JC SiLent:You cant be that far away from me ; if we're looking on the same side of the moon
Friday, October 31, 2008
Job cuts: Who's next
Employees from Wall Street to Main Street are feeling nervous about their jobs, but certain industries are more at risk than others.
By Jessica Dickler, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: October 30, 2008: 12:03 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/27/news/vulnerable_industries/index.htm?cnn=yes - CNN.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the impact of the economic crisis takes hold, employees from Wall Street to Main Street are feeling nervous about their jobs, and with good reason.
As of September, 760,000 jobs have already been lost this year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And a quarter of U.S. employers expect to make layoffs in the next 12 months, according to a recent report by consulting firm Watson Wyatt.
But which industries will suffer the most? Experts say certain sectors are more vulnerable to layoffs than others.
Housing: Jobs in the housing sector were the first to go when the mortgage meltdown took hold. But with the industry outlook at an all-time low, even more layoffs could follow.
Beyond mortgage lenders and homebuilders, jobs in commercial real-estate and at real-estate agencies will be the next to go, according to Dean Baker, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
With the worst September for new home sales since 1981, "some of the big [real-estate] chains will do some consolidation," Baker said, "clearly you need fewer offices," Baker said.
Finance: Few in the financial sector are feeling secure about their positions. The latest employment figures from the Department of Labor show financial firms have eliminated an estimated 110,000 jobs over the past year through September, and experts say there will be even more losses in the months ahead.
As financial firms reorganize and consolidate, there are going to be a lot more layoffs, Baker said.
"Financial services firms have cut tremendously and I don't think that's over," echoed Lee Pinkowitz, associate professor at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business.
Retail: Before the credit crunch, retailers were already struggling with soft sales as high gas prices and falling home equity forced consumers to curtail non-essential purchases. Now retail sales are dismal heading into the holiday season. "This could be the weakest holiday hiring season since 2001," said John Challenger, chief executive of global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and that's not good for those employed in the retail industry.
"I doubt we'll see the pick up in seasonal hiring that we'd normally see," Pinkowitz said.
But while department stores and high-end boutiques may be particularly hard hit, discount retailers, like Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) could fare well in the current climate, Challenger said. Wal-Mart is also the nation's largest private-sector employer, and could be a safe haven for those who work there.
Publishing: As consumers cut back, advertisers follow, and that means tough times for print publications, including newspapers and magazines, experts say.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, employment in the publishing industry has been contracting since the beginning of last year.
But the "grand decline" of jobs in the media industry, which also includes broadcast and digital media, began with the dot-com bust in 2001, noted Heidi Shierholz an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a research group based in Washington. Now a loss of jobs in traditional publishing is being exacerbated, in part, by the move away from print toward digital media.
"Every time you have a recession it pushes companies that have been holding on by their fingernails out of business," Challenger said. "It clears away an old generation of companies and I think we'll see that with print."
Autos: While sales at the Big Three automakers have fallen 20% this year and are likely to tumble further, trouble in the auto sector is not confined to manufacturing. All told, about 2 million Americans work in the industry.
While declining sales will likely lead to more job losses, those in "the tentacles of the auto industry" could be particularly hard hit in the coming months, Pinkowitz said, which includes those jobs at dealerships and suppliers.
Travel: Airlines have already announced layoffs across the board, but as consumers and businesses continue to scale back discretionary spending on travel, the implications go far beyond flying.
"All the industries under the umbrella of travel are going to be at risk" Challenger said, including rental cars, hotels and even restaurants.
If people are cutting back, travel and leisure activities are the easiest things to do without, explained Baker. Big restaurant chains will close locations, he said, which means eliminating many wait staff and service jobs, while some smaller restaurants will be forced out of business entirely.
But despite the mostly doom-and-gloom predictions, some say there are some bright spots ahead for American workers.
"Even if you're in an industry where there has been some job downturns, there still can be some opportunities," said Kimberly Bishop, vice chairman of Chicago-based executive search firm Slayton Search Partners.
Bishop suggests focusing on those skills and experiences that can translate beyond the industry in which you work. There are certain roles that every organization needs, she said, and you may be able to fulfill that role in another industry that has more promise.
& 12:43 pm
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wearing red may boost your sex appeal
By Theresa Tamkins
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/28/red.sex.appeal/index.html - CNN.com
Does wearing the color red give you a sexual edge? Maybe, according to a new study, which found that men find women sexier if they're sporting a crimson hue rather than, say, blue or green.
However, red won't make you look smarter or more competent, says study author Andrew Elliot, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York.
"We only found the effect for attraction, so males don't rate females in red as more intelligent, more likable, or as having a better personality; they only rate her as sexier and more attractive," he says.
Men also were more likely to say they wanted to have sex with a woman and that they would be willing to spend more on a date if she were in red, according to the report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In a series of five studies, about 150 heterosexual men (homosexual men and those with red-green color blindness were excluded) rated photographs of women framed in red, white, gray, green, or blue, or with the woman in a red or blue shirt.
On a 7-point scale, with 1 being the least sexy and 7 a white-hot sex goddess, the color red added about 1.25 points to the rating, says Elliot.
That's nice, but given the looming election, one might wonder: Does wearing red make you more attractive in the voting booth too?
Elliot says the study results don't really apply to the presidential candidates. However, he does say that red can be a negative color, depending on the setting.
"We actually have other research showing that red on the cover of an IQ test leads to worse performance, so red is actually a negative color [in some instances]," says Elliot.
"In terms of the election, I will say that if a politician wears a red tie he -- or she -- may be viewed as more dominant and that might have an effect, but again, that's way beyond our data," he explains. "Red in competence and achievement settings has a negative effect, so these things are really hard to talk about and predict right now."
Why is red so sexy? The researchers have a couple of theories. Read four myths about healthy sex
One is cultural: From red roses to Valentine's Day, red is the universally recognized sign of romance; it makes sense that men may subconsciously associate the color red with sex.
"We think that red, due to the association with hearts and Valentine's Day and lingerie and things like that, takes on a sexy meaning," says Elliot. "There's also a possibility -- a rather provocative possibility -- that there's a deeply embedded sort of tendency for heterosexual men to see red as an attraction cue because that's what happens in the wild."
For example, the rumps of some primates turn red during ovulation, so it's possible that men have some tiny portion deep in their brain that recognizes red as a mating symbol -- even though it's an association that hasn't come in handy for a few million years.
And it's not just men. The researchers think that women will find the color sexy too (tests are under way), possibly because red symbolizes dominance in male primates
However, it's all speculation at this point. The study can't determine if red is sexy because we're all just a bunch of animals running around in business suits, or if red is a culturally determined sex symbol. It also can't determine if wearing red has an effect outside the laboratory.
"In the real world, we have a welter of information coming at us about smell, sight, words -- who knows what accounts for the most variance in liking and behavior?" says Elliot. "My strong guess is that if you bring this to the real world and have females who are interested in their date and wear red, they are sending the message to the male that a male isn't even aware of -- they are sending a message that 'I'm available'."
& 3:24 pm
Thin line between love and hate?
Science knows why
By Michael Kahn
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49S01J20081029 - Reuters.com
LONDON (Reuters) - It often seems a thin line between love and hate, and now scientists think they know why.
Brain scans of people shown images of individuals they hated revealed a pattern of brain activity that partly occurs in areas also activated by romantic love, Semir Zeki and John Paul Romaya of University College London reported on Wednesday.
"This linkage may account for why love and hate are so closely linked to each other in life," the researchers wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS One.
"Our results show that there is a unique pattern of activity in the brain in the context of hate."
In their study, the researchers showed 17 men and women pictures of someone the volunteers said they hated along with three familiar, neutral faces. The hated individuals were all former lovers or work rivals, except for one famous politician.
The brain scans identified a pattern of activity in different areas of the brain the researchers called a "hate circuit" that switched on when people saw faces they despised, the researchers said.
"As far as we can determine it is unique to the sentiment of hate even though individual sites within it have been shown to be active in other conditions that are related to hate," the researchers wrote.
The so-called hate circuit includes structures in the cortex and the sub-cortex and represented a pattern distinct from emotions such as fear, threat and danger, Zeki said in a telephone interview.
One part of the brain that switched on was an area considered critical in predicting other people's actions, something that is likely key when confronting a hated person, the researchers said.
The brain activity also occurred in the putamen and insula, two areas activated when people viewed the face of a loved person. Scientists have linked the regions to aggressive action and distressing situations, Zeki said.
But there were important differences as well. A bigger part of the cerebral cortex -an area linked to judgment and reasoning -- de-activates with love compared to hate.
While both emotions are all-consuming passions, it may be that people in love are often less critical and judgmental about their partner but need to maintain their focus when dealing with a hated rival, the researchers said.
"It is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgment in calculating moves to (cause) harm," Zeki said in a statement.
& 3:05 pm
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
When will markets hit bottom?
http://business.blogs.cnn.com/ - CNN blog
LONDON, England — How long can this go on? We seem to be locked into a terrifying cycle: stocks suffer days of sell-offs, followed by a powerful bounce. But just as we start wondering whether this market slump will follow the same pattern as its ugly predecessors of 1987, 2001 and many others and hit bottom, the same pattern repeats itself.
Traders at the New York Stock Exchange, where share prices have fluctuated strongly during the past few weeks.
It’s three steps back, then one step forward - and over the past few months it’s been repeated more times than I care to remember. To make matters worse, there never seems to be that much rhyme or reason to the selling or the buying. One day share markets worry themselves sick about global recession, then the next day all that is outweighed by some random piece of supposedly good news. A few hours later a renewed slide on stocks in another time zone has investors back in panic mode, and we’re off to the races again.
Market insiders point to several underlying factors, notably the aching uncertainty about where the credit crunch and the world’s leading economies are heading. But they say that what is clearly adding to the volatility is a frenzied scramble by hedge funds to move out of stock markets and also to make money for their investors by whatever means they can dream up. The betting is that they are both creating a lot of the volatility and riding it at the same time.
To add to the craziness, we are seeing some violent swings on currencies, with the Japanese yen and to a lesser extent the dollar (given the relative security of US Treasury bonds) now the safe havens of choice amid the carnage of “global deleveraging”.
With previous sell-offs, there seemed to be a clear end to the selling. It may have taken a while to come along, but in the end the bargain-hunters stepped in and there was a gradual return to normality, and then to sustained growth in share values.
So where are we now? When Warren Buffett said a couple of weeks back he thought Wall Street stocks were a buy, he may have been right about their current puny valuations, but not about whether those valuations could get even punier.
Speaking on Business International on Friday, Robert Parker, Deputy Chairman of Credit Suisse Asset Management, was a lot more cautious, predicting the return to a bull market would not come until the middle of 2009.
That would certainly be a few months before the predicted end to the current global slowdown, which most economists I speak to seem to think will only loosen its stranglehold at the far end of 2009.
What do you think? If so illustrious an investor as Warren Buffett thinks we’re close to the bottom, should the rest of us pile into stocks in hopes of rather decent gains within a couple of years? Or has even he got it wrong?
Posted by: Charles Hodson, CNN business anchor
& 1:31 pm