You can go there if you want, but I'm letting go. $orry.
Related: Homes are Part of a Healthy Economy
Maybe if you are married it is okay, but.... hope this will get you started:
"Startups get cash they don’t need yet" by Michael J. de la Merced and David Gelles | New York Times April 14, 2014
NEW YORK — Quora, a question-and-answer website, didn’t need to raise money. It had barely touched $60 million in venture capital it accepted just two years ago.
Yet the California company, which has no revenue and just 70 employees, recently said it had raised an additional $80 million.
The 1% have so much loot they don't know what to do with it all and are making a second trip through the rolodex.
The eye-popping investment — for no obvious immediate purpose — was the latest example of a dynamic reshaping Silicon Valley: Startups, already flush with cash, are piling on the investment dollars.
A great place to work.
Related: In HBO show, tech community sees real life, comedy
You can watch it if you want to; I'm crossing that waste of time (I did read it) off the list. Sorry.
Of the 100 largest venture capital rounds on record, 88 were issued within the past five years, according to CrunchBase, which tracks venture funding. Each delivered more than $50 million to the companies.
“The more capital you have in the bank, the more comfortable and confident you can be,” said Marc Bodnick, a former venture capitalist who runs Quora’s business operations. “It was really that simple.”
Several factors are driving the proliferation of big late-stage investments. Technology startups are staying private longer, venture capital firms are looking to put idle funds to work, and institutional investors are chasing returns in fast-growing private companies.
For technology companies eager to achieve the highest possible valuation on the road to a sale or an initial public offering, this means it is easier than ever to raise mega-rounds.
At the same time, the flood of money is inflating the valuations of early-stage companies and stoking fears of another dot-com bubble.
I've been writing about that.
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Some venture capitalists warn the current rush of big late-stage funding could reduce entrepreneurs’ discipline. A number of investors cite Fab.com, an e-commerce startup that raised $150 million last summer at the tender age of two years. Fab’s chief executive, Jason Goldberg, defended the move as a way to open up business opportunities. Yet an overambitious expansion plan and falling sales led to a painful retrenchment.
And Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital, conceded that investors were spending less and less time conducting due diligence.
Venture capitalists are increasingly being joined by hedge funds and private equity firms chasing huge returns....
Nothing has changed on Wall Street or among the greedy elite, folks.
Also joining the fray are mutual funds like T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Investments.
So when will they need a bailout?
Often, such firms are given access to promising startups with the understanding they would remain investors even after an IPO....
Related: Yahoo For Alibaba
Think of it as a Mother's Day pre$ent.
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And how things can change in a few weeks, 'eh?
"New Yonder music service challenges subscription model" by Ben Sisario | New York Times May 12, 2014
NEW YORK — To many in the music industry, Apple’s pending $3.2 billion deal for Beats Electronics, which emerged last week, suggested a watershed moment for streaming music by subscription. Once a marginal model, it is now being trumpeted as the future of consumption by Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, and Beats’ own service, Beats Music.
See: Apple on verge of buying Beats for $3.2b
I'm not listening, sorry. I'm the man!
But music by subscription also has doubters.
Among them is Yonder, a small service opening this week with a very different model: selling specially licensed smartphones that allow users unlimited free downloads. Under this plan — sometimes called hard bundling — the cost of the music is hidden in the price of the phone.
Adam Kidron, the chief executive of Yonder, said this has much greater potential than streaming by subscription, which despite becoming more prominent has remained a small part of the business. Last year such plans, which typically charge about $10 a month, attracted about 6 million customers in the United States.
“What we’re saying,” Kidron said, “is that we need a model that attracts the other 98 percent of people who are not paying.”
The hard-bundled model, however, has a checkered history. In 2008, Nokia’s Comes With Music offered free downloads with certain phones, but the plan drew few customers and was withdrawn in most countries.
Blue-chip investors like News Corp. and Allen & Co. later backed a similar effort by Kidron’s previous company, Beyond Oblivion. Yet the company fell apart in late 2011 before ever reaching the public, which with $34 million in investments became one of the most spectacular failures in digital music.
Now “humbled,” Kidron said Yonder is setting out with more modest plans, including raising less than 10 percent of the size of Beyond Oblivion’s investment. While that company employed about 70 engineers, for example, much of the work to build Yonder, which is made for Android devices, was farmed out.
Out$ourced!?
Seed money came from Cliff Burnstein, a powerful music manager whose company, Q Prime, works with superstar acts like Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
In a further challenge to Yonder, a deal between Apple and Beats could mean a major marketing lift for subscription. Google has already entered the market with its own service....
At this point I'm turning the radio off.
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"More raiding their 401(k)s" by Richard Rubin and Margaret Collins | Bloomberg News May 12, 2014
WASHINGTON — Premature withdrawals from retirement accounts have become America’s new piggy bank, cracked open in record amounts during lean times by people like Cindy Cromie, who needed the money to start a new life.
Or simply live.
Her employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, outsourced Cromie’s medical transcription work. Cromie said that cut her income by as much as 60 percent. So, last year, at age 56, she moved 90 miles from Edinboro, Pa., into her mother’s basement. To make ends meet, Cromie pulled $2,767 from her retirement savings.
‘‘That money, it was a security that I needed,’’ she said. Still unemployed, Cromie is trying to avoid tapping what’s left of her retirement savings — $7,000 that would be subject to taxes and a 10 percent penalty if she touches it before she turns 59½.
Mine is all gone, and government got its cut and more.
It’s a small number that is part of a much larger picture: The Internal Revenue Service collected $5.7 billion in 2011 from penalties, meaning that Americans took out about $57 billion from retirement funds before they were supposed to.
The median size of a 401(k) was $24,400 as of March 31, with people older than 55 having $65,300, says Fidelity Investments. Such small amounts can disappear quickly in retirement, and the early withdrawals indicate the coming retirement crisis could be even more acute than expected.
‘‘They get hit with the penalty at exactly the time when they’re the most vulnerable,’’ said Reid Cramer at the New America Foundation, which tries to improve savings for lower-income families. ‘‘So it’s a real double-whammy.’’
For decades, Americans’ homes were their piggy banks.
I note the phrase because it shows how we are brainwashed from birth to think banks = good.
As values rose, they refinanced or took second mortgages. Since the 2008 housing collapse, that is often not an option. Taking money from a 401(k), and worrying about the consequences later, became a more attractive alternative, and a record number of Americans made early withdrawals in 2010.
Adjusted for inflation, the government collects 37 percent more money from early-withdrawal penalties than it did in 2003.
This bankrupt government that can't fix the jobs problem in the economy is profiting from the destruction of the labor market!!
Meanwhile, the amount of home equity loans outstanding was $704 billion in 2013, down 38 percent from the 2007 peak, according to Federal Reserve data.
In 2011, about 5.7 million tax returns, or 4 percent of US households, reported paying penalties on early withdrawals.
‘‘You have this kind of Catch-22,’’ said Karen Friedman, of the Pension Rights Center. ‘‘On the one hand, the penalty is meant to discourage people from taking the money out. At a time when millions of families are in hardship, they’re more likely to take that money out.’’
Then why couldn't we get a waiver from Congre$$ or Obama?
Money in tax-deferred retirement accounts can be removed without penalty after age 59½ and generally must be withdrawn starting after age 70½. Withdrawals, at any age, are added to a taxpayer’s income and taxed at regular rates. The extra 10 percent penalty for 401(k) plans applies to early withdrawals, except in cases of disability and certain medical expenses.
Those who leave jobs at or after age 55 can avoid the penalty. Withdrawals from individual retirement accounts have more exceptions to the penalty, including spending for education and first-time home-buying.
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And right next to that in my printed paper:
"London tops list as billionaire capital" by Danica Kirka | Associated Press May 12, 2014
LONDON — A study of the super-rich finds that London has become the capital of the world’s wealthiest, with more billionaires than any other city.
I have been typing over the last few weeks how the Globe is nothing but a paper for the elite of Bo$ton, written of and for them, and there it is again. I'm not complaining or criticizing at this point, I'm just recognizing it.
The Sunday Times, which published the list, says London has 72 residents whose fortunes exceed 1 billion pounds, or about $1.6 billion. That’s well ahead of Moscow, at 48, New York, at 43, San Francisco, with 42, Los Angeles at 38, and Hong Kong, with 34.
The newspaper reports that Britain also has more billionaires per head than any other country, with one billionaire for every 607,000 Britons, versus one for every 1 million or so Americans.
Indian-born brothers Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja top the British list, with an 11.9-billion pound ($20.04 billion) fortune. The two run Hinduja Group, a conglomerate.
The brothers replace last year’s richest man, Alisher Usmanov, who has seen his fortune drop by 2.65 billion pounds to 10.65 billion — largely because of the decline of the ruble. Other notables on the list are steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, in third place, and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich.
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Can't hold the light of the Moonves to that:
"CBS head’s pay: $66.9m" Bloomberg News April 14, 2014
NEW YORK — CBS paid chief executive Leslie Moonves $66.9 million in 2013, part of a package that rises to almost $200 million in three years, though last year’s payout trailed that of Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison.
OMG! There is money in $hitty TV.
Ellison got $78.4 million for the fiscal year ended in May, the company disclosed in September. At CBS, Moonves’s boss, Sumner Redstone, who also draws a paycheck as chairman of Viacom, got $109 million from CBS over the same years.
So Moonves was featured, but he's not number one?
The sums paid to the CBS executives are among the highest reported so far for 2013 by Standard & Poor’s 500 companies and show the media industry continues to lavish pay on CEOs.
And think of it; they are the lead mouthpieces addressing wage inequality and the raising of the minimum wage. Ain't corporate liberali$m grand?
Both men last year got more than the $52.5 million paid to Nolan Archibald, retired chairman of Stanley Black & Decker. CBS sales rose 8.5 percent to $15.3 billion last year.
As of April 9, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was second in total pay, at $37.2 million. Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, checked in with $34.3 million for third place, and David Zaslav, who runs Discovery Communications, received $33.3 million, for fourth.
Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, got $31.4 million, while Steve Burke, CEO of the company’s NBCUniversal division, collected $31.1 million.
See: Canceling Comcast
Is that a threat?
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They all can afford these homes:
"Jumbo loans thrive as other mortgages slip" by Alexis Leondis | Bloomberg News May 12, 2014
WASHINGTON — Todd Vitale, a personal trainer who opened his own gym last year, was having difficulty getting a mortgage of more than $700,000 to buy a home in Greenwich, Conn., because his new business was untested.
Then he tried Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest US home lender, where he kept most of his savings in an account he opened more than a decade ago, he said. He worked with the bank’s private mortgage unit, whose clients are entitled to loans of up to $6 million and personalized service, and had the opportunity to explain that he had already run a similar business and could make the gym succeed.
Wells Fargo approved his 30-year fixed-rate mortgage of more than $700,000.
‘‘I don’t think I would have gotten a loan unless Wells Fargo private mortgage gave me a shot,’’ said Vitale, 38, who moved into his new 3,000-square-foot home in February.
Jumbos, or loans of at least $417,000 in most areas, are one of the few thriving pieces of an otherwise shrinking mortgage market. The biggest banks, including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Bank of America, are ratcheting up efforts to win wealthier borrowers while keeping credit tight for almost everyone else.
What more do you need to know about AmeriKa's monetary $y$tem and those that control it, dear readers?!! It's all geared to service wealth and $end it upward at the expen$e of us all -- man, woman, black, white, gay, straight, young, old.
Lenders are allowing assets in accounts to serve as collateral in lieu of down payments, cutting rates if customers have or set up investment accounts, rolling out new adjustable-rate jumbo mortgages, and accepting lower down payments.
‘‘Jumbos are growing while almost everything else is dead,’’ said Paul Miller, a banking analyst at FBR Capital Markets. ‘‘Big banks need loan growth. If they were getting decent commercial loan growth, they wouldn’t be so aggressive on competing for jumbos.’’
And they called it an economic recovery.
Applications for jumbo mortgages of at least $729,000 increased 4.9 percent in March from a year earlier, while requests for loans of less than $150,000 fell by 21 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The average purchase application loan amount reached $280,500 in the week ended April 18, the highest since the survey started in January 1990.
Jumbos, also called nonconforming loans because they exceed the limit for government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee, are loans of more than $625,500 in pricier markets such as Manhattan and Los Angeles. They’re generally made to the most creditworthy borrowers with FICO scores of 760, on average, and held by banks instead of being packaged into securities and sold to investors.
Oh, the banks are keeping the solid loans and dumping bundled crap on the unsuspecting public still, 'eh?
JPMorgan modified its guidelines in the third quarter for making jumbo loans to take into account a client’s total assets at the bank. The bank made the change after seeing that customers who had long-term relationships with JPMorgan were less likely to default on their loans.
Last year, Wells Fargo created a team of 400 underwriters across six US locations who focus on jumbo loans.
Bank of America in October reduced the down payment to 15 percent from 20 percent for most jumbos of less than $1 million. Existing customers may receive discounts on their mortgages based on their level of business with the bank.
Just what the wealthy need.
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It's the paper of elite of Bo$ton is my regional flag$hit, no exception.
"In trying times for news dailies, college papers pick up slack" by Jennifer Conlin | New York Times April 14, 2014
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In January, residents here learned the news that the senior place-kicker for the University of Michigan’s football team had been permanently “separated” from the college for violating its student sexual misconduct policy. In addition, the violation, what the authorities said was a sexual assault, occurred in 2009, when the kicker was a freshman, and his punishment was not determined until his athletic career had ended this past winter.
The article describing all of this, based on documents reviewed by two reporters, stated, “It’s unclear why sanctions were not decided in this matter until recently.”
It was a shocking revelation, but almost as surprising was the origin of the report: The story was not broken by the local professional news organization, The Ann Arbor News. Instead, it was uncovered by The Michigan Daily, the college’s independently run student newspaper.
No, it really is not surprising at this stage. We have
The Ann Arbor News changed in July 2009 from a daily newspaper to a Web-first model that produced a print edition only twice a week. Since then, The Michigan Daily has been the only Monday-through-Friday print publication in town.
As daunting financial pressures force newspapers around the country to shut down or severely trim staff and budgets, a new model has emerged in many communities in which college journalism students increasingly make up for the lack of in-depth coverage by local papers....
They are called BLOGS, andf that's what happens when you are a lying, distorting, dividing, diverting, and obfuscating pos, AmeriKan media!
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Did you see jwho is president of the Harvard Crimson?
What is even more spooky about that is the accompanying resurrection by Hollywood (based on the book by Ira Levin?) for public consumption -- on Mother's Day! Talk about in-your-face sacrilege and perversion.
Related:
"US employers advertised slightly fewer jobs and February’s data for hiring and quits was revised much higher, indicating that the job market was in better shape that month than initially estimated. It’s a good sign when more people quit their jobs, because most people do so to take a new position, frequently at higher pay. Quitting also opens up a position that someone out of work can take."
Time for me to quit joking around to move out, readers, sorry. It has nothing to do with race, religion, or sexual preference. I simply gotta go catch a flight to the basketball game tonight (playing myself at 6, dear readers, before spurring my way to a friend's house later). Turn out the lights when you are done please. Thanks.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"The 10-hour, 212-mile journey also fits perfectly with the needs of long-haul truckers, who are required to rest for 10 hours between shifts. Instead of pulling over at a truck stop for the night, they can drive their trucks onto the ship, get some sleep, and arrive ready to work in a city that would have taken them an additional nine to 12 hours to drive. So Amundsen sought out contracts with trucking companies, emphasizing the advantage of the built-in rest period — an endeavor that could bring in more than $6 million a year."
That is all the luxury I am allowing today. Sorry.
