The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank promoted its information technology chief to the bank’s No. 2 post under the institution’s new president, Esther George.
Kelly Dubbert, who has worked at the Kansas City Fed since 1986, will be first vice president at the institution and its chief operating officer, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday.
George took the reins at the bank in October after long-time hawk Thomas Hoenig retired. George’s personal views on monetary policy are not widely known.
Dubbert would participate in discussions at the Federal Reserve’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee if George were absent business card design.
Dubbert has a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University and is a graduate of Harvard University’s Advanced Management Program and the Wisconsin Graduate School of Banking. He had headed the Kansas City Fed’s information technology division since 2006.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron pledged more action to deal with
Wall Street dealers made it tougher for hedge funds to finance trading of securities and derivatives in the three months through November, a Federal Reserve survey showed today.
Responses
The Google+ social network has topped 60 million users, according to Ancestry.com founder Paul Allen, who also made the bold prediction late Tuesday that Google+ would reach 400 million users by the end of 2012.
Allen, who calls himself the "unofficial statistician" of Google+, runs hundreds of queries on various surnames on the social network each week. He has been tracking those names since Google first announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users in July.
Google+, the company’s answer to Facebook, got off to a roaring start, hitting the 10 million mark in just two weeks — and that was even before the site was open to the public.
But growth had tapered off, taking three months to reach 40 million users, according to Google’s numbers.
Google’s hasn’t given a more recent count. But Allen has seen a rapid resurgence, estimating that the service hit 62 million late Tuesday.
"It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors, but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks," Allen wrote on his Google+ page.
Google’s (, Fortune 500) social network is now adding 625,000 users each day, Allen said.
At that pace, Google+ would reach nearly 300 million users by the end of 2012. But Allen believes that growth will accelerate, enabling it to hit 400 million.
There’s one crucial missing piece in Allen’s analysis: He only cites the total number of people who have signed up for the network, not the number of people who actually use it. People may sign into the service to check it out and never use it again.
Facebook, by contrast, reports that it has 800 million "active users," which are those users that have viewed a Facebook page or have used an application. Half of all Facebook active users log onto the social network in any given day, the social network says.
Google entices users to sign up in its newly redesigned home page, by making Google+ the first option in an ever-present pull-down menu — an option that sits right above search. It’s unclear how many sign up but then never actually use Google+.
The technology and advertising industries alike are watching Google+ very closely, which could yet prove to be a sizable alternative to Facebook. The project is very important to Google, which is trying to overcome its past miscues in the social networking space.
More people visit Google’s network of websites than Facebook each month, but Facebook is killing Google in categories that advertisers care most about: Time spent and pages viewed.
The European Central Bank
The Sappington Farmers Market, which filed for bankruptcy Friday, will remain open despite its troubles.
“The reorganization of Sappington Farmers Market will allow the store to remain open and viable,” said Nancy Smith, the market’s manager, in a written statement. “We feel this will position us to be successful in the future.”
Smith didn’t provide an interview.
The store, on Watson Road in Marlborough, has roots going back to the early 1980s and has been at its present location since 1995, where it has gained a loyal following of bargain hunters and proponents of local farming.
The store’s mission has long been to support area farmers by featuring their products.
In her statement released Saturday, Smith said the store would continue to feature local farmers and would continue distributing their products not only through the store but through schools, restaurants and a “mobile market.”
The store’s founder, Tessa Greenspan, sold it in 2008 to a cooperative of small-scale farmers known as the Missouri Farmers Union, which formed a company called Farm to Family Naturally LLC to buy the business.
Farm to Family Naturally, which does business as Sappington Farmers Market, was the organization that filed for bankruptcy on Friday.
Members of the original cooperative who purchased the store have since left, according to employees.
Summoned by Congress, Jon Corzine embraced a bold strategy Thursday to distance himself from MF Global’s fall and $1.2 billion in missing clients’ money:
Answer each question. Be courteous. And don’t huddle with your lawyer before replying.
He said very little. Nevertheless, it was a risky strategy, even for a risk-taking financial executive. Anything Corzine might say could be used against him in a courtroom, should he ever be charged in the MF Global case.
Yet the former CEO of the securities firm never declined to answer questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The one-time senator and New Jersey governor was subpoenaed by his former colleagues to explain how MF Global collapsed just over a month ago in the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. It’s the first time in more than 100 years that Congress has subpoenaed a former senator to testify, according to Senate historian Don Ritchie.
Looking strained and speaking hoarsely during nearly three hours of testimony, Corzine said he never intended to break rules that require firms to safeguard client funds. He said he doesn’t know what happened to the missing money, but added that customers’ losses weigh on his mind “every day, every hour.”
He said several times that he did not become aware of the shortfall in client accounts until Oct. 30, one day before MF Global filed for bankruptcy following its disastrous bets on European debt.
“I’m not in a position, given the number of transactions, to know anything specific about the movement of any specific funds,” said Corzine, who took over as CEO more than a year and a half ago.
In his testimony to the House Agriculture Committee, Corzine sought to deflect blame for the company’s collapse, arguing that he inherited a firm already doomed by his predecessors’ bad financial decisions.
Legal experts said they were surprised by Corzine’s decision to answer each question, however vaguely, given the legal risks. The FBI and federal regulators are investigating MF Global.
It’s hard to see how the testimony will benefit Corzine, said Robert Mintz, a defense attorney in Newark, N.J., who specializes in white-collar cases.
Mintz said Corzine’s answers leave him open to “a barrage of questions about facts and circumstances that will no doubt be the subject of review by prosecutors and regulators.”
Two other congressional panels have also voted to subpoena Corzine.
His testimony provided his first public comments since the firm’s spectacular collapse. A lawyer who handles white-collar criminal cases accompanied Corzine and sat behind him during the hearing. But Corzine never turned to seek his advice.
The hearing wasn’t particularly confrontational, though a few members expressed disbelief that Corzine could be so detached as CEO.
Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., told him it strained belief “for you to sit there and say instant payday loans… you know nothing about” the missing customer money. A lot of farmers in Georgia need to know, Scott said. “The key to this is you. You’re the CEO.”
Corzine said he was confident that others at MF Global were checking daily to ensure that the firm’s money and clients’ fund were being kept separate.
“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” he said.
He said MF Global toppled, in part, because of a large quarterly loss caused by his predecessors’ accounting moves. Rating agencies responded to the loss by downgrading the firm’s credit rating, which panicked investors and trading partners.
“The marketplace lost confidence in our firm,” he said.
He disputed media reports that he personally pushed the company to make big, doomed bets on risky European debt using too much borrowed money.
He said he made the high-stakes bets only after discussions with company executives who traded European debt long before he arrived. And he said he reduced MF Global’s investment risks in some ways.
Some outside experts challenged some of his assertions.
Janet Tavakoli, an expert on the transactions MF Global specialized in, said Corzine’s remarks seemed to divert attention from the firm’s fundamental flaw under his leadership: It lacked the cash to cover its bets after investors started to fear that a major European nation would default.
“His entire testimony looks like a very skilled way to try to detract from that key issue,” said Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance.
Lawmakers have heard from farmers, ranchers and small-business owners who are missing money deposited with the firm. Agricultural businesses use brokerage firms to help reduce their risks in an industry vulnerable to swings in oil, corn and other commodity prices.
A Democrat, Corzine represented New Jersey in the Senate from 2001 through 2005. He later served a single four-year term as governor, losing a re-election bid in 2009. Before entering politics, he was CEO of Goldman Sachs.
Several class-action lawsuits on behalf of shareholders have been filed against Corzine and three other top executives, accusing the firm and its leaders of making false statements about MF Global’s stability.
Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law, said lawyers typically advise clients in Corzine’s situation not to answer questions.
“When you answer a full day’s worth of questions, you’re committing yourself to a story that could come back to haunt you,” Gillers said.
Mintz added: “It only makes sense if your answers can satisfy those posing the questions. Short of that, the risks far outweigh the benefits.”
On the eve of “Cyber Monday,” online retailers reported an even stronger start to the holiday shopping season than brick-and-mortar stores.
Research firm comScore reported on Sunday that e-commerce spending jumped 26 percent on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with the same day a year ago. ComScore reported $816 million in online sales for the day, up from $648 million.
The 26 percent growth rate for online sales compares with a 7 percent retail sales increase reported for Black Friday by ShopperTrak, which gathers data from individual stores and shopping malls. At $11.4 billion, the brick-and-mortar sales total still dwarfs the online total.
Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman, said in a statement that e-commerce enjoyed a banner day, despite some analysts’ predictions that early store openings on Black Friday could hurt online sales.
“With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it’s clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels,” Fulgoni said.
Thanksgiving is also a big day for online sales, and comScore reported an 18 percent increase this year compared with a year ago, with $479 million in sales.
Online sales also have been strong throughout November pay day loans. Online sales through Saturday rose 15 percent compared with the same period a year ago, according to comScore, which is based on Reston, Va. Through the first 25 days of the month, online sales have totaled $12.74 billion.
ComScore said 50 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, up 35 percent from a year ago. Each of the top five retail sites reported double-digit gains in visitors, in percentage terms, led by top retail site Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.
Next up is Cyber Monday, when many online retailers run promotions for the first business day of the week following Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion last year, making it the heaviest day of online spending ever. ComScore’s Fulgoni expects another record will be set this year.
ComScore reported online sales for Black Friday two days after another researcher, IBM Corp.’s Coremetrics unit, reported a smaller online spending gain for Black Friday. Coremetrics reported a 20 percent increase, compared with comScore’s 26 percent.
An Egyptian demonstrator was killed early Saturday outside the country’s Cabinet building, where protesters have camped overnight to prevent the entrance of the country’s newly-appointed prime minister, witnesses and a medical official said.
The death came as a wave of protests against military rule was given extra impetus by the Egyptian military’s decision on Friday to appoint a prime minister who served under deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
Hundreds gathered outside the Cabinet to prevent Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri from entering to take up his new post, and clashed with security forces who tried to disperse them.
An Associated Press cameraman saw three police troop carriers and an armored vehicle being chased off by rock-throwing protesters. The security forces fired tear gas in return before leaving the site.
The medical official confirmed that one protester was killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Video clips posted on social networking sites showed protesters rushing to rescue a heavily bleeding man. Witnesses say the protester was killed when a police vehicle ran over him.
Officials say more than 40 people have been killed across the country since Nov. 19, when a small sit-in by protesters injured during the Jan. 25-Feb. 11 uprising was violently broken up by security forces.
Thousands of protesters have filled Tahrir Square, a few blocks from the Cabinet building, throughout the eight days.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects to indicate a police vehicle; adds details and background.)
OTTAWA
Powered by WordPress -- XHTML 1.0