Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP, one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, agreed to buy four terminals from St. Louis-based Slay Industries for $98 million.
The assets include a river terminal in Sauget, a liquid bulk terminal and a warehousing distribution center in St. Louis and a terminal in Muscatine, Iowa.
The purchase gives Kinder Morgan a toehold in the St. Louis terminal market and "unparalleled access to major markets via rail and waterway," Jeff Armstrong, president of the company’s terminals business, said Wednesday in a statement.
Houston-based Kinder Morgan and Slay Industries also formed a joint venture at Slay’s Kellogg Dock coal terminal in Modoc, Ill., and new North Cahokia terminal in Sauget, which includes 175 acres for development.
Slay Industries was founded 90 years ago as Slay Motor Freight and generates annual revenue exceeding $125 million, according to the company’s website.
Job hunters may be better off being unemployed and searching for permanent work rather than taking temporary positions, a new study contends.
“It’s not that temp work is bad, per se,” said David Autor, who co-wrote the study. “It’s that people who are successful as temps, would tend to be far more successful in direct hire jobs. It’s the opportunity cost rather than direct harm.”
Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleague Susan Houseman carried out a broad study of outcomes for 37,000 job seekers. The study group comprised clients of Work First, a public job-placement service operating in Detroit whose goal is to get people off welfare.
Applicants were randomly assigned to jobs; some were temporary positions doled out by agencies, others were direct hires to participating companies. All the jobs were relatively low-wage, low-skill labour.
Autor found that those workers who lucked into direct-hire employment, on average, earned 30 to 50 per cent more over the next two years than workers who took temp jobs. They found that earnings for temp workers tended to jump at the outset but then settled back when those jobs ended after a few days or weeks.
“The average outcome is that people placed in temp jobs do less well than they would have if they had just spent the extra time to search for a direct-hire position,” Autor said from his office at M.I.T. on Monday.
“Holding the temp job has two consequences: First of all, it’s very difficult to search for a job while you’re working. Second, when you’re connected to a temp agency, you may have the illusion a job is about to show up. They say, ‘We’ll call you when we have something.’ I wouldn’t call it ‘complacency,’ but it may create the sense that you’re doing something when you’re not payday loans guaranteed no fax.”
At the root of all this is the onerous nature of the job hunt itself.
“We know from all kinds of studies that people … hate searching for work. They hate it much more than working.”
Temp work, it seems, jolts people out of a job-hunting state of mind while offering no long-term benefits.
“Direct-hire placements give people stability. Stability is very valuable,” Autor said. “People often talk about the benefits of flexibility and so forth. Most of those benefits are actually for the employer rather than the employee.”
One of his conclusions is that government should not be in the business of trying to place people in temp jobs.
“You don’t need a government agency to connect you to a temp agency. Everybody knows where they are,” Autor said. “What is hard is connecting workers directly to employers.”
The participants in the study were a very particular kind of worker – one with little training. But Autor believes the study’s findings apply to a broad economic spectrum.
He is very careful not to suggest that people who need to put food on the table should be turning down any sort of job. But he gently suggests that the goal should be a successful job search, not a short one.
“What I’d like (job seekers) to take from this is that although temporary work sometimes leads to a direct-hire position, that’s probably not the most fruitful way to get them, relative to the sort of painful work of a direct-hire search,” Autor said.
“Don’t view temp work as the on-ramp into the labour market.”
NBC fired back at Conan O’Brien Wednesday as negotiations between the outgoing host of "The Tonight Show" and the network stalled over how much O’Brien’s staff would be paid under a potential severance deal.
"It was Conan’s decision to leave NBC that resulted in nearly 200 of his staffers being out of work," a network representative said in an e-mailed statement. "We have already agreed to pay millions of dollars to compensate every one of them."
O’Brien is reportedly close to signing a $40 million deal to walk away from "The Tonight Show," which he has hosted since June. The network tried to push the show to a later time slot.
But talks have been held up by disagreements over, among other things, how much the show’s staff is entitled to as well.
Gavin Polone, O’Brien’s manager, told the New York Times that some wrangling over staff compensation was to be expected given the dismal job market. But, he added, "We’re fighting to do better for them fast cash online."
The weeks-long dispute has roiled the entertainment industry and galvanized fans of the show, who held rallies in cities across the nation Tuesday in support of O’Brien.
According to NBC, O’Brien raised compensation issues a few days ago, and it is only one of many points still being negotiated.
"This latest posturing is nothing more than a PR ploy," the NBC representative said.
The rebuke comes one day after O’Brien took the network to task during his nightly monologue, saying "NBC is headed downhill faster than a fat guy chasing a runaway cheese-wheel."
O’Brien is widely expected to cede the show later this week. "I’m just three days away from the biggest drinking binge in history," he said Tuesday night.
SHANGHAI—Google is investigating whether one or more employees may have helped facilitate a cyber-attack from China that the U.S search giant said it was a victim of in mid-December, two sources told Reuters on Monday.
Google, the world’s most popular search engine, said last week it may pull out of the world’s biggest Internet market by users after reporting it had been hit by a “sophisticated” cyber-attack on its network that resulted in theft of its intellectual property.
The sources, who are familiar with the situation, told Reuters that the attack, which targeted people who have access to specific parts of Google networks, may have been facilitated by people working in Google China’s office.
“We’re not commenting on rumour and speculation. This is an ongoing investigation, and we simply cannot comment on the details,” a Google spokeswoman said.
Security analysts told Reuters the malicious software (malware) used in the Google attack was a modification of a trojan called Hydraq. A trojan is malware that, once inside a computer, allows someone unauthorised access. The sophistication in the attack was in knowing whom to attack, not the malware itself, the analysts said.
Local media, citing unnamed sources, reported that some Google China employees were denied access to internal networks after Jan. 13, while some staff were put on leave and others transferred to different offices in Google’s Asia Pacific operations. Google said it would not comment on its business operations.
TALKS SOON
Google, which has denied rumours that it has already decided to shut down its China offices, said on Monday it contacted the Chinese government last week after the announcement.
“We are going to have talks with them in the coming few days,” Google said.
Google is also still in the process of scanning its internal networks since the cyber-attack in mid-December.
China has tried to play down Google’s threat to leave, saying there are many ways to resolve the issue, but insisting all foreign companies, Google included, must abide by Chinese laws.
Washington said it was issuing a diplomatic note to China formally requesting an explanation for the attacks.
The Google issue risks becoming another irritant in China’s relationship with the United States. Ties are already strained by arguments over the yuan currency’s exchange rate, which U.S. critics say is unfairly low, trade protectionism and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
Washington has long been worried about Beijing’s cyber-spying programme. A congressional advisory panel said in November the Chinese government appeared increasingly to be penetrating U.S. computers to gather useful data for its military.
European exports declined for a second month in November as the euro’s strength made goods from the region more expensive abroad.
Exports from the euro area dropped a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent from October, when they decreased 0.1 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. The trade surplus narrowed to 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) in November as imports rose 0.3 percent from October, when they fell 1 percent. European inflation accelerated to 0.9 percent in December, a separate report showed.
The euro’s 10 percent advance against the dollar in the past year is threatening to undermine the region’s recovery by making exports less competitive. While European services and manufacturing industries expanded at the fastest pace in more than two years in December, the economy still faces a “bumpy road” ahead, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said yesterday.
“The exports-driven recovery of the preceding two quarters is fading,” said Dominique Barbet, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in Paris. “Imports’ lack of dynamism suggests lackluster domestic demand.”
December inflation was the fastest since February 2009, with energy prices rising 1.8 percent from a year earlier, the statistics office said. Core inflation, excluding volatile costs such as tobacco, food and energy, accelerated to 1.1 percent in December from 1 percent in the previous month.
Greece’s Struggles
The euro fell the most in almost a month against the dollar today as Greece’s struggles to cut its budget deficit dented investor confidence in European assets. The 16-nation currency traded at $1.4366 at 3:43 p.m. in London, down 0.9 percent on the day.
The ECB yesterday left its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 1 percent and signaled that officials will wait for more signs of recovery before withdrawing emergency measures further, with Trichet citing “a great level of uncertainty” surrounding the economic outlook short term personal loans. The central bank forecasts growth of about 0.8 percent this year and around 1.2 percent in 2011.
European Aeronautic, Defence & Space & Co., the parent of Airbus SAS, on Jan. 12 reported its steepest annual revenue drop since the company went public a decade ago, partly because of a weaker dollar. Eckhard Cordes, chief executive officer of Metro AG, Germany’s biggest retailer, said on Jan. 12 that he anticipates economic conditions will remain “challenging” in 2010 after currency swings eroded fourth-quarter revenue.
Biggest Economy
Economies around the globe are emerging from the worst recession in six decades, led by China, where exports gained for the first time in 14 months in December. The Asian nation overtook Germany as the largest exporter of goods in 2009. Industrial output in the U.S., the world’s biggest economy, rose in December for a sixth month, data showed today.
Euro-area exports to the U.S., the region’s second-biggest trading partner, dropped 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2009 from a year earlier, today’s report showed. Shipments to the U.K., the largest market for euro-area goods, declined 24 percent, while exports to China rose 1 percent. The detailed country data are published with a one-month lag.
To help shore up earnings, companies have been cutting costs and paring wages. European unemployment rose to 10 percent in November. That’s the highest in more than 11 years. Koenig & Bauer AG, the world’s third-biggest printing-press maker, said last month that it plans to eliminate more jobs.
“China and other emerging countries bring in volume but not necessarily profit,” Koenig & Bauer CEO Helge Hansen said on Dec. 4 in Wuerzburg, Germany. “They help retain jobs, but they don’t help in terms of a positive balance.”
Bucks County drug-discovery company BioLeap raised $5 million in a venture capital financing Tuesday.
The financing was led by Quaker BioVentures of Philadelphia and Adams Capital Management of Sewickley, Pa.
BioLeap, of New Hope, Pa., plans to use the funding for business development, to support continued development of its computational fragment-based drug design and to pursue alternative models of early drug discovery.
The fragment-based drug design process involves using the company’s in-house computer cluster and proprietary algorithms to rapidly calculate the potential for small molecular fragments of biological compounds to bind to, and inhibit, targeted proteins.
David Pompliano, CEO of BioLeap, said, “We are using our computational method to design novel drugs for specific diseases, and to build the foundation for the next generation of drug discovery.”
Brenda Gavin, founding partner of Quaker BioVentures, said BioLeap, since its creation in 2004,
has demonstrated its ability to save drug discovery costs for pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical companies. “By minimizing nonproductive guesswork during the drug discovery process, BioLeap assists in bringing better drug candidates to market in a shorter period of time,” she said.
Gavin and William A. Frezza of Adams Capital Management will join BioLeap’s board of directors.
The government is expected to unveil a new program in the next couple of months that if approved may reimburse homeowners for up to half the cost of making their homes more efficient, but don’t start shopping for new kitchens just yet.
Homeowners will get the most return for the money in simple upgrades like caulking the windows, putting insulation in the attic, and changing the light bulbs - not new windows, refrigerators or dishwashers.
What’s on the table
The average American home wastes a lot of energy.
A complete energy retrofit - which could include caulking and insulation as well as new windows, appliances and boiler, could slice a home’s energy consumption in half, according to Lane Burt, manager of building energy policy at Natural Resources Defense Council.
But getting all that work done might run into the tens of thousands of dollars. And any new federal program - which is still being drafted and is not guaranteed to become law - would cap the government reimbursements at $12,000, said Burt.
Homeowners need not despair. There are some simple improvements that are relatively cheap and can pay for themselves quickly.
Just adding the insulation, caulking and lights might run an average homeowner $5,000 to $7,000, he said. That could shave about 30% off a home’s energy bill each month. And if the government picks up half the cost, the payback time for homeowners would be just a few years.
"It’s a win-win-win," said Burt. "It creates jobs, it saves energy, and it saves consumers money."
Consumer watchdog groups back up Burt’s claim.
"I don’t know of anyone who’s looked at them and said they are not a good idea," said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. "The average consumer can save a big chunk of change by getting the work done."
What to look for
Experts say there are a few things to look for when getting an energy audit and retrofit work done.
First, find a contractor licensed by the Building Performance Institute or the Residential Energy Services Network. These contractors have been trained to first test a home and see how much energy it is losing, then make renovations on all the systems in the building instant payday loans.
As of now there are no incentives in the proposed program for do-it-yourselfers. That’s partly because the program is designed to create jobs by putting out-of-work contractors back on the job. But it’s also done to ensure the work is done right - a house that’s sealed up too tight could rot from mold or trap too much carbon monoxide.
Second, hire an energy contractor using the same diligence you would with any other contractor. Call around for price quotes and check references. If you have any problems report them to your state’s attorney general.
The big picture
The proposed program is part of a broader jobs initiative designed first and foremost to put people back to work.
The original proposal, which called for $23 billion to be spent on energy retrofits, was estimated to create over half a million jobs, according to CleanEdison, an association of green building professionals.
Those familiar with the proposal say the final bill may set aside $10 billion for energy retrofits. Still, it’s a lot more than is currently being done - while some states have reimbursement programs, there is no federal plan. The original stimulus bill contained $5 billion for low income homeowners and money to retrofit federal buildings, but nothing for middle income Americans. The new proposal has no income restriction.
But in addition to creating jobs and saving consumers money, it also lays the framework for an energy efficient economy and achieving the 80% reduction in greenhouse gases most scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
That’s a target that can’t be hit with building wind farms and solar plants alone.
Some 40% of all energy used in this country goes to buildings, mostly in the form of heating, cooling and lighting.
"You don’t get an 80% reduction by 2050 without retrofitting nearly every building in the country," said Burt.
MIAMI — The nation’s roughly 1 million paid tax preparers will soon be regulated by the Internal Revenue Service, which plans to require competency tests and registration with the government.
The new regulations don’t kick in this year, in part because of the size of the undertaking, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said Monday. But the agency will soon send letters to 10,000 preparers with a record of errors on returns.
About 80 percent of taxpayers use a tax preparer or tax software to complete their annual returns. Most are unregulated, unless they are attorneys, certified public accountants or agents who represent taxpayers before the IRS.
More people are turning to preparers or software for help with their taxes as the tax code becomes more complex, he said.
"If we can have preparers fill out taxes right, the American people are well-served," Shulman said. "We’re going to get accurate returns and collect the right amount of money."
Concern about unscrupulous and untrained tax preparers has been longstanding, said Karen Reinagel, president of the Florida Society of Enrolled Agents, a group of tax professionals authorized by the federal government to represent taxpayers in dealings with the IRS. "The taxpayer has no idea if they’ve got the proper education, if they’ve kept up with continuing education," Reinagel said.
People expect hair dressers and auto mechanics to have passed certain tests and acquired certain licenses, and they may assume as much about their tax preparers.
"But if they’re not registered or licensed they don’t have to have an education," Reinagel said. "They wouldn’t think they would have to ask."
The system will be paid for through user fees by tax preparers who register with the government and take the IRS competency tests business card templates.
Eventually, the IRS said, it will have a searchable database for taxpayers to consult before working with a preparer.
Shulman said his agency was already studying potential regulations for tax preparers before recent criticism about abuse of large tax credits offered through federal stimulus laws.
In a report last month by the inspector general for tax administration, as of July 25, about 74,000 taxpayers had wrongly claimed $504 million through the first-time home buyers tax credit that was expanded in last year’s federal stimulus law. The credit pays $8,000 to first time buyers and $6,500 to current owners if they buy a new home.
"Any time there’s a large, refundable tax credit, you’re going to see fraud _ people trying to claim the credit where it’s not earned," Shulman said.
The EITC _ Earned Income Tax Credit _ for low-income individuals and families is also a source of fraud. The credit offers up to $5,600 to those who qualify. Shulman praised that program as having lifted more people out of poverty than any program in the country.
In addition to the new regulations for preparers, IRS agents will visit thousands of tax preparers, sometimes without advance notice. Some agents will pose as taxpayers to gauge what kind of advice a preparer offers. These visits will begin this year.
And the IRS has set up a task force to review tax preparation software and review businesses that offer refund advances.
The rules won’t apply to volunteers who help low-income families and individuals prepare their taxes. But those who work at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program already must pass a test before working on others’ returns.
Companies in the U.S. expanded in December at the fastest pace in almost four years, signaling the economic recovery is gaining speed heading into 2010.
The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its barometer rose to 60, exceeding the most optimistic estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the highest level since January 2006. The gauge, in which readings greater than 50 signal expansion, showed companies boosted production and employment as orders climbed.
Stimulus programs and discounting have propelled a rebound in global sales that is reducing stockpiles, which may spur manufacturers to further increase production in coming months. Caterpillar Inc. is among companies that may recall dismissed staff, pointing to gains in employment that will drive consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.
“Manufacturing is now moving into recovery,” said David Sloan, senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, whose estimate was the highest among economists surveyed. “Inventories are rebuilding and exports are looking strong, with the Asian economies looking firmer and the dollar weak.”
Stocks drifted between gains and losses. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was little changed to close at 1,126.42.
Exceeds Estimates
Economists projected the Chicago index would drop to 55.1 from 56.1 in November, based on the median estimate of 53 projections in the Bloomberg survey. Forecasts ranged from 52 to 58.5.
The group’s gauge of orders climbed to the highest level in more than two years and its measure of employment showed growth for the first time since November 2007, the month before the recession began. Indexes of production and order backlogs also improved.
Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, will bring back some laid-off workers next year as sales improve, said Chief Executive Officer Jim Owens.
“We’ll gradually begin to call people back and to rebuild our overall sales and ability to ship product,” Owens said in a Dec. 11 interview with Bloomberg Television. “I think it will gradually begin to pick up as 2010 unfolds.”
Caterpillar cut about 18,700 full-time jobs and about the same number of temporary workers since December 2008 as the global recession reduced demand. The Peoria, Illinois-based company predicts 2010 sales will increase as much as 25 percent from the midpoint of the 2009 forecast range.
Early Indicator
Economists watch the Chicago index for an early reading on the outlook for overall U.S. manufacturing, which makes up about 12 percent of the economy. The group has said their membership includes both manufacturers and service providers, making the gauge a measure of overall growth.
The Tempe, Arizona-based Institute for Supply Management’s factory index probably rose this month to 54 from 53.6 in November, according to a survey median. That report is due Jan. 4.
The world’s largest economy expanded at a 2.2 percent pace from July through September after a yearlong contraction that was the worst since the 1930s, figures from the Commerce Department showed last week. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast growth to pick up to a 3 percent pace in the fourth quarter and average 2.6 percent for all of 2010.
Exports rose for the sixth month in October as economies worldwide rebounded from the global economic slump. A 13 percent drop in the dollar since March 5 against a basket of six major currencies also making American goods more competitive to overseas buyers.
Inventories Increase
Inventories at U.S. companies rose in October for the first time in more than a year, the government said Dec. 11, a sign firms are boosting production in line with rising sales.
United Parcel Service Inc. Chief Executive Officer Scott Davis said Dec. 2 that shipping demand was starting to improve as companies rebuild inventory and consumers began holiday shopping. UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, is considered a bellwether for the economy because it handles goods ranging from auto parts to electronics to clothing.
“Inventory has gotten real low,” Davis said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We think there will be some replenishment of inventories going forward, so the outlook is much better.”
– With assistance from Will Daley in Chicago and Betty Liu in New York. Editors: Carlos Torres, Vince Golle
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