Google Glass Ban List Grows

Don’t be surprised if the number of locations continue to increase, but for now, here are the top 10 places that have banned Google Glass.

10. Banks/ATMs

In this crazy age of identity theft it’s not exactly far-fetched for banks to be wary of Google Glass. It seems completely plausible for a wearer to sneak in behind a customer and snap a quick picture of their personal information, such as their ID or bank account info.

9. Sports Arenas/Concert Venues

If you frequent a sporting event or concert you’re already aware that most of the time you’ll get denied recording the event. Of course, this was easier before everyone had a smartphone, but security has adjusted and are quick to scold you if you’re caught recording. Because these locations already ban cameras, it’s not a stretch to believe that Google Glass is banned as well.

8. Locker Rooms/Dressing Rooms

It’s one thing for someone to take a picture of us without knowing in a public location. It’s a completely different beast if someone snapped a pic of you in your birthday suit. To help protect people at their most vulnerable, locations where people are naked definitely have to ban Google Glass for precautionary measures.

And let’s not forget the etiquette of wearing Google Glass in the men’s room.

7. Movie Theaters

Film privacy is already a major concern for the film industry. Like concerts and sporting events, it was easier to spot pirates before smartphones, but theaters still crackdown on anyone caught recording a movie. Still, having a camera at eye-level is something completely different. Do you really think that a movie theater would allow a person wearing glasses equipped with a video recorder inside?

6. Cars

Legislators in states like West Virginia and Arizona are concerned about their citizens safety while driving, which is why these states are attempting to ban people from “using a wearable computer with head mounted display.” This measure will most likely be followed by the 39 other states and Washington D.C. who have already prohibited texting while driving. Glassing & Driving is already set to be banned in the UK. Read more >>

Nothing says economic recovery like mass layoffs

Nothing says economic recovery like one of the most profitable and prestigious law firms in  the nation announcing mass layoffs for the first time in 82 years.  Yep, four years after the so-called “recovery” began, things are so good that Weil, Gotshal & Manges has decided to cut 7% of its associates and slash annual compensation for 10% of its partners by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As the article below notes, there is still massive overcapacity in the legal profession and this announcement is likely to spark a wave of layoffs in the industry.  Not to worry though, Blackstone will continue to place all cash bids on empty homes in Nevada and Arizona.  From the New York Times’ Dealbook:

One of the country’s most prestigious and profitable law firms is laying off a large number of lawyers and support staff, as well as reducing the pay of some of its partners, a surprising move that underscores the financial difficulties facing the legal profession.

Sixty junior lawyers, known in law firms as associates, will lose their jobs. That amounts to roughly 7 percent of Weil’s associates. Roughly 30 of the firm’s 300 partners are having their annual compensation reduced, in many cases by hundreds of thousands of dollars. And 110 staff employees – roughly half of them legal secretaries – are being let go. Read more >>

Arizona Becomes Second State to Approve Gold and Silver as Legal Tender

Last Monday Arizona lawmakers passed a bill that makes precious metals legal tender. Arizona is the second state after Utah to allow gold coins created by the Fed and private mints to be used as currency. More than a dozen states have legislature underway to pass similar measures.

The bill comes hot off the heels of one of the largest drops in the price of gold. The metal fell 9% yesterday -- its biggest one-day drop in 30 years. Gold’s volatility may make it hard to go to a grocery store and pay for milk and eggs with bullion coins.
Related: Gold Tumbles Again: Is the Era of Gold Over?

“Yeah, I know gold is down right now,” Arizona State Senator Chester Crandell and sponsor of Senate bill 1439, tells The Daily Ticker. “People are still buying gold and using it as a commodity and I think they want to use it as actual legal tender instead of the dollar."
Senator Crandell says that the differences between gold as a commodity and gold as legal tender are pronounced. Read more >>

More Than Dozen States Push For Gold as Legal Tender

Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.
Arizona is poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.

The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.

“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”

Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth. Read more >>

Arizonans Facing Cuts in Unemployment

Thousands of out-of-work Arizona residents are facing a loss of benefits this summer as Congress aims to cut long-term assistance to the unemployed. The state Department of Economic Security planned this week to begin notifying people affected by the loss of weeks' worth of benefits, The Arizona Republic reported.

The department said residents received as many as 99 weeks of unemployment aid during the height of the recession. The agency said it will go down to 79 weeks starting June 22. The department estimates about 700 people could lose their benefits each week. The change should not affect the state's unemployment assistance program _ which allows up to 26 weeks of aid amounting to no more than $240 each week.

According to the department, more than half of the 89,000 Arizonans getting unemployment assistance also receive federal aid. If Arizona's jobless rate drops significantly, benefits could be reduced to 54 weeks. Mark Darmer, a DES deputy assistant director, said when Congress renewed emergency funds in December for the long-term unemployed, lawmakers added triggers to gradually pare down how many people would be eligible. Read more >>

Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out

An extraordinary amount of personal income is coming directly from the government. Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year. More...

Foreign buyers lifting U.S. home sales

Foreign buyers are helping to stoke home sales in U.S. vacation hot spots decimated by the real estate crash, especially in southern Florida.

For the 12 months ending in March, 31% of Florida's home sales were to foreign buyers, up from 10% in 2007, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors.

In Arizona, 6% of sales in the same period were to foreigners. That was down from 11% last year but still up from 5% in 2007, the data show.

Foreign buyers are being enticed by low U.S. home prices, down 30% nationwide since peaking in 2006, and the weakened dollar, which makes their money go further. Since the start of 2006, the Canadian dollar has soared 18% against the U.S. dollar, while the euro has gained 22%, says data tracker Oanda.

U.S. home prices, meanwhile, have fallen far more than the national average in some places — down 55% from their peaks in Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Phoenix and 36% in Los Angeles, says Zillow.com. Those are three of the most popular areas for foreigners searching for real estate on Trulia's website, that company says. More...

Builders of new homes see no signs of recovery

Image via WikipediaSales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents.
Story: Sales of new homes plunge to record low

Builders and analysts say a long-term shift in behavior seems to be under way. Instead of wanting the biggest and the newest, even if it requires a long commute, buyers now demand something smaller, cheaper and, thanks to $4-a-gallon gas, as close to their jobs as possible. That often means buying a home out of foreclosure from a bank. More...

Foreclosure rates rise in 33 states

Bankruptcy levels remained largely unchanged...But the depressed housing market took a toll. Foreclosure rates rose in 33 states [in December], most sharply in Utah, New Jersey, Nevada and Arizona. The average county's score in December was 10.4, up from 10.3 in November. Slightly more than 40 percent of the nation's 3,141 counties were deemed stressed, up slightly from November. Read more...

1 million homes repossessed in 2010

Image via WikipediaForeclosures were at a record high in 2010, and more than 1 million people lost their homes, even as notices started leveling off during the end year.

In total, there were nearly 2.9 million foreclosure notices filed during the year, according to report released Thursday by RealtyTrac. That was a record high, but just 1.7% above 2009. It most certainly would have been higher had notices not plunged in November and December as banks halted tens of thousands of foreclosures in the face of the robo-signing scandal. More...

Gallup: 18% unemployed or underemployed

bizjournals.com

More than 18 percent of U.S. workers say they are either unemployed or underemployed, according to a Gallup Organization survey.

The running survey of U.S. workers shows 81.5 percent of them have jobs, but the national unemployed/underemployed number has been between the high-teens and 20 percent throughout the year. Gallup surveys 19,800 American workers each month.

The U.S. unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent, according to July numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Arizona’s unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, according to June figures from the Arizona Department of Commerce. Underemployment also is an issue in Arizona as many laid-off workers turn to part-time service and retail jobs while they look for full-time jobs.

Foreclosures up in 75 percent of top U.S. metro areas

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year's first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Unemployment was the main culprit driving foreclosure actions on more than 1.6 million properties, the company said.

"We're not going to see meaningful, sustainable home price appreciation while we're seeing 75 percent of the markets have increases in foreclosures," RealtyTrac senior vice president Rick Sharga said in an interview.

Foreclosure actions -- which include notice of default, scheduled auction and repossession -- in the first half rose in 154 of the 206 metro areas with populations 200,000 or more.

"We're not going to see real price appreciation probably until 2013," said Sharga. "We don't see a double dip in housing but we think it's going to be a long painful recovery for the next three years."

Nine of the 10 areas slammed hardest by the foreclosure tidal wave improved from the first half of 2009, suggesting a peak at rates that are still up to five times the national average, RealtyTrac said in its midyear 2010 metropolitan foreclosure report.

Cities with the 20 highest foreclosure rates were all in Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona. More...

In Minnesota the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent

Image by G Travels via Flickr

startribune.com
In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.

Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county.

In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt. More...

Gore Vidal blames coming US dictatorship on Bush; thinks Obama may be assassinated

I have always admired Gore Vidal's intellect and political insight. Who can forget Vidal's run-in with that pseudo intellectual phony William F. Buckley?

Then I read this from Timesonline:

“One thing I have hated all my life are LIARS and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don’t demand honour, that can be lies too. I don’t say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media. Would that it was. They’re busy preparing us for an Iranian war.”

Gore Vidal says of Obama “because he doesn’t lie. We know the fool from Arizona [as he calls John McCain] is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane [in 1967 near Hanoi, North Vietnam] and was held captive.”

Say again! How can a man of Vidal's intellectual stature be so blind to Obama's devotion to Wall Street oligarchs, and his administration's never ending stream of lies and deception? Vidal goes on to portray Obama as a victim, a man whose decisions are controlled by domineering generals, a man who has squandered his potential, a man with no vision. One could almost confuse Vidal's characterization of Obama with a Manchurian Candidate, to which I might agree.

Vidal predicts dictatorship in the U.S. and blames it on Bush and the stupidity of the American people:

“We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realize how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Gore Vidal's belief in party politics is a huge flaw, especially considering that it's painfully clear the U.S. political landscape is and has been dominated by a two-party monopoly system in which both parties are bought and sold to the highest corporate bidder.

Tim Teeman writes: Has [Vidal] met Obama? “No,” he says quietly, “I’ve had my time with presidents.” Vidal raises his fingers to signify a gun and mutters: “Bang bang.” He is referring to the possibility of Obama being assassinated. “Just a mysterious lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital,” he says in a wry, dreamy way.