Know The Laws, Know Your Rights: Another

On its second night of jump-starting the new television season a week before its network competition, the Fox network again got some positive results.

A new comedy, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” got some promising ratings; another, “Dads,” fared well enough to hold out some hope, and one returned comedy, “New Girl,” showed some renewed strength.

Only one comedy, “The Mindy Project,” generated disappointing numbers, probably disappointing as much to critics as to Fox executives because “Mindy” had been widely extolled before its second-season premiere. The premiere also featured a guest appearance by James Franco.

Even so, Fox will probably take the overall performance on a Tuesday night, where it struggled badly last season. Probably the best news was the strong showing for “Brooklyn,” another favorite of critics, which drew six million viewers and a solid 2.5 rating among the group Fox sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

The other new series, “Dads,” which had been excoriated by critics for what they charged was racially insensitive humor, managed a 2.1 in that 18-49 group and 5.6 million viewers, both respectable numbers for a newcomer. “New Girl” returned with 5.6 million viewers and the best 18-49 rating of the night, a 2.9. Both numbers were up slightly from the show’s premiere episode a year ago.

“The Mindy Project” however, showed what may be a worrisome falloff from “New Girl,” dropping to just under four million viewers and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 group. Fox, which is also offering projections of how its shows will fare when delayed viewing is counted, offered some hope for “Mindy,” suggesting it could eventually reach more than six million viewers and climb to a 2.7 rating among those younger adult viewers.

That would still be a sizable falloff from “New Girl,” which Fox thinks could get as high as more than 10.5 million viewers and perhaps a 4.7 rating in the 18-49 category.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Another Candidate Responds to 'Not Recommended' Rating

The Legal reached one more Philadelphia judicial candidate after our print deadline passed for our story on the ratings arm of the Philadelphia Bar Association rating 13 judicial candidates as "not recommended."

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Another Shake-Up at NPR as Chief Steps Down

Gary E. Knell, the public radio organization’s chief for the last 20 months, announced on Monday that he would be leaving to run the National Geographic Society. It came as an unwelcome surprise to NPR staff members, given that Mr. Knell brought some desperately needed stability to the executive ranks when he was hired in late 2011.

Conflicts between past chief executives and the NPR board resulted in repeated shake-ups in the years leading to his arrival. On Monday, though, Mr. Knell and the board hurried to reassure public radio fans that his exit was because of something more mundane: a better job offer.

In an e-mail to the NPR staff, Mr. Knell said he had been approached by the National Geographic Society and “offered an opportunity that, after discussions with my family, I could not turn down.”

In a subsequent telephone interview, Mr. Knell said he had been prepared to renew his NPR contract, which expires in November. But then National Geographic called, and it was enticing for a number of reasons. One that was immediately suggested by observers on Monday was money: he will earn a significantly higher salary at the society. While that is true, he said his decision “wasn’t really driven by a financial equation.” What was most appealing about National Geographic, he said, was its size, its educational efforts and international scope.

At National Geographic, he will succeed John M. Fahey Jr., who has served as the society’s chief executive since 1998 (and who will remain its chairman). Mr. Knell is already one of the trustees of the nonprofit organization, which publishes National Geographic and other magazines, supports scientific research and expeditions and owns part of the commercial National Geographic Channel.

“The perfect person for this crucial role was right in our own backyard,” Jean N. Case, the co-chairwoman of the committee that searched for a new chief executive, said in a statement.

The society had about $600 million in income in 2011, according to tax filings, making it far bigger than NPR, which has a budget of about $180 million this year and is running a small deficit. The society also has twice as many employees.

While Mr. Knell’s departure from NPR is amicable by all accounts, it is disappointing to that organization’s board, which must once again search for a leader. Ken Stern, who was named chief executive in 2006, stepped down less than two years later; an interim head took over until NPR hired Vivian Schiller away from The New York Times to run the organization in 2009. She resigned two years after that, after back-to-back controversies involving the political views of an NPR analyst, Juan Williams, and two NPR fund-raising executives. Another interim head was appointed until Mr. Knell’s arrival in 2011 from the nonprofit Sesame Workshop.

Analysts have suggested that the revolving door has hindered NPR, which has had to delicately maintain relationships with its member stations across the country while expanding its presence on the Web. “NPR’s a vital journalism organization that seems to have more problems with its business side than its journalism side, and that hurts its reputation, because people don’t make that distinction,” said Alicia Shepard, who was NPR’s ombudsman between 2007 and 2011.

Over all, the organization has shown that it is adjusting to changes in consumer behavior; just last week it introduced a redesigned home page that looked a lot like a mobile app. The new home page also included a big new space for messages from sponsors, public media’s version of advertisers.

It may need more of those in the future. The organization has a $6 million deficit in the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, and it is forecast to run a deficit again next year. Mr. Knell has been working on a plan to help NPR achieve a balanced budget in 2015. “We hope to present a strategic plan to the board soon, before my departure,” he said on Monday, declining to comment further.

Mr. Knell said that among his proudest achievements at NPR were “bringing institutional donors back” and “helping calm some of the waters on Capitol Hill.” (Calls for cuts to government subsidies for NPR and PBS have quieted in the last year.) By other measures — like NPR’s relations with member stations and its reputation for innovation — the organization has made steady improvement under Mr. Knell. “We’ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time,” he said, suggesting that he felt as if he had fit four years of work into his two years.

He managed to irritate some public radio supporters during his tenure by ending “Talk of the Nation,” the midday call-in show, and throwing NPR’s weight behind a news broadcast called “Here and Now” instead. The change took effect this summer, and more than 300 stations now carry “Here and Now,” about 100 fewer than the number that carried “Talk.”

Kit Jensen, the chairwoman of the NPR board, said she expected a “fairly quick” succession process.

Ms. Jensen called Mr. Knell a “stellar C.E.O.” in a telephone interview, saying, “Certainly, we wish his decision had been otherwise, but we respect what that decision is.”

The board could turn to one of Mr. Knell’s top lieutenants, like Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s executive vice president and chief content officer, or Margaret Low Smith, the senior vice president for news. Or it could look outside the organization — the same thing it has done the last three times.

Privatization Chief Quits After Another Misstep In Big Greek Asset Sales

One of the ways Greece plans to dig itself out of debt is through the sale of state-owned assets. But that effort has been besieged by missteps.

The latest involved Stelios Stavridis, the chairman of the government privatization agency, who had overseen one of the country’s first big asset sales — a one-third stake in the state gambling company, OPAP, for 652 million euros. But then he hitched a ride to a vacation spot on the private jet of a Greek oil magnate involved in the deal.

Government officials insisted that Mr. Stavridis’s ouster from the privatization agency, Taiped, was “for ethical reasons” and would not upset the country’s state sell-off effort. But the privatization program has suffered from political upheaval and delays and has fallen far short of the revenue targets set by Greece’s so-called troika of foreign creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, on Sunday sought Mr. Stavridis’s resignation from Taiped after a newspaper quoted the chairman as saying he had traveled last week on the Lear jet of the oil and shipping oligarch Dimitris Melissanidis, a major stakeholder in the Greek-Czech consortium Emma Delta, which agreed to buy the OPAP stake in May.

The contract was signed Aug. 12 after much wrangling over the details. A few hours later, Mr. Stavridis, a 65-year-old Swiss-trained engineer, joined the oil magnate on his plane, which dropped Mr. Stavridis on Cephalonia, an island in the Ionian Sea where he spends his summer vacations. “Melissanidis, who was traveling to France, offered to take me with him to accommodate me,” Mr. Stavridis was quoted as telling the Proto Thema newspaper, which published a photograph of him, smiling, sitting next to a flight attendant.

Speaking to the Greek private television channel Skai after his firing on Monday, Mr. Stavridis defended his decision to fly on Mr. Melissanidis’s jet, noting that the trip had come long after the OPAP deal was completed. He referred to “hypocrisy” in Greek society which, he said, was interested in “the facade rather than the essence.”

“I am not a monk and I won’t hide,” said Mr. Stavridis, who founded Piscines Ideales, one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of swimming pools in 1991. More recently, he was head of the Athens water board, Eydap, which is also in the country’s privatizations portfolio.

Less than six months ago, Mr. Stavridis’s predecessor, Takis Athanasopoulos, was accused of a breach of faith during a previous stint at the head of the state electricity board. Prosecutors accused him of commissioning a power station in central Greece even though he knew it could not operate profitably.

The main left-wing opposition party, Syriza, which has vowed to reverse all privatizations if it comes to power, said Taiped was “a tool of the troika” whose goal was “the biggest sell-off of state wealth that Europe has seen since the era of East Germany.” In a statement on Monday, Syriza described the Stavridis affair as “the first clear admission of the dirty relationship between the government of the memorandum and business interests,” referring to the Greek deals for foreign loans.

The troika has urged Athens to speed up state sell-offs and to step up tax collection to raise much-needed money. But revenue targets have been revised downward several times. The original target of 50 billion euros by 2016 was later changed to 19 billion euros, then to 15 billion euros. Since last year, the troika has focused on annual targets. But Taiped is expected to fall 1 billion euros short of its 2.5 billion euro target for 2013.

Bits Blog: Samsung Throws Another Jumbo Phone Against the Wall

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Monday, August 19, 2013

Your Money: One Dip Into a 401(k) Often Leads to Another

After workers borrow money from their 401(k) retirement account, they may find that it becomes easier to come back for another loan — and perhaps even another. And yet another one after that.

Fidelity, which houses the 401(k) plans of more than 12 million workers, recently studied the behavior of these so-called serial borrowers. It found that this sort of repeat borrowing can put a serious dent in long-term savings, especially if the employees cannot continue to save as much while they pay the loan back.

And that’s what tends to happen with this group. “Once they broke the barrier, they went back and took more and more,” said Jeanne Thompson, vice president for market insights at Fidelity. “They find it’s probably easier than going to the bank to get a loan, so it becomes a bad habit.”

This type of borrowing can be a most attractive alternative to banks: the average interest rate for a 401(k) loan right now is about 4.25 percent (most plans add one percentage point to the prime rate, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America’s 2011 report, though the formula does vary across plans). With the exception of a mortgage refinance, and perhaps a home equity line of credit, it is hard to beat that rate. Compared with credit cards and personal loans, which now average 15.31 percent and 11.41 percent, according to Bankrate.com, it seems prudent.

The government does not take a 10 percent penalty on the amount borrowed, as it does when a person cashes out of a 401(k) before retirement.

By and large, it looks like sensible people are using this vehicle. Repeat customers, Fidelity found, were typically in their 40s and 50s: people who have saved enough to actually take multiple loans and who also have a lot of competing needs: college tuition, perhaps, and aging parents to look after.

Ms. Thompson also suspects they’re using the money to pay off medical bills and credit card debt, though call center representatives reported that at least some people are using the money for luxury items like Jet Skis and vacations. A small fraction of borrowers even took out loans as little as $200. On average, someone who took three or more loans over the 12-year period earned $80,000.

But how sensible is it? Fidelity studied the patterns of 180,000 borrowers who were active participants in a 401(k) plan over the last 12 years. Among this group, the majority — two-thirds of employees — took more than one loan over that time period. But 25 percent of borrowers came back for a third or fourth loan, while 20 percent came back to their retirement account five times or more.

Even though borrowing appears to beget more borrowing, other experts cautioned that these workers may not be lacking self-control, but are simply using the loans to absorb some long-lasting financial shocks, like a spouse who lost a job. Over all, the number of 401(k) loans hasn’t significantly changed: about 10.6 percent of Fidelity plan participants took out new loans in the first three months of this year, which tracks close to the industry average. About 30 percent of all participants who took out two or more loans, or more than 1.7 million workers, still had more than one loan outstanding at the end of June.

“That a lot of people have more than one loan doesn’t mean that they are dysfunctional,” said David Laibson, an economics professor at Harvard who focuses on behavior. “It could mean a lot of things. It could mean that the household is in some financial distress. And for that household it might be a perfectly legitimate response.”

Fidelity didn’t survey the borrowers. It just observed their behavioral patterns. But it did find that the amounts that people borrowed decreased over time, particularly when they had taken at least three loans. “It’s almost a different mind-set versus the people who take just one,” Ms. Thompson posited.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that serial borrowing can permanently impair your long-term savings. The money is no longer invested, so you may lose investment earnings. (When you borrow from a 401(k), the money is taken from your account, without penalty, and you pay yourself back with interest, typically through payroll deductions.)

Monday, August 5, 2013

Bond Purchases by Fed Will Continue, at Least for Another Month

As expected, the Fed’s policy-making committee voted to press ahead for now with its campaign to increase job creation. And its statement said nothing about how much longer it would continue to add $85 billion a month to its holdings of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities. But the Fed left its economic outlook basically unchanged, suggesting that the central bank still intended to reduce the volume of its purchases later this year.

The statement, issued after a regular two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, acknowledged the weak pace of growth during the first half of the year, which it described as “modest” rather than “moderate” — the words are synonymous in English but distinct in the Fed’s carefully calibrated lexicon, suggesting an even more lackluster economic performance. But it maintained the Fed’s forecast that “economic growth will pick up from its recent pace” in the coming months, driving job creation.

The statement also repeated language first introduced after the Fed’s previous meeting, in June, that “the committee sees the downside risks to the outlook for the economy and the labor market as having diminished since the fall,” when the Fed began this latest push aimed at increasing the pace of growth.

Analysts said they expected the committee to cut back at its next meeting in mid-September. Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital, said the statement was “on the dovish side” because of its references to slower growth, rising mortgage rates and low inflation. Nonetheless, he added, “We continue to expect the F.O.M.C. to taper the asset purchase program in September, provided that the next two employment reports are reasonably strong.”

The committee had little time to grapple with the implications of the latest economic data. The government announced earlier Wednesday that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter, better than economists had expected but below the pace that Fed officials regard as necessary to create enough jobs to bring down the unemployment rate.

The Fed repeated its stark assessment that “fiscal policy is restraining economic growth.” It also noted that “mortgage rates have risen somewhat,” a new check on the economy that is at least partly of the Fed’s own creation.

The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.37 percent in July from 3.54 percent in May, according to a survey conducted by Freddie Mac. But that increase is only partly the result of investor uneasiness about the Fed’s plans; it also reflects an improved economic outlook. And that improved outlook, in turn, is mitigating the impact of the rate increases.

David Hall, president of Shore Mortgage in Troy, Mich., said that the higher rates had cut into demand for refinancing, but that demand for mortgages to buy a home remained strong. “People understand the historical context, that these are still really low rates, and coupled with all the news about home values rising, there’s still a lot of excitement about buying,” he said. “That excitement has overshadowed the rate increases a little bit.”

The Fed has also become more concerned about the sluggish pace of inflation. Prices rose at an annual pace of just 0.8 percent in the second quarter, according to the Fed’s preferred measuring stick, a measure of inflation compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis — well below the 2 percent annual pace that the Fed considers healthy. Low inflation can cause problems, although Mr. Bernanke recently noted that the reasons were “hard to explain to your uncle.” The primary cause for concern is the risk that prices will begin to fall, which can plunge the economy into a debilitating cycle of deflation as prospective buyers wait for prices to fall even further.

James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, chided his fellow officials for underplaying this risk at the committee’s June meeting. This time the Fed noted the risk in the statement but maintained its official view that the pace of price increases was likely to rise.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

For Obama, Another Round With the Economy

It may also be a reflection of how little the president — any president — can do to alter the country’s economic trajectory while he is faced with global forces that shape the financial system in the United States, as well as a domestic political system that has ground to a standstill, particularly over economic issues like taxes and spending.

The new public relations effort, which begins with a major address Wednesday and as many as six economic-themed speeches over the next two months, is intended to give Mr. Obama a chance to claim credit for the improving economy and to lift his rhetoric beyond the Beltway squabbles that have often consumed his presidency.

But the speeches will not contain big new proposals, senior administration officials said Monday, speaking to reporters on the condition that they not be quoted. Nor are they designed to break the hardening stalemate on economic issues between a president and his Republican adversaries in Congress. Instead, they will repackage economic proposals that the president has offered for years — sometimes in new formats, the officials said.

“The point is to chart a course for where America needs to go,” Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser, said in an e-mail to the president’s supporters Sunday night. Officials said that course has improved significantly during Mr. Obama’s administration, giving Americans a sense of stability, if not complete economic security.

Mr. Obama’s adversaries on Monday were quick to point out that the president has frequently launched similar efforts to redefine or restate his economic agenda, often accompanied by rhetoric from his advisers about a new direction or emphasis. Most have run headfirst into opposition on Capitol Hill.

In the fall of 2011, Mr. Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to unveil a $447 billion jobs bill that has not passed. In 2012, as his re-election campaign neared its end, Mr. Obama renewed his vision with a 20-page economic plan. In his State of the Union speech in February, the president refocused on the economy after beginning his second term focused on gun control, immigration, climate change and gay rights.

And just this past May, Mr. Obama announced he was restarting his “Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour,” with stops in Baltimore and Austin.

“They’ve been saying the same thing for four years,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate. “The previous Democrat Congress passed his agenda — Obamacare, the stimulus, thousands of pages of regulations — and the economy is treading water. More taxes, more regulation, and more failures to unleash American energy jobs are not the answer.”

Republicans say Mr. Obama should have spent less time passing health care legislation early in his presidency and more time improving the economic fortunes of Americans.

“Memo to Obama and the White House: speeches don’t create jobs,” said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Senior administration officials on Monday conceded that the president was partly to blame for the Washington conversation veering away from the economic issues that many Americans believe are the most important. One official said that it was incumbent on Mr. Obama to shift the overall focus of the debate in Washington, and that has not happened.

In some cases, the White House has chosen to spend its time and political capital on other topics. Mr. Obama made it clear early this year that he wanted Congress to make a major push to pass an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. The president also responded to the shooting of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School by calling for broad new gun laws. His allies argue that the health care law and an immigration overhaul will help the economy, and they blame Republicans for blocking many of Mr. Obama’s economic policies.

But officials also criticized Republicans, especially in the House, for seizing on what the White House says are overblown scandals: the targeting of nonprofit groups at the Internal Revenue Service and the actions of officials in the wake of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

And they noted that some of the distractions in Washington have been out of Mr. Obama’s control. When oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010, it consumed the White House for weeks. Hurricane Sandy’s destruction late last year and the tornadoes in Oklahoma City in May required presidential attention, as did tensions in the Middle East. Even the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case prompted presidential remarks on Friday.

Administration officials said the timing of the speeches was broadly related to the looming fiscal deadlines that are likely to spark bitter fights in Congress later this fall. Republicans are already promising big fights over extension of the nation’s debt limit and new budget battles.

But Mr. Obama’s aides said that the president wanted to avoid using the speeches as a negotiating platform over legislative programs. They said he would talk about housing, jobs, education, retirement and health. But they cautioned reporters not to expect a Congressional to-do list from Mr. Obama.

That decision is driven, the president’s top aides said, by a conclusion that there are no magic answers that will accelerate the economy’s recovery or help provide jobs to the millions of people who are still having trouble finding one.

Administration officials said they hoped Mr. Obama’s speeches would help frame the contours of a conversation that was broader than the Congressional debates in Washington, in part by reaching out to Americans, business owners and others.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Bits Blog: Coursera, an Online Education Company, Raises Another $43 Million

Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, at the company's offices in Mountain View, Calif. Over the next few months, Coursera plans to double its employees to about 100.

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera, at the company’s offices in Mountain View, Calif. Over the next few months, Coursera plans to double its employees to about 100.

Coursera, a year-old company offering free online courses, has raised another $43 million in venture capital from investors active in both domestic and international education.

The new investors include the International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, and Laureate Education, an international higher education company with dozens of profit-making universities around the world, as well as GSV Capital, Learn Capital and Yuri Milner, an individual entrepreneur.

“We hope it’s enough money to get us to profitability,’’ said Daphne Koller, a co-founder of Coursera. “We haven’t really focused yet on when that might be.’’

Coursera, based in Mountain View, Calif., previously raised $22 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; New Enterprise Associates; and the University of Pennsylvania and California Institute of Technology, two of its university partners.

Over the next few months, Coursera plans to double its employees to about 100, and expand in several areas, including mobile apps and its Signature Track offerings, which charge a fee to students who want an identity-verified certificate upon successful completion of Coursera’s free courses. Since January, when the Signature Track option was first offered in five courses, Signature Track fees have produced more than $800,000, Ms. Koller said — and in the long run, she said, such revenue may be enough to make the company sustainable.

The company also plans to invest in international expansion, through localization, translation and distribution partnerships, and techniques for blended learning, in which Coursera’s online materials are used alongside classroom sessions with a professor.

“We see great potential for using some of the Coursera materials in our universities, so there is a strategic element to this investment,’’ said Douglas L. Becker, chairman and chief executive officer of Laureate. “The I.F.C. made the largest education investment they ever made in Laureate, and they’re joining us in this investment. Coursera allows us to invest in something we see as a rising technology impacting higher education, and gives us access to their content and curriculum.”

Coursera has grown with stunning speed since it began in April 2012, with four university partners. Now, the company works with 83 educational institutions on four continents, offering about 400 free college-level courses to more than four million students from every country in the world.

But after the initial burst of enthusiasm last year about massive open online courses, or MOOCs, and their potential for democratizing higher education worldwide, this year has brought some pushback. Faculty members at several institutions have expressed concern about how the courses may change higher education, how quickly university administrators signed on to work with MOOC providers, and whether the aim is more to save money than improve the quality of education.

So far, most of the students who have completed Coursera MOOCs have been college graduates, and it is still unclear how well the format will work to help students without degrees earn college credit for their online work. Coursera has recently started to market its materials for use by public universities in blended on-campus classes. Universities that use the materials will pay licensing fees, which Coursera will share with the universities that produce the courses.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Hepatitis Threat Forces Another Frozen Fruit Recall

As a result, the Scenic Fruit Company of Gresham, Ore., has recalled three different lots of its Woodstock Frozen Organic Pomegranate Kernels, which were shipped from February through May to United Natural Foods Inc. distribution centers in 12 states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington.

The F.D.A. said the centers might have distributed the pomegranate seeds to grocery stores in other states.

The pomegranate seeds in the Scenic Fruit product came from the same shipment of pomegranate seeds from Turkey that were used in a frozen berry mixture made by Townsend Farms of Fairview, Ore. Townsend recalled packages of its Organic Antioxidant Blend sold in Costco stores on the West Coast and in Harris Teeter grocery stores, primarily located in the southeast.

The Centers for Disease Control has identified 127 people who became ill with the virus caused by Hepatitis A after eating the Townsend Farms berries, although none so far from the Harris Teeter stores.

In a statement, the agency said it would continue “working with the firms who have distributed pomegranate seeds from this shipment from Turkey to help ensure that all recipients of these seeds have been notified.”

That berry contamination case cropped up shortly after Shuanghui International, a large Chinese meat processor, announced plans to buy Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest pork producers in the country, raising public awareness of how much food is imported to the United States.

The particular strain of Hepatitis A found in clinical specimens taken from 56 of the people who were sickened belongs to a genotype rarely seen in the United States but that is circulating in North Africa and the Middle East.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Another Candidate Responds to 'Not Recommended' Rating

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Economix Blog: Another Look at Natural Gas

After my column on Wednesday about how the nation’s natural gas boom is helping reduce emissions of heat-trapping carbon, I received a bunch of e-mail arguing that gas obtained by hydraulic fracturing could, on the contrary, worsen climate change.

The main reason is that fracking wells — where water, chemicals and sand are pumped at high pressure into horizontal shafts to fracture shale rock deep underground — leak.

Cheap natural gas is helping to cut carbon emissions because power companies are using it to replace coal, a much dirtier fuel. But the benefits would be wiped out if a lot of the gas escaped into the atmosphere, because natural gas is mostly methane, which traps much more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

One study last year suggested that replacing coal with gas would reduce greenhouse gas emissions only as long as the leakage of methane into the air from gas production did not exceed 3.6 percent.

The question is, how much do these wells leak? “There is a lot of debate over that,” noted Susan Brantley, a geoscientist who heads the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Pennsylvania State University. “It is very vitriolic.”

According to a draft of the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual inventory of greenhouse gases, methane emissions from natural gas production declined by 45 percent from 2006 to 2011, to about 48 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog has covered this controversy exhaustively. And in January, the magazine Nature published a good account of the state of knowledge on the subject.

But the best answer is that we don’t have a definite answer. Different groups of researchers have come up with vastly different estimates of leakage, from around 2 percent to a whopping rate of 9 percent, found in a recent analysis of a gas field in Utah.

Ms. Brantley suggests that the National Science Foundation underwrite an exhaustive study that could bring some clarity to the issue. But will it have the money? Sequestration just cut some $350 million from its budget for 2013.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Should I Aim for In-House or Another Law Firm?

Q: I have been a member of the bar for 15 years and with my firm, a litigation boutique started by a group of former BigLaw partners, for the last 10 years. It is now clear to me that I need to move on although I have not been told as much and believe I have time on my side to find whatever it is I am looking for. My problem is deciding what to do next. Do I go in-house or move to another firm? What size firm or company do I want to work for? The single most important criterion for my next position is that I have the opportunity to participate in the growth of a business -- law firm or corporate.

My problem is that my main practice area is in a very discrete area of litigation. Everyone knows everyone so I am very concerned about networking with the people who are most able to help me find opportunities at another law firm. On the other hand, I know almost no one in-house from whom I could seek advice, information, and referrals. Any advice on getting started on figuring out what my next step should be?

-- Nowhere to Network

A: Dear Nowhere to Network,

You identify two problems. First, you are unsure about your next move. So far, you know only that a new position must offer you the prospect of playing a role in the growth of the organization. You ask whether you should pursue opportunities with law firms or corporate legal departments and wonder about the size of the organization. Those questions just scratch the surface of what to seek in an employer, and only you can answer.

To address those issues, and others, you must understand your personality, as well as assess your work values and goals. Based on your 15 years of experience, what has been satisfying and what would you like to avoid? You may wish to consider the following questions and others that may spring from them. With whom do you want to work – attorneys, business people, others? What personality traits would you like colleagues to possess? What industries appeal to you? What is the mission of the organization? What is the organization’s culture? What qualities does the organization value? What role would you like to play, aside from participating in the organization’s growth? How transferable are your skills and how can you demonstrate their transferability?

Your second problem is identifying individuals with whom you can network. The way that you approach networking may partly depend on the basis for your understanding that you must make a transition, "have not been told as much," and have time to do so. Sometimes attorneys know that a move is necessary based on behavior or oblique statements by individuals in the organization. They have not yet received direct confirmation, but see the signs. At other times, attorneys are motivated by the realization that their current position is no longer satisfying; nothing else is pushing them to change.

Individuals are likely to be more skittish about networking when they are concerned about jeopardizing a secure job than when they believe their position is tenuous. Still, fear of discovery can be powerful in both situations. Yet, giving in to that fear can keep you frozen, which can result in either remaining tethered to a secure and unsatisfying position for many years, or scrambling to network to find a new position when asked to leave your current employment.

So, another question is how much time you can afford before you begin to network. Even though the attorneys in your practice area are a close-knit group, evaluate the nature of your relationship with them. Determine whether you can count on them to keep your conversations confidential. If there are only a limited number of practitioners in your practice area and you wish to remain in it, you may have no other way to let key players know of your interest in making a change. Consider, too, whether attorneys in your current firm may be willing to help with your transition.

You need not confine networking to the attorneys in your tight group, especially if you are interested in taking your career in a different direction. Regardless of whether you continue in your current practice or move into a new area, talk to attorneys in other practices; law school alumni who work in-house and may be identified through your law school or a search in www.martindale.com; individuals who work in corporations on the business side; friends; family members; and others with whom you come in contact. Your network can include individuals who work in fields aside from law. Do not limit your efforts to people you already know. To improve your chances for successful networking, you must expand your networks as far as possible.

As you seem to recognize, networking is the most effective job search method. Once you determine the next step in your career, you must weigh the risks and rewards of networking. At the same time, consider the consequences of not networking. You have somewhere to network. The question is: do you venture there?

Sincerely,
Linda E. Laufer

Linda E. Laufer was the author of the weekly Crossroads column at New York Lawyer, a publication of New York Law Journal. Laufer is an experienced career counselor and former practicing attorney.

This column originally appeared in New York Lawyer on July 6, 2009 and is reprinted from the New York Lawyer website.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Euro Watch: Euro Zone Unemployment Rose to Another Record in January

That, along with new data showing a decline in inflation in the euro zone, could prompt the European Central Bank to take steps to stimulate the economy when its governing council meets on Thursday, analysts said.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone climbed to 11.9 percent in January from 11.8 percent the previous month, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

For the 27 nations of the European Union, the jobless rate was 10.8 percent, up from 10.7 percent in December. All of the figures were seasonally adjusted.

A separate Eurostat report showed price pressures easing in February. In the euro zone, the annual inflation rate was 1.8 percent, down from 2 percent in January and below the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The jobless data suggests “that wage growth is set to weaken from already low rates” and further depress consumer spending, which has already been hurt by government austerity measures, wrote Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics in London, in a research note.

Ms. McKeown said that the low inflation and high joblessness “should leave the E.C.B.’s policy options open,” and that the central bank “might discuss an interest-rate cut or other unconventional policies.”

There was some bright news on Friday. A survey of European purchasing managers by Markit, a data and research firm, showed that German manufacturing output grew for a second consecutive month in February as new business levels improved.

The composite German purchasing managers’ index rose to 50.3 — just above 50, the level that separates growth from contraction — from 49.8 in January. And the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported that German retail sales rose 3.1 percent in January from December, when sales fell 2.1 percent.

Another bit of data this week also supports the view that the German economy will recover from a fourth-quarter slump. The European Commission’s economic sentiment indicator for the euro zone rose to 91.1 in February from 89.5 in January, with German confidence leading the gain.

“German industry is clearly rebounding and taking advantage from better external traction,” wrote Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London.

Employment is sometimes seen as a lagging indicator of economic growth because companies try to avoid adding to their costs until they are convinced that a rebound is at hand.

But despite the glimmers of hope in German industry, there are few reasons to regard a recovery as imminent. Markit’s overall euro zone purchasing managers’ index was unchanged in February at 47.9, indicating continued contraction.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, forecast on Feb. 22 that the euro zone economy would shrink 0.3 percent this year, about the same as last year. The bloc’s debt problems, and the tax increases and government spending cuts that have been prescribed as the remedy, have sapped spending power, reducing business demand for labor.

In absolute terms, Eurostat estimated that 19 million people in the euro zone and more than 26 million in the European Union were unemployed in January.

Spain’s unemployment rate was 26.2 percent, and Portugal’s was 17.6 percent. Austria had the lowest rate, at 4.9 percent, followed by Germany and Luxembourg, at 5.3 percent each.

Greece’s unemployment rate in November, the latest month for which Eurostat has figures for the country, was 27 percent.

France, which has the second-largest euro zone economy, after Germany’s, had a 10.6 percent jobless rate in January. Britain, which is not a euro member, had a 7.7 percent rate in November.

That compares with unemployment rates of 7.9 percent in the United States in January and 4.2 percent in Japan in December.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article carried a headline that misstated the month of the data. The report was for January, not February. An earlier version of the article also misstated the name of a federal agency in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is the Federal Statistical Office, not the Federal Statistics Office.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Should I Aim for In-House or Another Law Firm?

-- Nowhere to Network

A: Dear Nowhere to Network,

Sincerely,
Linda E. Laufer

Linda E. Laufer was the author of the weekly Crossroads column at New York Lawyer, a publication of New York Law Journal. Laufer is an experienced career counselor and former practicing attorney.

This column originally appeared in New York Lawyer on July 6, 2009 and is reprinted from the New York Lawyer website.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

DealBook: Judge Takes Aim at Another S.E.C. Settlement

Associated PressThe headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C.

An obscure settlement announced in March 2011 has triggered questions from a federal judge about how much accountability the Securities and Exchange Commission should demand when it resolves a case.

Following a path started by Jed S. Rakoff, a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan, Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., has held up the settlement for nearly two years because of his demands for greater disclosure to ensure the public’s interest is protected.

The case involves violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by International Business Machines from 1999 to 2008 for payments made to foreign government officials. The amounts involved were not significant, about $207,000 paid in Korea and a slush fund of undisclosed size to pay for overseas trips by Chinese officials.

The settlement called for the company to pay $10 million. That included a civil penalty of $2 million, an amount that is small compared with some other recent overseas bribery cases. For example, Eli Lilly agreed last week to pay more than $29 million to settle with the S.E.C., with $8.7 million designated as a civil penalty.

Unlike the recent reporting by The New York Times about widespread bribery paid by Wal-Mart to officials in Mexico, the I.B.M. case created hardly a ripple when the S.E.C. announced it. It looked like a routine matter in which the company promised not to violate the law again and paid its fine in much the same way that you would pay a parking ticket.

That is, until Judge Leon took a hard look at the terms of the settlement. In a hearing last Thursday, Bloomberg reported, the judge raised questions about the deal, saying, “I’m not just going to roll over like the S.E.C. has.”

The proposed settlement involved the “books and records” provisions of the overseas bribery law that requires companies to properly report their transactions and maintain adequate internal controls. To ensure it does not violate the law again, Judge Leon has demanded that I.B.M. provide annual reports on its compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and any possible accounting violations in the company.

The S.E.C. and I.B.M. defended the settlement and said that the additional reporting requirements would be too difficult for the company to comply. Judge Leon expressed some skepticism, asking “why, for one of the largest companies in the world, this is too burdensome.”

The judge is no stranger to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases. Last year, he acquitted two defendants in the “Africa sting” case. The Justice Department accused 22 defendants of violations, relying on an undercover operative to record the defendants discussing payments to obtain fictitious contracts from an African government. Federal prosecutors eventually dropped the entire case after Judge Leon questioned the fairness of the prosecution.

Judge Leon’s unwillingness to approve the settlement with I.B.M. raises the issue of the proper role the courts should play in overseeing how a government agency decides to resolve a case before trial.

Last year, Judge Rakoff rejected a settlement between the S.E.C. and Citigroup over the bank’s marketing of a collateralized debt obligation tied to subprime mortgages. The settlement imposed a $285 million penalty, but it did not include an admission of any wrongdoing. The judge found that without some basis to find the bank had violated the law, the proposed consent judgment was “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.”

Whether Judge Rakoff’s tough stand survives is questionable. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is considering an appeal of his rejection of the settlement, having indicated in a preliminary decision that the S.E.C. was likely to succeed in compelling the court to approve it.

Unlike Judge Rakoff’s broad demand for accountability, Judge Leon is taking a much narrower approach. He wants I.B.M. to report on its continuing compliance with the law and disclose other potential violations it discovers. Such a mandate does not require the company to admit to anything improper but only how it is meeting the requirements of the settlement.

This case was not the first time I.B.M. had run afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In December 2000, the company settled a S.E.C. case by agreeing to not commit future violations of the same “books and records” provisions and paid a $300,000 penalty.

So, Judge Leon may have good grounds for seeking information about I.B.M.’s continuing compliance with the law because it is a prior offender of the overseas bribery law.

How this case will be resolved remains to be seen, as Judge Leon appears to be taking tough stance. Bloomberg reported that the judge told an S.E.C. lawyer at one point during the hearing, “I guess you want that $10 million judgment on your list of achievements this year. Well, it’s not going to happen.”
It looks like the settlement will continue to languish until the S.E.C. can come up with some type of continuing disclosure requirement that is palatable to both I.B.M. and Judge Leon.

The S.E.C. and I.B.M. could try to go over Judge Leon’s head by seeking a writ of mandamus from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit directing him to approve the settlement. But appellate courts are reluctant to issue such orders. A number of overseas bribery cases are filed in the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., so trying to bypass Judge Leon could cause the S.E.C. problems in other cases.

Whatever the resolution, the tussle is another signal that federal judges will not just rubber-stamp settlements by the S.E.C.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Should I Aim for In-House or Another Law Firm?

-- Nowhere to Network

A: Dear Nowhere to Network,

Sincerely,
Linda E. Laufer

Linda E. Laufer was the author of the weekly Crossroads column at New York Lawyer, a publication of New York Law Journal. Laufer is an experienced career counselor and former practicing attorney.

This column originally appeared in New York Lawyer on July 6, 2009 and is reprinted from the New York Lawyer website.