by contacting the hotel prior to arrival, using the contact information on the booking confirmation. Up to 2 children 2 years old and younger stay free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding. The property allows pets in specific rooms only and has other pet restrictions (surcharges apply and can be found in the Fees section). Guests can arrange to bring pets by contacting the property directly, using the contact information on the booking confirmation.


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JEFFREY BROWN: And, next, we resume our weeklong look at food security and how climate change is affecting what we produce and how we eat.
Tonight, special correspondent Sam Eaton reports from India on how farmers are turning to ancient seeds to keep their crops viable in the future.
It's part of our series "Food for 9 Billion," in partnership with Public Radio International's "The World," Homelands Productions, American Public Media's Marketplace, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
SAM EATON: On May 25, 2009, Cyclone Aila slammed into the Ganges River delta on the coast of Bangladesh and India. Hundreds of thousands fled as the storm surge tore through earthen embankments and flooded rice fields with a wall of seawater.
I traveled to Eastern India with ecologist Asish Ghosh to see how the more than four million people living in this vast river delta are adapting to the salty soils the storm left behind. It's been four years since the cyclone hit. And farmer Raj Krishna Das says growing enough food is still a struggle.
ASISH GHOSH, Director, Center for Environmental Development, Kolkata: So he even cannot have any vegetables growing after Aila because still — still there is salt in the soil.
SAM EATON: This is what climate change looks like for the densely populated river deltas of the world. They hold some of the most productive farmland on the planet. But it's also some of the most threatened.
ASISH GHOSH: We have lost this amount of land on all sides of the island.
SAM EATON: Today, this delta coastline is retreating more than 600 feet a year, and the salt is encroaching even farther inland. As farmers here adapt to rising sea levels and more powerful storms, they become a case study for how to produce food on a warming planet.
But their solution may come as a surprise. The only thing that will grow in Das' field today is a salt-tolerant rice variety developed more than a century ago by small-scale farmers just like him.
ASISH GHOSH: He thinks it is one of the biggest resources that he has got. Now it is more precious than gold to him.
SAM EATON: Ghosh's Center for Environmental Development and other nonprofits are trying to reintroduce these traditional seeds, which became rare after farmers began adopting modern high-yielding varieties in the 1960s, so-called green revolution varieties that could double or even triple their rice harvest given the right conditions and chemical inputs.
But these same seeds were the first to fail after Cyclone Aila doused the soil with saltwater.
ASISH GHOSH: Aila changed everything. He lost his home. He lost his possessions.
SAM EATON: Starting over with only a handful of the old salt-tolerant seeds, farmers like Das have labored for three years to grow enough rice to ward off hunger.
ASISH GHOSH: And now he's confident he's got enough seeds to cover his land. So I think the story between the last three years has changed from a story of despair to the story of hope in future.
SAM EATON: But the struggle to survive after the cyclone also offers a stark warning about how much this genetic legacy in agriculture has been lost.
Scientist Debal Deb has spent more than decade traveling across India trying to save what's left of these traditional seeds. Farmers in India once cultivated more than a hundred thousand distinct varieties of rice alone. Most of those are now lost forever. But here on this small nonprofit seed farm in Eastern India, Deb is propagating nearly 1,000 of them and distributing the seeds free of charge, including the salt-tolerant variety farmers are now growing in the Ganges River Delta.
Deb says many of these seeds are ideally suited to the extreme and unpredictable conditions of the future.
DEBAL DEB, Rice Conservator: My own collection, I have more than 200 varieties, some of which can withstand drought and can yield something on zero irrigation, some varieties which can withstand 12-feet deep-water for three months, and the stem will elongate and still give some yield.
And we have at least six varieties of salt-tolerant rice which can withstand seawater intrusion. These are the unique properties which genetic engineers have not yet imagined.
SAM EATON: Despite the billions of dollars spent by governments and agribusiness on plant breeding programs and genetic engineering, Deb says these programs have yet to create new seeds that can rival the traditional varieties' tolerance for extreme conditions.
And as global temperatures continue to rise, even the most ardent defenders of the green revolution are now realizing how essential these traditional varieties are for the future of agriculture.
That green revolution began thousands of miles away, in the Philippines, at the International Rice Research Institute. Now scientists here are trying to breed new seeds that will withstand the stresses of climate change. The institute has stored tens of thousands of the world's traditional rice varieties in its frozen seed vaults as a genetic pallet for future seeds.
But many of these seeds were collected in the 1960s. And after being stored for so long, they may no longer be viable for breeding. That means Debal Deb's grassroots seed farm back in India may be one of the most valuable genetic resources left. Still, scientists say simply reintroducing old varieties isn't going to feed the world; they just don't produce enough.
They're working to build new varieties using the genetic information embed in the traditional seeds.
M.S. Swaminathan is considered the father of India's green revolution.
M.S. SWAMINATHAN, Geneticist: There is no other alternative in this country. Land is going out of agriculture. In fact, the farms where I had demonstrations 40 years ago, they have all disappeared. They have become big malls. They have become big shops and so on and hotels.
So, land is a shrinking resource. We have to produce more and more from less and less land, less and less water. That means we need the green revolution approach, productivity improvement approach.
SAM EATON: The International Rice Research Institute has successfully bred some climate-resilient traits from the traditional varieties into a single high-yielding seed. The new plants are designed to tolerate limited amounts of drought and flooding during the same growing season.
So far, the institute has distributed them to more than four million farmers. In even the remotest parts of India, the green revolution caused many farmers to abandon their traditional seeds for the modern high-yielding varieties promoted by the government. But for those who didn't, the benefits of these locally adapted seeds are becoming more and more pronounced; 64-year-old farmer Looknath Nauri grows 30 different traditional varieties of rice, millet, corn, squash and lentils on his two-acre plot in Eastern India.
His song is a celebration of the diversity of traditional seeds and the happiness it brings to his family and his land. These seeds, created over thousands of years, don't just have the genes to withstand droughts and floods. They're also adapted to local soils and pests, eliminating the need for costly nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides. Some are so resilient, they sprout even in the dry months.
MAN: Look at this pearl millet. We cut it last December. There hasn't been any rain for five months. And it's sending up new shoots. This would never happen with a high-yielding variety. Once the rains come, we don't even have to reseed it. It just grows back by itself for two to three years.
SAM EATON: Nauri says he tried the new rice seeds, but his harvest didn't even come close to the traditional varieties.
MAN: I tried planting that high-yielding rice one year. But I didn't have money to pay for the chemical fertilizers. And without them, it wouldn't grow. So I went back to the traditional varieties.
SAM EATON: The search continues for ways to feed nine billion people on a climate-changed planet. The new super-seeds scientists are developing could transform agriculture in the years to come.
But, for now, many of the world's poorest farmers are turning to the seeds that sustained their ancestors as a sort of genetic insurance policy against an unpredictable future.


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Rated 4 / 5 stars
as i read the title my mind in 0.000001 s completed the phrase with mr. freeman but i wasn't expected it was really something on hl. Anyway cool work, i like the smoot and fast animation. <3 hl
Rated 4 / 5 stars
this is a very professional piece of work you got there, my friend! i really liked how it had a complete introduction and credits, it really made this seem legit.
Rated 4 / 5 stars
a little creepy
but only because of how well you matched the timing of the audio and video. i kind of expected something scary to happen at the end of it. it would have been much better if something did happen.
Rated 4 / 5 stars
I found it a bit wierd but it was AWESOME and i dont get itthe narater guy is wak.
Rated 4 / 5 stars
author's comment
i'l hit you i'll hit ya good boy
lol i love half life 2 its epic and that would be an epic flash inro........ to an epic flash game of course


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"One of my favorite authors on the martial arts is Donn Draeger. I find his material to contain a wealth of information and has been a reliable source for a number of my articles. As a career military man, Draeger spent decades studying and teaching the martial arts in the US and abroad. Most of his formative training was done in Japan."
"The Art of Forgetting," by John Vesia
…because martial arts training is, essentially, a personal experience, it is hard to achieve continuity between generations. and unlike Olympic sports, it is even harder to identify whether there is any progress or whether change is even for the better.


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7 Pot Bubblegum Naga 6+seeds each pack AKA Naga/BBG7 Cross PREMIUM
This is a hybrid 7 pot bubblegum X with a ghost pepper. Giving it a larger, longer and hotter pepper. This variety in UNSTABLE but very fun hybrid to grow. This pepper was red Bubblegum in 2013, Chocolate bubblegum in 2014 and is now producing longer hotter RED pods 2015 season. So you may get red, chocolate , yellow, green and or peach next year.
7 Pot bubblegum naga
- Product Code: 7pbn
- Availability: In Stock
Tags: 7 Pot bubblegum, Bubblegum naga, Chocolate bubblegum 7 pot, Kraken scorpion, 7 Pot primo, Carolina reaper, Moruga scorpion


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A COUNSELLING and complementary therapy service for young people is looking to celebrate in style its fifth year in business.
Escape Intervention Services (EIS) was launched in November 2008 to provide a holistic approach to families in the most socially deprived areas of South Tyneside.
The service provides one-to-one counselling to address issues such as bereavement and loss, domestic violence, abuse, substance misuse, gambling, bullying and family relationships, along with anger management.
It also offers complementary therapies such as Indian head massage, aromatherapy massage, reflexology and shiatsu, which reduce depression, stress and anxiety.
Administrator Cara Smith has nominated the social enterprise for Community Group of the Year in the Pride of South Tyneside Awards 2013.
She said: "To date, EIS has worked with hundreds of individuals and families within the borough, delivering its services through a team of highly-trained professional volunteers.
"The team of 12 counsellors and three complementary therapists works tirelessly to enable young people and their parents/carers to address their problems and work more effectively together.
"EIS successfully acquired £490,000 funding through the Big Lottery Youth Fund, which has enabled it to benefit hundreds of young people by providing evening and weekend activities.
"This money provides adventurous, cultural and leisure experiences to increase the confidence and self-esteem of participants, together with offering accessible opportunities to those most socially deprived young people."
Last summer, 11 members of the group, based in River Drive, South Shields, climbed to the top of Ben Nevis to raise money for and awareness of EIS.
Project manager/practitioner Lynne Yousef said: "I am really delighted that we have been nominated, and this is all down to the fantastic team of volunteers and staff we have to support the young people who come through our doors."
The Pride of South Tyneside Awards, organised by the Gazette, South Tyneside Council and the Customs House, recognise the borough's unsung heroes.
Ten awards will be handed out in a glittering ceremony at the Temple Park centre in South Shields on Sunday, April 28.
Twitter: @shieldsgazedu


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THE boss of HS2 yesterday challenged politicians to pave the way for faster building of the line to reduce its £50 billion cost.
Sir David Higgins proposed an accelerated timetable for phase 2 - the northern section of the high-speed line.
The former London Olympics guru also called for a new look at ways of improving connections between phase 2 and the existing railway.
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And he proposed a larger development at Euston - the project's southern terminus - but said plans to link HS2 with HS1, the London to Kent Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link, should be reconsidered.
No government has yet made a commitment to extend the line to Scotland but a study aiming to increase the benefits to Scotland of the project was announced by the UK government last year.
Phase one would see a line running from London through Tory heartlands to Birmingham and is due for completion in 2026.
Phase two will see the line continue in a Y-shape from Birmingham to north-west and north-east England and, under current plans, would be completed around 2032/33.
The current total cost, including contingencies, is £42.6 billion, with £7.5 billion for the trains.
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls and others are concerned about the cost of the project but shadow transport secretary Mary Creagh welcomed yesterday's announcements.
She said: "We will continue to hold the Government to account for keeping costs down on the project."


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Dock It game
Ahoy Captain! Time to sail around the world!
Dock It, play free Car racing games, related games and updates online. Added on
Author: mgf 18178
Here are some more related games in Car racing category. Also you can jump to other category using box above.
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Related games
- American Tank Zombie Invasion
- Yacht Docking
- Parking Frenzy
- Park Your Car by flashgamesfan com
- American Tow Truck
- Primitive Parking
- Park My Caravan
- Fire Truck Parking
- Cargo Space Loader
- Pursuit At Airport
- Retro Drive Parking
- Tropical Uphill Driver
- Crazy Vip Driver
- Uber Parking
- Level Up Parking
- Azure Parking
- Mad Combiner
- Park in the snow
- Package Driver
- Drive And Park
- Park Big Truck
- Port Car Loader
- Anarchy Racer
- Stunt Acrobat 2
- Small Car Parking
- Awesome Truck Parking
- Retro Cars Parking
- Minefield Racing


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Drought surcharge will be explored
Ukiah Daily Journal
The city of Ukiah has hired the Reed Group of Sacramento to conduct a water rate study and explore a drought surcharge.
Public Works Director and City Engineer Tim Eriksen told the Ukiah City Council at its last meeting last month that the city had not worked with the Reed Group before, but the city's new Finance Director Karen Scalabrini "has used them before and found them to be very good."
The council approved hiring the firm at a cost of no more than $41,425.
Eriksen previously told the council that a drought surcharge would not increase the water rates, but does keep the city's revenues stable regardless of how much water residents are using.
"The surcharge keeps your bill at what you would typically use, so even if you use less because of the drought, you will be charged for the amount you typically use," Eriksen said. "And I understand how painful and controversial that is, but it really protects the ratepayers from steep increases in the future. The whole idea is so the revenues don't drop down so significantly that we have to dig our way out later."
Ukiah residents are already cutting back on their water usage, Eriksen has told the council in regular updates, explaining that typically the city uses 2 million gallons a day during the winter, but that recent usage had dropped significantly to less than 1.5 million.
The city is also planning to build a new well, No. 9, which Eriksen said "would give us another 1 million gallons a day." Another source of water the city is exploring is reclaimed or recycled water, which can be used for irrigating crops.


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Better than par: Dr. Jim Ribary focuses on the challenges ahead
Jim Ribary loves golf— digging in, analyzing the course, and improving his game by honing in on the nuances of the course. His path to becoming president of the WSDA Board of Directors has been similar — he's served on committees and as Secretary-Treasurer, Vice President and President-elect over the past eight years, developed an understanding of how the organization works from the ground up, met and befriended the players, and helped shape and define the course of the organization for his tenure and beyond. It didn't always come naturally. "When I started out I was like a lot of members out there — I really preferred to stay in the background. I just wanted to understand the finances and serve on the Budget and Finance Committee. Now I have the confidence in myself and the issues, know where we want to position ourselves as an organization, and how to best deliver that message to our members. As president, I'm certainly not in the background anymore, but I think taking that time was instrumental."
His experience can only help — Ribary will preside during a year when many critical issues are moving to the forefront: defining our model of mid-level provider, continuing the work of the Washington Oral Health Initiative, and managing the purchase of a new building for the WSDA. "Every year the new president comes in and sets an agenda at the officer's retreat – assessing what we hope to accomplish. And I can't think of a year that we've made that happen because there are always bigger issues coming up during the year that take precedence," he says "So it's always a surprise what becomes the focus and seeing how we adapt to the situation. I think we've done a good job of that in the past and I hope to do the same."
Carving out time
Although he's passionate about WSDA politics, Ribary balances that with family, his practice and volunteer work -— and as much time on the golf course as he can fit in, "you wouldn't know it by watching me play, but it doesn't dampen my enthusiasm," says Ribary. He and wife Linda have been married for 13 years and have a lively blended family that includes six children, ages 23-37 and two grandchildren, whom Ribary calls "a complete joy."
After running his Gig Harbor practice alone for 19 years, Ribary sold half to Dr. Keiko Wada in 1996, and will complete the sale of the remaining half to her this year. His other work has included 29 years in the Army Reserve, four trips to Honduras as a volunteer dentist with Medical Teams International, and serving as one of three dentists on the NORDIC Board of Directors.
Carving out time will be easier once he retires from practice - he notes "By the end of the year I could have a lot more time to spend on pending WSDA issues."
Choosing the best model
Ribary will need the time — the issues are monumental: defining the best mid-level provider model for greater access to care has been difficult with so many versions and stakeholders in play – from hygienists and dentists, to state legislatures across the US, to national programs in Canada and New Zealand, everyone seems to have an idea of how best to attack it. Here in Washington, the WSDA Board of Directors began to dissect the issue two years ago, with the first of two task forces (Ribary chaired both) assigned with developing a model. Early meetings were less than fruitful — "The first task force was polarized in terms of what procedures should be allowed. By the time everyone was happy, there was nothing this person could do that a hygienist today isn't already allowed to do. So, when we formed the second task force we decided to look at the issue a different way. We asked if we had a mid-level provider, what would it take to make them valuable to a practice? To what kind of practice? Where? They'd have to be able to do something to take the pressure off what the dentists do, which is why we got into irreversible procedures such as 1-6 classifications of restorations."
While mid-level providers are unfamiliar here, in Canada, New Zealand and most British Commonwealth countries, dental therapists have been filling a void for the last 80 years – treating close to 96 percent of all children in school-based treatment programs. Arguably, part of that success is due to nationalized medicine, but if the goal is access to care, they've achieved it. Here, where dentists do it all, only about 40-50 percent of all Medicaid-eligible obtain dental care. Closing that gulf is the key and figuring out the best way is the subject of much debate — starting with basics, like education and supervision. Ribary states, "For instance, Alaska's model is a high-school diploma followed by a two-year program – so the question is are they mature enough to perform invasive, permanent procedures? In Minnesota, where two forms of mid level providers are already legislated, they have a dental therapist and advanced dental therapist, modeled on the advanced practice dental hygienist. In their model, the hygienist has a four-year degree followed by a two-year masters degree and can perform the procedures independent of a dentist. Their dental therapist program is a four-year degree program, but only because all their programs at Univ. of Minnesota are four year programs. That means it may include a lot of pre-requisites that have nothing to do with dentistry. The clinical training takes place along side the dental students."
Taking the message to members
Talk to WSDA officers and you'll find that initial meetings at component societies about mid-level providers were tough — "It's a new concept, so the reaction was not only no, but hell no!" Ribary says with a laugh. Officers and WSDA staffers observed and adapted their delivery strategy. "One of the things I'm trying to do now when we go to meetings is to talk to members and let them know that we're listening and looking for feedback. This is the start of the process — not the end— but we also want to let members know how much we've researched the various models, and how what we do looks like from the public's perspective." Once the task force has listened and distilled member's responses, they'll bring it to the House of Delegates in 2010 and put it to a vote. The hope is that by then, members will be familiar and comfortable with the model. If accepted at the House, WSDA will take it to the Olympia. "Our goal would be program in place in five years, although it may take significantly longer, " Ribary explains " It takes at least 5 years for a program to become CODA approved, and realistically I'd add another 5 years to that."
Ribary stresses that dental hygienists are already making plans for independent advanced practice hygienists to be trained at Eastern Washington University. With a new masters program and federal money in the pipeline, all that is lacking is a venue — either approved by the Legislature or, as EWU has proposed, on tribal land outside state jurisdiction. "We cannot fail to have a viable alternative for the Legislature to review," Ribary noted gravely.
While experts assume there will be some shortage of workforce by 2014, between an increase in the number of dentists in the workforce and a downturn in the economy, dentists aren't feeling the heat to define a mid-level provider right now. The problem is that by the time they do, it could be too late to implement an effective solution. The WSDA's goal is to be ahead of the curve, dictate legislation rather than react to it, and secure a program that addresses the needs of the public and still ensures their safety. But, fighting members' misconceptions about where and how mid-level providers would be introduced into the dental community is a challenge — "90-95% of all practices are not set up to benefit from using this model," says Ribary, "they simply don't have enough chairs nor do they see the volume of patients necessary. It doesn't matter whether you're in Gig Harbor or Seattle, you're going to find that there are people who can't afford dentistry, so anything we can do to expand the number of people whose needs are met in community clinics among the uninsured and working poor is going to be a benefit to the community." No one envisions mid-level providers encroaching on private practices either here or across the country, but working with legislators to craft bills can be tricky, everyone needs to feel that concessions have been made without losing sight of key elements like education and supervision.
Part of the big picture
While mid-level providers are a key piece of a cohesive plan to improve access there are other, critical, elements that make up the web of care for the working poor and uninsured. For instance, Ribary notes "You look at the oral health initiative and there are bits and pieces that are all parts of the puzzle, each part helping a little bit. If we have a dental navigator to help the uninsured find access to care, that's part of it; EFDAs can address some access needs, but with only 35 graduates now, it's still too early to know the role they'll assume; if children have a dental health assessment prior to school that will help, even if we don't necessarily have a means for them to be treated at this time. It will help educate parents about the importance of taking care of a child's teeth." Ribary's wife, Linda agrees. As a former first-grade teacher she saw all too often how misinformed parents could be "You can't imagine how many times parents told me they weren't worried about their child's rotting teeth — they felt that as baby teeth, they weren't important. We had to try and impress upon them the role they play as placeholders for the permanent teeth to come. It wasn't always clear." Experiences like that compelled Dr. Ribary to start the Adopt-a-School pilot program in Gig Harbor four years ago. He was getting calls from local nurses about children, with toothaches and abscesses, who did not have insurance or the money to see a dentist. Ribary cobbled together a band of local dentists in the Peninsula School District willing to treat the emergency cases for free. "Once seen by a volunteer dentist there is no restriction to the work they can do, and some do more than just alleviate the emergency situation – many dentists go beyond the initial need." Today, the Adopt-a-School program is successfully run by the Washington Oral Health Foundation, with 130 dentists who provide emergency care to 215 schools across the state. Additionally, new programs like Washington Solutions to Dental Access (see accompanying article on page 8) and a new state initiative to compliment existing programs.
The importance of grass roots dentistry
The WSDA takes the grass roots message to its members every year – get involved, bring your message to capital hill — and Jim Ribary is a believer, having seen first hand how the involvement of dentists has shaped legislation "I was probably the least political person when I first started in the WSDA, and I think that's the way many members are. The less I heard about political issues, the better. I think the first time I really felt my views change was one time when I was down in Olympia with Dr. Savage, and we able to make a recommendation about the composition of the DQAC Board that the Governor not only heard, but followed. To me that was like a light going off, I got it." By continuing to work proactively in politics, WSDA can affect change on all kinds of issues from increasing Medicaid rates to limiting licensing fees to making sure that we have input on critical issues affecting the industry like mid-level providers and insurance regulation. "And," Ribary adds, "with so much pressure on the WSDA to do something about access to care, we can use the grass roots effort let Olympia know it can't all be about charitable care – the state has to step up to the plate as well."
Driving membership
With so much at stake, Ribary isn't shy about addressing the need to drive membership, saying "Those are the things that keep dental leadership awake at night – how do we attract more people? We're a large organization and maybe there is some resistance to the cost of membership, but look at what we're doing on behalf of all dentists in the state, whether or not they're members. We understand their struggles but would love to have them join the association. We have incredible membership benefits — the Pacific Northwest Dental Conference, the WSDA News, the new, cutting edge Web site that will be unveiled this fall, and the cost savings we offer through our endorsed companies program." He continues, saying "When you consider what we've accomplished to date, membership is really affordable."
Acquiring a permanent home for the WSDA is part of remaining affordable. "The more costs we can control, the more stable our association will be going forward. When you buy a building you control costs to some degree, and can expect to see appreciation in most markets. To that end, we're raising capital by increasing dues $100 a year for three years. I understand that on the surface an increase of $100 can seem controversial, but in the course of a year you probably spend $100 in ways you don't even notice. Looking forward, I can't imagine that owning a building isn't going to be more economical in the long run."
It's just one more way that Jim Ribary and the Board of Directors of the WSDA are looking out for all members and the future of this organization. "A year ago I had some trepidation," says Ribary, "that feeling in the pit of my stomach asking 'can I do this?' Today, he attacks issues the same way he attacks his golf game — methodically, carefully, and with an eye for keeping the WSDA and its members out of the rough.


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Give us a call to get our secret deals 1-800-468-3578
Property Location
With a stay at Flower Garden Hotel in Hanoi (Ba Dinh), you'll be minutes from Cua Bac Church and Hang Dau Water Tower. This spa hotel is within close proximity of Dong Xuan Market and Quan Thanh Temple.
Make yourself at home in one of the 83 air-conditioned rooms featuring refrigerators and LCD televisions. Complimentary wired and wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and cable programming provides entertainment. Private bathrooms with shower/tub combinations feature deep soaking bathtubs and complimentary toiletries. Conveniences include phones, as well as safes and desks.
Relax at the full-service spa, where you can enjoy massages. You're sure to appreciate the recreational amenities, including a sauna and a fitness center. This hotel also features complimentary wireless Internet access, gift shops/newsstands, and tour/ticket assistance. Getting to nearby attractions is a breeze with the area shuttle (surcharge).
Enjoy a meal at one of the hotel's dining establishments, which include 2 restaurants and a coffee shop/café. From your room, you can also access 24-hour room service. Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge.
Business, Other Amenities
Featured amenities include a business center, complimentary newspapers in the lobby, and dry cleaning/laundry services. Planning an event in Hanoi? This hotel has 2044 square feet (190 square meters) of space consisting of conference space and meeting rooms. For a surcharge, guests may use a roundtrip airport shuttle (available on request) and a train station pick-up service.


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An agricultural problem emerging in high-performing Asian economies
Policies tending to tax farmers in low-income countries and subsidize them in high-income countries have been identified as a major source of disequilibrium for world agriculture. Recently, on advancing from low-income to middle-income status thanks to successful industrialization, many high-performing economies in Asia have been confronted with the problem of a widening income gap between farm and non-farm workers, corresponding to rapid shifts in comparative advantage from agricul-ture to manufacturing. In order to prevent this disparity from culminating in serious social and political instability, policies have been reoriented towards supporting farmers' incomes. At the same time, governments in middle-income countries must continue to secure low-cost food for the urban poor, who remain numerous. The need to achieve the two conflicting goals with the still weak fiscal capacity of governments tends to deprive agricultural policies of real efficacy in such economies. Greater re-search inputs in this area are called for in order to prevent the growth momentum of high-performing economies in Asia from being disrupted by political crises.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Volume (Year): (2008)
Issue (Month): 1 (March)
|Contact details of provider:
| Postal: Via Silvio d'Amico 77, - 00145 Rome Italy
Phone: +39 06 57114743
Fax: +39 06 57114774
Web page: http://host.uniroma3.it/associazioni/rossidoria/qa.asp
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Hayami, The late Yujiro & Godo, Yoshihisa, 2005. "Development Economics: From the Poverty to the Wealth of Nations," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199272716.
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Alyssa is currently there reporting LIVE from the showfloor, so be sure to follow @EBMag or www.twitter.com/EBMag for tweets in realtime. Many thanks to event organizers for the invitation and hospitality. This gallery contains photos from Day 1 (April 15) at the tradeshow, highlighting energy-efficient building system solutions, electrical installations, building infrastructure, and datacom. (Photos A. Dalton)
Interested in more L+B 2012 photos? Click here for the DAY 2 and DAY 3 photo gallery.
GALLERY - Light+Building 2012, day 1 (April 2012) - Frankfurt, Germany
April 16, 2012 - EBMag's associate editor Alyssa Dalton hit the jackpot this year – by receiving an exclusive invitation to attend Light+Building 2012... in Frankfurt, Germany! Arguably one of the world's largest and most influential lighting and building-services technology shows, this year's fair boasts of over 2,000 exhibitors and some 183,000 visitors. Wow!
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From world-class doctors to web design superstars, inspiring teachers to world travelers, St. Ambrose alumni have left our campus and gone on to do amazing things. Meet some of our alumni, and share your Ambrose story with us.
Becoming a doctor had been Karen Clark-Brenot's goal since high school.
Although Stephanie Cervantes originally wanted to be a FBI investigator, she found her true passion for sales (and the jet-setting life) at Reed Elsevier, a company that provides medical software.
Becky Maedge-Hayden spent her college years as a cheerleader for St. Ambrose, but these days her web designs get the hurrahs.


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Are you skilled at organizing?
Do you like to put everything in its proper place?
Then WVPL has a part-time job for you.
Part-time Page Position (re-shelve returned material)
Thurs. 6-9 PM weekly at Main Library (Blue Bell)
1 Sat. 10 AM-1 PM or 1-5 PM and 1 Sun. 1-4 PM shift per month, at either library.
Hourly rate is $9.
Empty book drops, scan materials and return them to the shelves. Assist patrons with questions and assist with opening and closing the library. Experience with Polaris Software is a plus. Experience with tablets and smart phones is important. Attention to detail vital. It is a physically active job.
Go to www.wvpl.org and click on forms to get the employment application.
Email completed application to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Employment offers are conditional upon a successful background check and reference checks. The Wissahickon Valley Public Library is an Equal Opportunity Employer.