Posts Tagged: information

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29
Jul 10

Didn’t go to college? Blame your kindergarten teacher!



Harvard economist Raj Chetty and 5 other researchers examined the lives of 12,000 children who had been part of an ’80s education experiment, and who were now about 30 years old. They found that some teachers were able to help students learn much more than others, and the students who learned more in kindergarten were more like to go to college

…The students with the effective kindergarten teachers were earning more. They were more likely to be saving for retirement. At the age of 27, these students with good kindergarten teachers were earning an extra $100 a year for every percentile they had moved up in test-score distribution in kindergarten. For example, a 5-year-old with a good teacher would typically jump from the 50th percentile to the 60th, and, 22 years later, could expect to earn about $1,000 a year more other students who stayed average.Chetty’s research is particularly timely considering the national pressure to tie teachers’ pay to students’ performance, with schools in Daytona Beach, Fla. and elsewhere already implementing such a system.Ms. Yamaguchi, my kindergarten teacher, certainly had an effect on me. For several weeks, while the other kids ran off to the playhouses and swings during free time, she sat down with me to help me write a story I came up with about a dinosaur who fell asleep and woke up in modern time to live among…

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Didn’t go to college? Blame your kindergarten teacher!

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28
Jul 10

SEC Says New Finincial Regulation Law Exempts It From FOIA

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

…”The new provision applies to information obtained through examinations or derived from that information,” said SEC spokesman John Nester. “We are expanding our examination program’s surveillance and risk assessment efforts in order to provide more sophisticated and effective Wall Street oversight. The success of these efforts depends on our ability to obtain documents and other information from brokers, investment advisers and other registrants. The new legislation makes certain that we can obtain documents from registrants for risk assessment and surveillance under similar conditions that already exist by law for our examinations. Because registrants insist on confidential treatment of their documents, this new provision also removes an opportunity for brokers, investment advisers and other registrants to refuse to cooperate with our examination document requests.”…

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SEC Says New Finincial Regulation Law Exempts It From FOIA

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28
Jul 10

Determining Family Spending Priorities

In order to keep your financial life on track, it is important to have spending priorities. As part of a plan, articulating priorities can help you make decisions that will keep you on track to meet your goals.

…Children learn from example, and one way that you can help your children learn about saving money and establish spending priorities is to make an effort to decide what your family spending priorities are. Even though my son is only seven, my husband and I frequently discuss money and our priorities around him, and ask him for his thoughts on specific items that apply to him.
The Importance of Having Spending Priorities
In order to keep your financial life on track, it is important to have spending priorities. As part of a plan, articulating priorities can help you make decisions that will keep you on track to meet your goals. When you know what is important to you, as a family, your spending choices are more likely to be in line with your values and they will help you move toward financial freedom.
Those without an overall financial plan quickly find themselves spending money on things that they dont particularly need. Even though my son is seven, he already knows how important it is to set money aside for…

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Determining Family Spending Priorities

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28
Jul 10

How People REALLY Feel About Online Ads [InfoGraphic]

With such a huge impact on the revenue of a news giant like NYTimes, it’d be interesting to see see exactly how people really feel about online advertising. Check out our infographic below for a visual guide on some of the latest data in the online advertising industry.

…Can’t help but recall the (very recent) times when people wondered why Facebook isn’t monetizing as aggressively as they could. Now that they’re beating everyone else in the total share of display ads, everyone knows they were just waiting for the best time, partnerships, etc There’s still a lot for them to improve (issues related to security, privacy, etc), and I hope they will. If they do, they (and their revenues) will grow substantially more….

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How People REALLY Feel About Online Ads [InfoGraphic]

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27
Jul 10

Who is Bob Dudley? (the man named as new BP chief)

Bob Dudley, The man named as a replacement for BP chief Tony Hayward could be just what the company needs.

…Since then, he’s worked with various BP (BP) divisions, including a brief stint helping to oversee the company’s solar, wind and hydrogen businesses. Most recently, he headed up TNK-BP, a joint venture that would become Russia’s third-largest oil and gas company. He was named to BP’s board in 2009. Dudley’s breadth of work experience and tenure within the oil industry make him a natural choice to succeed Hayward.But many believe what has thrust him to the top is his background as a native of the Gulf Coast region.Dudley, who grew up in Mississippi, has expressed a personal commitment to the clean-up effort and reiterated that pledge on Tuesday.BP swings to massive $17.2 billion loss”In this change of roles, I particularly want the people of the Gulf Coast to know that my commitment to remediation and restitution in the region is not lessened. I gave a promise to make it right and I will keep that promise,” he said in a statement after being named to his new post.Dudley, 54, has spoken of moments swimming,…

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Who is Bob Dudley? (the man named as new BP chief)

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26
Jul 10

Has Arianna Huffington Figured Out the Future?

If you had to declare a winner among Internet media companies today, the victor easily would be Arianna Huffington.

…HuffPo has 88 editorial employees, while big newspapers might have several times that many. Online jobs used to pay far less than print jobs, but now salaries for entry-level staffers are comparable: $35,000 to $40,000. To hold down the costs, sites get a lot of content free, aggregating articles from other sites and getting readers to create the content themselves, as HuffPo does via its 6,000 unpaid bloggers. Cheap content, however, begets cheaper ad rates. Social networks like Facebook, the ultimate creator of user-generated content, get only 56 cents per thousand ad impressions, according to comScore….

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Has Arianna Huffington Figured Out the Future?

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24
Jul 10

Big European banks pass stress test

Most of Europe’s biggest banks passed stress tests aimed at shoring up confidence in the region’s economy, officials said Friday.

…Policymakers published the test results in hopes of restoring confidence to European funding markets, which have been wracked by fears that a sovereign debt default will lead to another slew of bank failures.The design of the test raised some eyebrows in the markets. Supervisors said they discounted the value of sovereign bonds held by banks, but only for those bonds held in the banks’ trading accounts. Bonds that the banks plan to hold to maturity weren’t discounted under the test. This leaves open the possibility that a bank holding Greek government bonds, for instance, could pass the test — and still suffer crippling losses in the case of a Greek default.That’s a major weakness of the test, and will feed skepticism about whether the exercise actually accomplished anything. Even so, the tests are likely to have at least a modestly positive effect on sentiment in the banking sector in Europe. Stress tests conducted in the United States faced similar skepticism last year, with many observers contending they…

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Big European banks pass stress test

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24
Jul 10

10 SEO Musts for Local Businesses

In order to convert customers into followers, you’ve got to get in front of them. For local businesses, beefing up your local SEO efforts can be a big win

…2) Include your location in your website’s title tag
You may want to add your address and phone number as well. These are things visitors should find once they’re on your page, including them in your title tag can be one way to make sure you can get them there.

3) Use your keywords in your content
Want to show up for a certain search phrase? Well then, you’d better have that string of words in your content. Don’t go overboard here, you want just enough so that when someone searches for that term, Google knows your site is relevant. If you include your keyword too much, Google might see the repetitiveness and just skip right over you.

4) If you have multiple locations, create a page for each one
People can be very specific when they search, so if you’ve got locations in Maryland and in DC, you’ll want to create a landing page for each one, that way prospective customers are pointed to exactly the information they’re looking for. Plus, you get another page to optimize which can lead to more organic traffic…

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10 SEO Musts for Local Businesses

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23
Jul 10

Ford turnaround picks up speed

Ford Motor continued its successful turnaround as better-than-expected sales and profits easily outdistanced expectations and reversed the operating loss of a year ago.

…The results were the best quarterly results for Ford in six years and marked the fourth straight quarterly operating profit for the company, which had suffered more than than four years of steady losses before it returned to profitability in the second half of last year.Ford was the only major U.S. automaker not to go through bankruptcy in 2009, but its year-ago results were still hurt by overall weakness in the U.S. economy and one of the worst quarters of overall auto sales on record. It suffered an operating loss of $638 million, or 21 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.The company has been steadily gaining market share over the last year, with the introduction of critically-acclaimed new vehicles. A year ago it was behind both General Motors and Toyota Motor (TM) in U.S. sales, but it moved back in front of Toyota this year.Even better results ahead. “We are ahead of where we thought we would be despite the still-challenging business conditions,” said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally in a…

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Ford turnaround picks up speed

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