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Sorry Spark, wasn't accusing you of being racist. I think the photo is, but whatever, no big deal, hopefully were still cool.Comment
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Course we are Big. It takes a whole lot more than that to break up a friendship for me. You are a class act Big and your words to me in your last post proves it. ThanksOriginally posted by BigWeiner View PostComment
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Our Government up to no-good again
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The White House on Friday told government contractors worried about fiscal cliff spending cuts to hold off on warning employees about possible layoffs.
The government said it would cover legal costs if contractors are forced to slash their payrolls because of the looming $109 billion in automatic cuts next year and are alleged to have violated the WARN Act.
The federal WARN Act requires businesses with more than 100 employees to notify workers at least 60 days in advance of a mass layoff or plant closing. Some states require more notice.
"Any resulting employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability as determined by a court, as well as attorneys' fees and other litigation costs (irrespective of litigation outcome) would qualify as allowable costs and be covered by the contracting agency, if otherwise reasonable and allocable," the Office of Management and Budget said in its guidance.
Contractors told to hold off on layoff warnings due to fiscal cliff spending cuts - Sep. 28, 2012
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Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today — one with political overtones — and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election.
Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.
Such massive layoffs could have threatened Obama’s standing in the state he won in 2008 and is hoping to carry again this November.
On Friday, the Obama administration reiterated that federal contractors should not issue notices to workers based on “uncertainty” over the pending $500 billion reduction in Pentagon spending that will occur unless lawmakers can agree on a solution to the budget impasse, negotiations over which will almost definitely not begin until after the election.
Contractors had been planning to send out notices because of the WARN Act — Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — which according to the Department of Labor requires “most employers with 100 or more employees to provide notification 60 calendar days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs.”
In a statement Friday, GOP Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte accused Obama of putting “his own reelection ahead of the interests of working Americans and our national security by promising government contractors that their salary and liability costs will be covered at taxpayer expense if they do not follow the law that requires advance warning to employees of jobs that may be lost due to sequestration. … Apparently, President Obama puts politics ahead of American workers by denying them adequate time to plan their finances and take care of their families. The people who work in the defense industry and other government contracting companies deserve as much notice as possible that they are on track to lose their jobs.”
In July the Labor Department issued legal guidance making clear that federal contractors are not required to provide layoff notices 60 days in advance of the potential Jan. 2 sequestration order, and that doing so would be inconsistent with the purpose of the WARN Act.
In Friday’s memo, the Office of Management and Budget reiterated that notice, urging agencies’ contracting officials and CFOs to “minimize the potential for waste and disruption associated with the issuance of unwarranted layoff notices.”
The guidance issued Friday told contractors that if the automatic cuts happen and contractors lay off employees the government will cover certain liability and litigation costs in the event the contractor is later sued because it hadn’t provided adequate legal warning to its employees, but only if the contractor abides by the administration’s notice and refrains from warning employees now.
After “careful review” Lockheed announced today that it will abide by the administration’s guidance.
“We will not issue sequestration-related WARN notices this year,” Lockheed announced in a written statement. “The additional guidance offered important new information about the potential timing of DOD actions under sequestration, indicating that DOD anticipates no contract actions on or about 2 January, 2013, and that any action to adjust funding levels on contracts as a result of sequestration would likely not occur for several months after 2 Jan. The additional guidance further ensures that, if contract actions due to sequestration were to occur, our employees would be provided the protection of the WARN Act and that the costs of this protection would be allowable and recoverable.
“We remain firm in our conviction that the automatic and across-the-board budget reductions under sequestration are ineffective and inefficient public policy that will weaken our civil government operations, damage our national security, and adversely impact our industry. We will continue to work with leaders in our government to stop sequestration and find more thoughtful, balanced, and effective solutions to our nation’s challenges,” Lockheed said
At White House Request, Lockheed Martin Drops Plan to Issue Layoff Notices - ABC NewsComment
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Spark I agree with you on most of the Oh Bam Ah criticisms ... [for those who don't know me ... I basically think that all politicians stink and are just charlatans in nice business suits with Wash DC addresses]. But, do you really think that Romney will be any better? Guy just comes off as such a dweeb ......
I don't think that Romney could fvck things up much worse Domestically (getting rid of Oh Bam Ah care works for me). But, I'm not so sure about his ability to handle International Affairs. Commander In Cheif (brings Jimmy Carter to mind). Is he the guy we want to tackle the next terrorists attack ? Who would be his Sect of State or Sect of Defense (I happen to like Leon).
Granted, he did smoke Oh Bam Ah's ass in the last debate.Comment
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Great pic .... looks like me and Kb at about 4 o'clock in the afternoonOriginally posted by BigWeiner View Post
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Save up your dollars. They will one day be useful as toilet paper when toilet paper costs $1000 a roll.Originally posted by Spark View Post
KISS THE DOLLAR GOODBYE
The dollar slumped against rivals last week in the wake of the British daily's controversial report.
"The US dollar is being hurt by the continued talk of a shift away from a dollar-centric world," said Kit Juckes, an analyst at currency traders ECU Group.
"Three conclusions stand out very clearly. Firstly, the shift in economic power away from the G7 economies is continuing. "Secondly, there is a growing acceptance amongst those winners that one consequence of this power shift will be to strengthen their currencies.
"And finally, as long as the US economy is not strong enough for any rise in interest rates to be conceivable for a long time, the dollar's underlying downtrend will remain in place," added Juckes.
The Independent, under the front-page headline "The Demise of the Dollar", reported last Tuesday that Gulf states, together with China, Russia, Japan and France, were considering replacing the dollar as the currency for oil deals.
"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning -- along with China, Russia, Japan and France -- to end dollar dealings for oil," wrote The Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.
They would switch "to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar," added Fisk, citing Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources.
The report was denied by a host of countries, including Kuwait, Qatar and Russia, while France dismissed it as "pure speculation."
Even so, the United Nations itself last week called for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy, which had allowed the United States the "privilege" of building up a huge trade deficit.
UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, Sha Zukang, said "important progress in managing imbalances can be made by reducing the (dollar) reserve currency country's 'privilege' to run external deficits in order to provide international liquidity."
Zukang was speaking at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, whose President Robert Zoellick recently warned that the United States should not "take for granted" the dollar's role as preeminent global reserve currency.
Meanwhile at a G20 summit in Pittsburgh last month, world leaders unveiled a new vision for economic governance, with bold plans to fix global imbalances and give more clout to emerging giants such as China and India.
Following the summit, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner repeated Washington's commitment to a strong dollar.
But last week the finance chief was left to watch as traders used The Independent's report as an opportunity to push lower the troubled US unit.
The report "has helped concentrate the minds of traders and investors alike, and has given them another excuse to take the dollar lower," GFT Global Markets analyst David Morrison told AFP.
"Despite what the Fed and other central bankers say, a weaker dollar is desirable because it is necessary to rebalance the global economy.
"As long as the decline is gentle and orderly, then they're happy. But aggressive selling would spook the markets," he added.
Commerzbank currency analyst Antje Praefcke agreed that the market's reaction was significant because it showed that the dollar was on a downward trajectory.
"The questionable article in the Independent was of course disclaimed," Praefcke said.
"It is nonetheless an interesting study of the pscychological factors which are currently putting pressure on the dollar. Even if conspiracy theories turn out to be nonsense, the dollar is subsequently able to retrace only some of its losses."
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