Hey! Where is everyone? I headed to Nasdaq headquarters in Times Square, ground zero of the biggest high tech stock offering ever, where Facebook would be welcomed into the arms of the investing public. And all I found was a bunch of CNBC cameras. One block south, the corners at the intersection of the world were [...]
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Busloads of Occupy activists have been arriving in Chicago to protest the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“We’re trying to bring a critical mass of people back to the Occupy movement,” said Nicole Powers, an activist and managing editor of Suicide Girls, a website that has extensively chronicled the Occupy movement since it began on Wall Street. “We want to get mass involvement back into the Occupy movement as we move into an election season.”
Protestors plan to gather in Daley Plaza on Friday and on Saturday for a march to the home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Sunday brings the climatic event: a march from Grant Park to the McCormick Place convention center, where NATO delegates will be meeting throughout the weekend.
The list of targets is smaller than it used to be. The Group of Eight was originally supposed to meet in Chicago this weekend, but White House officials scrapped the idea after word of the Occupy plans got out. Now the G8 is meeting in the seclusion of Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. Occupy protesters have happily taken credit for the move.
Many in Chicago have invoked the historical echoes of earlier protests — the melee at 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the protests of international organizations like NATO that rattled cities around the world in the late-’90s and early-2000s. “I think that this is a historic weekend in Chicago,” said Stephen Weber, an activist who helped organize bus trips for hundreds of activists from eight cities. “The fact that the G8 was supposed to be here and they moved to Camp David is indicative of the power of the narrative and the visibility of discontent in this country and around the world.”
Protesters are not alone in anticipating something akin to the 1968 Chicago riots. The police department has supplied officers with pepper spray and million worth of new riot gear. Cops arrested 20 participants in preliminary protests.
Weber, who helped start the group 99% Solidarity, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, said he opposed NATO because it fights wars and because governments fund those wars with money they should spend elsewhere.
“There’s definitely a connection between the two and I think they’re very important,” Weber said. “My hope is 30 years from now, we won’t have a need for marches like this.”
Which is better for an economy: millions of future jobs and trillions of future dollars, or a few people making a quick buck today by selling out their country? For decades America’s 1%-backed conservatives have chosen the latter course, and we can see the results all around us. Now the Obama administration has imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese solar panels because China was “dumping” — selling below cost — to drive American manufacturers out of business. Will conservatives support their country and our companies or will they continue to side with our country’s competitors?
The Commerce Department yesterday concluded that Chinese solar panel companies are “dumping” product – selling below the cost of production – into the US market, and imposed stiff tariffs. NY Times, U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels,
The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of antidumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China.
… The antidumping decision is among the biggest in American history, covering one of the largest and fastest-growing categories of imports from China, the world’s largest exporter.
Again and again technology revolutions come along and disrupt economies. Countries that jump on new technologies are the countries that win the industries and jobs and revenue. This is how the United States became the world power that it is was. Railroads, steel, automobiles, airplanes, electronics, semiconductors, computers, the Internet, pharmaceuticals, biotech and software are a few examples. And in every case our government helped these new industries get off the ground. When these industries took root the payoff was enormous.
Green energy is one such technology of the future. Producing solar panels, wind turbines, etc. will bring millions and millions of jobs and trillions of dollars, and several countries are competing to win a share of this new industry.
China is fighting hard for those jobs and dollars. They are being smart and they are also pushing past the limits of the rules. From the NY Times story,
Alan Price, a partner who heads the international trade practice at Wiley Rein, the law firm representing the United States companies in both the solar and wind cases, said that China posed a particular threat to America’s developing green energy sector.
“China’s method is straightforward: it sets forth industry-specific Five-Year Plans and then uses all forms of national and local subsidies and other governmental support to quickly transfer jobs, supply chains, intellectual property and wealth, to the permanent detriment of U.S. and global manufacturers,” he said. “China’s ability to ramp up and overwhelm an industry is unique and particularly devastating with new and emerging technologies, where global competitors may be less established and can be knocked out more easily and quickly.”
To compete for a share of this new industry we need to be proactive. We need national efforts to develop the industrial commons, or ecosystem, that will foster green-tech industries. We also need government policies that promote a market for these products until they take hold, just as our defense industry did for aircraft and other new technologies. And we need to enforce the rules for international economic competition, which is what has happened with the tariff decision.
The NY Times story points out that this was not a political decision by the Obama administration,
The American decision was made by civil servants in a quasi-judicial process that is heavily insulated by law from political interference and does not represent a deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to confront China on trade policy. But that distinction has been largely lost in China, where the solar panel issue has been one of many causes embraced online by the country’s vociferous ultranationalists, who put heavy pressure on Chinese officials to respond forcefully to perceived snubs to China.
The rules say that if a country is dumping, then we must impost tariffs. The Commerce Department investigated and concluded that China has been dumping so they had no choice. If we do not enforce trade rules, they are meaningless and countries that cheat gain an advantage, driving out the honest players. That is how cheating, accountability and enforcement work. (Hint: this also applies to banking fraud laws.)
In the case of solar-panel tariffs, we were losing companies and jobs and facing losing the possibility of losing the entire industry to China. From Tariffs On Chinese Solar Might Help Prevent The Next Solyndra,
You have probably heard about a solar-energy company named Solyndra, but probably what you have heard is a bunch of negative, conspiratorial, anti-alternative-energy, anti-Obama stuff from the corporate/conservative spin machine. The real story is that our government is trying to help us capture some of the new green energy industry that will create the jobs of the future. But China is, too. And China doubled down, and then quadrupled down on government support. They even directly subsidize their companies so their products cost less. This helped put Solyndra out of business. But the Obama administration is doing something about it.
China cheats, and we don’t usually do anything about it. They let companies pollute, don’t do much about worker safety, pay low wages, and make people work long hours. So-called “free trade” lets companies cost us more than 50,000 factories in the Bush years, and millions of jobs. And it empowers companies here to tell their workers to shut up and behave and accept wage and benefit cuts, or they’ll send their jobs to China, too. We continue to just let China take jobs, factories and industries because powerful interests, like Wall Street, make tons of money off of it.
So the decision is made, our country is engaging in the economic war that has been underway against us. Will our country’s conservative take our country’s side?
Oil-backed conservatives have been waging a campaign to discredit green energy, trying to stop government efforts to move us away from dependence on oil and coal. (Please click the links.)
They have used the failure of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra — partly due to Chinese dumping — to paint green tech in general as a bad investment. They have even tried to turn the public against the Chevy Volt, claiming that it “ran out of juice in the Lincoln Tunnel” when it actually just kicked over to the gas-engine charger, and that the car is “flammable” because on test battery got too hot — as compared to cars that run on gasoline! (Gasoline car-fire data at the link.)
These anti-dumping tariffs change the dynamics of this oil-backed anti-green campaign. Now when conservatives slam Solyndra or the Chevy Volt and otherwise join in this anti-green-energy campaign they are taking China’s side against American companies at a time when the country is engaged in economic conflict. This presents a tough choice to the conservative movement, do they continue to accept oil and coal company funding and side against their country and support China, or will they return to their pro-American roots and side with their country in a time of conflict.
Low prices from trade-cheaters are always attractive. But if we want a slice of the jobs, factories, industries and economy of the future we have to fight back when our competitors cheat.
The solar-installer industry is worried they will be hit hard by this because prices for solar panels could increase sharply. BusinessWeek: U.S. Solar Tariffs on Chinese Cells May Boost Prices,
The tariffs “will increase solar electricity prices in the U.S. precisely at the moment solar power is becoming competitive with fossil fuel generated electricity,” Shah said in a statement. “This new artificial tax will undermine the success of the U.S. solar industry.”
[. . .] The U.S. decision to impose import duties on Chinese solar panels will raise their price to .11 per watt, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a London-based researcher owned by Bloomberg LP. That price is 17 percent higher than the current spot price of non-Chinese panels.
Forbes: Solar Installers Caught In Cross Fire Of Escalating China Trade War,
On Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a preliminary decision levying steep tariffs against Chinese solar manufacturers, finding they illegally dumped cheap photovoltaic cells on the American market. But the companies that install those solar panels on residential and commercial rooftops – and which have benefited from a 75% plunge in photovoltaic prices in recent years – are split over the impact of the tariffs on their burgeoning business.
The government could remedy the impact on domestic customers and installers several ways, including:
- by using the new tariffs to fund tax credits and other incentives that help homeowners and businesses make the move to solar power,
- by imposing a large “carbon tax” that is refunded on a per-capita basis. This would mean high users of carbon-based fuels would pay in, the revenue is divided up evenly to everyone over 21 and paid out with a monthly check, and people could use this money to both cover their own added energy expenses and to purchase solar and other alternative energy products to lower their carbon-energy footprint,
- and by setting a national renewable energy standard, requiring power producers to use a certain percentage of solar, wind and other alternatives, creating more of a market for green tech.
Of course the oil and coal companies will continue to fight this shift from their “buggy-whip” technology, and will use their tremendous influence over our government to try to hold off the inevitable. But the tide is shifting. The fact that China is fighting so hard and putting so much investment into this sector shows its value to the world economy in the future. The fact that our government is responding shows that we have a chance to win a share of the jobs and revenue that green tech promises to bring.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Bespoke Innovations isn’t your average design firm. The young company is creating stylish accessories for a demographic often left behind by the fashion world: amputees.
Founded in 2010, the San Francisco-based firm creates “fairings” — intricately designed panels that fit over prosthetic legs. The fairings create a shell around the traditional prosthesis, giving the mechanical limb a more natural shape. The company uses 3D scanning and printing technology to create the most accurate dimensions for the panels, which are produced to mimic the size and contours of the customer’s sound leg. The fairings are then personalized with etchings, embellishments, even tattoo designs to reflect the client’s personal style. Made of lightweight polymer, chrome or leather, Bespoke’s panels are the first of their kind.
“We avoid the competitive nature of the healthcare world by exploring areas where no other company has explored,” said Scott Summit, founder, chief technology officer and industrial designer of Bespoke. “There is nothing at all like a ‘fairing’ in orthopedics today, so we have no competition to speak of.”
Summit began experimenting with prosthetics five years ago before teaming up with Ken Trauner, a Harvard-educated orthopedic surgeon. The pair received a small round of series A funding in 2009 and got started fitting eager customers.
Bespoke has worked with many victims of motorcycle accidents as well as a growing number of veterans. “Many of the soldiers we work with are ideal candidates, since they’re often younger, full of personal style and eager to show the world their new hardware,” Summit said. “We’re constantly amazed by the resilience that we see in people and their determination to drive forward despite often brutal physical loss.”
The durable panels, which snap on and off the prosthesis for easy care, are capable of fitting every lifestyle, allowing customers to regain a solid sense of physical normalcy that is often pushed aside by current prosthetic design. The fairings, which can cost between ,000 to ,000, are not yet covered by insurance, but Bespoke is hoping to work with prosthetists in the future to change that.
While Bespoke only currently creates prosthetic leg panels, Summit and his team aspire to much more. “We’ll be working with companies that are working with more complex physical challenges in order to improve the overall quality of living for the user. I hope to be able to offer complete, functional prosthetic legs to people throughout developing countries at some point.”
WIth the Tech sector down approximately -3% over the past trading month, we went looking for undervalued Tech dividend paying stocks. Although the Tech sector isn’t known for high dividend stocks, this sector has experienced some of the best growth in its dividend yield and its number of stocks starting to issue dividends:
We found 2 Dow dividend stocks which look undervalued and oversold: Cisco, (CSCO), and Microsoft, (MSFT). Cisco joined the ranks of dividend paying stocks in 2011, starting out with a $.06/share quarterly dividend, which it increased to $.08 in the first quarter of 2012. Microsoft increased its quarterly payout by 25% in 2011, raising it to $.20, from $.16/share. MSFT goes ex-dividend next week.
A Buying Opportunity: Although it reported good quarterly EPS growth, Cisco got hammered this week, with shares dropping approximately 10% on Thursday, due to CEO Chambers’ cautious comments about next quarter’s earnings. However,
The corporate world is emerging from several weeks of boardroom turbulence dubbed the ‘Shareholder Spring.’
In annual meeting after annual meeting around the world, boards have been taken to task by investors and other stakeholders on a wide range of issues: remuneration, board composition, competence, diversity, voting control, dual stock, and more.
In the meantime, we have also witnessed the soap opera of Yahoo’s boardroom, the rebuke to newly public Groupon’s board for its lack of oversight of accounting practices, and the public condemnation of News International’s chair – and, by extension, its board – questioning his competence to lead the organisation. No sector has been immune; no director has been untouchable.
Now Facebook is about to enter the public markets. Its defiant position regarding its old-style governance is in stark contrast with the temper of the Shareholder Spring. Facebook swims against the tide of a global movement toward transparency, engagement, and checks and balances. It feels as if we’ve all stepped into a time machine and none of the past couple of years of governance lessons – including the failures of boards in the banking-sector crisis – ever happened.
Several troubling issues call into question how this company can consider itself groundbreaking, innovative or new: the concentration of power in the hands of one man, the stranglehold on voting rights, the lack of diversity in the boardroom (which in a way is inconsequential, as the Facebook board does not have much bite anyway), and above all else the flagrant disregard of the lessons of the past several years about engaged, active and independent boards contributing to strong companies.
Were Facebook striving to be an innovative company built to last, it would encourage healthy dialogue and diversity in the boardroom, and equal shareholder voting rights. It would not need to lock in power, but rather earn authority through excellent performance and results. The leadership would trust that a democratic boardroom would foster greater strength and stability than dictatorship, which brings a false sense of security. That’s a lesson we can take from the Arab Spring, where dictators thought that they held real control.
Today there is euphoria, anticipation and excitement among investors. A lot of people will make money in the short term, but short-term investing is not what builds strong businesses and strong economies. The world needs durable companies that are innovative in the products and services they sell, but also distinguish themselves through responsive and responsible conduct in their corporate governance structures and business practices.
Over the years Facebook will need to grapple with many issues that affect the development of the company and the lives of its users, from growth to innovating ahead of the curve, and from privacy to social responsibility. My hope is that Mark Zuckerberg begins to see the value of ceding some of the control he holds by rule and is able to trust that he will be able to earn that control through deed. If that doesn’t happen, all eyes will be on the investors to see if at least they have learned the lessons of bad governance and the value of good.
Lucy P. Marcus is a columnist for Reuters, where this article first appeared.
Lucy P. Marcus is a board chair and non-executive director who is challenging conventional wisdom inside and outside the board room. She has emerged as a strong voice setting the agenda on future proofing boardrooms and companies around the world, and was recently recognised with the Thinkers 50 “Future Thinkers” Award and was ranked 19th on the Reuters & Klout 50 list of “Most Influential Execs on the Web”. The CEO of Marcus Venture Consulting, she is also Professor of Leadership and Governance at IE Business School, focusing on corporate governance, ethics and leadership, and she writes a column and hosts a new tv show, “In the Boardroom with Lucy Marcus” for Reuters on the intersection of boards and leadership.
General Electric (GE) is among the highest yielding dividend paying stocks in the Dow 30, and is listed in our High Dividend Stocks By Sector Tables.
GE went to the dark side during the financial crisis, slashing its dividend from $.31/quarter to $.10/quarter in 2009. This was due mainly to liquidity issues about its ailing GE Capital division, which suspended its dividends to parent GE in 2009, to preserve cash. However, GE has steadily clawed its way back, increasing its quarterly dividend twice in 2010, and twice in 2011, to its present $.17/quarter dividend rate.
Although its payout isn’t back to pre-recession levels yet, GE shareholders just got a big break this week: GE Capital just received approval from the Feds to pay a quarterly dividend of 5 million to GE in the second quarter of 2012. In addition, GE Capital’s board announced that it plans to pay a .5
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook has priced its initial public offering of stock at per share, at the high end of its expected range. It means investor demand is strong for the world’s largest online social network.
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WASHINGTON — A Democratic senator has asked the Obama administration to immediately bar Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin from re-entering the U.S., based on a previously unenforced 1996 law.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who as a congressman in 1996 authored an amendment that excludes from reentry into the U.S. citizens who renounced their citizenship for tax purposes, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday, asking her to enforce the law — for the first time — by barring Saverin.
“By all accounts Mr. Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship for the purposes of avoiding taxes despite taking advantage of the multiple opportunities afforded to him by the United States,” Reed wrote. A Homeland Security spokesman couldn’t be reached for comment after the close of business Thursday.
Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore in September. Reed’s letter comes on the eve of Facebook’s initial public stock offering that is expected to value Saverin’s share of the company at around billion. Saverin’s switch to Singaporean citizenship, which came to light two weeks ago, could save him hundreds of millions in taxes if his Facebook stock increases in value after the company sells stock to the public.
Earlier on Thursday, two Democrats proposed legislation that would hit Saverin with heavy taxes and bar him from reentering the U.S.
But Reed’s plan doesn’t call for a congressional action — just an executive decision.
Reed wrote in his letter that the secretary of Homeland Security now has the power that was once only vested in the attorney general to determine who should fall under the 1996 statute.
And just like Homeland Security can bar aliens involved in terrorism or drug trafficking, Reed wrote, “I urge a similar and vigorous treatment for the exclusion of expatriates that have renounced their citizenship in order to avoid taxes.”
Saverin issued a statement Thursday, insisting he was grateful to the U.S. and still intends to pay plenty of taxes.
“I am obligated to and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government,” Saverin said. “It is unfortunate that my personal choice has led to a public debate, based not on the facts, but entirely on speculation and misinformation.”
Attached is a message from the President to the Senate regarding the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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