Italy has the highest level in Europe of young people who are neither in education nor employment, at 23.9 percent, the study showed. In Italy's impoverished south, one in three people aged 15-29 fell into this group.

The number of people living in families considered to be seriously deprived has doubled in the past two years to 8.6 million, or about 14 percent of the population, ISTAT said. Families who meet more than four of nine poverty indicators are considered seriously deprived. These include not being able to heat their home adequately, which affected one in five people in 2012 according to the report, twice as many as in 2010.

The percentage of people in families who could not afford to eat a protein-based meal such as meat every two days rose to 16.6 percent in 2012 from 12.4 the previous year and 6.7 percent in 2010.

About 14.9 million people, or a quarter of Italy's 61 million population, are living in families that meet three of more of ISTAT's poverty indicators.

Just 57.6 percent of young people who graduated within the last three years are in employment, well below a European average of 77.2 percent, the data showed.

Italians' purchasing power fell by 4.8 percent last year, an "exceptionally steep" decline caused largely by aggressive tax hikes aimed at strengthening public finances, following four years of smaller falls, ISTAT said.

A traditionally high savings rate in Italy has dwindled steadily and is now far below those of France and Germany, with the situation becoming particularly acute in the poor south, the report said.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/22/us-italy-economy-poverty-idUSBRE94L0AX20130522

But, of course as some guys told us previously, if we look at this data properly, all this people just went into undegraund and invisible small manufacturing sector that store all the products in the basement not selling them, hence all the statistic data.

Fresh data showed industrial production in March fell 7.6pc from a year earlier, dropping for the 15th consecutive month. New orders fell 10pc.

Country’s industrial output fell back to levels reached in 1979 and continue to fall.

The EU expects Italy’s economy to contract by 1.3pc this year, pushing the debt ratio to 131pc of GDP. Many private forecasters fear far worse

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10069752/Italys-industrial-output-falls-back-to-1970s.html

As nowadays the right to health care depends on the number of days that someone has worked during the previous year, the long-term unemployed and the uninsured workers lose their access to health care. In the meantime, the health services offered to the general population have been reduced, since several public hospitals and prevention centers have been shut down as a result of the cuts (40%) in the health and welfare budget, combined with the introduction of increased fees even for the insured patients. These problems, combined with the critical situation of the public hospitals still functioning (many suffer by tragic shortages in personnel and even in basic material, such as medicines, disinfectants, bandages etc.) and the inability of many citizens (mainly pensioners) to pay the much increased share for their medicaments, has led even the EU’s Centre for Disease Control to warn against an imminent outbreak of viral infections, hospital viruses, contagious diseases, HIV etc.

The rapid decline of the heating oil consumption is another indication of the ongoing extreme pauperization of the population: compared to 2011 (a year that was marked already by a first sharp decrease in heating oil consumption), there is a 75% decrease of the consumption in December 2012, despite the cold spell in the biggest part of the country. A large part of the population is suffering today by cold because of the unforeseen successive increase of taxes imposed on heating oil by the Troika and the government, which resulted to the sharp rise of its price (average prices per liter 2009: 0,57 euro, 2010: 0,71 euro, 2011: 0,91 euro, and in 2012: 1,37 euro).

The hunger is spreading rapidly all over the country, especially in the urban areas, for the first time since the era of the Nazi occupation. There are no available data on national level, but the case of the Diocese of Neapolis and Stavroupolis (two suburbs of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece) is a characteristic example: in 2010 the soup kitchens of the Diocese offered meals to 1.387 destitute and homeless citizens, in 2011 to 2.445 citizens, and in 2012 to 5.223 citizens. Another example is the desperate call of teachers’ unions in several regions of the country, informing the authorities that many pupils arrive hungry at school, with constantly increasing cases of daily faint of pupils in the classrooms due to hunger. Moreover, the hospital doctors’ association has announced that a constantly increasing number of infants are brought to public hospitals with severe stomach upsets – the reason is that their parents cannot afford to feed them with the (very expensive) baby milk and other infant feeding products; instead, they buy the cheapest products for adults.

According to the European Commission itself, between 2009 and 2011 Greece has suffered the most violent drop in “real household disposable income”: the Greek households lost 17% of their real disposable income, while the other Southern European households counted income losses ranging from 5% (Ireland) to 8% (Spain). And the data for 2012 are yet to come… Most of the Greek workers and employees, both in the private and in the public sector (as well as the pensioners), have lost 30% or 40% or even 50% of their income during these nightmarish three years. And, yet, they are considered as the "lucky" ones, since they continue to have a job! A job that now is paid € 586 (gross!) per month, while those under 25 receive a monthly salary of € 511 (always gross!). The reality is even worse, though: In the private sector, many employers are blackmailing the workers and employees and oblige them to accept “salaries” of € 300, of course without any social insurance. On top, many employers (including “established” multinational firms and big enterprises) are not paying even these ridiculous salaries during many months. Thus, they transform their employees into hostages who continue to work without payment, hoping to receive sometime at least a part of their due salaries.

http://international.koel.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=178:social-aspects-of-the-greek-drama-and-the-struggle-for-a-way-out-1412013&catid=14:other-documents&Itemid=13

Let's look at http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

Average annual hours per worker in 2011:

• Greece - 2032
• Spain - 1690
• UK - 1625
• Germany - 1413
• France - 1476

PC shipments in Western Europe totaled 12.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013, a decline of 20.5% from the corresponding period of 2012, >according to Gartner.

"The first quarter of 2013 brought the worst quarterly decline in Western Europe since Gartner started tracking PC shipments in this region," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Wide availability of Windows 8-based PCs could not boost consumer PC purchases during the quarter. Although the new Metro-style user interface suits new form factors, users wonder about its suitability for traditional PCs - non-touchscreen desktops and notebooks."

All PC segments in Western Europe exhibited on-year declines in the first quarter of 2013. Mobile and desktop shipments fell by 24.6% and 13.8%, respectively. Shipments to the professional PC market declined by 17.2%, while those to the consumer PC market decreased by 23.7%.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer both recorded declines of over 30%. However, despite seeing its consumer notebook volumes halve during the quarter, HP remained the market leader.

In the first quarter of 2013, the mobile PC market accounted for 62% of PC shipments in France as volumes decreased by 26%. "One reason for the decline was a drop in netbook shipments, which represented less than 1% of all notebook shipments in France during the quarter," said Durand. The decline in desktops, of 24%, was less steep than that of mobile PCs

Via: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20130516PR204.html

The Greek government said Monday it will use emergency powers to prevent protesting teachers from disrupting university entrance exams this month. Civil servants' unions retaliated by calling a 24-hour strike for Tuesday.

It is the third time this year that the conservative-led coalition government has used the emergency civil mobilization order — a measure normally reserved for natural disasters and other times of national crisis — to end a labor dispute in the crisis-hit country.

More than 2,000 teachers — some dressed in army fatigues to mock the order — and left-wing unionists held two separate, peaceful protests in central Athens late Monday.

Tuesday's nationwide strike is expected to close schools and disrupt public services. Civil servants' union officials told the AP on Monday that the union was also planning a work stoppage Thursday and a series of public protests.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said the government decided to use the civil mobilization order against the teachers under its "moral obligation" to safeguard the May 17-31 exams for school leavers and university candidates.

Via: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/greece-emergency-power-striking-teachers-19166051

Now one remember them to use emergency power to help teachers by butchering banks? No? Strange.

This guys are working hard :-)

With more than 6 million people unemployed for the first time, Spain's jobless rate shot up to a record 27.2% in the first quarter, the National Statistics Institute said Thursday, in another grim picture of the recession-wracked country.

The agency said the number of people unemployed rose 237,400 the first three months of the year, a 1.1% increase from the previous quarter. The number of people out of work stood at 6.2 million, first time the number has breached 6 million.

yet

Anti-government protestors would stage another attempt to "Surround Congress," just 24 hours before the latest round of economic and fiscal reforms, which will almost certainly include further spending cuts, are to be announced by the government of Mariano Rajoy.

In reality it is all completely pointless. I mean here asking elites to stop destruction of middle class. This guys really never understand good words.

Useful book.

Media talking heads complain that Washington is “dysfunctional.” But it is functioning very well—in the interests of those at the top of the economic pyramid. Growing inequality is not an accident. The rich are getting richer from the same policies that are making American workers poorer.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending/dp/0470182393/

The US economy will officially become 3 per cent bigger in July as part of a shake-up that will see government statistics take into account 21st century components such as film royalties and spending on research and development.

Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the gross domestic product of the world’s largest economy in a revision aimed at capturing the changing nature of US output.

Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times that the update was the biggest since computer software was added to the accounts in 1999.

“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” said Mr Moulton.

GDP will now include:

1. Research & Development
2. Artistic Originals
3. Pension Accounting among other items

Via: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-21/us-gdp-will-be-revised-higher-500-billion-following-addition-intangibles-economy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21814325

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/16/eurozone-cyprus-anger-idUSL6N0C81DL20130316

http://pawelmorski.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/cyprus-a-brutal-lesson-in-realpolitik-2/

In the late sixties the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an appar- ently paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be summarized as follows: //Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he reaches his level of maximum incompetence//

If you do not have Peter's books, get them and read.
They contain much more than only this principle.
They are about fundamental things - monkeys natural habit to form hierarchies and are very useful in life.

Our computational study of the Peter principle process applied to a prototypical organization with pyramidal hierarchical structure shows that the strategy of promoting the best members in the PH case induces a rapid decrease of efficiency, while it works well only if members would ide- ally maintain their competence at each level, an hypothesis that, although in agreement with common sense, seems in practice very unrealistic in the major- ity of the real situations. On the other hand we obtained the counterintuitive result that the best strategies for improving, or at least for not diminishing, the efficiency of an organization, when one ignores the actual mechanism of competence transmission, are those of promoting an agent at random or of randomly alternating the promotion of the best and the worst members. We think that these results could be useful to guide the management of large real hierarchical systems of different natures and in different fields.

Via: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.0455.pdf

Slightly more fun math.

Knowledge is Power. Time is Money.

Work/Time = Power

Now make substitution:

Work/Money = Knowledge

or

Work/Knowledge = Money

The less you know, the more you get :-)

I'll ignore ultra liberal fluff, as it is just waste of time, but set of proposed solutions from smarter ones is quite typical.

Most popular one is reindustrialisation and moving manufacturing back to Europe and US. Combined with some sort of customs fees preventing competition with foreight goods.

Issue here is that current crisis is fundamental, tightly connected to population numbers, automatization, energy, land and resources available. Plus extreme complexity of current systems and products. Reindustrialization, unfortunately is not solution for all this problems.

Usually target country has enery deficit, trade deficit, issues with working force, issues with logistics due other sectors also moved away. Worst things here is that it needs big amount of energy and resources, and this, in turn could mean life level drop. In global scale in means less efficient energy usage (due to reducing scale and concentration and also due to bigger consumption standards of new workers) and increased complexity. Such approach could work perfect on the left slope of energy curve, with big amount of cheap energy. And we saw exactly this. Now it won't work.

You can also try to make most of population work in small firms that use old primitive approach requiring many unskilled workers, but it'll require more energy, more land and more resources. Only easy solution is to reduce population on large scale.

Another popular idea is regulation of commercial banks. Issue here is misunderstanding of banks role. Banks in their current form had been made to solve fucking rabbits problem. Potential(!) resources and possibilities had been so vast that most effective approach was to just "make" money via multiplier and lend it to everyone who could use them. As this is not the case now, system stopped working properly. And use of any usual measures won't run it again. So, commercial banks will be destroyed. Corporations hope that they'll be in charge of superbanks, as if it won't happen most of them will share commercial banks destiny. I am almost sure that this attempt will fail.

Unemployment rate is already 26pc and lay-offs are continuing at an alarming pace. Labour specialists AML Afi-Asempleo said the economy would shed 300,000 jobs over the first three months of this year.

The ratio of unemployed to the number of jobs available has risen to a record 107.

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9925876/Italys-companies-face-slow-death-as-credit-crunch-deepens.html

Via: http://www.slideshare.net/DouglasWestwood/sns2012-1-mar-2012-jw-slideshare

Google's Motorola Mobility unit is to shed another 1,200 jobs or 10 percent of its workforce as the smartphone maker tries to return to profitability, Google said on Friday.

The lay-offs come on top of the 4,000 jobs cut at Motorola Mobility in August as Google seeks to make more smartphones and fewer simple handsets.

Via: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-google-motorola-idUSBRE92707C20130308

Best Buy - 200 to 250

Kmart - 175 to 225

Sears - 100 to 125

J.C. Penney - 300 to 350

Office Depot - 125 to 150

Barnes & Noble - 190 to 240

Gamestop - 500 to 600

OfficeMax - 150 to 175

RadioShack - 450 to 550

Via: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eight-retailers-that-will-close-the-most-stores-173320796.html?page=1

Personal income decreased $505.5 billion, or 3.6 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $491.4 billion, or 4.0 percent, in January, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $18.2 billion, or 0.2 percent. In December, personal income increased $353.4 billion, or 2.6 percent, DPI increased $325.7 billion, or 2.7 percent, and PCE increased $14.8 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.

Real disposable income decreased 4.0 percent in January, in contrast to an increase of 2.7 percent in December. Real PCE increased 0.1 percent, the same increase as in December.

Via: http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm

The total units made by eight major Japanese automakers for their domestic market fell 10.6 percent year-on-year in January to 714,580, the companies said.

Among the majors, Honda Motor Co.'s domestic production for January plunged 40.3 percent to 58,772 vehicles, Kyodo News reported.

Nissan Motor Co. January production was down 26.4 percent to 70,698 units, while Toyota Motor Corp. production slipped 5.7 percent to 278,804 vehicles.

Via: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2013/02/27/Japanese-domestic-auto-production-drops/UPI-55191362021177/

Same data in slightly different view:

Small bump:

And cost of this bump is far from small, as oil is much harder to get now:

Projections:

Issues with new stuff:

EROI is dropping as it is clear from charts below, it means that more and more of oil are going not to consumption, but to producing oil, so all this fancy bumps are, in fact, much worse :-)

This leads to much quicker reduction of net energy available to people, check that happens with right part of bell curve:

And finally most important chart:

The bamboo species Melocanna baccifera blossoms en masse approximately every 48 years. This particular type of bamboo grows throughout a large area of Northeast India (primarily in Mizoram and Manipur States) as well as regions of Burma (mainly Chin State) and Bangladesh (Hill Tracts.) It densely covers valleys and hillsides in the typically rugged terrain of the region. The blossoming bamboo produces fruit, then dies off.

The fruit has a large seed, resembles avocado, and is packed with protein and other nutrients. During the fruiting stage of the cycle, local species of forest rats feed on the bamboo fruits/seeds. The rats cease cannibalizing their young and begin to reproduce in an accelerated birth surge, producing a new rat generation as often as every three months. Once the burgeoning population of rats has stripped the forest of bamboo fruit/seeds, nocturnal rat swarms quietly invade farms and villages to devour crops and stored rice, other grains, potatoes, maize, other vegetables, chili, and sesame.

The rodents often grow to particularly large sizes and can gnaw through bamboo and wood floors, walls, storage containers and granaries. This phenomenon has historically resulted in mass starvation among the indigenous peoples of the region where Melocanna baccifera bamboo grows. According to The Times of India, "the last flowering in Mizoram, in 1958-59, caused a famine that killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of livelihoods." The bamboo flowering and rat infestation cycle has in the past lasted for about three years, until the rats run out of food and their populations return to normal.

Via: http://www.projectmaje.org/mautam.htm

See more charts by country, and sector at http://www.imaa-institute.org/statistics-mergers-acquisitions.html#MergersAcquisitions_Worldwide

One trend which has become blatantly apparent since mid-2012 is that M&A is the preferred growth strategy for US & UK companies. Rather than opting for the lengthier and often more costly process of developing their own operations, companies are more and more commonly seeking to acquire other companies operations with the view of integrating them into their own thus saving costs of development of personnel, buildings and infrastructure. What we are hearing first hand is that companies would much rather acquire existing operations in order to save time in order to capitalize on current market conditions as quickly as possible.

Via: http://www.benchmarkcorporate.com/2013/02/21/2013-ma-activity-the-story-so-far%E2%80%A6/

Global mergers and acquisitions rose to the highest level in four years this quarter, as a surge in U.S. deals provided ground for optimism and salvaged what had been the worst year for takeovers since the financial crisis. Companies worldwide have announced $691.9 billion in purchases in the final three months of the year, the most since the third quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Via: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-27/fourth-quarter-m-a-surge-spurs-optimism-after-2012-deals-decline.html

Banks and real owners are assembling huge conglomerates :-)

This week, the people of Nottingham welcomed Goliath with open arms. An incredible 1,701 people applied for eight vacancies at a new Costa branch that opened yesterday. But such devotion is far from a reaction to a paucity of macchiatos in the suburb of Mapperley. Newly released quarterly figures show that despite a record number of people now in work, millions are trapped in a cycle of part-time employment. Permanent jobs are in short supply, stunting Britain’s recovery.

Via: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9888250/Costa-Coffee-barista-Im-going-to-cling-on-to-this-job.html

Btw, GB credit rating had been downgraded recently.

The country has seen a huge amount of homeowners default on their rents or mortgage payments, prompting a wave of repossession by government-backed banks.

Following several suicides some locksmiths are no longer willing to carry out banks's orders to evict people from their houses.

The Spanish government authorities and banks have turned to the fire service to step in and break open the doors of those resisting eviction

Last Tuesday, firefighters in Coruna, a town in Northern Spain, were called to help evict an 85-year-old woman who had defaulted on her rent. When the firefighters arrived they refused to open the door and some of them joined in the protest. Since then, firefighters in other regions such as Catalonia and Madrid have followed their example.

Via:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9888042/Spanish-firemen-and-locksmiths-refuse-to-evict-homeowners.html

I am sure, they'll find solution. may be will be using special forces to break into your door, may be will just blast it with explosives.

"Things are quite tough right now," she said after the wedding. "We cut down on many things, from invitations to the reception, on everything."

The number of Greek couples who tied the knot in church tumbled to 28,000 in 2011, two years into Europe's debt crisis, compared to the pre-crisis level of 40,000 in 2008, according to the country's statistic service ELSTAT.

In contrast, the number of low-key civil unions skyrocketed to 26,000 in 2011 from about 8,000 a decade earlier.

Via: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite4_1_21/02/2013_484079

Check how it'll be, especially if you plan to get RED Epic to shoot weddings.

Better save some for your last days.

Some Greeks do not collect their dead loved ones from the hospital to avoid having to pay for the funeral. Others can no longer afford a traditional marble tombstone and so leave plots as simple dirt mounds overgrown by weeds, a cemetery official said.

But a third stage remains, one which in China at any rate may be reached at no distant period, when capital and organising energy may be developed within the country, either by Europeans planted there or by natives. Thus fully equipped for future internal development in all the necessary productive powers, such a nation may turn upon her civiliser, untrammelled by need of further industrial aid, undersell him in his own market, take away his other foreign markets and secure for herself what further developing work remains to be done in other undeveloped parts of the earth. The shallow platitudes by which the less instructed Free Trader sometimes attempts to shirk this vital issue have already been exposed. It is here enough to repeat that Free Trade can nowise guarantee the maintenance of industry or of an industrial population upon any particular country, and there is no consideration, theoretic or practical, to prevent British capital from transferring itself to China, provided it can find there a cheaper or more efficient supply of labour, or even to prevent Chinese capital with Chinese labour from ousting British produce in neutral markets of the world. What applies to Great Britain applies equally to the other industrial nations which have driven their economic suckers into China. It is at least conceivable that China might so turn the tables upon the Western industrial nations, and, either by adopting their capital and organisers or, as is more probable, by substituting her own, might flood their markets with her cheaper manufactures, and refusing their imports in exchange might take her payment in liens upon their capital, reversing the earlier process of investment until she gradually obtained financial control over her quondam patrons and civilisers. This is no idle speculation. If China in very truth possesses those industrial and business capacities with which she is commonly accredited, and the Western Powers are able to have their will in developing her upon Western lines, it seems extremely likely that this reaction will result.

Via: John A. Hobson, Imperialism, A Study, 1902

Back in 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue. In 2012, corporate taxes accounted for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.

General Electric

• U.S. Profits: $10,460,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$4,737,000,000

PG&E Corp.

• U.S. Profits: $4,855,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$1,027,000,000

Verizon Communications

• U.S. Profits: $32.518.000.000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$951,000,000

Wells Fargo

• U.S. Profits: $49,370,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$681,000,000

American Electric Power

• U.S. Profits : $5,899,000,000
• Taxes Paid : ‐$545,000,000

Pepco Holdings

• U.S. Profits: $882,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$508,000,000

Computer Sciences

• U.S. Profits: $1,666,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$305,000,000

CenterPoint Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,931,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$284,000,000

NiSource

• U.S. Profits: $1,385,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$227,000,000

Duke Energy

• U.S. Profits: $5,475,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$216,000,000

Boeing

• U.S. Profits: $9,735,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$178,000,000

NextEra Energy

• U.S. Profits: $6,403,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$139,000,000

Consolidated Edison

• U.S. Profits: $4,263,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$127,000,000

Paccar

• U.S. Profits: $365,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$112,000,000

Integrys Energy Group

• U.S. Profits: $818,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$92,000,000

Wisconsin Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,725,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$85,000,000

DuPont

• U.S. Profits: $2,124,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$72,000,000

Baxter International

• U.S. Profits: $926,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$66,000,000

Tenet Healthcare

• U.S. Profits: $415,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$48,000,000

Ryder System

• U.S. Profits: $627,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$46,000,000

El Paso

• U.S. Profits: $4,105,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$41,000,000

Honeywell International

• U.S. Profits: $4,903,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$34,000,000

CMS Energy

• U.S. Profits: $1,292,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$29,000,000

Con-­way

• U.S. Profits: $286,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$26,000,000

Navistar International

• U.S. Profits: $896,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$18,000,000

DTE Energy

• U.S. Profits: $2,551,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$17,000,000

Interpublic Group

• U.S. Profits: $571,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$15,000,000

Mattel

• U.S. Profits: $1,020,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$9,000,000

Corning

• U.S. Profits: $1,977,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$4,000,000

FedEx

• U.S. Profits: $4,247,000,000
• Taxes Paid: $37,000,000 (a rate of less than 1%)

Total

• U.S. Profits: $163,691,000,000
• Taxes Paid: ‐$10,602,000,000

Earlier this month, the Facebook Inc. released its first “10-K” annual financial report since going public last year. Hidden in the report’s footnotes is an amazing admission: despite $1.1 billion in U.S. profits in 2012, Facebook did not pay even a dime in federal and state income taxes.

Instead, Facebook says it will receive net tax refunds totaling $429 million.

Via: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/abolish-the-income-tax-you-wont-believe-who-is-getting-away-with-paying-zero-taxes-while-the-middle-class-gets-hammered

We end up with the evaluation spreadsheet. Each row lists some feature or sub-feature that someone has determined the technology must have. These features are all weighted according to their importance.

The columns then reflect all the options. Fill each cell with a number assessing how well this option delivers this feature, and you calculate a score for each option. Select the one with the highest weighted score, and you have the best technology for your needs.

Problem is, this rarely works.

For a start, the features and weightings aren’t objective. Someone gathers requirements, filtering them as they go. People argue about weightings. Ultimately, the person with the most power decides. We’ve just shifted the politics into the structure of the spreadsheet.

Research into the way experts make decisions shows that they rarely think through a set of options and assess them against objective “decision criteria”.

In situations where they need to integrate a lot of information, deal with uncertainty, and balance the concerns of diverse perspectives, experts go through the following stages:

They imagine themselves into the situation.

1. They identify a single option that will most likely meet their needs.
2. They test this option, mentally, against the situation.
3. If this option works well enough, they don’t waste time on further analysis. They select it and get into action.
4. If the option doesn't work, they adapt and adjust it in their minds. If they can find a way to make it work, they use it.
5. If they can’t find a way to make it work, they look for other options.
6. They may go through this loop several times, using the selection and testing and adaptation of options to improve their understanding of the situation. They evolve a workable solution.

Experts can do this remarkably quickly. Fire fighters and other emergency service workers go through this loop in life-and-death situations in fractions of a second.

We’re not fire fighters Lives don’t depend on the split-second timing of our decisions. So it makes sense to balance scenario-based decision-making with some thought about features, functionality and weighing off the different options.

We should make it easy to imagine ourselves into the situation we’re trying to address. What would it be like to use this system, work with this agency, etc? Write scenarios rather than feature lists, and ask vendors to explain how their technology fits each scenario.

We need to give ourselves hands-on time with each option, so we can experience how they really work. Vendor-driven presentations aren’t enough. Pilots are ideal, or hands-on workshops where we can try the options for ourselves during the course of the procurement.

Via: http://econsultancy.com/ru/blog/62153-how-we-buy-technology

Four out of 10 Greeks told the same survey that they no longer have any disposable money left after covering their basic needs, which is the highest rate ever recorded in Greece and the biggest in the October-December period in Europe. A year earlier (in Q4 2011) that rate had stood at 34 percent and in Q4 of 2010 it had been at 25 percent.

Even in cases where consumers do have some money left to spend, it goes mostly toward the payment of loan and credit card installments (31 percent) or savings (22 percent). Only a very small number of consumers use their disposable income for entertainment, vacations and buying clothes, which helps to explain the turnover slump in of the sectors of food catering, domestic tourism and apparel stores.

In exactly same fasion it'll be in US and EU.

Less and less money will be left, and this small amount will lead to destruction of division of labor. System will turn into ineffective natural economic.