Juan Carreón

From IT to hedge funds and back again
Patrick Thibodeau and Todd R. Weiss

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September 26, 2008 (Computerworld) The collapse of Wall Street may help make computer science and IT careers attractive to students who abandoned these fields in droves after the pop of the last big bubble, the dot-com bust of 2001.

William Dally, chairman of the computer science department at Stanford University, said that for the last several years, he has watched some students interested in technology go into banking and finance because those fields could be more lucrative.

"Many thought they could make more money in hedge funds," Dally said. He said students are returning to computer science because they like the field and not because it can necessarily make them rich.

John Gallaugher, associate professor of information systems in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, said he's already seeing a shift in student interest.

"Students have commented to me and written on their course wikis that they're considering changing from finance [majors], both based on the appeal of IS and concern over availability of finance jobs" in the future, Gallaugher said.

After the dot-com bust, computer science enrollments began declining, reaching a low of 8,021 last year from 14,185 in 2003-2004, according to the Computing Research Association (CRA) in Washington, which tracks year-over-year enrollment and graduate trends at 170 Ph.D.-granting institutions.

"Current economic conditions seem to impact the choice that students make in the majors they choose -- that has been true for computer science," said Jay Vegso, a CRA analyst who studies computer science enrollment trends. "Students who are now choosing majors might be looking for safer alternatives," he said, and IT may be a safer alternative.

The dot-com era was a wonderful time to be young, computer-savvy and in search of stock-option riches. Wall Street poured billions of dollars into hundreds of companies that were making little or no money. For instance, Webvan Group Inc., a grocery delivery firm in Foster City, Calif., that was founded in 1997, had so much money that it bought a rival, HomeGrocer, in 2000 for $1.2 billion in stock. Webvan ended in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001.

If the dot-com meltdown wasn't enough, offshore outsourcing also scared away students from technology. In 2004, Carly Fiorina, then CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., summed up the offshore trend this way: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore." Fiorina is now an adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain in his bid for the White House.

Today, companies are suffering from a shortage of technology professionals and baby boomer retirements will only add to the problem.

"The pipeline is inadequate for IT professionals," said Jerry Luftman, who is involved in academics and business as associate dean at the Stevens Institute of Technology's Howe School of Technology Management in Hoboken, N.J., and vice president for academic affairs at the Society for Information Management in Chicago.

The big difference between today and the heyday period of the late 1990s is the type of student that businesses need, Luftman said. Technical skills are still important, but businesses also want to hire students with management and industry training, strong communications abilities, marketing and negotiation skills, he said.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, IT jobs are among the fastest growing. On the top of the bureau's list of fast-growing career areas is network systems and data communications analysts, which it is forecasting will grow from 262,000 jobs in 2006 to 402,000 jobs by 2008, a 53% increase. Computer software engineers, applications, is expected to increase from 507,000 to 733,000 or 45%; while computer scientists and database administrators will rise from 542,000 to 742,000, a 37% increase.

Randal Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said his school saw student applications drop to a low of 1,700 from a peak of 3,200 in 2001 at the end of the dot-com boom.

But the situation has been turning around in the past few years, with 2,300 applications coming in last year, he said.

Bryant said he expects that the troubles on Wall Street will likely influence some students to switch majors in the coming months from business to other fields, including computer science. He also urges caution to those students.

"I like to tell students that if you make your career choice that quickly based on what is hottest this month, you're going to be graduating in four years and that field may not be hot anymore," Bryant said. "I tell them to major in something they like and not what's a likely short-term fluctuation in the job market."

"Our peak at the dot-com [period] included people in computer science who had no particular aptitude in it, but they thought they'd get rich," he said.

Sep 28th 2008
From Economist.com

It may seem unfair, but a bailout is essential

SUSPICION of banks is a recurrent historical theme, from President Andrew Jackson’s opposition to “money power” in the early 19th century, to the British Labour party’s suspicion of the “bankers’ ramp” that forced it from office in 1931.

So there is a natural temptation to think that the current crisis may be entirely artificial, a device dreamed up by bankers to help them out of a hole. But if there is a conspiracy, it is extremely well organised and extraordinarily risky.

The money markets are a bit like the sewers of the financial system: in normal times, nobody notices them but when they get blocked up, the stench is abominable. And they are severely congested at the moment. The good news is that, unlike last week, it is possible for banks to borrow overnight at a reasonable rate. The bad news is that borrowing at longer rates is either impossible or prohibitively expensive.

Why is this? The problem seems to relate to the money-market fund sector, which suffered an outflow of assets when one of them “broke the buck” (failed to repay clients at face value) last week. Other funds are desperate not to repeat the trick, so are desperately opting for safe assets, which means those offered by the American government.

Consequently, three-month Treasury bills were yielding just 0.43% last week (something like 2% would be more normal). According to Barclays Capital, the cost of long-term financial debt was some 450 basis points (4.5 percentage points) above that of government debt, compared with a normal spread of less than 50 basis points. Shorter term, the gap between three month Libor (the rate at which banks borrow) and that paid by the government is getting wider and wider (see chart).

At that level, it is simply uneconomic for banks to lend money to customers. So they won’t. Banks are getting by on borrowing overnight, but the markets for one and three-month loans have dried up. That explains why central banks have been forced to offer billions of dollars at those maturities.

This cannot last long without causing immense damage. Companies will be unable to raise new money and, more importantly, refinance old loans. Corporate bankruptcies will soar. Consumers will also find it difficult, or expensive, to borrow. The result will be a sharp downturn in demand that will push the economy into a deep recession.

So some kind of bailout deal is necessary. Whether all the details were right is, at the moment, secondary to whether it does the trick. And the trick will be the restoration of confidence in the banking system.

It is, indeed, unfair that banks tend to be rescued when they go wrong whereas coal mines and shoe retailers do not. But banks play a key role in oiling the system; they provide the credit that lets the rest of us do business. They also have innate risk, because they lend more money then they have cash in hand. To put it another way, they borrow short and lend long. This has made them the subject of panics throughout history, and those panics have always led to economic turbulence. The authorities can let them go bust, but the risk is depression. Or they can hold their noses and bail them out.

They have, after all, not got away entirely scot-free. A lot of bonuses in recent years have been paid in the form of restricted stock, and that has fallen sharply in value. Jobs have been lost at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and more will follow. In future, banks will have to accept a lot more regulation; in particular, higher capital ratios that will restrict the potential for profitability.

And there will be more crises in future. Now that investment banks are part of commercial banks, we have returned to the risks that characterised the system before the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933—specifically, that reckless investment banks can fritter away retail depositors’ money. And what will we have to do if that happens? Bail them out again.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Deleveraging

A fate worse than debt
Sep 25th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Consumers and companies may be forced to cut back

IT IS ugly, but deleveraging is the word of the moment. Financial institutions, desperate to repair the damage inflicted on their balance-sheets by mortgage-related securities, sell assets. In doing so, they exacerbate the problem. Forced sales push down the prices of assets, worsening the balance-sheets of other investors, forcing more asset sales, and so on. In the end, the government is the only entity left in the game with a balance-sheet strong enough to keep buying.

The Bush administration’s bail-out plan, even if it gets through Congress, may not be the end of the finance industry’s problems. The travails of investment banks will inevitably cause problems for hedge funds, which depend for their finances on institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Many hedge funds have already cut positions since the credit crunch started in the summer of 2007, and banks have tightened the terms on which they will do business with them. This has been particularly true for those that sought funding through the prime-brokerage arms of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers before they were wiped out.

The volatility of financial markets may intensify the pain, since both brokers and hedge funds use models which lead them to sell assets when prices move down sharply. Some hedge funds may have to give up altogether. Around 15% more were liquidated in the first half of 2008 than in the first half of 2007, according to Hedge Fund Research, a consultancy.

What hurts finance affects the rest of the economy in spades. Tim Bond, of Barclays Capital, reckons that, thanks to the gearing effect, a shortfall of bank capital of around $170 billion may reduce the potential supply of credit by $1.7 trillion.

A cut in overall lending would be a complete reversal of trend. Morgan Stanley reckons that total American debt (ie, the gross debt of households, companies and the government) has risen inexorably since 1980 to more than 300% of GDP (see chart), higher than it was in the Depression. Consumers, in particular, were encouraged to borrow by low unemployment and interest rates and (until last year) rising asset prices. Their debt jumped from 71% of GDP in 2000 to 100% in 2007, a bigger increase in seven years than had occurred in the previous 20.

If consumers start to save more or borrow less, spending suffers. In the last three months, America has seen the weakest car sales since 1993, according to Bloomberg. A general decline in demand will cause businesses to shed jobs, creating further falls in demand and more bad debts.

Once started, the process is hard to stop. “What the financial and household sectors are doing is unwinding more than ten years of a credit boom,” says George Magnus, an economist at UBS. “The idea that they can rid themselves of this problem in a matter of months is pie in the sky.”

Then there are businesses. Thanks to strong recent profits, many firms are less geared than they were earlier this decade during the telecoms bust. Nevertheless, there are plenty of big borrowers around, including carmakers and businesses bought by private-equity groups. They may struggle to refinance their debts as they fall due. Martin Fridson, of Fridson Investment Advisors, says that the default rate on high-yield bonds may climb to 10%.

Even firms that are not heavily in debt may think twice about expanding. According to Morgan Stanley, changes in bankers’ attitudes to lending tend to lead business investment by three quarters. If the past pattern holds good, by the summer of next year investment may be falling at an annual rate of more than 10%. That will further depress economic growth.

The danger is of a “second-round effect”, as the crisis in finance affects the economy, leading to further problems in finance. Mortgages may be the problem asset of the moment but next year the worry may be about credit cards, car loans and corporate debt.

The Bush administration’s rescue plan aims to arrest this deleveraging cycle. But it will not be easy. “Eventually they will put the fire out,” says Nick Carn, a partner at Odey Asset Management, a hedge fund. “The question is how much gets burned between now and then.”

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Publicado por The Wall Street Journal, EEUU

São Paulo y Dubai, 25 de septiembre.- Las turbulencias del sector financiero amenazan con socavar el respaldo al dólar entre los inversionistas, perjudicar los esfuerzos de Estados Unidos para liberalizar más sectores de la economía e intensificar la competencia de bancos y mercados financieros de otros países que buscan expandir su influencia global.

En país tras país, la reacción a los colapsos financieros y los rescates del gobierno en las últimas semanas es cuestionar el liderazgo económico de EE.UU. y revisar políticas que se apegan al modelo estadounidense.

En América Latina, la crisis financiera constituye una victoria retórica para políticos que defienden una mayor injerencia estatal en la economía y que insisten que las panaceas neoliberales de Washington se encuentran en el centro de la persistente desigualdad en los ingresos de la región.

De Venezuela a Ecuador y Argentina, los electores han respaldado a líderes que apoyan una intervención directa en los mercados por medio de una variedad de políticas poco ortodoxas, incluyendo controles de precios, la nacionalización de industrias y, en algunos casos, la renuencia a pagar deudas. Los defensores de esta tendencia casi asumen el poder en México y Perú en 2006. Los economistas señalan que la crisis probablemente tendrá un efecto más nocivo sobre países como Venezuela y Argentina que Brasil y Chile, que se han ceñido a las recetas del libre mercado.

En un mundo más entrelazado que nunca económica y financieramente, los problemas parecen haber sembrado más dudas sobre el sistema estadounidense que cualquier otra crisis en las últimas décadas. Eso le ha dado munición a los detractores de Washington y ha debilitado a quienes comparten la preferencia de EE.UU. por el capitalismo.

Los legisladores de Corea del Sur, por ejemplo, están reevaluando los planes para desregular la industria financiera. La canciller alemana, Angela Merkel, realizó una enérgica defensa de la ley que le otorga al Estado el poder de vetar una adquisición de Volkswagen AG, la mayor automotriz europea. Asimismo, la campaña de EE.UU. para lograr que China deje que el mercado fije el valor de su moneda podría caer en oídos sordos, según analistas.

"La credibilidad de EE.UU. ha salido muy mal parada y su capacidad para sermonear a otros países en materia económica se ha perdido para siempre", señaló Christopher Wood, estratega de la corredora bursátil CLSA Asia-Pacific en una nota enviada a sus clientes.

La propuesta del gobierno del presidente George W. Bush de gastar US$700.000 millones para adquirir valores tóxicos de bancos estadounidenses ya ha mermado la confianza en el dólar entre los inversionistas que sienten que el plan podría aumentar los ya altos niveles de endeudamiento de EE.UU. Tal preocupación podría debilitar aún más el estatus del dólar como la divisa dominante en el mundo.

A medida que mengua la confianza en el liderazgo estadounidense, China y otros países con grandes reservas en dólares podrían considerar el traslado de más activos a otras divisas. Xu Xiaonian, profesor de la Escuela de Negocios Internacionales China Europa, en Shanghai (CEIBS, por su sigla en inglés), proyecta que el dólar se volverá "más y más débil, pase lo que pase".

Mientras tanto, Rusia y otros países han expresado su preocupación sobre el dominio del dólar en las reservas mundiales. "Toda la economía mundial no puede depender de sólo una prensa", señaló recientemente el primer ministro ruso, Vladimir Putin. Buena parte de los US$600.000 millones de reservas rusas están invertidas en activos en dólares.

La magnitud de las repercusiones dependerá de la duración y la gravedad de la actual crisis. Una recuperación rápida podría restaurar algo de fe en la adaptabilidad del sistema estadounidense.

La crisis, sin embargo, podría menoscabar el respaldo a las prioridades internacionales de EE.UU., como expandir el acceso de las compañías financieras estadounidenses a los mercados internacionales y abogar por una mayor desregulación en Europa. "El modelo estadounidense antes tenía poco atractivo para Europa", dijo Nina Hauer, legisladora socialdemócrata del parlamento alemán. "Ahora ha perdido su atractivo por completo".
Los problemas de EE.UU. también podrían contribuir a una reconfiguración de las finanzas globales.

La conmoción actual, por ejemplo, podría acelerar el cambio hacia una arquitectura financiera más difusa, donde las capitales regionales jueguen un rol más importante y dependan menos de las decisiones que se tomen en los centros financieros de Nueva York y Londres.

Los grandes bancos occidentales han estado enviando altos ejecutivos a Asia y Medio Oriente, ansiosos por hacer negocios con economías que aún siguen creciendo con rapidez.

No son sólo centros de negocios establecidos, como Hong Kong y Singapur, sino nuevos lugares como Shanghai, Mumbai y Dubai, en especial, los que están atrayendo a los mejores talentos de Occidente.

Tomado de la Agencia Inter Press Service

Ginebra, 25 sep (IPS) - Los males de la crisis financiera y la contracción de las economías, que se propagan desde Estados Unidos, repercuten en las inversiones internacionales, con una disminución este año de 10 por ciento respecto del nivel récord de 2007, cuando sumaron 1,8 billones de dólares.

En la presentación del Informe sobre las Inversiones en el Mundo 2008, el secretario general de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Comercio y Desarrollo (UNCTAD), Supachai Panitchpakdi, vaticinó que las inversiones extranjeras directas sólo ascenderán este año a 1,6 billones de dólares.

Todos los aspectos relacionados con las inversiones dependerán de la magnitud y la duración de la crisis actualmente en desarrollo, previno Supachai.

El jefe de la UNCTAD saludó la iniciativa del gobierno de Estados Unidos de intervenir nuevamente en el mercado financiero con el lanzamiento de una operación de salvataje de por lo menos 700.000 millones de dólares para cubrir las pérdidas de los grandes bancos e instituciones financieras privadas.

"Todo el mundo coincide en que es encomiable el intento del gobierno estadounidense de hacer frente a la crisis financiera mediante un paquete amplio de apoyo al sistema, que es muy necesario", dijo Supachai respecto de la propuesta gubernamental que está pendiente de la aprobación del Congreso legislativo.

Supachai recordó que la UNCTAD, creada en 1964 para respaldar las políticas de los países en desarrollo, ha sostenido desde hace tiempo "la necesidad de colocar al sistema financiero dentro de un marco regulatorio, de manera que haya más transparencia y rendición de cuentas".

La UNCTAD subraya que, a pesar del funcionamiento del mecanismo liberal del mercado, "es inevitable que el Estado regrese y desempeñe un papel más marcado" en el área financiera, puntualizó el jefe de la agencia especializada de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU).

La crisis financiera, que ya había comenzado a insinuarse en agosto de 2007, no interrumpió en ese período el ciclo de cuatro años consecutivos de crecimiento de inversión extranjera directa, hasta llegar a la cifra de 1,833 billones de dólares, que superó el récord anterior registrado en 2000.

A pesar de las penurias financieras y crediticias que aparecieron en la segunda mitad de 2007, los países industrializados, los países en desarrollo y las economías en transición hacia un mercado liberal de Europa sudoriental y de la Comunidad de Estados Independientes (CEI), experimentaron un aumento continuo de la entrada de inversiones.

El aumento de las inversiones extranjeras directas derivó en gran parte del crecimiento económico relativamente elevado y de los buenos resultados alcanzados por las empresas en muchas partes del mundo.

También contribuyó hasta cierto punto la depreciación del dólar con respecto a otras importantes monedas. Sin embargo, los flujos de inversiones mostraron igualmente un incremento considerable, medidos en monedas locales. Con estos parámetros, el crecimiento de 2007 fue de 23 por ciento.

Los países desarrollo obtuvieron un aumento de 21 por ciento en la entrada de inversiones, hasta alcanzar un monto de unos 500.000 millones de dólares. En ese comportamiento influyeron el auge de los precios de los productos básicos y las mejoras de las políticas de acogida de las inversiones.

Un 75 por ciento de las reformas introducidas en los regímenes de inversión extranjera fueron favorables a los inversores, según la interpretación de la UNCTAD.

Las restantes correspondieron a modelos más restrictivos aplicados principalmente a industrias extractivas de América Latina, en particular en Bolivia y Venezuela.

Sin embargo, la UNCTAD aceptó que esas restricciones reflejaron preocupaciones estratégicas y de seguridad nacional.

Unos dos tercios de ese incremento en los países en desarrollo tomaron rumbo a Asia, un tercio se dirigió a América Latina y el Caribe y una décima parte ingresó a África.

Los países de la CEI, ex miembros de la desaparecida Unión Soviética, registraron un récord de arribos de 74.000 millones de dólares. También obtuvieron marcas sin precedentes los países menos avanzados, con 13.000 millones, y los africanos, con 53.000 millones.

Un rasgo singular de la inversión extranjera directa fue la confirmación de los fondos soberanos como motores de un número cada vez mayor de fusiones y adquisiciones transfronterizas, la principal modalidad del flujo.

Los fondos soberanos han sido creados por algunos gobiernos, a partir de la década de 1950, con la finalidad de invertir ahorros estatales en activos extranjeros. Esos fondos suelen asumir mayores riesgos y pretender rendimientos más elevados que otras colocaciones tradicionales efectuadas por las autoridades monetarias.

Por ejemplo, la Government Investment Corporation (GIC), controlada por el gobierno de Singapur, acudió en marzo en socorro de UBS (antes conocida como Unión de Bancos Suizos) al adquirir una participación de 9.800 millones de dólares en el capital de la principal entidad financiera suiza y primera víctima prominente de la crisis desatada por los créditos hipotecarios en Estados Unidos.

En coincidencia con el informe sobre las inversiones en 2008, la UNCTAD distribuyó también un estudio sobre las perspectivas de inversión en el mundo en el período 2008-2010.

Ese trabajo indica que la contracción de la economía y la inestabilidad financiera han obligado a las empresas transnacionales a ser más cautelosas con respecto a sus inversiones extranjeras directas a mediano plazo.

La mayoría de esas compañías consultadas por la UNCTAD respondieron que mantienen sus intenciones de aumentar el flujo de inversiones en los tres años venideros, pero de manera más moderada, explicó Anne Miroux, jefa del equipo que elaboró los dos documentos.

Los cinco países considerados más atractivos por las transnacionales para enviar sus inversiones futuras son China, India, Estados Unidos, Rusia y Brasil. La UNCTAD precisó que el interés por Rusia y Brasil ya figuraba en el estudio del año anterior, aunque ahora ha aumentado notablemente.

En esa lista figuran a continuación Vietnam, Alemania, Indonesia, Australia, Canadá, México, Gran Bretaña, Polonia, Sudáfrica, Francia y Turquía.

Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008
How We Became the United States of France
By Bill Saporito
This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future where too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national healthcare? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.

Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by a half dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn. and FedExed to Washington D.C. to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We're now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride. Italy? Sure, it's had four governments since last Thursday, but none of them would have allowed this to go on; the Italians know how to rig an economy.

You just know the Frogs have only increased their disdain for us, if that is indeed possible. And why shouldn't they? The average American is working two and half jobs, gets two weeks off, and has all the employment security of a one-armed trapeze artist. The Bush Administration has preached the "ownership society" to America: own your house, own your retirement account; you don't need the government in your way. So Americans mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy overpriced houses they can no longer afford and signed up for 401k programs that put money where, exactly? In the stock market! Where rich Republicans fleeced them.

Now our laissez-faire (hey, a French word) regulation-averse Administration has made France's only Socialist president, Francois Mitterand, look like Adam Smith by comparison. All Mitterrand did was nationalize France's big banks and insurance companies in 1982; he didn't have to deal with bankers who didn't want to lend money, as Paulson does. When the state runs the banks, they are merely cows to be milked in the service of la patrie. France doesn't have the mortgage crisis that we do, either. In bailing out mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, our government has basically turned America into the largest subsidized housing project in the world. Sure, France has its banlieues, where it likes to warehouse people who aren't French enough (meaning, immigrants orAlgerians) in huge apartment blocks. But the bulk of French homeowners are curiously free of subprime mortgages foisted on them by fellow citizens, and they aren't over their heads in personal debt.

We've always dismissed the French as exquisitely fed wards of their welfare state. They work, what, 27 hours in a good week, have 19 holidays a month, go on strike for two days and enjoy a glass of wine every day with lunch — except for the 25% of the population that works for the government, who have an even sweeter deal. They retire before their kids finish high school, and they don't have to save for a $45,000-a-year college tuition because college is free. For this, they pay a tax rate of about 103%, and their labor laws are so restrictive that they haven't had a net gain in jobs since Napoleon. There is no way that the French government can pay for this lifestyle forever, except that it somehow does.

Mitterrand tried to create both job-growth and wage-growth by nationalizing huge swaths of the economy, including some big industries, including automaker Renault, for instance. You haven't driven a Renault lately because Renault couldn't sell them here. Imagine that. An auto company that couldn't compete with a Dodge Colt. But the Renault takeover ultimately proved successful and Renault became a private company again in 1996, although the government retains about 15% of the shares.

Now the U.S. is faced with the same prospect in the auto industry. GM and Ford need money to develop greener cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda. And they're looking to Uncle Sam for investment — an investment that could have been avoided had Washington imposed more stringent mileage standards years earlier. But we don't want to interfere with market forces like the French do — until we do.

Mitterand's nationalization program and other economic reforms failed, as the development of the European Market made a centrally planned economy obsolete. The Rothschilds got their bank back, a little worse for wear. These days, France sashays around the issue of protectionism in a supposedly unfettered EU by proclaiming some industries to be national champions worthy of extra consideration — you know, special needs kids. And we're not talking about pastry chefs, but the likes of GDF Suez, a major utility. I never thought of the stocks and junk securities sold by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as unique, but clearly Washington does. Morgan's John Mack calls SEC boss Chris Cox to whine about short sellers and bingo, the government obliges. The elite serve the elite. How French is that?

Even in the strongest sectors in the U.S., there's no getting away from the French influence. Nothing is more sacred to France than its farmers. They get whatever they demand, and they demand a lot. And if there are any issues about price supports, or feed costs being too high, or actual competition from other countries, French farmers simply shut down the country by marching their livestock up the Champs Elysee and piling up wheat on the highways. U.S. farmers would never resort to such behavior. They don't have to: they're the most coddled special interest group in U.S. history, lavished with $180 billion in subsidies by both parties, even when their products are fetching record prices. One consequence: U.S. consumers pay twice what the French pay for sugar, because of price guarantees. We're more French than France.

So yes, while we're still willing to work ourselves to death for the privilege of paying off our usurious credit cards, we can no longer look contemptuously at the land of 246 cheeses. Kraft Foods has replaced American International Group in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the insurance company having been added to Paulson's nationalized portfolio. Macaroni and cheese has supplanted credit default swaps at the fulcrum of capitalism. And one more thing: the food snob French love McDonalds, which does a fantastic business there. They know a good freedom fry when they taste one.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1843168,00.html

Lexington

Richard Milhous McCain
Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Americans cannot escape from the shadow of Tricky Dick

MODERN Republicans admire no one more than Ronald Reagan, the man who, in their view, destroyed communism, rolled back welfare-state liberalism and reintroduced God into American politics. But when it comes to practising politics, particularly at election time, the Republicans have a rather different hero, a man of frowns rather than smiles: Richard Nixon.

Nixon’s great contribution to Republican politics was to master the politics of cultural resentment. Before him, populism belonged as much to the left as the right. William Jennings Bryan railed against the eastern elites who wanted to crucify common folk on a “cross of gold”. Franklin Roosevelt dismissed Republicans as “economic royalists”. Nixon’s genius was to discover that the politics of culture could trump the politics of economics—and that populism could become a tool of the right.

Nixon understood in his marrow how middle-class Americans felt about the country’s self-satisfied elites. The “silent majority” had been disoriented, throughout the 1960s, by the collapse of traditional moral values. And they had boiled with righteous anger at the liberal elites who extended infinite indulgence to bomb-throwing radicals while dismissing conservative views as evidence of racism and sexism. Nixon recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from “positive polarisation”: dividing the electorate over values. He also recognised that the media, which had always made a great pretence of objectivity while embracing a liberal social agenda, could be turned into a Republican weapon. He encouraged Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, to declare war on the “effete corps of impudent snobs” in the media, with their Ivy League educations and Georgetown social values.

Many people predicted that 2008 would finally mark the end of the Nixon era. The issues were too grave to be swamped by a squabble about culture, the argument went. And the candidates, in the form of John McCain and Barack Obama, were too noble to be distracted by the siren voices of the culture war. George Packer dismissed the remains of the culture wars as “the spasms of nerve endings in an organism that’s brain-dead”. Andrew Sullivan hoped that Mr Obama might finally take America “past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the baby-boom generation that has long engulfed all of us”. This paper saw the two candidates as “America at its best.”

Not quite. Two weeks after the Republican convention, America seems to be hellbent on repeating the 1972 election. Forget about the “sunny uplands” of post-partisan politics. The American electorate is still trapped in Nixonland: a land where Democrats and Republicans exchange endless gibes about who despises whom, where simmering class and regional resentments trump all other political considerations and where the airwaves crackle with accusations about lies and counter-lies.

The Republicans now have all the material that they need to do what they do best. Mr Obama is an Ivy-League-educated intellectual whose associates include unrepentant terrorists and swivel-eyed preachers. Mr McCain’s running-mate, Sarah Palin, is a Nixonian fantasy come true, perfectly designed to create a cycle of accusation and counteraccusation. The “liberal media” cannot do its job without questioning Mrs Palin’s qualifications, which are astonishingly thin; but they cannot question her qualifications without confirming the Republican suspicion that they are looking down on ordinary Americans. “Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators,” Mrs Palin told the Republican convention, doing her best to channel Agnew. “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion—I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Nixon’s original insight remains as true now as it was in the late 1960s: lots of liberals do, indeed, look down on flyover Americans as stump-toothed imbeciles and, for some strange reason, lots of flyover Americans resent them for it. What is more, the culture wars have intensified since Nixon’s last election, supersized by the Roe v Wade decision on abortion in 1973.

Not victims but victors

Yet the Republican Party’s decision to rely so heavily on Nixon’s 1972 template is nevertheless depressing. Aren’t Republicans supposed to deplore the politics of victimhood? Conservatives make a good case that treating minority groups as victims diminishes America and institutionalises dependency. But when it comes to election-time they not only play the politics of victimhood, but play it with extraordinary relish, presenting ordinary Americans as the victims of diabolical conspiracies.

Haven’t Republicans done quite well when it comes to power? They have controlled the White House for 28 of the past 40 years, and have a solid majority on the Supreme Court. And aren’t Republicans rather good at getting their message across? Nixon was justified in feeling that the press liked to kick him around. But the past 30 years have seen the emergence of a conservative media establishment that excels at kicking liberals around, not least Fox News and talk radio. Nixon at least had the excuse that he spent his life as an outsider, despite his intellectual gifts and relentless hard work. Mr McCain is the ultimate insider: the offspring of a naval dynasty, a bad boy turned war hero, the media’s favourite Republican.

The bigger question is whether the politics of resentment will be enough on its own to win an election. Rick Perlstein, the author of “Nixonland”, points out that, from Nixon’s time onwards, “culture” has always been just one part of the Republican trifecta, which also includes economic management and foreign policy. Richard Nixon and George Bush senior offered mastery of foreign policy. Ronald Reagan offered a revolutionary mixture of free-markets at home and assertiveness abroad. But this year the Republicans are left with nothing but a culture war to sell to the voters—Richard Nixon with the redeeming features left out.

The presidential election

Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The election has taken a nasty turn. This is mainly the Republicans’ fault

AS RECENTLY as a few months ago, it seemed possible to hope that this year’s presidential election would be a civilised affair. Barack Obama and John McCain both represent much that is best about their respective parties. Mr Obama is intelligent, inspiring and appears by instinct to be a consensus-seeking pragmatist. John McCain has always stood for limited, principled government, and has distanced himself throughout his career from the religious ideologues that have warped Republicanism. An intelligent debate about issues of the utmost importance—how America should rebuild its standing in the world, how more Americans could share in the proceeds of growth—seemed an attainable proposition.

It doesn’t seem so now. In the past two weeks, while banks have tottered and markets reeled, the contending Democrats and Republicans have squabbled and lied rather than debated. Mr McCain’s team has been nastier, accusing Mr Obama of sexism for calling the Republican vice-presidential candidate a pig, when he clearly did no such thing. Much nastier has been the assertion that Mr Obama once backed a bill that would give kindergarten children comprehensive sex education. Again, this was a distortion: the bill Mr Obama backed provided for age-appropriate sex education, and was intended to protect children from sex offenders.

These kinds of slurs seem much more personal, and therefore unpleasant, than the more routine distortions seen on both sides. Team McCain accuses Mr Obama of planning to raise taxes for middle-income Americans (in fact, the Democrat’s plan raises them only for those earning more than $250,000); Mr Obama claims Mr McCain wants to fight in Iraq for 100 years (when the Republican merely agreed that he would gladly keep bases there for that long to help preserve the peace, as in Germany) and caricatures him far too readily as a Bush toady (when Mr McCain’s record as an independent senator has been anything but that).

An issue of life and life

The decision to descend into tactics such as the kindergarten slur shows that America is back in the territory of the “culture wars”, where the battle will be less about policy than about values and moral character. That is partly because Mr Obama’s campaign, perhaps foolishly, chose to make such a big deal of the virtues of their candidate’s character. Most people are more concerned about the alarming state of the economy than anything else; yet the Democrats spent far more time in Denver talking about Mr Obama’s family than his economic policy. The Republicans leapt in, partly because they have a candidate with a still more heroic life story; partly because economics is not Mr McCain’s strongest suit and his fiscal plan is pretty similar to Mr Bush’s; but mostly because painting Mr Obama as an arrogant, elitist, east-coast liberal is an easy way of revving up the Republican Party’s base and what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority” (see article).

The decision to play this election, like that of 2004, as a fresh instalment of the culture wars is disappointing to those who thought Mr McCain was more principled than that. By choosing Sarah Palin as his running-mate he made a cynical tryst with a party base that he has never much liked and that has never much liked him. Mr McCain’s whole candidacy rests on his assertion that these are perilous times that require a strong and experienced commander-in-chief; but he has chosen, as the person who may be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency, someone who demonstrably knows very little about international affairs or the economy.

What Mrs Palin does do, as a committed pro-lifer, is to ensure that the evangelical wing of the Republican party will turn out in their multitudes. Mr McCain has thus placed abortion, the most divisive cultural issue in America, at the centre of his campaign. His defenders claim that it is too big an issue to be ignored, that he has always opposed abortion, that culture wars are an inevitable part of American elections, and that it was only when he appointed Mrs Palin that the American public started to listen to him. All this is true: but the old Mr McCain, who derided the religious right as “agents of intolerance”, would not have stooped to that.

Publicado por The Wall Street Journal, EEUU

Más de 200 años después de haber nacido a la sombra de un árbol en la calle que le dio su nombre, el Wall Street que conocemos está dejando de existir.

La desaparición de Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., un banco de inversión fundado hace 158 años, la súbita adquisición de Merrill Lynch & Co. y el colapso de Bear Stearns Cos. representan un hito en la mayor reestructuración de la industria bancaria desde la Gran Depresión.

Durante décadas, firmas de valores como Lehman, Merrill y Bear tomaron grandes riesgos, obtuvieron jugosas ganancias y asumieron pérdidas ocasionales. Ahora, a medida que estas firmas de valores se desvanecen, el viejo negocio de captar depósitos y construir redes de sucursales recobra su importancia como la manera confiable de ganar dinero.

Instituciones como las estadounidenses Bank of America Corp. y Wells Fargo & Co. el alemán Deutsche Bank AG y el español Banco Santander SA, ascienden a la cima de una industria financiera que probablemente será más segura pero menos lucrativa para los accionistas.

De los cinco mayores bancos de inversión independientes que existían hace dos años, sólo dos (Goldman Sachs Group Inc. y Morgan Stanley) siguen en pie.

Un sello característico del nuevo orden probablemente será un alejamiento de los grandes riesgos —un alto nivel de endeudamiento, valores complejos— que imperaron en los últimos años.

Los bancos están "volviendo a lo básico, al principal propósito del sistema sin toda la parafernalia", dice Douglas Flint, director financiero de HSBC Holdings PLC y copresidente de un grupo de banqueros que elabora un marco para prevenir un riesgo bancario sistémico. "Reconocen que cuando se calmen las aguas... la industria en su esencia será diferente".

El cambio refleja una reevaluación más amplia sobre cuál es la mejor forma de abordar el negocio central de los bancos, el cual tiene un papel principal en la economía al convertir el efectivo y los depósitos de los ahorradores en inversiones a largo plazo como hipotecas y préstamos a empresas.

La contracción del crédito ha desnudado las fallas de los esfuerzos de los bancos por trasladar gran parte de ese negocio desde sus balances a los mercados, donde los préstamos son agrupados y vendidos a inversionistas y a una gran gama de fondos especializados. Las firmas de valores y los fondos de cobertura tuvieron un rol clave en el sistema bancario virtual. Ayudaron a los bancos a agrupar sus préstamos e incluso asumieron parte del negocio de créditos, pero con menos protecciones contra pérdidas y sin el respaldo estatal a los depósitos de los clientes.

El nuevo orden financiero también pone de relieve el duradero impacto de los esfuerzos de Wall Street hace casi una década para derogar la ley Glass-Steagall, que impedía que los bancos comerciales de EE.UU. incursionaran en la banca de inversión.

La revocación en 1999 de dicha ley permitió que los bancos comerciales entraran al negocio de valores y pudieran competir contra firmas como Bear Stearns y Merrill. El modelo de banco universal que surgió resultó difícil de manejar. No obstante, los grandes bancos comerciales, como Bank of America, que son regulados y tienen que mantener grandes provisiones contra posibles pérdidas, hasta ahora han soportado mejor la crisis financiera que las firmas de valores.

La renovada importancia del negocio bancario tradicional es un fenómeno global. Deutsche Bank, que se había concentrado en fortalecer su negocio global de banca de inversión, acordó la semana pasada pagar cerca de US$4.200 millones para adquirir las 850 sucursales en Alemania y los 14,5 millones de clientes de Deutsche Postbank AG, el banco comercial del sistema postal del país. Santander, que también cortejó a Postbank, pagó US$2.230 millones por el banco hipotecario Alliance & Leicester, que refuerza su ya importante red de sucursales en Gran Bretaña. Antes de ser adquirida por Bank of America, Merrill había estado expandiendo su unidad de banca comercial.

Los depósitos han sido una de las escasas luces en medio de un panorama oscuro para las firmas financieras. Han crecido rápido aun cuando otras formas de financiación casi se han agotado.

En EE.UU., por ejemplo, los ahorros y depósitos a plazo pequeños en bancos comerciales totalizaron US$6,9 billones (millones de millones) a fines de agosto, un alza de 7,6% con respecto al mismo mes del año previo, según la Reserva Federal.

El modelo bancario básico, sin embargo, no ha funcionado para todos. Los bancos pequeños en EE.UU. y Europa han sufrido, en parte porque no tienen la escala y la diversificación para absorber las grandes pérdidas generadas por las crecientes cesaciones de pagos en las hipotecas y los préstamos corporativos.
De todos modos, el regreso de los bancos a su negocio más tradicional representa un marcado contraste con la tendencia predominante en los últimos años. En lugar de ganar dinero captando depósitos a tasas de interés a corto plazo y conceder préstamos a tasas más altas a largo plazo, los bancos crearon una estructura que hacía esencialmente lo mismo. Establecieron fondos especializados, conocidos como canales y vehículos de inversión estructurados (o SIV, por sus siglas en inglés), los cuales tomaron prestado dinero en el mercado de papeles comerciales y compraron valores agrupados con préstamos. Las firmas de valores y los fondos de cobertura también entraron en el juego, creando y comprando bonos que contenían préstamos corporativos e hipotecarios. Sin acceso a los depósitos, las firmas de valores y los fondos de cobertura se dirigieron a otros mercados para pedir dinero.

Toda la actividad e innovación ayudaron a los bancos a alcanzar un nuevo nivel de rentabilidad después de varios años de vacas flacas. Los bancos europeos produjeron un retorno promedio de 21% sobre las inversiones de sus accionistas en 2007, comparado con el 13% de 1996, según un reciente informe de Citigroup Inc. Pero recurrieron a altos niveles de endeudamiento para conseguir tales retornos.

Cuando empezó la contracción del crédito hace un año, las fallas de la nueva arquitectura financiera se volvieron evidentes. El mercado para valores respaldados por préstamos hipotecarios casi desapareció. Los bancos se vieron forzados a asumir los miles de millones de dólares en préstamos y valores que habían puesto en conductos y SIV.

Para las firmas de valores se ha vuelto mucho más difícil y caro obtener préstamos y otros tipos de financiación. Esto hace que surjan dudas sobre si las firmas de corretaje no ligadas a bancos comerciales podrán sobrevivir.

ANOTHER week, another drama. The unveiling of the second bail-out plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on September 7th—to say nothing of the dwindling fortunes of Lehman Brothers in the succeeding days—was a reminder that the credit crunch is proving infuriatingly difficult to bring to an end.

The crunch has lasted long enough to spawn its own publishing mini-boom, as authors have raced to give their diagnoses in print. George Cooper, a strategist at JPMorgan, an investment bank, has produced by far the best so far*, skewering both academic orthodoxy and central-bank policy in the process.

The problem, says Mr Cooper, is that central banks have subscribed to one economic philosophy in an expanding economy and quite another when the economy is contracting. When things are going well, central banks leave the markets alone. But at the merest hint of crisis, central bankers have responded by cutting interest rates to stimulate their economies and prevent asset prices from falling. Tongue firmly in cheek, Mr Cooper describes this as “pre-emptive asymmetric monetary policy”.

This approach, he argues, stems from a belief in efficient-market theory which states, at its simplest, that prices reflect all available information. On that basis, asset prices are always “right”, there can be no bubbles and central banks should not intervene to restrain speculative excess. Similar reasoning seems to have persuaded Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, not to prick the dotcom bubble of 1999, even after warning of “irrational exuberance” in 1996.

To be fair, Mr Greenspan did not argue that there were no bubbles, only that it was impossible to spot them while they were inflating. Instead, he felt that central banks should wait to mop up the mess once the bubble had burst.

In contrast, Mr Cooper argues that markets are far from efficient, as they often get locked into feedback mechanisms that lead to booms and busts. Indeed, if markets were really as efficient as some believe, why would economies need central banks in the first place? The market would set the appropriate level of interest rates for the economy and would automatically rebalance itself in the event of a problem in the financial system.

However, crises occur time and again, and far more frequently than most financial models would predict. Perhaps this is because investors are not the perfectly informed paragons found in efficient-market theory. Instead, they may simply be unable to get enough information to make correct judgments about the value of securities, or indeed may be given misleading information by insiders such as company executives or salesmen from the financial-services industry.

Central-bank intervention to prop up markets is often popular at the time; few people relish banking collapses or recessions. But it creates problems in the long run. The first is that consumers (and companies) are encouraged to borrow, not save, thanks to the low level of interest rates and a belief that central banks and governments will always rescue them if things go wrong. But as Mr Cooper writes: “A depressed savings rate leaves the economy precariously positioned to deal with future adverse shocks.”

The second danger is that the system becomes progressively less stable as risk-taking is encouraged. Instead, central banks should permit some short-term cyclicality in order to purge the system of excesses. They can do this, Mr Cooper argues, by preventing excessive credit creation (which he defines as credit growth far ahead of economic growth).

This is not a new thesis, as the author accepts. Hyman Minsky developed a theory of financial instability in the 1970s. Jeremiahs have been warning about a looming debt crisis for at least 20 years. But Mr Cooper’s book is by far the most cogent and reasoned of the modern-day “credit excess” school.

Alas, the author does not see an easy way out of today’s mess, in effect arguing that we “shouldn’t start from here”. Letting the markets have their way would risk a repeat of the 1930s, and the Fannie and Freddie rescue shows the authorities are desperate to avoid that. But the danger is that central banks inflate another credit bubble, saving the economy from disaster in the short term but raising the stakes still further when the next crisis comes around. The Fannie and Freddie rescue, though unavoidable, suggests the world is heading in that direction.

Las exportaciones mexicanas a Canadá han experimentado una mayor diversificación desde que entró en vigor el TLCAN. (Foto: Archivo)
quebec

Canadá representa para las pequeñas y medianas empresas mexicanas uno de los países con mayor potencial para realizar comercio exterior, y en donde la tecnología juega un papel esencial.

“Las exportaciones mexicanas en ese país alcanzaron 14,115 millones de dólares en el 2006”, destaca Juan José Campuzano, representante de ProMéxico en Ontario, Canadá, y quien invita a las pymes a mirar más allá de EU.

Y es justo el rubro de las Tecnologías de la Información (TI), el que abre fuertes oportunidades a los empresarios desarrolladores de software, entre otros, para llevar a Canadá sus propuestas, principalmente a Montreal.

La composición de las exportaciones mexicanas a Canadá ha experimentado una mayor diversificación en el período de vigencia del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN).

Los artículos de cómputo y aparatos eléctricos han aumentado su participación.

Los sectores con mayores oportunidades son: en el mercado de TI, hardware, software, multimedia, seguridad informática y aplicaciones web, entre otros.

En el segmento de Tecnologías wireless, el mercado canadiense requiere soluciones Wi Max, RFID, hardware y software para conectividad, y VoIP.

En el caso del sector de robótica y automatización se requieren productos y desarrollos ligados a la nanotecnología y materiales avanzados para la industria.

De acuerdo con información de ProMéxico, las ventajas competitivas de las empresas mexicanas son proximidad con el mercado canadiense, los mismos usos horarios, una cultura similar, mano de obra competitiva, infraestructura y telecomunicaciones.

Para ayudar al los empresarios mexicanos que desean incursionar en el mercado de las TI canadiense, estos se pueden apoyar en la aceleradora de negocios TechBa Montreal (www.techba.com), la cual ayuda a las empresas altamente innovadoras.

Una recomendación que hace el representante de ProMéxico en Canadá a los empresarios esel “desarrollo de una página de Internet, en la cual difunda detalladamente las condiciones de sus productos”.

Con un diseño apropiado de dicha herramienta facilita la exposición y promoción de los productos o servicios de los exportadores mexicanos.

En el mercado canadiense debe tomarse en cuenta que los hombres de negocios son particularmente estrictos con el cumplimiento de su palabra.

Así, cuando las citas de negocios se concentran a cierta hora, sorprende la puntualidad con la que se llevan al cabo.

En la actualidad, México goza de una simpatía clara por parte del empresariado canadiense. El reto es cumplir puntualmente y generar una relación de confianza.

Ofrecerán Google y HSBC banda ancha vía satélite a AL
EFE
El Universal

Martes 09 de septiembre de 2008

Mediante la firma del empresario Greg Wyler y con el respaldo de ambas compañías internacionales, la empresa 03b Networks pretende en 2010 ofrecer Internet de alta velocidad en regiones de tercer mundo a bajos costos

El empresario Greg Wyler creó una compañía que, con el respaldo de Google y HSBC, entre otros, pretende ofrecer a partir de 2010 acceso a internet a alta velocidad, vía satélite y a bajo costo a varias regiones emergentes del planeta, entre ellas América Latina, informó hoy la empresa.

La compañía, bautizada como 03b Networks, informó hoy a través de un comunicado que su proyecto "reducirá los costos de la banda ancha para los operadores de telecomunicaciones y proveedores de servicios de internet, permitiéndoles dar servicios de voz e internet a velocidades equivalentes a las que se disfrutan en el mundo desarrollado".

El proyecto cuenta con el respaldo financiero de varios inversores, entre ellos Google, Liberty Global y HSBC y también tratará de facilitar el acceso a internet en Latinoamérica, Asia, África y Oriente Medio.

El nombre de 03b Networks viene del compromiso de la compañía de conectar las redes de internet de los países desarrollados con otros 3 mil millones de personas (other three billion, en inglés) que tienen limitado el acceso a internet.

La nueva empresa recordó que las naciones desarrolladas, sobretodo en el hemisferio norte, cuentan con un amplia red de fibra submarina, pero explicó que su despliegue en muchos mercados en vías de desarrollo "no es comercialmente viable ni práctico".

03b Networks, fundada por el empresario de telecomunicaciones Greg Wyler con "la misión de hacer accesible y asequible internet para miles de millones de personas , aseguró que sus precios serán "comparables con los de la fibra óptica en regiones desarrolladas" .
Para poner en marcha el proyecto, sus directivos tienen previsto lanzar inicialmente dieciséis satélites y calculan que el servicio estará activo a finales de 2010.

VERÓNICA ROSAS
El Universal

Jueves 04 de septiembre de 2008

Cuestionan embestida cibernética contra la gobernadora de Alaska; la hacen aparecer en provocativas portadas de revistas para las que nunca posó

veronica.rosas@eluniversal.com.mx

La política no perdona y Sarah Palin lo está experimentando en carne propia en estos días. La prensa ha arremetido contra ella exponiendo cuanto “trapo sucio” le ha encontrado a la aspirante republicana a la vicepresidencia de Estados Unidos. Desde su presunta adscripción en sus años mozos a un partido independentista en Alaska, su cercanía a un senador que enfrenta cargos criminales, abuso de poder para despedir a un funcionario y el embarazo de su hija adolescente

Pero el peor golpe, la gota que ha derramado el vaso, no ha venido de los medios tradicionales, sino de internet, de la blogósfera, donde todo es posible, incluso ver a la gobernadora de Alaska en portadas de conocidas revistas luciendo diminutos bikinis y una escultural figura, en una actitud provocadora con todo y efecto de melena alborotada y sonrisa perfecta. Pero no, no se trata de Sarah Palin, sino de fotos alteradas; aparecen en decenas de páginas y en algunos blogs se habla de un concurso convocado con el propósito de usar photoshop en imágenes de la aspirante a la vicepresidencia del partido conservador.

Y de conservadoras las fotos no tienen nada; el ingenio, devastador si se quiere, pero ingenio al fin, de los usuarios de internet ha hecho posible ver a Palin en la portada de Vogue o de Maxim, incluso de Playboy, para escándalo de los sectores más conservadores del partido. Los simpatizantes de la gobernadora de Alaska han salido en su defensa y también hay páginas que denuncian la falsificación de las imágenes, muestran la foto original y advierten a la gente que las fotos con la sexi Sarah están truqueadas.

Muchos han denunciado este ataque contra Palin como sexista; después de todo, no se han visto fotos de Joseph Biden, el compañero de fórmula de Barack Obama, en calzoncillos o desnudo en ninguna imagen en la red. John McCain, el virtual candidato republicano a la Presidencia, sorprendió a todos al elegir a una mujer para aspirar a la vicepresidencia, con la esperanza de ganar el voto femenino y capturar un sector que estaba con Hillary Clinton. Quería “sacudir” al mundo, pero seguramente no esperaba que los ataques contra Palin alcanzaran tales dimensiones.

Los detractores de Sarah en el mundo del photoshop han explotado al menos tres de sus características: que es mujer, que es conservadora y que de joven participó en un concurso de belleza y fue miss Wasilla, por lo que la exhiben en portadas revistas de moda o para caballeros, en diminutas prendas o de plano sin ellas, y hasta con un rifle (por aquello que defiende a la Asociación Nacional del Rifle).

Esta campaña presidencial es sin duda inédita y ha estado llena de sorpresas; Barack Obama, el aspirante demócrata a la Presidencia, ha tenido que enfrentar alguno que otro ataque de tinte racista (como cuando el mismo Biden dijo que Obama era “bien articulado, inteligente y limpio”), o religioso, porque algunos opinan que tiene cercanía con el islam (The New Yorker incluso le dedicó una portada con imágenes vestido al estilo musulmán). Por su parte McCain ha tenido que padecer críticas y burlas por su avanzada edad, con caricaturas que lo muestran en silla de ruedas.

Ahora es el turno de Sarah Palin. Tiene que padecer una nada agradable embestida que usa photoshop como instrumento; pero también hay que decir que si hasta hace menos de una semana era prácticamente una desconocida, ahora es el nombre más buscado en Yahoo y en Google aparecen más de 50 mil entradas si se busca “Sarah Palin photoshop”; unos publican las fotos y otros defienden a esta madre de cinco hijos, que se ha manifestado en contra del aborto y que está criando un niño con síndrome de Down. Una conservadora de pura cepa.

Ahora, dependerá del Partido Republicano cómo capitalizar en su favor la recién adquirida popularidad de Palin. Por lo pronto, la ex tesorera Rosario Marín manifestó ayer su indignación por los ataques contra una madre trabajadora, en el marco de una campaña que, photoshop aparte, los republicanos tachan de sexista.

Publicado: Agosto 25th, 2008

Por Juan Carreon
Un nuevo contexto de la actividad política estadunidense es el que revela la encuesta The Internet and the 2008 election de Pew*, en el que 46% de los adultos en dicho país empleó Internet, correo electrónico o mensajes de texto mediante celular, con propósitos políticos hacia el final de las más recientes elecciones primarias.
Ese porcentaje significa que, de los estadounidenses, usuarios o no de la red:
40% obtuvo noticias e información de la Web acerca de dichas elecciones.
23% recibió mensajes electrónicos invitando a apoyar a algún candidato o comentar la campaña, cuando menos una vez a la semana.
19% se conectó a la red más de una vez a la semana para realizar actividades relacionadas directamente con las campañas.
10% contribuyó al debate político mediante correo electrónico, cuando menos una vez a la semana.
6% realizó diariamente actividades partidarias, y
4% de los adultos (uno de cada diez usuarios de mensajes de textos) envió o recibió regularmente mensajes acerca de la campaña o de temas políticos relacionados.
Hacia finales de las elecciones primarias, el porcentaje de usuarios de información política en la red superó el total de todos los usuarios a lo largo de toda la campaña de 2004. El 13% que observó vídeos relacionados ese año, ascendió a 35% en las elecciones primarias de 2008. En el caso de usuarios de sitios de redes sociales, 66% que disponen de un perfil en línea, o sea los que tienen menos de 20 años, 50% empleó dichos sitios para obtener o compartir información acerca de los candidatos y la campaña.
Ciudadanos de la Red
Es notable como los usuarios más jóvenes de la red gravitaron hacia el lado Demócrata y, en particular, por la opción representada por Obama; 51% de dichos usuarios por el lado Demócrata consumió videos políticos en línea, frente a 42% del lado del partido Republicano. También, 36% por el lado Demócrata creó perfiles en redes sociales, frente a 21% del Republicano, y 28% de los independientes.
Si hasta hace pocos años el candidato con mayores probabilidades de vencer había sido el más mediagénico, el que manejaba mejor los recursos mediáticos en prensa, radio y televisión, ahora comenzó a ser significativo cuál de los candidatos es más cibergénico.
Es decir, el que incorpora fuertes dosis de diálogo y otros modos de relación, mediante el empleo de los nuevos medios de comunicación personales en el ciberespacio, incorporando fuertes dosis de diálogo con los netizens o ciudadanos de la Red. Al igual que Howard Dean en las primarias de 2004 se apalancó en la red a fin de obtener una plétora de recursos financieros y un lugar especial en la mente del electorado, Obama con la misma estrategia logró superar a un candidato tras otro para finalmente obtener la nominación Demócrata.
Hecho creciente
La eclosión de esos nuevos medios de comunicación personales, agrupados bajo la denominación de periodismo ciudadano, anunciaría también, entre otras cosas, la crisis y el fin de la política de masas y de los medios de comunicación tradicionales. Esos nuevos medios apuntan a la vez hacia el surgimiento de una mayor presencia de la negociación, del diálogo y de la participación ciudadanos.
Esas señales existen de forma creciente, así sean por ahora tenues y ambiguas (como muestra la encuesta de Pew, cuando al preguntar a los encuestados si “Internet está lleno de desinformación y propaganda que demasiados votantes creen verídica”, 60% de ellos considera que sí, y 32%, que no).
—
*Aaron Smith, The Internet and the 2008 election, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, D.C. June 15, 2008. http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/252/report_display.asp
Categoria: Opinión

8/27/2008 11:46:00 AM
At a time when more and more digital technologies are becoming indispensable to millions of people, the field of computer science (CS) is in trouble. Enrollment and retention of CS students, particularly those historically underrepresented in the field (women, African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Hispanics) has declined sharply. According to the Computing Research Association, CS enrollment in the U.S. was at its peak in 2000, with 15,958 undergrads. By 2006, enrollment declined by roughly half: 7,798 undergrads. And enrollment among already-underrepresented groups has dropped even more sharply.

We hope to address this problem (and potential shortage) with a variety of programs beyond our scholarship initiatives. Recently, our educational outreach group, University Programs, and Diversity and Talent Inclusion teams joined forces to create the Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI). This special institute included an interactive and collaborative CS curriculum, as well as a living-learning residential experience for student networking. We chose 17 college sophomores, all aspiring computer scientists, to attend the all-expenses-paid CSSI in Mountain View from August 3–15.

Our goals for the institute:

* To enrich the skills of students early in their CS studies (or at risk of leaving the major) in an effort to increase the pipeline into the CS major and boost retention
* To provide a social and professional network for underrepresented (women, Hispanic, African-American, and/or Native-American) technology students
* To empower students, giving them the tools, motivation and confidence to continue with CS studies
* To show students daily life at Google and the amazing applications of CS that occur here

The CSSI faculty was comprised of Google engineers and our educational outreach group. We paired students with Google "buddies" - engineers with whom they can develop a long-term advising relationship. Students heard from professionals from across the technology industry and academia about the many things they can do with a CS degree.

Students worked in teams to build a completely interactive Web 2.0 website, keeping in mind both practical programming skills and the theory behind it.

We plan to keep in touch with these students across their college careers, and to encourage future participants to complete their CS work and join the community of computer scientists.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/strengthening-study-of-computer-science.html

Dec 30th 2007
From Economist.com

Think small, think short—and listen

SO THERE you are on the moon, reading The World in 2008 on disposable digital paper and waiting for the videophone to ring. But no rush, because you’re going to live for ever—and if you don’t, there’s a backed-up copy of your brain for downloading to your clone.

Yes? No? Well, that’s how the 21st century looked to some futurologists 40 or 50 years ago, and they’re having a hard time living it down now. You can still get away (as we do) with predicting trends in the world next year, but push the timeline out much further, and you might as well wear a T-shirt saying “crackpot”. Besides, since the West began obsessing a generation ago about accelerating social and technological change, people in government and industry can spend weeks each year in retreats brainstorming and scenario-building about the future of their company or their industry or their world. The only thing special about a futurologist is that he or she has no other job to do.

Small wonder that futurology as we knew it 30 or 40 years ago—the heyday of Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock”, the most popular work of prophecy since Nostradamus—is all but dead. The word “futurologist” has more or less disappeared from the business and academic world, and with it the implication that there might be some established discipline called “futurology”. Futurologists prefer to call themselves “futurists”, and they have stopped claiming to predict what “will” happen. They say that they “tell stories” about what might happen. There are plenty of them about, but they have stopped being famous. You have probably never heard of them unless you are in their world, or in the business of booking speakers for corporate dinners and retreats.

We can see now that the golden age of blockbuster futurology in the 1960s and 1970s was caused, not by the onset of profound technological and social change (as its champions claimed), but by the absence of it. The great determining technologies—electricity, the telephone, the internal combustion engine, even manned flight—were the products of a previous century, and their applications were well understood. The geopolitical fundamentals were stable, too, thanks to the cold war. Futurologists extrapolated the most obvious possibilities, with computers and nuclear weapons as their wild cards. The big difference today is that we assume our determining forces to be ones that 99% of us do not understand at all: genetic engineering, nanotechnology, climate change, clashing cultures and seemingly limitless computing power. When the popular sense of direction is baffled, there is no conventional wisdom for futurologists to appropriate or contradict.

Popcorn and prediction markets

There are still some hold-outs prophesying at the planetary level: James Canton, for example, author of “Extreme Future”. But the best advice for aspirant futurists these days is: think small. The best what-lies-ahead book of 1982 was “Megatrends”, by John Naisbitt, which prophesied the future of humanity. A quarter-century later, its counterpart for 2007 was “Microtrends”, by Mark Penn, a public-relations man who doubles as chief strategy adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. “Microtrends” looks at the prospects for niche social groups such as left-handers and vegan children. The logical next step would be a book called “Nanotrends”, save that the title already belongs to a journal of nano-engineering.

The next rule is: think short-term. An American practitioner, Faith Popcorn, showed the way with “The Popcorn Report” in 1991, applying her foresight to consumer trends instead of rocket science. The Popcornised end of the industry thrives as an adjunct of the marketing business, a research arm for its continuous innovation in consumer goods. One firm, Trendwatching of Amsterdam, predicts in its Trend Report for 2008 a list of social fads and niche markets including “eco-embedded brands” (so green they don’t even need to emphasise it) and “the next small thing” (“What happens when consumers want to be anything but the Joneses?”).

A third piece of advice: say you don’t know. Uncertainty looks smarter than ever before. Even politicians are seeing the use of it: governments that signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change said, in effect: “We don’t know for sure, but best to be on the safe side”—and they have come to look a lot smarter than countries such as America and Australia which claimed to understand climate change well enough to see no need for action.

The last great redoubt of the know-alls has been the financial markets, hedge funds claiming to have winning strategies for beating the average. But after the market panic of 2007 more humility is to be expected there too.

A fourth piece of advice for the budding futurist: get embedded in a particular industry, preferably something to do with computing or national security or global warming. All are fast-growing industries fascinated by uncertainty and with little use for generalists. Global warming, in particular, is making general-purpose futurology all but futile. When the best scientists in the field say openly that they can only guess at the long-term effects, how can a futurologist do better? “I cannot stop my life to spend the next two or ten years to become an expert on the environment,” complains Mr Naisbitt in his latest book, “Mindset” (although the rewards for Al Gore, who did just that, have been high).

A fifth piece of advice: talk less, listen more. Thanks to the internet, every intelligent person can amass the sort of information that used to need travel, networking, research assistants, access to power. It is no coincidence that the old standard work on herd instinct, Charles Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”, has been displaced by James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”.

The most heeded futurists these days are not individuals, but prediction markets, where the informed guesswork of many is consolidated into hard probability. Will Osama bin Laden be caught in 2008? Only a 15% chance, said Newsfutures in mid-October 2007. Would Iran have nuclear weapons by January 1st 2008? Only a 6.6% chance, said Inkling Markets. Will George Bush pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby? A better-than-40% chance, said Intrade. There may even be a prediction market somewhere taking bets on immortality. But beware: long- and short-sellers alike will find it hard to collect.

http://www.infocomgroup.net/falkow/?p=264

http://www.nevillehobson.com/wp-content/uploads/gartnerhype2008.jpg

Gartner, Inc. has identified 27 emerging technologies and predicts that eight of these will have a transformational business impact and should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years.

Are there any nuggets of wisdom for us in PR here?

Web 2.0, although placed in their Trough of Disillusionment now, is tipped to emerge within two years to have a transformational impact on business as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications.

Virtual worlds, which are suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest.

Technologies and trends at or around the peak of the Hype Cycle in 2008 that will reach the plateau in two to five years are:

Social Networking platforms - the MySpace, Facebook model. Companies are examining the role that these sites, or their enterprise-grade equivalents, will play in future collaboration environments.

Microblogging - The Twitter phenomenon has caught on among certain online communities, and leading-edge companies are investigating its role in enhancing other social media and channels.

“Following the trend of the last few years, many of the new entries on this year’s Hype Cycle, including microblogging, social networking platforms and cloud computing, are making their impact in the consumer world before they hit businesses,” said Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

We’ve certainly seen the impact of some of these technologies in the consumer world. And it has changed the practice of PR. Gartner predicts they will have an impact on the entire enterprise in the years to come.