AmMed Direct to layoff 223 employees

Competition in the diabetic supply business led AmMed Direct LLC to give layoff notices to its 223 employees on Tuesday as it prepares to sell assets to a Florida-based competitor and then stop operating.

The deal with Arriva Medical of Coral Springs, Fla., is part of a consolidation trend in the mail-order diabetic supply business as regulatory changes create uncertainty.

Medicare, for instance, is rolling out a new competitive bidding system to determine which companies would continue to provide supplies to its beneficiaries and at what price — perhaps lower rates.

“Several companies are trying to get bigger because they know there’s going to be fewer companies, and they want to be one of the survivors,” said industry consultant Tom Milam, who expects the number of vendors nationally to fall from as many as 500 to as few as 20 companies.

From: http://ping.fm/kPPmf

Nokia to Cut 4,000 Jobs at 3 Factories – NYTimes.com

NOKIA connecting collecting people

 BERLIN — Nokia, the biggest maker of cellphones by volume, said Wednesday that it would cut 4,000 manufacturing jobs, or 7 percent of its global workforce, as it moved to streamline and save money from its production of smartphones.

The company said the cuts would be made at three Nokia factories — in Komarom, Hungary; Reynosa, Mexico; and Salo, Finland — as it transferred the assembly of smartphones to factories in Asia, which are closer to component makers.

“Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market,” said Niklas Savander, the Nokia executive vice president responsible for smart phones. “By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive.”

Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, said it planned to cut 2,300 of 4,400 jobs at its Hungarian factory, 700 of 1,000 in Mexico and 1,000 of 1,700 in Salo, its largest production facility in Finland.
The job reductions come as Nokia is struggling financially during the transition from its Symbian-based smartphone lineup to Lumia Windows phones with Microsoft. Nokia last month said it lost €1.1, or $1.4 billion, in the fourth quarter, with its sales declining 21 percent from a year earlier, as operators abandoned or demanded price cuts on Symbian models.

The factories affected by the job cuts will refocus on customizing Nokia smartphones for Europe and North America. Nokia’s smartphone lineup includes Lumia Windows phones with Microsoft, MeeGo from an alliance with chip maker Intel, and Symbian.

Last September, the Nokia chief executive, Stephen Elop, said the company would start a comprehensive review of its smartphone production facilities with an eye to reducing costs and making long-term improvements in efficiency.

Nokia’s smartphone factories in Masan, South Korea, and Beijing will take over the assembly of smartphones, said James Etheridge, a Nokia spokesman in Espoo. The factories in Hungary, Mexico and Finland will add software and local-language applications.

The reductions are the second wave of job cuts at Nokia under Mr. Elop, a former Microsoft executive. In April 2011 Nokia said it would eliminate 4,000 jobs in Britain, Denmark and Finland, and transfer 3,000 employees in Symbian software development to Accenture, a technology consultant.

From: http://ping.fm/0CUWU

Greek Economy Implodes: Budget Revenues Tumble 7% In January On Expectation Of 9% Rise

While hardly surprising to anyone who actually paid attention over the past two months to events in Greece (instead of just reacting to headlines) where among those on strike were the very tax collectors tasked with “fixing the problem”, we now get a first glimpse of the sheer collapse in the Greek economy, which also confirms why Germany is now dying for Greece to pull its own Eurozone plug (predicated by a naive belief that Greece is firewalled as was discussed before. As a reminder Hank Paulson thought that Lehman, too, was firewalled on September 15, 2008). And what a collapse it is: according to just released data from Kathimerini, budget revenues lagged projections by €1 billion in the very first month of the year. “Revenues posted a 7 percent decline compared with January 2011, while the target that had been set in the budget provided for an 8.9 percent annual increase. Worse still, value-added tax receipts posted an 18.7 percent decrease last month from January 2011 as the economy continues to tread the path of recession: VAT receipts only amounted to 1.85 billion euros in January compared to 2.29 billion in the same month last year.” This it the point where any referee would throw in the towel. But no: for Europe’s bankers there apparently are still some leftover organs in the corpse worth harvesting. Unfortunately, at this point we fail to see how this setup ends with anything but civil war, as the April elections will merely once again reinstate the existing bloodsucking regime. We hope we are wrong.

Epic collapse:

The VAT revenue data represent a particular worrying sign regarding the depth of recession for 2012, while even more painful measures are expected to lead to a reduction in salaries and therefore a further drop in consumption. This is the vicious cycle that the government will have to tackle by way of additional fiscal measures this summer.

According to the current data, the 2012 budget will certainly have to be revised soon, given that the original estimate for a contraction of 2.8 percent is now raised to 3.5-4 percent of gross domestic product.

Finance Ministry officials attribute the slump in VAT receipt figures to the major cash flow problems that enterprises are facing. Some of the latter are choosing not to pay for their VAT in order to plug other holes caused by liquidity problems.

At the same time the crisis is seriously hurting the competitiveness of Greece’s economy, resulting in a considerable drop in entrepreneurship. Finance Ministry data showed that some 111,000 companies shut down in 2011, against just 75,000 new businesses being set up. In fact the majority of new start-ups are not actual enterprises but newly self-employed professionals.

This is attributed to the dramatic fall in market turnover and the insecurity that entrepreneurs feel, dissuading them from getting engaged in the local business field.

And this is the background against which the Troika wants Greece to cut another 150,000 people, and to cut minimum wage even more? Does nobody realize that at this point the entire Greek economy has frozen to a dead halt, and has joined only its utterly insolvent banking system in the dumpster?

How much longer will doctors fret around the patient before they finally have the decency to admit the patient has long since passed away?

From: http://ping.fm/250dS

Trabajadores Pagan por Trabajar en Gasolineras en Ciudad de México

Despachadora de Gasolinería

 Ya ni la amuelan, ahora se debe dar una “pequeña cuota” para trabajar en una gasolinera…?!

El problema se presenta principalmente en el Valle de México por el bajo número de gasolineras, alta demanda de combustible y porque las personas en esta zona están más acostumbradas a dar propinas, aseguró Gerardo Cantú, empresario del sector.Empresarios gasolineros

“Cd. de México, México (06 febrero 2012).- Un gran porcentaje de los 250 mil despachadores de gasolina que hay en México trabajan de manera informal, pues no tienen prestaciones, ni un salario fijo, sumado a que, para poder laborar, deben pagar una cuota.Así lo afirmaron representantes de la Confederación Revolucionaria de Obreros y Campesinos.
Según testimonios de trabajadores, esta cuota, la cual establecen los grupos de estaciones de servicio va de 50 a 100 pesos diarios, mientras que el promedio de propinas al día oscila entre 150 y 200 pesos.Esto significa una ganancia diaria de alrededor de 100 pesos.Carlos, quien trabaja en una gasolinera al oriente del DF, aseguró que el pago es por tener asignada una bomba para el despacho de combustible.Además, de acuerdo con los testimonios, el trabajador está obligado a vender un número determinado de productos, como aditivos y anticongelantes, pues, de lo contrario, el patrón se los cobra.Hidrosina, la empresa con más estaciones enesta zona, fue consultada sobre el caso, pero no ofreció respuesta.Daniel, otro despachador, comentó que en la estación donde labora sólo los jefes de turno tienen derecho a prestaciones y beneficios legales.
El problema se presenta principalmente en el Valle de México por el bajo número de gasolineras, alta demanda de combustible y porque las personas en esta zona están más acostumbradas a dar propinas, aseguró Gerardo Cantú, empresario del sector.Empresarios gasolineros que pidieron el anonimato aseguraron que sus trabajadores se encuentran afiliados a un sindicato de la Confederación de Trabajadores de México o a la CROC, pero los organismos negaron que eso ocurra.”Podemos decir que un uno por ciento tiene una relación establecida con sus trabajadores, con los despachadores de gasolina, pero en muchos de los casos no. Si no hay una relación de trabajo, menos una relación de seguridad social dentro de los sectores de distribución de gasolina”, aseguró Rafael Torres Soriana, asesor jurídico sindical de la CROC.Fabiola Patiño, directora de Asesoría y Vinculación de la Procuraduría Federal de la Defensa del Trabajador, aseguró que la situación en la que se encuentran los despachadores es ilegal.Dijo que la oficina de Inspección del Trabajo, perteneciente a la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social, es quien puede sancionar.Fernando González Piña, secretario general de la Organización Nacional de Expendedores de Petróleo, dijo que la asociación no tiene conocimiento de esta forma de trabajar, pero reconoció que los trabajadores reciben una comisión por la venta del producto.”

ACTA The International Treaty You’ve Never Heard of That Could Affect Internet Freedom

While there was massive attention last week to online anti-piracy bills — SOPA in the House and the PIPA in the Senate — ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, has received scant media attention yet poses a tremendous threat to online freedom.

RT reports on how the ACTA treaty will work:

Under this new treaty, Internet Service Providers will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online. And should you do something considered “breach of copyright” like, for instance, getting a tattoo of a brand logo, taking a photo and posting it somewhere, you may be disconnected from the Internet, fined or even jailed.

This, of course, threatens the entire founding idea of the Internet – the free sharing of information. But ACTA doesn’t stop there. It goes beyond the Internet, bearing down on generic drugs and food patents. If passed, ACTA will enforce a global standard for seed patenting, which would wipe out independent, local farmers and make the world completely dependent on the patent owners (read “big corporations”) for supplies.

So who supports this far-reaching treaty? Wired.co.uk reports:

Acta is supported by major copyright holders including pharmaceutical companies, movies studios and record labels. Lobbying organisations include GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Monsanto Company, Time Warner, Sony, Verizon, The Walt Disney Company, the Motion Picture Association of America, News Corporation, and Viacom. It looks like the European Commission supports it but the European Parliament are unanimously against it.

From: http://ping.fm/YIOEh

Greek Riots Are Back Livestreamcams

The Parliament is putting new austerity measures on the Greek citizens, since the IMF (International Monetary Fund), Sarkozy and Merkel announced that they don´t have any more money to give to Greece. Violent Riots have erupted and more likely the Greek government will run out of money by the end of this month.

All sectors, from dentists, state hospital doctors and lawyers to shop owners, tax office workers, pharmacists, teachers and dock workers walked off the job ahead of a Parliamentary vote Thursday on new austerity measures which include new taxes and the suspension of tens of thousands of civil servants.

Greek Riots turn violent
Greek Live StrikeCam at Syntagma Square
Watch Live

EU Ending Food Aid Homelessness

The European Union will be ending the Food Aid program they have right now due to the severe financial struggle they are experiencing. Homelessness and hunger will definitely increase, and with those factors starvation, crime and disease will rise. Prepare accordingly; if you are smart enough to understand global economics and geo-social-political issues of the world, you better prepare.

The 9-9-9 Plan: Is The Herman Cain Tax Plan A Good Idea?

According to ABC News, an average family of four with a yearly income of just under $50,000 (i.e. the median household income), would pay approximately $2,725 more to the federal government in taxes under the 9-9-9 plan.

Well, that doesn’t sound good.

That doesn’t sound like a recipe for economic recovery.

But if you are a middle income small business owner, the news is much worse than that.

Under Herman Cain’s tax plan, some small business owners could end up paying up to 37 percent of their incomes in taxes to the federal government.

Here is how that breaks down….

#1) First they would pay the 9 percent personal income tax.

#2) Secondly, they would pay 9 percent on all business income. There would not even be a deduction for wages paid out. This would hit some small businesses incredibly hard. In fact, small businesses that have a very tight profit margin could be totally wiped out by this.

A lot of people have assumed that the 9 percent tax on businesses is only on corporations. But that simply is not the case.

In a recent article, Paul Krugman of the New York Times explained what the 9-9-9 plan really says….

From comments I see that some readers believe that Cain’s second “9″ is a profits tax, which I’ve argued in the past probably falls on capital owners. But it isn’t: it’s a tax on all business income, defined as sales minus purchased inputs and dividends — but with no deduction for wages.

Ouch.

Okay, so now we are up to 18 percent for small business owners.

#3) The 9-9-9 plan also calls for a 9 percent national sales tax. Of course the truth is that very few people will spend all of their money on things that the national sales tax is imposed upon, but theoretically this could add another 9 percent to an individual’s tax burden.

So now we are up to a potential total of 27 percent for small business owners.

The 9-9-9 plan would also make sales taxes absolutely crushing in some areas of the United States. For example, it has been projected that once you throw in state and local sales taxes, some areas of the country could be facing a combined sales tax as high as 17 percent once the 9-9-9 plan is implemented.

Cain’s plan would also set the stage for a VAT tax to be implemented. Many countries in Europe have already implemented a VAT tax, and quite a few liberal politicians in the U.S. have been eager to institute one here.

The potential dangers of a VAT tax were described in a recent article by Dean Clancy….

From: http://ping.fm/ddZrg

Deutsche Bank To The Rescue

Don´t mess with the boys and girls at ZeroHedge!

From Deutsche Bank: “The PrimeX indices have experienced a sharp decline since the beginning of October despite an 11% rally of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the biggest two-week rally since 2009. The price drop can be viewed as a catch-up to the overall market selloffs following investors’ growing fear over the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, increasing likelihood of a global recession, and a weak US housing market.
The Fitch’s report on the prime RMBS sector published on October 5 and a subsequent article by ZeroHedge on October 7 fueled the panic selloffs in the last few days, during which we have received far more inquiries about PrimeX than the combined inquiries about PrimeX and ABX over the last two years. It appears to us that many investors have suddenly turned their attention to the PrimeX. Investors from around the world have been wondering whether the PrimeX of 2011 will repeat the ABX miracle of 2007.”

From: Ping.fm

Philips Layoffs 4,500 Jobs Globally – Businessweek

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Royal Philips Electronics NV, the Dutch maker of lighting equipment, medical devices and consumer electronics, said it plans to cut 4,500 jobs globally, of which 1,400 will be in the Netherlands, as part of a plan to lower costs by 800 million euros.

“Through this program, Philips is investing in growth, addressing structural change, focusing on execution, reducing overhead costs and adopting a new company culture,” Philips said in the statement today, as it reported earnings for the third quarter.

Philips said about 60 percent of the savings are related to the job cuts, while the remaining 40 percent are tied to “other structural costs.” The company reiterated its mid-term earnings targets today.

From: http://ping.fm/0N2Yt