The level of background noise affects both the intensity of flavour and the perceived crunchiness of foods, researchers have found.Read More......
Blindfolded diners assessed the sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness, as well as overall flavour, of foods as they were played white noise.
While louder noise reduced the reported sweetness or saltiness, it increased the measure of crunch.
Employer-sponsored 401(k) retirement plans will have to disclose fees that savers pay on investments and transactions by 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor said.Read More......
“Participants will be able to understand the dramatic effect fees play in the returns that they get,” Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi said in a conference call today.
The regulations, which will apply to the plans by Jan. 1, 2012, will require companies to provide investors information on administrative and investment fees charged to their accounts in their quarterly statements, the Labor Department said.
Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiabo encouraged crime in China, the government said Thursday, while telling his supporters to stop interfering in his case.Read More......
China has been issuing angry statements and rejecting calls for Liu's release since the Norwegian Nobel Committee honored him Oct. 8 for his more than two decades of advocacy of human rights and peaceful democratic change that started with the demonstrations at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The 54-year-old literary critic is serving an 11-year prison term after being convicted of inciting subversion for his role in writing an influential 2008 manifesto for political reform.
Wall Street initially hoped the banks would do just that but as the political furor grew, a quick end to the crisis was looking less and less likely. On Wednesday, 50 state attorneys general announced they were investigating the practices of the mortgage servicing industry, while Florida’s attorney general subpoenaed the nation’s largest mortgage processor, L.P.S., as part of a broader investigation.Read More......
In some cases, officials at mortgage servicers signed hundreds of documents a day with barely a chance to review them — the so-called robo-signers — while doubts have arisen about the veracity of the original documents compiled as part of the foreclosure process.
“I don’t see how it can be cleared up in a short period of time,” said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with Rochdale Securities. “The moratorium won’t last that long but the problem will last at least four or five years, maybe a decade.” In the short term, he said, “it could easily cost $1.5 billion per quarter.”
The put-back crisis is not driven by economics. It is driven by legal rights. And there’s simply zero probability that the politicians in Washington are going to let Bank of America or Citigroup or JP Morgan Chase fail because of a legal issue.Read More......
So here’s what I expect will happen. The lame duck session of Congress will pass a bill that essentially papers over the misdeeds of the banks that originated mortgage securities. Every member of Congress and every Senator who has been voted out of office will cast a vote for the bill. And the President will sign it.
Will the public be outraged? Probably. Financial bloggers will scream from the high heavens against another bailout of the banksters. Congress may try to create some cost for banks in exchange for the forgiveness, perhaps requiring more mortgage modifications.
Historically, black turnout for midterm elections has lagged behind the national average, but two new reports offer a bullish outlook for this year.Read More......
A major survey conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University found that 80 percent of black Democrats are as interested or more interested in the midterms than they were in the 2008 presidential election, when their enthusiasm helped propel Barack Obama into office.
This year, 62 percent of all black Democrats say they're likely to encourage others to support certain candidates, according to the survey, compared with 47 percent of white Democrats and 57 percent of all Republicans.
Democrats say the recession would have been worse if the government didn't step in with those programs to prop up the economy.It's not Democrats, it's the CBO. Why doesn't AP simply tells its readers the truth, rather than playing this false he-said-she-said? Read More......
Last month I wrote about the potential that early voting might help the Democrats overcome the much-discussed "enthusiasm gap," because although an unenthusiastic voter might skip going to the polls on election day they might get cajoled to turn in a ballot if harangued over the course of a couple of weeks. Judging by the early numbers, it seems as though this dynamic may in fact be playing out much to the Democrats' advantage [in Ohio and Iowa].Read More......
The 13 percent decline in the Dollar Index since June has led some OPEC members to call for oil to rise to $100 a barrel.Read More......
The U.S. currency’s weakness means the “real price” of oil is about $20 less than current levels, Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said after yesterday’s meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna. The group, which accounts for 40 percent of global crude output, left targets unchanged and called for greater adherence to quotas, which are being exceeded by a supertanker load a day.
The battle for control of the House has tightened in 58 competitive districts across the country, according to the newest NPR poll of the congressional battlefield. Democrats trail Republicans in those seats by a three-point gap, lagging 44 percent to 47 percent. In June, Democrats had 41 percent support to the GOP’s 49 percent. The big caveat comes from Glen Bolger, who tells NPR “the bad news for Democrats is that there are now more of their seats at risk. The battleground has expanded. ‘That's a succinct way to put it," Bolger said. ‘Having Republicans ahead or tied across 86 districts just gives Republicans a much larger margin for error to win back the House.’ … Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg sees a small, but silver lining. ‘This is still an election that it would be very hard for Democrats to hold the House with these numbers,’ Greenberg said. ‘But there is movement here and it's not trivial movement.’”Read More......
The late-campaign airing of allegations of ethical misconduct in the race for an open New Hampshire House seat could produce the rare spectacle of a member of Congress facing an ethics investigation shortly after entering office.Yeah, that's just what one should want in a Congressman -- an immediate trip to the Ethics Committee. Bass served under Tom DeLay for years. Apparently, he learned well from that sleazebag. Dean Baker at Blue Hampshire sums it up perfectly:
On Thursday morning, the Nashua Telegraph published a fairly damning story about former Congressman Charlie Bass (R-N.H.) who is running for his old seat, currently held by Senatorial candidate Paul Hodes (D-N.H.). According to the paper, Bass helped set up a business meeting benefiting a New Hampshire wood pellet company at the same time that he held $500,000 worth of privately held stock in that company. Days after Bass left office in January 2007, he took a position on that company's board.
To me this is exhibit A on the sleazy nature of revolving door Washington politics.Close that door on Bass, please, New Hampshire voters. Read More......
[T]he mortgage mess is making nonsense of claims that we have effective contract enforcement — in fact, the question is whether our economy is governed by any kind of rule of law.And the telling details (my emphasis):
Horror stories have been proliferating, like the case of the Florida man whose home was taken even though he had no mortgage. More significantly, certain players have been ignoring the law. Courts have been approving foreclosures without requiring that mortgage servicers produce appropriate documentation; instead, they have relied on affidavits asserting that the papers are in order. And these affidavits were often produced by “robo-signers,” or low-level employees who had no idea whether their assertions were true.So much for the myth of the dark-skinned Other (plus Barney Frank) forcing reluctant banks to make loans to the Great Undeserving. As a consequence of all this, as Krugman says: "[M]any of the foreclosures now taking place are, in fact, illegal."
Now an awful truth is becoming apparent: In many cases, the documentation doesn’t exist. In the frenzy of the bubble, much home lending was undertaken by fly-by-night companies trying to generate as much volume as possible.
Republicans in Congress are lying low, but conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.Where's that law and order when you need it? Sorry, not for the small people; only for your Betters, the Barons of the New America. Nice that the Professor picks up on the nobles vs. peasants imagery. It's hardly a metaphor any more.
UBS sought to brush its disastrous performance during the financial crisis under the carpet yesterday by admitting mistakes but ruling out any legal action against its former bosses.Read More......
The bank said that while there were grounds for it to pursue them through the civil courts, it had decided to take no action, in part because court cases would generate negative public relations and prevent the restoration of its "good name".
UBS said: "Experience has shown that such cases last many years, generate high costs, lead to negative international publicity and thus hamper UBS's efforts to restore its good name in the markets in which it operates."
The program is intended to put more locally grown food in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, invest in training and infrastructure for small and medium-sized farmers particularly in emerging markets and begin to measure the efficiently of large suppliers in growing and getting their produce to market.Read More......
Given that Wal-Mart is the world’s largest grocer, with one of the biggest food supply chains, any changes that it makes would have wide reaching implications. Wal-Mart’s decision five years ago to set sustainability goals that, among other things, increased its reliance on renewable energy and reduced packaging waste among its supplies, sent broad ripples through product manufacturers. Large companies like Procter & Gamble redesigned packages that are now also carried by other retailers, while Wal-Mart’s measurements of environmental efficiency among its suppliers helped define how they needed to change.
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