The firm claims Smith had argued unsuccessfully for a raise before resigning with a scathing op-ed in the New York Times earlier this year.
See the original post: Goldman Sachs hits back at Greg Smith
Category : Stocks, World News
MercadoLibre (MELI -3.4%) closed lower after Stifel (Sell) argued once again (previous) Amazon (AMZN) is planning to enter the Brazilian e-commerce market. Brazil accounted for nearly half of MercadoLibre’s Q2 revenue, with sales growing at a 36% Y/Y clip. Also, Deutsche launched coverage with a Hold, declaring shares “fairly valued” at current levels. 
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Category : Stocks
“It’s a hoodlum [Qihoo] versus a monopoly [Baidu], so who should we help? Participating in this war is really [expletive] stupid.,” says the CTO of Sohu (SOHU), whose Sogou search engine is China’s second-biggest. The remarks are particularly notable given Sohu’s CEO had earlier remarked Sogou “has to take part in this search war.” Qihoo nemesis
Category : World News
AT&T (T) once more provokes a consumer backlash by stating Apple’s (AAPL) FaceTime video-calling app can only be used over its network by users subscribed to a costly shared data plan. “Exceptionally hostile to net neutrality,” declares The Verge. Perhaps it’s fitting the move comes a day after BGR argued AT&T was more inept at PR than Verizon (VZ), in light of the latter’s ability to win regulatory approval for its spectrum purchases, and the former’s failure to do so for the T-Mobile acquisition. 3 comments!
Category : Business
Being an average $40k better off than our US cousins should feel good – but revelling in their fall is ultimately un-Canadian
Just in time for the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812, Canada is now, for the first time in history, wealthier than the United States. Over the last five years, the average Canadian’s net worth has gradually overtaken that of the average American’s, to the tune of an extra $40,000 dollars per household.
The coincidence that such a statistic would materialise just as Canada celebrates the bicentennial of its first and founding war is not without significance. If you’re not as familiar with the war of 1812, I’ll give you a brief primer: it’s the one where Canadians fought off an American invasion and burned down the White House. Before the US invaded, William Eustis, the then secretary for war, stated: “We can take the Canadas without soldiers. We have only to send officers into the provinces and the people will rally round our standard.” Those words would go down in hilarious infamy after troops marched on Washington and set fire to the presidential residence. It’s far more complicated than that, but for brevity’s sake that’s all you really need to know. Though I’m told Americans tend to disagree on who actually won the damn thing.
Despite being largely forgotten by the Americans after it was over with, the war of 1812 has become Canada’s primary foundation myth; right up there with the establishment of universal healthcare, the 1972 Summit Series and the conspiracy theory that Tim Horton’s coffee is laced with nicotine. But unlike US myths, which mutate to the rhythm of pop-culture trends, Canadian myths require a near-constant buttressing – which goes some way in explaining why Stephen Harper’s government just spent $28m on a marketing campaign to make Canadians more aware of the war’s importance.
One specific point of pride that is often tendered whenever the war of 1812 makes the news is how the conflict brought together Canada’s various disparate peoples in their opposition to American annexation, beginning what would become our long march towards a gradual and politely restrained nationhood.
Since 1812 Canada has defeated the US many, many times – but most of those rematches have been limited to the ice rink, where Canadian prowess remains largely unchallenged. For the past two centuries Canada has had to sit by idly without being able to defeat America at anything it truly cares about. But to finally overcome the US in terms of wealth accumulation is to beat it at its own game. It’s like the Saskatchewan RoughRiders winning the Superbowl.
This recent bump in household wealth is of course due to a number of factors, the most curious of which is Canada’s efforts to transform itself into the world’s dominant oil power. Nowadays, we’re so rich from oil money that our money is literally made from oil. But there are more compelling, systemic reasons why Canadians have continued to prosper while our southern cousins falter and stagnate.
Pundits have spent the week floating a variety of theories: Stephen Marche, renowned mythologiser of all things Canuck, argued that it was due to Canada’s unique brand of “ruthless socialism“. To this, the anti-socialist crowd argued the shift was actually due to Canada becoming more capitalist, just as the US began to experiment with wealth redistribution. Others argued that it was all about the mortgage regulations, stupid.
Regardless of the reason, Canadians truly believe that our social democracy-lite is fundamentally better than the man-bites-dog-Superpac-devours-man market democracy of the US.
And now, it seems it’s also more profitable. It wasn’t too long ago that Canada was being routinely denounced by US politicos as “Soviet Canuckistan”, and held up as a frightful example of what the US would look like if liberalism were allowed to run amok. We haven’t heard much of that since 2008. The triumph of the Canadian system over America’s spelled out in the cold truth of dollar signs picks up where the war of 1812 left off. After 200 years of graceful acrimony, the Canadian standard has at last proven to be the superior of the two systems.
But while such conclusions deliver a pleasurable bit of schadenfreude, revelling in America’s fall from the top is ultimately un-Canadian. Being richer than an America that has seen its blue-collar cities gutted and its middle class begin to hollow out is a rather empty sort of victory. Especially when you begin to suspect that we’re not actually winning, we’re just losing more slowly.
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Firms warned that plan to boost minimum annual leave from four to six weeks could harm competitiveness and job security
Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to increase employees’ annual minimum paid holiday entitlement from four to six weeks, after firms warned it might hurt competitiveness and threaten jobs.
The initiative was put forward by the trade union Travail.Suisse, which argued that four weeks’ holiday was insufficient because the pressure of work had increased so much in recent decades, causing stress and health problems.
But Swiss television said initial figures showed the proposal had been rejected by a clear 67% of voters on Sunday.
Travail.Suisse said the referendum had taken place at a bad time due to economic concerns over the eurozone crisis.
“For many voters, it was understandable that current concerns about their own jobs took precedence over the long-term welfare of people and Swiss business,” it said in a statement. “With their fear-mongering campaign, the opponents of the initiative played with the uncertainty of workers.”
The main employers’ association, which had lobbied hard against the proposal, welcomed the result. It said in a statement: “The no to the holiday initiative means above all a yes to the maintenance of the competitiveness of Swiss companies and the securing of jobs.
“Adoption of the initiative would have pushed up already high labour costs in Switzerland and burdened business with additional costs of 6bn Swiss francs a year.”
It had argued that longer holidays would hurt firms already battling to cope with the impact of the safe-haven franc rising in value since the financial crisis, driven in particular by investors fleeing the eurozone.
Average Swiss holiday entitlement is already about five weeks, as many firms offer more than the statutory minimum.
In 2002, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to cut the working week from 42 hours to 36 hours.
Referendums are central to Switzerland’s political system of direct democracy, and have been held on topics ranging from health insurance to smoking bans.
In a separate vote on Sunday, Swiss voters narrowly approved a proposal to limit the building of holiday homes, which are seen by many as a blight in Alpine villages.
Financier faces up to 20 years in prison after jury finds him guilty of conspiracy and 12 other charges including obstruction
Allen Stanford, the Texan financier, knight of Antigua, Washington power player and billionaire benefactor of English cricket, has been found guilty of orchestrating a $7bn Ponzi scheme.
After a six-week trial in Houston, Texas, a jury found him guilty of conspiracy and 12 other criminal charges including obstruction. He was acquitted of one wire fraud charge.
Stanford, who turns 62 on 24 March, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced.
The jury of eight men and four women had appeared to be deadlocked on Monday and had to be given instructions by the judge, David Hittner. Outside, family members had gathered to offer their support.
“I’m hoping for the best,” Stanford’s 84-year-old father, James, told the Houston Chronicle as he waited for the verdict. “We support him 100%. In fact, 150%.”
During the trial prosecutors argued that Stanford used his clients’ money to fuel his “lavish lifestyle and his loser companies” in a massive Ponzi scheme that spanned two decades. Stanford, they argued, conned investors into buying certificates of deposit, or CDs, from his bank on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua, telling them they were a safe investment. Instead the bank was “his own personal ATM”, the prosecutor William Stellmach said.
By 2008 Stanford’s bank owed depositors more than $7bn that it did not have and Stanford had blown huge chunks of that cash on luxury yachts, private jets and cricket sponsorship.
In damning testimony James Davis, Stanford Financial Group’s former chief financial officer, told jurors his boss was “the chief faker” – a man who threatened to fire anyone who questioned the $2bn prosecutors say he pocketed from his Antiguan bank.
The picture that emerged during Davis’s testimony was one of a long spending spree to disaster. By the end of December 2008 Stanford International Bank had only $88m in cash, but claimed to hold $1bn in assets.
As worried investors pulled out their cash, Davis told the court Stanford tried to use his beloved Antigua to bail him out. He cooked the books and 1,500 undeveloped acres Stanford had bought on the island for $64m were set to be valued at $3.2bn, Davis told the court.
Stanford’s attorneys argued that the bank would be solvent today if the US government had not shut it down in February 2009. They did not put the businessman on the witness stand, although Stanford had reportedly wanted to testify.
Steven Cohen, the billionaire founder of SAC Capital Advisors LP, hid $5.5 million from his ex-wife during their 1990 divorce, her lawyer argued before a federal appeals panel in a bid to reinstate her lawsuit.
More here: SAC’s Cohen Hid $5.5 Million From Ex-Wife, Lawyer Argues
Japan and the United States clashed with each other over nuclear inspection provisions with the International Atomic Energy Agency in the late 1960s because of Washington’s demand that it and other countries possessing nuclear weapons be treated differently, according to newly declassified diplomatic documents.
In 1969, one year before signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Japan argued for the need to maintain equality with the United States and other nuclear “haves” in the face of an IAEA position that only those without nuclear weapons must submit themselves to mandatory inspections under its safeguards provisions.
Read more: U.S. clashed over IAEA inspections in 1960s: papers