The National Climate Prediction Center has raised the probability of an El Niño in the Northern Hemisphere lasting through this summer to 90 percent, and added that there is a a greater than 80 percent probability it will last through all of 2015.
The Center for Jobs & the Economy has published a study entitled, “Economic Tale of Two Regions: Los Angeles County vs. Bay Area.” Their research, which compiles data to track jobs created in the past 24 years, reveals that the two regions have been at opposite ends of the wage spectrum. The Bay Area experienced high-wage growth that lifted the middle-class, while Los Angeles slumped toward a two-tier economy as higher-wage jobs shriveled and were somewhat replaced by lower-wage jobs.
Buying AOL, Inc. was a deal Verizon had to make, given that Verizon’s bundled telephone, Internet and pay-TV services seem headed toward serious decline.
Long-shot presidential candidate Governor Jerry Brown offered to have California tax-payers double the federal Earned Income Tax Credit for many Californians this week. Though the credit is considered by the IRS Inspector General to have an “improper payment rate” of 22 to 26 percent, Brown wants to give away an additional $380 million in state funds to deflect what Breitbart News has reported as the fact that “California might be 7th Largest Economy, but is 1st in Poverty.”
Craig Stevens of Newport Beach pleaded not guilty to wire fraud Monday in federal court in Santa Ana in connection with charges of selling $4.27 million of fake In-N-Out Burger franchises, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
The highly respected Colorado State University forecast for the coming season looks for only 7 named tropical storms and only 3 hurricanes, about 40% less than average. Coupled with the expectations of global cooler weather and more precipitation from El Niño, climate change “scientific experts” may need to develop more new models.
If Robin Leach visited the headquarters of Uber today, it would be all “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” as the ride-hailing service that just closed a $2.8 billion venture capital deal three months ago at a $40 billion valuation is on track to slurp up another $2 billion of venture capital pixie dust at a valuation of $50 billion or higher.
In a devastating precedent that could redefine history, a Manhattan federal judge ruled that Nomura Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland willfully misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into purchasing mortgage bonds that contained numerous fraudulent misrepresentations and underwriting errors.
David Rosenberg, former Chief Economist for Merrill Lynch, recently made the comment that the current global interest rates, at below 2 percent, have only been this low once or twice in the last 500 years. The globalization cycle over the last two decades pushed up total world debt to $223.3 trillion, over three times the world GDP of about $75 trillion. But the current low rates indicate that individuals and corporations no longer have the moral willingness to take on more debt.
California’s cap-and-trade tax is creating a luscious honey-pot of cash to sooth state politicians’ spending fantasies. In expectation of the cash available from the “May Revised Budget” to be released this week, lawmakers and their interest-group fellow travelers are outlining ambitious proposals that include funding port improvements, paying for heavy-duty trucks and ferries, nurturing urban rivers, sponging up carbon in soil and increasing subsidies for bus riders.
When Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk unveiled a line of home and commercial battery packs a week ago, he said Tesla was “trying to change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world.” Although the system Musk announced was better than the competition, the cost was assumed to be too expensive except for home solar systems. But now it turns out that Tesla’s new batteries do not even make economic sense to back-up rooftop solar systems–at least not yet.
California schools are about to suffer a 235% increase in the percentage of their annual budgets that are devoted to teacher pensions managed by the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). The stunningly higher costs will slash the number of classroom teachers in all predominantly middle-class schools, but exempt inner-city school districts with high “English learners and recipients of subsidized meals.”
Leaking information to reporters in Silicon Valley is an everyday occurrence. But a former employee at Yahoo is being sued for actually leaking passwords to confidential computer files inside the company to help a financial industry journalist write an unauthorized biography titled: “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!”
State Controller Betty T. Yee yesterday announced that her staff will conduct an investigation into the financial practices of the City of Industry after an outside, “limited-scope audit” raised questions about $326 million in payments to businesses owned by a former mayor David Perez and his family.
Facebook Mobile is combining its lucrative app install ads with linking to location, conversation, and movement, so a specific “in-app purchase page” opens as an app download, according to a review by TechCrunch. The result is an extremely powerful tool for direct marketers to increase monetization of products and services on mobile.
Rain and snow hit Northern California as an unseasonably cold spring storm pushed south through parts of Northern California on Thursday, bringing a welcome break in the drought.
In February, Google unveiled an expansion of its Silicon Valley campus that many dubbed the new Star Wars Fleet Command Headquarters. The worldwide acclaim for its eco-friendly biosphere design, which features translucent canopies and walkways around natural salt water lagoons, has been intense. But this week, the City of Mountain View decided, in order to maximize property tax revenue, to give the property to Linkedin to build 1970s-style conventional stack-and-pack office towers that maximize occupancy.
Earlier this week, the San Jose Mercury published an article, “Asian-American Tech Workers Absent from Silicon Valley’s Executive Suites,” that describes how the Ascend Foundation wants to add Asians to the classes of black, women and Latino engineers that are
The Pacific Justice institute warned parents of children in California schools that new legislation progressing through the California State Assembly will force schools to put a positive spin on the HIV and AIDS epidemics.
Californians could soon see drones irrigating or dusting crops. Amazon and Google told the Wall Street Journal they have recently seen a major shift in the attitude of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding critical issues to accelerate commercial drone test flights that extend beyond the sight of the operator.
Harris stated that she may be able to wipe out student loans through a “closed-school loan discharge”, a rule that provides students with debt relief if they cannot complete their education because their school closed. But “closed-school loan discharge” means former students are not eligible for debt relief, and students that try to transfer with completed class credits lose their eligibility for any debt relief.
Breitbart News reported in January that farmland prices were estimated to have fallen 3 percent, for their first fall since 1986. But the Chicago Federal Reserve just upped the decline to 8.9 percent, and “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer” warns that farmland
Adam Andrzejewski, Chairman of American Transparency and founder of the transparency website OpenTheBooks.com, has been battling for American Transparency (AT) to force California’s Chief Financial Officer, the State Controller of California, for an “any and all” line-by-line detail for state vendor payments.
A new, unauthorized, supposedly “tell-all” biography just released by Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance claims that serial entrepreneur and Tesla (TSLA-NASDAQ) CEO Elon Musk hid from investors and customers that the electric car company was down to two weeks of cash in early 2013 and had to beg for Google to consider buying the company.
The prices of California’s water and sewer bonds are beginning to take a nose-dive after Governor Jerry Brown issued the first-ever mandatory statewide cut-backs to water use.
The “Hill and Bill” Clinton effort to convince America that “we are just regular middle-class folks” took another dive when former President Bill Clinton said that the couple had “taken almost no capital gains” over the last 15 years. However, in another self-inflicted controversy, Bill failed to realize that Hillary’s campaign had already released the couple’s 2000 to 2006 tax returns that reported a $371,000 of capital gains.
John Malone, Chairman of Liberty Media, the dominant shareholder of Charter Communications, reportedly called Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus in recent days about a friendly merger following the collapse last week of an offer by Comcast to buy Time Warner, according to the Wall Street Journal blog. Malone and Marcus appear be discussing a 3-way merger that would challenge Comcast’s industry dominance.
The sun is known to be the main driver of all weather and climate. With 99.86% of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of violent fire in the sky, has recently gone quiet in what is likely
Saudi Arabia is still rich, but they are burning through their foreign reserve cash at a record pace due to lower oil prices and an unwillingness to cut the domestic spending that ensures the survival of the royal family. With the nation hemorrhaging cash, Saudi Arabia’s total foreign reserves fell by 5 percent, or $36 billion in just the last two months.
The Port of Los Angeles has been best known for union labor strife over the last year, but the scandal that is blowing up over the arrest of Chief of Port Police Ronald Jerome Boyd on federal bribery, kickback, and tax fraud charges may set a new high for port turmoil.
Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk unveiled a line of home and industrial battery packs at an event late Thursday afternoon. Musk said that Tesla is “trying to change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world.” Although the system announced appears favorable compared to the numerous competitor’s battery solutions currently offered, Tesla’s high reliability stand-by power is much more expensive than generators and has a commercially unfavorable investment recapture period of eight to ten years.
George Soros is often called the “Godfather of the Left” for supporting a worldwide network of progressive causes with over $550 million in donations. But the world’s 27th wealthiest person–according to Forbes–with a net worth of about $30 billion has allegedly used tax deferral to prevent paying any taxes on $13.3 billion profit. Now, according to an Irish regulatory filing by Soros, he will soon be enjoying the shared sacrifice of paying a 50 percent tax that will wipeout a quarter of his net worth.
U.S. Judge Nathanael Cousins, at a San Jose hearing on Wednesday, called the ground-breaking case against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) an “adventurous and risky lawsuit.” The judge signaled he is likely to award the $50 million requested by plaintiffs’ lawyer Hausfeld LLP, who won what Cousins called “the most significant antitrust case of the era.”
In response to San Francisco’s new vacation-rental law to allow unlimited short-term rentals when a host is present, a powerful group of unions, landlords, housing activists and traditional hotels are preparing a November ballot initiative to severely constrict Airbnb and other “sharing economy” companies’ ability to help individuals secure short–term rentals from part or all of their homes or apartments.
U.S. economic growth stalled out in the first quarter of 2015 as the domestic energy boom caused a short-term collapse in capital spending, large lay-offs in the oil industry, and a 15 percent jump in the exchange rate of the US dollar. A pattern of slowing GDP just before a consumer spending boom takes off is consistent with what happened the last time a big rise in U.S. crude oil production tanked gasoline prices beginning in 1986.
The Assembly Governmental Organization Committee voted unanimously this week in favor of advancing AB 431. The positive vote marks the first time that the legislature has moved a digital gambling bill towards a floor vote that could allow widespread sponsorship by Native American casinos, horse tracks and poker of online gambling.
Despite a continuing backlog of freight following the nine months of bitter labor strife between the Pacific Maritime Association and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union(ILWU), who settled their disputes two months ago, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has started a
Over 4,600 people are reportedly presumed dead in the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal Saturday and the numbers continue to rise, but nine Californians in various stages of rescue or distress remain alive at this point.
Apple’s earnings vaulted by 27.5% for the first three months of 2015 compared to the same period last year, on the phenomenal Chinese sales driving profit margins for the iPhone 6. The virtuous smartphone tailwind and buzz about the Apple Watch spiked store traffic that also goosed Mac sales. With an operating margin of over 30 percent and $194 billion in the bank, Apple deserves to be the world’s most valuable company.
Henry Ford is credited as saying “I knew that only half my advertising worked, but the trouble is that I do not know which half.” Today, with 30 percent of advertising already going digital, Silicon Valley geeks commanding databases are terrorizing Madison Avenue’s Mad Men.
